Burden of proof is a very basic concept. You are expected to provide evidence to justify your claims and beliefs. However, religious people believe that their faith is exempt from such requirements. This in turn renders all their religious beliefs or beliefs otherwise associated with religion to be semi-exempt from those claims as well. I have yet to see anyone try to provide a justification for this outside of Yitzi. Does anyone else care to try? However, first let me note why this is important. Burden of proof is basically the stance that the negative is taken as the default, and that positive claims require evidence. This is because it is impossible to prove a negative, because the only way to do that is to first disprove all positives, which are infinite in number. Doing so bogs down debate and renders reasoned argument impossible, making the achievement of even basic goals unfeasible. As a result, people generally adhere to burden of proof... with the exception of faith. Faith is exempted for this with no reason given other than "because it just is". The flying spaghetti monster's purpose is to demonstrate why this is an unfeasible approach. If you maintain that there is no default, or that all positions are positive, including the negative, then not only does this put atheism on the same footing as monotheism, it puts the flying spaghetti monster on the same footing as well, in addition to an infinite number of other ideas. So I ask the religious people of the forum to answer the following: 1. Why do you believe it is acceptable to have the default be something other than the negative? 2. Given that, what justification do you have for your positive being the default over all the others? I ask this because in every other debate on every other subject, the failure to adhere to burden of proof, IE the insistence that the negative is not the default, would be greeted with ridicule. Why is this not the case for religion? And before you ask, don't try the "religion/faith and science/reason deal with different areas" justification, I've heard it before and it doesn't work. As I noted before, because faith is exempted, all beliefs based off of faith are also semi-exempted, including beliefs which specifically are within the domain of science. It is true that science and philosophy deal with different areas, however, philosophy as a general rule does not try to invade science's domain. Religion does constantly. Unless you can provide evidence that your faith and all beliefs you have based on faith have nothing to do with the domain of science, drop the argument. Oh, and "domain of science" equals everything within the reach of our perception and reason, or as I like to call it, basically everything that matters. If you don't apply religion to that... good for you, you special snowflake. Now when all the other religious people do that, you will have the high ground. NOTE: This is an offshoot of the "why does religion get a free ride?" debate as people there requested it be moved to a separate topic.
Well... you did ask (edit: or was that Anchovy?). Moreover, I wrote myself into a trap. If I didn't make this thread, it'd have made my argument in the other thread hypocritical.
Okay. Thank you for the challenge. I'll try to make a response later today. I hope that's acceptable?
Because human knowledge gathering is innately fucked, relying on the unconscious acceptance of a concept is perfectly normal and human. Most of the time this is fine and useful (it is less neurologically expensive to not bother considering most things you accept in regards to normal life), other times it runs into strenuous difficulties and bad consequences.
Because when people start trying to apply logic and reason to their religion they end up non believers.
Ok. Though if you somehow find and use Yitzi's argument you will be sued for copyright infringement. Again, if memes are viewed as living organisms whose habitat happens to be the human psyche, then religion would be both the predictable result and exemplar of such. Religion is a meme that provides an incentive for people to believe in it, an incentive for people to resist conversion to a different belief, and an incentive for believers to propagate it. More importantly, it has the capacity to evolve and adapt over time.
I'm going to turn this around and say that we all operate on faith to one degree or another. Consider the following questions? Is the universe wholly comprehensible by the human mind? Can that understanding be validated completely by testing? Feeling safe walking down a street in public? All of these, despite whatever hemming and hawing one choses to engage in, are matters of faith to one degree or another. The burden of proof for instance, is built with the pressumption that something can be tested and either fail or pass. Just as a matter of survivial, we operate on faith and assumptions everday, it's the only way society functions. And in general, your whole approach is tilted from a very false binary perspctive: something is either true or false. Trouble is, even in the scientific world, that's not really the case a lot of the time. The reality is that, even for the most analytical of geniuses, there is a limit to what we can test and know for certain. Indeed if anything, intelligence and certainty often seem to have an inverse relationship. That's where reasoned faith (not the dogmatic faith often espoused by religious nutcases looking to control every aspect of people's lives) comes in. It's saying that when you can't be sure if someone is lying to you or telling you the truth, taking it on faith that people are basically good and deciding to take the risk of trusting the person. You're not abandoning reason, if you felt you had a compelling reason not to trust that person, you wouldn't take the risk. You're simply setting a default for when it comes up fifty-fifty, which happens in life as a matter of course. Board gamers call it analysis paralysis, whereby someone will simply get caught up in analyzing and trying to logically figure out what is the next move and spend an hour trying to make up their mind what to do next. Faith, in that context, might be adhering to the priciple that when the situation on the board is uncertain: attack or defend. In general, people seem to get hung up on the idea of "faith" and "religion" being intertwined. Consider De'Gaulle or Churchill, a man of borderline delusion faith in their destiny. Yet because of that faith, they were able to rise to the occassion. Though in a way, second hand lions said it best as far as I'm concerned; "Sometimes, the things that may or may not be true, are the things a man needs to believe in the most."
