On the Necessity of Proving Things

[Syntax]

Very true. But don’t forget that some people would answer the question: “what is the probability that I win the jackpot?” by answering: “it is 50% - it will either happen or it will not”. They have no idea what probability means, they have no idea what supporting evidence means. All they have is their blind faith, and instead of proudly wearing it as a badge, they try (very inadequately and feebly) to equate their evidence (one set of fairy tales) with ironclad, objective, verifyable evidence running into hundreds of volumes. One must almost (but not quite!) feel sorry for their self-imposed blindness.

Do you realize what you just said? You are confusing two different kinds of probabilities–empirical and logical. Winning the Jackpot, or the probability of rolling a 6 on a die, are merely *logical probabilities *that are a function of our ignorance. Scientific empirical probabilities, on the other hand, are derived from the relative frequency of past observed cases, so any probabilitstic frequency assigment to an event happening again based off past observed cases will be a ratio expressing past cases/all possible cases. And since *all possible cases *are potentially infinite, the probability of the same event happening again in the future=0…since 1/infinity=0

You need a better way to ground your empirical probabilistic induction technique, because so far, the probability of any future event happening again just like it did in the past is 0.

Talk about blind faith, buddy!! LOL!

 

[R_Daneel]

Do you realize what you just said? You are confusing two different kinds of probabilities–empirical and logical. Winning the Jackpot, or the probability of rolling a 6 on a die, are merely *logical probabilities *that are a function of our ignorance. Scientific empirical probabilities, on the other hand, are derived from the relative frequency of past observed cases, so any probabilitstic frequency assigment to an event happening again based off past observed cases will be a ratio expressing past cases/all possible cases. And since *all possible cases *are potentially infinite, the probability of the same event happening again in the future=0…since 1/infinity=0

You need a better way to ground your empirical probabilistic induction technique, because so far, the probability of any future event happening again just like it did in the past is 0.

Talk about blind faith, buddy!! LOL!

I just love when non-mathematicians try to argue about mathematics. It is so entertaining…

 

[AlbertBall]

I just love when non-mathematicians try to argue about mathematics. It is so entertaining…

lol well the dude has totally lost me, and maths was a big part of my degree. What on earth his post has to do with the fact that we have overwhelming evidence for the moon landings and zero evidence for a god, is beyond me.

 

[Syntax]

I just love when non-mathematicians try to argue about mathematics. It is so entertaining…

lol well the dude has totally lost me, and maths was a big part of my degree. What on earth his post has to do with the fact that we have overwhelming evidence for the moon landings and zero evidence for a god, is beyond me.

You both missed the point entirely; I never mentioned the “moon-landing” example. My argument is much larger in scope in denying that scientific practice is any useful guide for providing us *any *predictive certainty about future cases from only a finite set of past observable cases. As a mathematician, you ought to know that any inductive procedure that infers from past to future cases depends on the empirical frequencies given within our observed, but very limited, experience. So when you compare the ratio of the actually observed cases to *all possible *cases that could be observed, the limit approaches to infinity making the empirical probability, for instance, that the sun will rise tomorrow 0. This is a very basic point any elementary mathematician of probability knows.

David Hume made this same point over two centuries ago, and his very own empiricism made him thoroughly skeptical with respect to all practicing science itself. Science works from the implicit assumption that observed regularities are “evidence” for scientific laws. But no one “observes” laws; we only observe constant and repeated regularities. So the unwarranted inference to the conclusion that laws exist from sense-experience, and by which our future predictions are said to acquire a high degree of probability, is outright circular. Because of this circularity your justification for thinking that the future will be anything like that past is completely undermined.

Certainty is never given in sense-experience itself because scientific Laws themselves are not given in sense-experience. But Laws are precisely what you need to make your inference that science “will always be successful” even remotely plausible. Even if science were “successful” as far as we can tell (which it clearly is not), given the limited scope of our actual observations you have no reason to think it is going to be just as successful in the future that it has been in the past because you are presupposing that necessity exists in nature, the very supposition for which you have absolutely no evidence from science itself. This is precisely why David Hume said that the certainty allegedly achieved by science is based on “force of habit” and “faith” because, in retrospect, there is none whatsoever. So there is no reason to think we are *justified *in believing anything the results from science tells us.

 

[R_Daneel]

You both missed the point entirely; I never mentioned the “moon-landing” example. My argument is much larger in scope in denying that scientific practice is any useful guide for providing us *any *predictive certainty about future cases from only a finite set of past observable cases.

