On 30 Jun 2014, at 07:02, meekerdb wrote:
On 6/29/2014 7:33 PM, LizR wrote:
On 30 June 2014 04:43, John Clark <[email protected]> wrote:
On Fri, Jun 27, 2014 at 9:44 PM, LizR <[email protected]> wrote:
> agnosticism is of course the defining principle of the scientific
method, so we really need the concept in order to understand the
status of scientific theories.
I like what Isaac Asimov, a fellow who knew a thing or two about
science, had to say on this subject:
"I am an atheist, out and out. It took me a long time to say it.
I've been an atheist for years and years, but somehow I felt it was
intellectually unrespectable to say one was an atheist, because it
assumed knowledge that one didn't have. Somehow, it was better to
say one was a humanist or an agnostic. I finally decided that I'm a
creature of emotion as well as of reason. Emotionally, I am an
atheist. I don't have the evidence to prove that God doesn't exist,
but I so strongly suspect he doesn't that I don't want to waste my
time."
So he knows that he only has enough evidence to be agnostic, but he
is emotionally convinced to be an atheist nonetheless. OK, so that
puts him on a par with religious believers who are also emotionally
convinced, though not of the same thing.
No more so that being an aSanta-Clausist. Actually I think there is
enough evidence to prove (in the 'beyond reasonable doubt' sense)
that the God of the bible does not exist.
Already the number PI of the bible does not exist. But that does not
per se prevent the number PI to exist (at least in some sense, clear
for mathematicians).
If by God, you mean the God of the bible + the assumption that the
bible is 100% correct, then I agree with you: that God does not
plausibly exist.
But for some believers, even Christians, the bible is not assumed to
be 100% correct. Only some sects (like Jehovah's Witnesses (the french
naming) insist on literal interpretations.
Most Christians in Europa adheres to Christianity for what they take
as its moral value, and consider with varying degrees that there is
some partial historicity in the story.
But you don't have to prove something doesn't exist to reasonably
fail to believe that it does. I don't have proof that there is no
teapot orbiting Jupiter, but that doesn't make me
epitemologically irresponsible to assert I don't believe there is one.
Careful as "I don't believe there is a teapot" is different from "I
believe there is no teapot".
Personally, I don't believe that there is teapot orbiting Jupiter, but
why would I believe that there is no teapot? I have no real evidences
for that too. I have only a speculation extrapolated from my limited
knowledge of teapot and Jupiter.
I might *bet* that there is no teapot, but then I can easily
conceive losing the bet, by the usual "bad luck".
I can conceive that a teapot might be part of a debris or trashed out
from some space station, and that one or two asteroid(s) give(s) it
the right impulsion to go around Jupiter.
You know we pollute the whole Solar System, not just our planet and
oceans.
Bruno
Brent
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