I don’t think that’s how it generally works. The sheer fact of numerous people confirming something makes that thing more plausible.
If it’s just one person, you can easily dismiss it and think of it no more.
But look at what happens when multiple people confirm something— your post. You must...
Number of believers makes things more plausible. Not sure how you could deny this.
Imagine if I told you I saw a flying saucer last night. Not particularly convincing.
Now imagine you see the news and thousands of people are claiming they saw a flying saucer last night. Makes my claim a bit...
No, I think god is more plausible.
Do you think that having less people believing in something makes it more plausible? I’m confused as to how you misinterpreted my post.
It’s hard for me to choose. They all seem about equal to me. I’ve been each of them at some point.
As an atheist now, obviously I think that’s the most rational position... for me. I do not think it’s rational to claim agnosticism any longer, as my pendulum has officially swung to an atheist...
This was a great post!
My only issue is that your agnostic theist and your agnostic atheist are not direct opposites, like the gnostic theist and gnostic atheist.
Your agnostic theist “believes in a god or gods but is not 100% certain”, while your agnostic atheist “lacks belief in god or...
Belief isn’t inherently a vice or a virtue. I think it’s an unavoidable necessity and outgrowth of human thought in the face of never completely knowing what is true.
We must act as if certain things are true, despite not knowing 100% that they are. Belief frees us from that paralysis...
In most cases “I don’t believe X” is synonymous with “I believe not-X”. I would argue that that is how it normally works— people will freely interchange “I believe the earth is not flat” with “I don’t believe the earth is flat” and intend the same meaning.
I agree that it is not always...
That’s why I posted my rabbit/duck. You can see the same thing and interpret it differently.
Since we can only go by their interpretation of what they saw— since we don’t have the original to compare— we can’t say whether the interpretations differ because what they saw was different or...
I would argue that if it’s a conscious, considered position to not believe something, then that is a belief.
I make a distinction between things we choose not to believe, and things we do not believe simply because we’ve never considered them. The former are beliefs; the latter are not.
I do...
Your connotation that religious belief = belief in God is demonstrably incorrect. I think multiple eastern religions, as well as some moderns ones would like a word.
We shouldn’t make incorrect statements because some people don’t know that there are godless religions.
And again, I’m not even...
Thanks for the clarification!
I think my issue with your analogy is that it assumes that a religious belief makes you part of a religion, which I disagree.
If you think Star Trek is terrible, you have a Star Trek opinion— it doesn’t make you a Trekkie.
If you think that belief in god is...
What truth?
The truth you offered before was not the truth that people were asserting when they claimed it was a planet. I really don’t understand what you mean by truth if it has no connection to language.
Edit:
I’ll try to explain my issue a different way.
When you say that the “truth”...
I am not claiming that anything changed about Pluto.
I am saying the truth value of the statement “Pluto is a planet” changed. Before it was true. Now it is false.
Language isn’t just a “symbolic representation”. It’s the thing that expresses truth. A rocky sphere in orbit doesn’t possess truth. Truth isn’t a characteristic of objects; it doesn’t exist “out there”. It’s a value we impart, via language, to express the idea that “this represents reality”...
What are you considering the truth here about Pluto?
I’m not sure how you can divorce truth from the supposed truth’s description.
People in 1995 believed that the *description* of Pluto as a planet was true. If the description is no longer true then truth changed (or the people in 1995 didn’t...
I just think that muddies the waters more than necessary. “Scientific truth” isn’t a scientific term; in fact, “science” would likely reject such a term.
A laymen could use it, I suppose, but it’s not even a term that is used in normal conversation. It’s kinda just made up to distinguish...
The purpose of that post was much more narrow.
It was asserted that since descriptions of the spiritual realm don’t correspond at all, we may conclude that people aren’t seeing the same thing.
Since we can imagine that the spiritual realm *might* be ambiguous and since we can imagine that our...