Wow… NO predictions at all? Do you keep on placing your hands into fire, because prior experience of a burning hand does not give you ANY certainty that next time it will hurt again??? Come on, be somewhat rational…

So there is no reason to think we are *justified *in believing anything the results from science tells us.

Well, I suggest you start to put your money where your mouth is. Science tells you that drinking poison is bad for your health. You don’t think that science is justified to make such a prediction (based upon the finite number of observations). So, please drink a little nicotine abstract, and see how wonderful you will feel after it… I predict that you will feel pretty bad (if at all) - if you drink more than a mouthful, you will probably die. But you don’t believe my prediction - after all it is only based upon a finite number of prior observations. You know what? Even rats learn from their experience… are you smarter than those rodents?

 

[Syntax]

Wow… NO predictions at all? Do you keep on placing your hands into fire, because prior experience of a burning hand does not give you ANY certainty that next time it will hurt again??? Come on, be somewhat rational…
Well, I suggest you start to put your money where your mouth is. Science tells you that drinking poison is bad for your health. You don’t think that science is justified to make such a prediction (based upon the finite number of observations).
So, please drink a little nicotine abstract, and see how wonderful you will feel after it… I predict that you will feel pretty bad (if at all) - if you drink more than a mouthful, you will probably die. But you don’t believe my prediction - after all it is only based upon a finite number of prior observations. You know what? Even rats learn from their experience… are you smarter than those rodents?

You’re just begging the question! That’s precisely my point. The decision comes from force of habit and, not from any epistemically justified belief that the flame will, in fact, burn my hand. So to say that it’s “rational” to believe that it will, is presupposing that you have some standard of empirical justification in mind for which you don’t. Though your beliefs that the future will be conformable to the past are useful to you, usefulness is no measure of truth because things can always turn out otherwise. Whether I do or do not believe that putting my hand in the flame will in fact burn my hand, this belief alone has no bearing on whether or not I am, in fact, justified in thinking that it will burn my hand. Utility and truth come apart–and the history of scientific-theories being continually falsfied show this!

duh…

 

[Image_of_God]

You should have read the whole thing. Here is the correct quotation:

I highlighted the pertinent part: “SOME”. This is the **existential operator **(∃), and not the **universal operator **“ALL” (∀). The philosophical stance you disagree with (and I would concur) is properly called “logical positivism” (sometimes it is called neo-positivism) which is a variant of empiricism - but **not **the same.

Based on context, that’s not the way the word “some” is being used for here. If that were the case, then the author would have said, “Empiricists endorse the following claim for some subject areas.” The plural there would make clear that the author was addressing a fraction of some whole. The word “some” is being here used as one would say “such-and-such”. By using the word “some”, he is simply referring to an unspecified subject.

Dictionary.com’s first definition for word “some”:

1.being an undetermined or unspecified one: Some person may object.

Yes, logical positivists would argue that the proposition “all even numbers are divisible by two” is meaningless, because it cannot be empirically verified. But the “garden variety” empiricists accept that the abstact sciences (axiomatic systems) do offer valid knowledge without the need for empirical verification of their claims. Yes, the logical positivists do hold a self-contradictory foundation, but “simple” empiricists do not. And I am not a logical positivist, I am an empiricist. Now, have we wasted enough time on this nonsense? I think it is time to eat crow my friend and move on. Maybe you never heard of logical positivism and what separates it from regular empiricism. Now you do. There is no reason to dig in your heels and stick to your incorrect definition.

I am aware of the existence of logical positivism, but that’s not what I’m talking about. Your source has clearly agreed with us. Even the dictionaries agree with us. For your sake, I provide yet another definition from philsophypages.com:

empiricism

Reliance on experience as the source of ideas and knowledge. More specifically, empiricism is the epistemological theory that genuine information about the world must be acquired by a posteriori means, so that nothing can be thought without first being sensed. Prominent modern empiricists include Bacon, Locke, Berkeley, Hume, and Mill. In the twentieth century, empiricism principles were extended and applied by the pragmatists and the logical positivists.

Even this definition agrees with ours.

At least we have a definition of “faith” that we can agree upon. Now do you offer “faith” as an “alternative” epistemological tool to arrive at knowledge?

