The reason i ask is because i'm positing what i believe is more "neutral" assertion: if there is no evidence for or against a given hypothesis, then its truth and its fallacy hold equal credit.
What i'm suggesting here is that the use of terms like "burden of proof" or even "Occam's razor" implicitly put your original statement ("I'm an atheist because I think the burden of proof is on those who believe in ANY kind of supernatural phenomena.") into a logical/scientific context. This is of course reasonable, but my question is this: is it a circular argument?
The idea i'm testing here is this:
The disciplines of logic include axioms such as not bringing in irrelevant facts, or accepted practices like assigning burden or proof or applying Occam's Razor. Therefore, to apply these tools to this question is to bias the answer, because the tools themselves are based on a discipline whose purpose and usefulness comes from being able to rule out certain things.
(I hope i'm making sense -- i'm having a hard time articulating the idea.)
That said, trying to "unbias" this doesn't lean us toward the hypothesis that supernatural things exist, either. Instead, the unbiased approach seems to lead just to the neutral stance that, given no substantial evidence either way, both hypotheses are equally "valid".
("Valid" is in quotes because this isn't the "valid" of logical terminology, but just the more conceptual "valid".)
Let's say for a moment that this makes sense (but stop me if it doesn't). We're now at a point where, given no real evidence either way, the existance of anything supernatural/metaphysical/god-like is entirely debatable and perhaps even arbitrary, from a "truth" standpoint.
From here, two things come to mind:
1) That (as stacycat69 said), this is why this is all about faith -- either way. I have utmost respect for the "hard atheist" belief that there is no God. What drives me nuts is when, for whatever reason, the occasional hard atheist believes that this belief is somehow not a faith, but some sort of scientific conclusion about which the rest of the world is in denial or error. (For the record, in both this and past discussions here and elsewhere, none of the present company has ever seemed to be in this group.)
2) Where one goes with a decision that's arbitrary from one standpoint is often determined by changing standpoints -- if there's no more or less "truth" to believing in God or not, the next question seems to be what other factors might lend toward one or the other.
#2 is where things get interesting, in my mind. As you said, it's often just a "gut feeling" or intuition that takes over here. When talking about "beliefs", it's often not really a choice, but more of something intrinsic to our experience and/or makeup. It also leads me to ask the next question, which i think is key (and others have touched upon it):
What is, in your mind, the implicit goal or potential effect of believing (or not believing) in something spiritual?
If it's merely to explain what we see, then we're back to arbitrarity: both hypothesis seem to cover that ground (well, for purposes of this conversation -- i have some of my own questions about that, but they're out of scope here). If, as you said, it's about things like making the world make sense, helping people make good decisions, and bringing people together, then we have a fresh set of criteria with which to weigh the value of belief.
(Of course, that's just an exploratory exercise. It might lead to changes in beliefs, but we are talking about beliefs here... and true beliefs don't just change because we will them to. If we were suddenly all forced to change religion under some oppressive government, we might have a perfectly good reason (survival) to change our to the prescribed belief, but that doesn't mean that we could force ourselves to actually believe it.)
Anyway... curious what you think of all this. Thanks again for (yet another) cool discussion!
no subject
The reason i ask is because i'm positing what i believe is more "neutral" assertion: if there is no evidence for or against a given hypothesis, then its truth and its fallacy hold equal credit.
What i'm suggesting here is that the use of terms like "burden of proof" or even "Occam's razor" implicitly put your original statement ("I'm an atheist because I think the burden of proof is on those who believe in ANY kind of supernatural phenomena.") into a logical/scientific context. This is of course reasonable, but my question is this: is it a circular argument?
The idea i'm testing here is this:
The disciplines of logic include axioms such as not bringing in irrelevant facts, or accepted practices like assigning burden or proof or applying Occam's Razor. Therefore, to apply these tools to this question is to bias the answer, because the tools themselves are based on a discipline whose purpose and usefulness comes from being able to rule out certain things.
(I hope i'm making sense -- i'm having a hard time articulating the idea.)
That said, trying to "unbias" this doesn't lean us toward the hypothesis that supernatural things exist, either. Instead, the unbiased approach seems to lead just to the neutral stance that, given no substantial evidence either way, both hypotheses are equally "valid".
("Valid" is in quotes because this isn't the "valid" of logical terminology, but just the more conceptual "valid".)
Let's say for a moment that this makes sense (but stop me if it doesn't). We're now at a point where, given no real evidence either way, the existance of anything supernatural/metaphysical/god-like is entirely debatable and perhaps even arbitrary, from a "truth" standpoint.
From here, two things come to mind:
1) That (as
2) Where one goes with a decision that's arbitrary from one standpoint is often determined by changing standpoints -- if there's no more or less "truth" to believing in God or not, the next question seems to be what other factors might lend toward one or the other.
#2 is where things get interesting, in my mind. As you said, it's often just a "gut feeling" or intuition that takes over here. When talking about "beliefs", it's often not really a choice, but more of something intrinsic to our experience and/or makeup. It also leads me to ask the next question, which i think is key (and others have touched upon it):
What is, in your mind, the implicit goal or potential effect of believing (or not believing) in something spiritual?
If it's merely to explain what we see, then we're back to arbitrarity: both hypothesis seem to cover that ground (well, for purposes of this conversation -- i have some of my own questions about that, but they're out of scope here). If, as you said, it's about things like making the world make sense, helping people make good decisions, and bringing people together, then we have a fresh set of criteria with which to weigh the value of belief.
(Of course, that's just an exploratory exercise. It might lead to changes in beliefs, but we are talking about beliefs here... and true beliefs don't just change because we will them to. If we were suddenly all forced to change religion under some oppressive government, we might have a perfectly good reason (survival) to change our to the prescribed belief, but that doesn't mean that we could force ourselves to actually believe it.)
Anyway... curious what you think of all this. Thanks again for (yet another) cool discussion!