Only took eleven posts before the appearance of bullshit argument of 'well, everyone takes something/everything on faith!'. Because when I sit in a chair without checking it's durability or weigh capacity, this is an act of faith. It couldn't possibly be because my brain has constructed a predictive, consistent, testable model on what a chair is and how it works. Same goes for walking down a street or driving my car.
No. Assuming logic, yes. Not assuming logic, no. I don't feel safe walking down a street in public. I also check for spontaneous Bengal Tigers under my bed at random times.
What do they end up when the apply logic and reason to logic and reason? Godel, Nietzsche, and also, in fairness, pretty damn good science.
Oh this argument. No one's ever tried this one before... not. Remove all the excess wordage and you'd beasically have Yitzi's argument. Maybe, maybe, and maybe. Believing with certainty that they are true would require faith. However believing with certainty that they are true is not necessary to justify acting upon them. Probably. I could be in the matrix and actually be an alien from the planet zebulon where 1+1=3, whereupon I would likely be wrong. However going into solipsist paroxysms over an infinite number of indeterminate hypotheticals is not an advisable course of action from my current vantage point, and its pretty much exactly why the burden of proof idea exists in the first place. I act upon what is least false, not what I believe to be true. It is possible that my course of action is wrong, but over time my method of evaluation will lead to it improving. It is possible that my course of action is wrong, and is incapable of spotting a better one. However, I see no reason to follow a different course of action. Oh and answer the freaking questions. You more or less answered 1, but completely dodged number 2. This is important because your argument is the same as Yitzi's argument. You claim that it is impossible to base an epistemology off of something other than faith, including the logic and reason parts. Your basis for this is... your epistemology, which is based off your faith. Its a circular argument, which can be used to justify anything. 2 specifically asks why you use it to justify your particular beliefs rather than any number of other beliefs it could also justify.
Hmmm... I have not found anything in my religion that truly goes against science, so I am at a loss on what to defend. People raising points that actually contradict my religion hasn't happened a lot to me, since where I live it is pretty homogeneous.
For god's sake! Faith is believing in something in the absence of evidence, or even in spite of evidence. This is why we make base assumptions. We accept that the universe exists, that we can learn something from it, and that predictive models are much more accurate than non-predictive models. I personally do not like faith and make an effort to avoid it at all costs, as reality speaks quite differently. Just today I took an exam that I had thought I was prepared for... I ended up doing quite badly. I can honestly say I deserved what I got because I took something on faith (so to speak) and reality was much harsher than I wanted it to be. From this, I learned not to overestimate myself, and not to be lazy when I should have tested myself and ensured I knew the subject before taking the test. This I completely disagree with. While people do operate on faith, that's not an effective way of living one's life. The example I gave above shows when one trusts in faith, reality inevitably forces itself upon you. The less you rely on faith and the more you center yourself on reality, the better.
Actually, yes, you are. In Germany, people will step out into the street without looking because they have trust or faith that everyone will obey the law and give pedestrians right of way. Americans, I've found, do not have that kind of faith in their fellow citizens to step off a curb into a busy street without looking, especially if you are in New York City or Chicago. Every heard someone say, "I'm a great driver, it's those other people I'm worried about?" If it makes you feel better, we can substitute the faith mechanic for 'taking it for granted.' Personally, for me, theoretical science is theoretical. 20 years ago, we had many theories of astrophysics, universe formation, light, entropy, etc, etc that have been tweaked, shortened, lengthened, supported or debunked. 20 years from now that won't have changed. I'm content to wait until we can come with a definite 'yes' or 'no' on our current theories. And have pretty much gotten used to being ridiculed because I don't treat the current theories like they were as concrete as the Law of Gravity.
Exactly. Logic is, in itself, a kind of faith. You have seen chairs and know how they function, so you have a natural tendency to believe that any chair that looks so is actually structurally sound. Unless you stress-test every chair you ever come across before you sit in it, each and every time, you cannot know with any degree of certainty that said chair is not damaged or engineered in such a way as to fail when you sit. If you DO stress-test every chair before you deign to plant your ass in it, then there's a whole hell of a lot more wrong with you than with someone who believes in an invisible being that offers comfort and support to those who talk to it.
Funny story, I once sat right through a chair, one of the plastic lawn ones. Best part of it was that I was about 145 lbs, 150 lbs when that happened.
Because arguing matters of faith with someone is a pain in the ass and leads to all kinds of other drama so most people don't care enough to make an issue of it.
However, I will admit that I have been slightly unfair. I have yet to come across a religion that has a real answer on weirdly wired people but science does. The general consensus among the Christian faith on sociopaths is 'pray and stay the fuck away' which is not encouraging.
I desperately do not want to be associated with either side of this fight. Fortunately, I don't think either side wants to be associated with me.
Too bad for you that there's more than two sides here! BUTTER SIDE AND TOAST SIDE HAVE JOINED THE BATTLE!