“Faith” or “belief”, whichever, is the foundation of all knowledge. You cannot know something unless you believe it to be true. I cannot prove that material things exist. But I *believe *them to be true because of reason and intuition.

Correct. So what tool do you use to separate the wheat from the chaff? And more importantly, why do you offer your epistemological method on something which is not part of the past, which allegedly exists today?

I listen to reason, I use common sense, and I follow my heart. Because God appeals to our reason and our heart and he enlightens each part with his grace such that we will always find the truth…if we but trust in Him.

 

[Syntax]

Based on context, that’s not the way the word “some” is being used for here. If that were the case, then the author would have said, “Empiricists endorse the following claim for some subject areas.” The plural there would make clear that the author was addressing a fraction of some whole. The word “some” is being here used as one would say “such-and-such”. By using the word “some”, he is simply referring to an unspecified subject.

Quite right. RDaneel is trying to twist something here that Empiricists were not really saying. RD doesn’t even know what he’s talking about, and it is clear in the passage from Stanford what is going on.

In some form or another all of them, including the logical positivists, said that **all **knowledge comes from, and only comes from, sense-experience. They all ruled out the existence of innate ideas entirely, so the only source for the synthetic-content of our ideas come directly from sense-experience. Further, with respect to a priori “knowledge,” there is really no such thing because *a priori *“knowledge” merely consisted of our awareness about the **logical connections **between our ideas, but these connections don’t have any substantive content at all–only our empirical ideas do. Alleged *a priori *“knowledge” consisted merely of analytically or **trivially true **sets of sentences such as X=X, so none of them are synthetically informative. And **Synthetic content **was a necessary condition for our having any real substantive knowledge at all.

The logical positivists just took this a step further and applied the empiricist principle to **linguistic meaning **as well! They said that, not only does all our knowledge come from sense-experience, but also that every statement that is not, in principle, verifiable by sense of experience is meaningless…hogwash.

 

[warpspeedpetey]

You forget that an all powerful being would know what theories would be recognised. Therefore he can place both a profound and recognisable theory.

he sure could, but thats not the problem im refering to. what im pointing out is that unless you are in possession of that truth yourself, you couldnt recognize it in the Bible. say he did, how would you know it unless you had that theory?

the math on Messianic Prophecies avoids that problem.

Then you have to rationalise with probability. And generally, the more events that must be faked, and the more difficult it is to fake the events, the greater the probability that the event did happen.

See above, with the evidence we have observed, the chain of fakings is enormous, and difficult. The probability that it didn’t happen is close to zero. Applying this probability to the writings, the probability that none of the writers embellished anything is close to nil. Therefore, the probability that events occurred as published is also close to zero.

ive never heard of rationalizing with probability, thats called “guessing” around here. you have no idea what any of the probabilities are in a mathematical sense.

suppose we have zombie dark age and in a few thousand years when we have rebuilt civilization from the zombie hordes, our ancestors have this same conversation, but instead they are discussing the “moonlanding myth” now obviously soemone could give the argument you just did about the moonlanding, but as witnesses to these times, we know that it did happen. ergo that sort of reasoning is just guessing.

Unfalsifiable unless you were raised in seclusion.

thats not a problem. all verification/falsification schemes are self refuting, representing a logical contracdiction. see this link

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Self-refuting_idea#Verification-_and_falsification-principles

Special pleading.

how so? im pointing out that these Prophecies are unique to Christianity, thats all.

No, they’ll have thousands of photographs, video, documentation. Not to mention the technological impact of the moon landings means that they also have access to space travel.

video documentation is no better than written documentation, in fact much of what we see in the movies doesnt actually exist at all, its computer graphics. its no more trustworthy then written documetation. nor can you be sure they will have space travel. society might be wiped out the same way europe was by the plagues.

Nope, it is only evidence for the writings existing. That they document actual events is still unfounded.

you are right. it seems improbable though to think the magna carta was written for no reason

But if they did, you would believe Vulcans exist? lol.

sure, because i wouldnt know that they are fictional from watching star trek, i would need evidence that they didnt exist at that point.

 

[warpspeedpetey]

The second part of the post:

But the question still remains, why not the far more plausible answer that it never happened and the writers fabricated a virgin birth.

but why do you think that is more plausible? because you dont know how it was done. this is actually a logical fallacy called argument from incredulity, or the argument from ignorance

skepticwiki.org/index.php/Argument_from_Incredulity

Argument from Incredulity is an informal logical fallacy where a participant draws a positive conclusion from an inability to imagine or believe the converse…

**1.I cannot imagine how P could possibly be true
2.Therefore, not-P. **

This is a fallacy because someone else with more imagination may find a way. This fallacy is therefore a simple variation of argument from ignorance. In areas such as science and technology, where new discoveries and inventions are always being made, new findings may arise at any time.

this is even an atheist argument.

Extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence. The savage is right to be skeptical at first contact. However, when he is taught about electricity and shown how it works, that’s the evidence that is level with the extraordinariness of the light bulb.

this is just a saying. it does sound good, but all claims require the same evidence. otherwise one runs into the fallacy demonstrated above.

of course if we knew how things work they wouldnt seem implausible, but that doesnt actually say anything about their actual plausibility.

Of course you can’t apply the scientific method experimentally to an unfalsifiable claim. All unfalsifiable claims are on the same level, with science. That is, highly improbable unless there is evidence of it’s existence. A small teapot could be orbiting Mars. Unfalsifiable and not really analysable by science, yes. Probable? No way.

as i showed in the last post falsifiability is a logically contradictory claim, just as empiricism is. we shouldnt try to apply the scientific method to anything but scientific inquiry, of observable facts. it is very useful, but only in its domain.

Chain stories don’t need conspiracies.

if your claiming conspiracy, then present the evidence that you have. though these arent chain stories in general, the Gospels themselves are all about the same three year period with Christ from different peoples viewpoints.

If video itself was the only evidence, then, yes, it would be shakier. But there is much more than that.

ok, but what evidence that cant be faked? there is none, you, and i accept their veracity on the evidence, yet it could all be faked, so we come back to my point that you cant reject the Biblical claims on the basis that they might be fake either.

And they can be unashamedly called morons. For every part of the journey, you have multiple pieces of evidence. All are fakable, but the suggestion that they are all fake is moronic.

i may not use that wording, but yes its silly. it is just a useful tool for demonstration, we could just as easily talk about the American Revolution, WWII, or the War of 1812.

There is no double standard. That standard is how many pieces of evidence (and how difficult are they to fake) for each thing.

as i pointed out before, 2000 years from now the same argument might be had about the moonlanding. but we know it occured. in the future they may doubt it, because there may not be as many pieces of evidence at that point.

yet the people denying its occurence would be wrong.

A chain story versus many pieces.

i guess i need to know what qaulifies as a “chain story” that seems like it would apply to any historical books.

Scientific documentation, actual space vessels, samples from the moon, other missions to the same place, many living witnesses. Yes, 100 years from now the evidence will diminish as living witnesses die, but the weight of the other evidence is sufficient.

and yet every bit of it is fakeable, in 2000 yearts, will anyone believe it really happened? i dont know, but 20 centuries of time sees nations and empires come and go, we are barely 10% of that here. nobody really thought troy existed either, but it turned out to be true.

if you reject the Biblical stories because they may be fake, then you must reject all other historical events that you didnt witness. because all of them are fakeable.

if you reject the Biblical stories becuase the events seem implausible, then you are committing the logical fallacy, called the argument from incredulity that ive already demonstrated.

on one hand there is a hypocritical double standard. on the other hand is a logical fallacy, one defined by atheists, no less.

accepting either, makes one dismissable. either on the grounds of hypocrisy or on the grounds of irrationality.

there simply are no rational, logical, grounds to deny the veracity of Scriptural claims. 0r at least i have yet to see any that didnt fall into these two categories.

 

[warpspeedpetey]

1. We used known existing technology to put man on the moon.
2. That technology was created by 100s of companies, all of which have it fully documented.
3. We have 10s of 1000s of eye witnesses that are still ALIVE TODAY that saw the event. Including those that WERE ON THE MOON.
4. We have VIDEO EVIDENCE of the event.
5. We have has multiple landings of man on the moon, ALL equally witnessed and documented.
6. We have brought pieces of the moon to earth.
7. We have all the equipment to return to the moon on earth.
8. There are satellites in space (which is proven every time you use your phone)
9. We have the space station in space (which i can SEE WITH MY OWN EYES)
   10.There are NO claims made about the moon landings which we cannot observe on a daily basis. (i.e burning bushes chatting, and dead people coming back to life).
10. **Every single detail of the process is entirely documented, fully understood understood and natural. **

everyone of which concerning the moonlanding could be faked. so if you reject Biblical claims on the grounds that they could be faked, but then accept the moonlanding in spite of this same situation, you are applying a double standard.

