On 04 Jul 2014, at 04:35, meekerdb wrote:
On 7/3/2014 7:19 PM, LizR wrote:
On 3 July 2014 05:16, Bruno Marchal <[email protected]> wrote:
On 01 Jul 2014, at 21:16, meekerdb wrote:
On 7/1/2014 9:40 AM, Bruno Marchal wrote:
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".
How you would bet and at what odds is the real measure of belief.
I think you believe there is no teapot.
I think that the presence of such teapot is highly implausible. But
I can't be sure.
I think the presence of my own teapot at home is highly plausible,
but I can't be completely sure about that either.
For all we know the solar system may be littered with teapots left
by visiting aliens. I wouldn't give the idea house room if
designing the shielding on a space craft, and if pressed I would
work out the chances of it being true using the Drake equation
(with the Arthur Dent modification) and no doubt end up with the
probability being exceedingly low.
But I don't believe "there is no teapot". I do believe it is highly
unlikely that there is one (or more).
I was careful. I wrote, "I don't believe there is one." In exactly
the same sense, I don't believe there is a theist god and hence am
an a-theist.
Then you are agnostic in the common sense of the word.
I know that atheists dispute on this.
That is why, respecting that fuzziness, I use the mabel "strong
atheists" for those who vindicate the strong sense of believing that
the theist God does not exist. But even the Theist god is a quite
fuzzy notion, and I prefer to start from a problem, like the mind-body
problem, and then choose name for concepts by name which fits the best
literature.
I think that scientist should be agnostic on everything, and just make
their theories and deduce in them. Even theologians.
Bruno
Brent
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