To even try and claim the moon landings and religion should be viewed in the same light is absurd to the highest degree!

as far as we are talking about Biblical claims, they absolutely should be, after all, both are subject to being faked.

 

[Image_of_God]

You know R Daneel, you missed what I my point in bringing up the analogy of historical events.

We never witness historical events. We just believe what the textbooks tell us. And the people who write the textbooks base their facts off of documents assumed to be written by people who witness a particular historical event. How do we know that the person who wrote the document wasn’t lying? Well, the fact is, we don’t know for sure. There’s no way to prove that the person who wrote the document wasn’t lying. However, we believe the person to be true because of reason and intuition—because of “faith” essentially. Because of reason and intuition, we arrive at the idea that the person who wrote the document probably had nothing to gain from lying. He was probably telling the truth.

But if we were to follow scientific realist or empiricist ideology, then that document wouldn’t really prove anything. Why? Because we would have to experience the event with our senses in order for it to be true. In fact, that’s the *only *way it can be true. If we don’t see that event with our own eyes, if we don’t hear it with our own ears, then according to empiricist ideology, it cannot be true. And of course, we won’t be able to experience past events, because they’ve already happened, so therefore, according to empiricism, it cannot be true. But according to reason, something that has occurred in the past is always true, even if its existence has passed.

I recall science textbooks. If we were truly honest, then we would acknowledge that most people have never seen an atom. So why should they believe what scientists have said: that atoms exist and that everything is made up of them? Most people will never see one, so therefore, at least to those people, the existence of an atom is based on pure faith in testimony of scientists. Imagine if Albert Einstein tried to prove again all the mathematical theorems of the Greeks and Egyptians, the Laws of Kepler, the findings of Galileo and Newton, just so he could confirm their existence empirically (which is what empiricism/scientific realism basically demands). He wouldn’t have had much time to come up with the General Relativity Theory, would he?

How is this at all different from the Bible? The Bible tells us about a God we have never seen. How do we know that the Apostles were telling truth? We didn’t see the miracles of Jesus. We weren’t there to empirically test them. Yet, we know them to be true because of reason, intuition, and most especially faith.

Just because you have never seen, heard, smelt, tasted or felt something does not mean it is not true.

 

[Image_of_God]

everyone of which concerning the moonlanding could be faked. so if you reject Biblical claims on the grounds that they could be faked, but then accept the moonlanding in spite of this same situation, you are applying a double standard.

as far as we are talking about Biblical claims, they absolutely should be, after all, both are subject to being faked.

Exactly!

 

[Image_of_God]

Quite right. RDaneel is trying to twist something here that Empiricists were not really saying. RD doesn’t even know what he’s talking about, and it is clear in the passage from Stanford what is going on.

In some form or another all of them, including the logical positivists, said that **all **knowledge comes from, and only comes from, sense-experience. They all ruled out the existence of innate ideas entirely, so the only source for the synthetic-content of our ideas come directly from sense-experience. Further, with respect to a priori “knowledge,” there is really no such thing because *a priori *“knowledge” merely consisted of our awareness about the **logical connections **between our ideas, but these connections don’t have any substantive content at all–only our empirical ideas do. Alleged *a priori *“knowledge” consisted merely of analytically or **trivially true **sets of sentences such as X=X, so none of them are synthetically informative. And **Synthetic content **was a necessary condition for our having any real substantive knowledge at all.

The logical positivists just took this a step further and applied the empiricist principle to **linguistic meaning **as well! They said that, not only does all our knowledge come from sense-experience, but also that every statement that is not, in principle, verifiable by sense of experience is meaningless…hogwash.

Thank you for clarifying what logical positivism was. I wasn’t sure what logical positivism was, only that it wasn’t what I was talking about.

 

[warpspeedpetey]

Very true. But don’t forget that some people would answer the question: “what is the probability that I win the jackpot?” by answering: “it is 50% - it will either happen or it will not”. They have no idea what probability means,

considering indiscrete events, it simply means “guessing”. if you want to assign a mathematical probability to a specific Biblical claim, then go ahead. but it will still be guessing.

they have no idea what supporting evidence means.

sure we do, its something that supports your argument. we are not talking about particular evidence, but rather, whether or not the possiblity of that evidence being fake is grounds for dismissal without proof of that faking.

All they have is their blind faith,

its not blind faith, it is rational, critical thinking, our cherished beliefs are open to attack are yours? i believe our position is so strong that i am willing to make available to disproof, is yours? when presented with a logical contradiction, bare, and undeniable, accepted even by russell, the most famous of atheists. you havent been able to accept it. it damages your cherished belief.

so really, who has a blind faith?

and instead of proudly wearing it as a badge, they try (very inadequately and feebly) to equate their evidence (one set of fairy tales) with ironclad, objective, verifyable evidence running into hundreds of volumes. One must almost (but not quite!) feel sorry for their self-imposed blindness.

be specific. what evidence is ironclad and which isnt, because i havent seen any, anywhere, even mathematics has rotated foundations three or four times in the last century or two.

 

[Schn]

but why do you think that is more plausible? because you dont know how it was done. this is actually a logical fallacy called argument from incredulity, or the argument from ignorance

skepticwiki.org/index.php/Argument_from_Incredulity

this is even an atheist argument.

It’s not incredulity. It’s informed incredulity. I know that you need sperm and sex or in vitro fertilisation to conceive a foetus. The only evidence you have of it occurring in another way is a chain story. Therefore, it didn’t happen.

this is just a saying. it does sound good, but all claims require the same evidence. otherwise one runs into the fallacy demonstrated above.

of course if we knew how things work they wouldnt seem implausible, but that doesnt actually say anything about their actual plausibility.

Yes, where is the evidence, I say. A chain story. All extraordinary claims should be considered false until evidence is produced. You have none. Incredulity is usually used when evidence is there but rejected out of incredulity. There is a difference between “I don’t know how this could have happened, so it didn’t”, and “there is no evidence that it happened, so it didn’t”.

as i showed in the last post falsifiability is a logically contradictory claim, just as empiricism is. we shouldnt try to apply the scientific method to anything but scientific inquiry, of observable facts. it is very useful, but only in its domain.

All things that have observable effects can be studied by the scientific method. Those that do not have observable effects don’t concern anyone precisely because they do not have observable effects.

if your claiming conspiracy, then present the evidence that you have. though these arent chain stories in general, the Gospels themselves are all about the same three year period with Christ from different peoples viewpoints.

What part of ‘don’t need conspiracies’ don’t you understand? And even if I did need it, in this case it’s pretty easy. The church has a vested interest in keeping itself alive. When you’re in power, falsifying a chain story is pretty easy.

ok, but what evidence that cant be faked? there is none, you, and i accept their veracity on the evidence, yet it could all be faked, so we come back to my point that you cant reject the Biblical claims on the basis that they might be fake either.

What part of how more evidence is harder to fake don’t you understand? It’s not a matter of whether you can fake all the evidence or not. It’s how much evidence must be faked. This is a simple pissing contest. The bible has one bit of evidence that must be faked, and that is itself. The moonlanding would have hundreds, at the very least.

i may not use that wording, but yes its silly. it is just a useful tool for demonstration, we could just as easily talk about the American Revolution, WWII, or the War of 1812.

It’s not. It’s a false attempt at equating a myth chain story with a real event.

as i pointed out before, 2000 years from now the same argument might be had about the moonlanding. but we know it occured. in the future they may doubt it, because there may not be as many pieces of evidence at that point.

yet the people denying its occurence would be wrong.

If they only thing surviving of the moon landing is a chain story, they are correct to doubt it’s veracity. It’ll be gone once they go to the moon and see a flag and a few retroreflectors though.

i guess i need to know what qaulifies as a “chain story” that seems like it would apply to any historical books.

A chain story may be good enough to establish approximately or roughly how events that would not break laws of physics occurred, like a battle or campaign. Even then, uncertainty is widely admitted by those who study the accounts, with the glory of the winning side usually exaggerated. It is far from good enough to justify believing in something that breaks science as we know it.

and yet every bit of it is fakeable, in 2000 yearts, will anyone believe it really happened? i dont know, but 20 centuries of time sees nations and empires come and go, we are barely 10% of that here. nobody really thought troy existed either, but it turned out to be true.

if you reject the Biblical stories because they may be fake, then you must reject all other historical events that you didnt witness. because all of them are fakeable.

if you reject the Biblical stories becuase the events seem implausible, then you are committing the logical fallacy, called the argument from incredulity that ive already demonstrated.

on one hand there is a hypocritical double standard. on the other hand is a logical fallacy, one defined by atheists, no less.

accepting either, makes one dismissable. either on the grounds of hypocrisy or on the grounds of irrationality.

there simply are no rational, logical, grounds to deny the veracity of Scriptural claims. 0r at least i have yet to see any that didnt fall into these two categories.

I’ve replied to this. In a sentence, the number of pieces of evidence for scripture (that is, one piece) is less than the number of pieces for the moon landing (hundreds), and is not enough to establish that something that would beak science as we know it actually happened.

 

[davidv]

It’s not incredulity. It’s informed incredulity. I know that you need sperm and sex or in vitro fertilisation to conceive a foetus. The only evidence you have of it occurring in another way is a chain story. Therefore, it didn’t happen.

Yes, where is the evidence, I say. A chain story. All extraordinary claims should be considered false until evidence is produced. You have none. Incredulity is usually used when evidence is there but rejected out of incredulity. There is a difference between “I don’t know how this could have happened, so it didn’t”, and “there is no evidence that it happened, so it didn’t”.

All things that have observable effects can be studied by the scientific method. Those that do not have observable effects don’t concern anyone precisely because they do not have observable effects.

What part of ‘don’t need conspiracies’ don’t you understand? And even if I did need it, in this case it’s pretty easy. The church has a vested interest in keeping itself alive. When you’re in power, falsifying a chain story is pretty easy.

What part of how more evidence is harder to fake don’t you understand? It’s not a matter of whether you can fake all the evidence or not. It’s how much evidence must be faked. This is a simple pissing contest. The bible has one bit of evidence that must be faked, and that is itself. The moonlanding would have hundreds, at the very least.

It’s not. It’s a false attempt at equating a myth chain story with a real event.

If they only thing surviving of the moon landing is a chain story, they are correct to doubt it’s veracity. It’ll be gone once they go to the moon and see a flag and a few retroreflectors though.

A chain story may be good enough to establish approximately or roughly how events occurred, like a battle or campaign. Even then, uncertainty is widely admitted. It is far from good enough to justify believing in something that breaks science as we know it.

I’ve replied to this. In a sentence, the number of pieces of evidence for scripture (that is, one piece) is less than the number of pieces for the moon landing (hundreds), and is not enough to establish that something that would beak science as we know it actually happened.

You say “chain story”. How do you know it is? Do you have evidence that it is? What is this evidence?

I say “eye witness accounts”, and have 20 centuries of consistency in the story.

 

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Of course you can’t apply the scientific method experimentally to an unfalsifiable claim. **All unfalsifiable claims **are on the same level, with science. That is, **highly improbable **unless there is evidence of it’s existence.

All those claims said to be “unfalsifiable” with respect to empirical evidence are highly improbable.
Mathematical claims are unfalsifiable with respect to empirical evidence.
Therefore, mathematical claims are highly improbable.

A small teapot could be orbiting Mars. Unfalsifiable and not really analysable by science, yes. Probable? No way…

No. “Unfalsfiable” simply means that a purportedly empirical claim is, in principle, unfalsifiable, not actually unfalsifiable. “Teapots orbiting Mars” is falsifiable because, given the right conditions, this* could *be verified or disconfirmed.

 

[Schn]

You say “chain story”. How do you know it is? Do you have evidence that it is? What is this evidence?

I say “eye witness accounts”, and have 20 centuries of consistency in the story.

Chain story, that is, a story written by multiple people over a period of time. That describes the bible pretty well. It kind of tells you that itself, you know. Book titles being different people and all. Eye witness accounts they may be, but warped over 20 centuries of retelling. It may be enough evidence to conclude that there is a good likelihood that someone called Jesus existed. It is nowhere near enough evidence to conclude that he breaks physics.

 

[Schn]

All those claims said to be “unfalsifiable” with respect to empirical evidence are highly improbable.
Mathematical claims are unfalsifiable with respect to empirical evidence.
Therefore, mathematical claims are highly improbable.

Mathematics is defined within a rigid framework. Defined within that framework, certain theories can be proven. I hope you’re not equating the bible with mathematical laws. That’s sad.

No. “Unfalsfiable” simply means that a purportedly empirical claim is, in principle, unfalsifiable, not actually unfalsifiable. “Teapots orbiting Mars” is falsifiable because, given the right conditions, this* could *be verified or disconfirmed.

Nah, all you have to do is mention that the teapot is too small to detect.