Atheists/Agnostics/Skeptics! What are your sources of knowledge?

[Milton Platt]

I think he means to avoid Tiberius' quote. He will dodge around substantive responses by asking vague questions, rather than say what he means.
Tom

Yup....if ya can't dazzle 'em with brilliance baffle them with bulls**t

 

[columbus]

Yup....if ya can't dazzle 'em with brilliance baffle them with bulls**t

I think that is a verse in the quraan.
Muhammad got it from 6th century Christians.
Tom

 

[Valjean]

Science doesn't do purpose any more than it does proof.
Science describes function.

 

[paarsurrey]

No, because purpose is an abstract concept.
A large gold ingot might be great wealth and power, or it might be a doorstop, or it might be something else.
What science can tell you is how much it weighs, what it's current market value is, the atomic weight of gold, and lots of other facts. But not it's purpose. Because purpose doesn't exist in the world we share with each other. It only exists between our ears.
Tom

You mean that science cannot unfold the whole truth about a thing, it covers it partially? I get you. Right?
Regards

 

[Milton Platt]

You mean that science cannot unfold the whole truth about a thing, it covers it partially? I get you. Right?
Regards

Can we ever know the whole truth of a thing, or is it possible we could slways learn a little more? Science is a methodology for understanding and explaining how things are, not what kind of purpose someone wants to attach to it. What's your point?

Please name something you know the whole truth of and demonstrate how you know beyond all doubt that there could be nothing more that could ever be known about it.

 

[paarsurrey]

Can we ever know the whole truth of a thing, or is it possible we could slways learn a little more? Science is a methodology for understanding and explaining how things are, not what kind of purpose someone wants to attach to it. What's your point?
Please name something you know the whole truth of and demonstrate how you know beyond all doubt that there could be nothing more that could ever be known about it.

The scientific method has been so designed that it can provide only physical and material aspects of a thing that is a partial aspect. Right?
Regards

 

[sayak83]

The scientific method has been so designed that it can provide only physical and material aspects of a thing that is a partial aspect. Right?
Regards

Hi Paar. I am new to this forum and wish to jump into the conversation here. Let start with a few rough definitions.
Reality:- Let me assume that a reality of some kind exists. That is something exists, and the things that exist exist in certain ways rather than in other ways it could possibly exist.
Truth-Set:- The entire information data set that is fully able to describe all of reality as it exists. If reality exists than this information set also exists.
Knowledge:- A information set possessed by a sentient being that makes it possible for that being to successfully interact with some aspects of the reality. This information set has to stand in some relation with the information set which I am calling truth about reality. It may a useful approximation of a subset of the truth for example.
Then epistemology is the study of how best to acquire knowledge for various applications and conditions the sentient being finds itself in. It seems that the primary sources involve 1)experience, 2)analysis of experience through reasoning and discussion and 3)expert testimony of others. The test of reliability is how successful I am in using that knowledge for my various needs of interacting with reality.

Now, in this, almost every body agrees. The disagreement is what are criteria of reliability in either of the three categories. For example atheists do not consider revelation to be a reliable form of expert testimony while theists do. That's it.

 

[paarsurrey]

You are welcome to the forum.
I don't deal in definitions, sorry. I am an ordinary man in the street with no claim of scholarship and piety whatsoever.
What is your own personal understanding of "secular" as religion? Please
Regards

 

[9-10ths_Penguin]

The scientific method has been so designed that it can provide only physical and material aspects of a thing that is a partial aspect. Right?
Regards

Science can speak to anything that interacts with the observable or measurable, regardless of whether you call it "physical" or something else.

 

[leibowde84]

You mean that science cannot unfold the whole truth about a thing, it covers it partially? I get you. Right?
Regards

You are assuming that "purpose" actually exists. It could be that there is no "purpose" in this context.

 

[gnostic]

You are welcome to the forum.
I don't deal in definitions, sorry. I am an ordinary man in the street with no claim of scholarship and piety whatsoever.
What is your own personal understanding of "secular" as religion? Please

And, yet. Whenever I read your posts, you seemed to claim that you know better than experts in the fields.

You always claimed to be right, and everyone else wrong, everyone like scientists, academics, scholars, historians and experts.

You always telling people they are wrong in things that clearly YOU don't know anything about, instead of learning from people who do know better than you.

And now you are claiming to be "ordinary man" and have no "scholarship". So tell me, paarsurrey, how can someone who has no scholarship ever claim that this or that person is wrong when they disagree with you?

Did it ever occur to you that you are wrong about things that you don't understand?

 

[leibowde84]

The scientific method has been so designed that it can provide only physical and material aspects of a thing that is a partial aspect. Right?
Regards

What makes you so confident that there is anything beyond what the scientific method of observation, experimentation, etc. can discover about a thing?

 

[Kelly of the Phoenix]

I just meant an estimation.

The example was knowing about fire.
If one sees smoke arising from a house, one could guess there is 25% (approximately) chance that there is fire somewhere in the House as one knows that smoke rises when there is fire.This would be knowledge by the certainty of reason.
If one goes near the house and sees with one's won eyes the fire. One would be 75% (approximately) sure of fire. This is knowledge by the certainty of sight.
If one puts one's hands and feel the burning of the fire, one would get 100% (approximately) certainty of fire. This is knowledge by the certainty of experience.
How would you go about for gaining certainty of knowledge of something? Please.

What if you have a nerve dysfunction that makes you unaware of heat ... how do you verify fire then?

What if I'm looking at an electric fireplace, the smoke and the fire are illusions, but I can still burn my hand on the heating elements, right?

I mean the Absolute truth that is why I used capital T and not t.
There cannot be a relative truth if there exists no absolute Truth.

How can a limited being experience 100% Truth?

Please mention against them the level of certainty they generate in one.
Did all these disciplines ( and many more not listed by one) exist say about 3000 years ago?

Probably not called such, but "proto" versions did.

Suppose one is sick and has suffered a lot from a disease, one of his friend meets him and asks him as to how is he now. He responds saying I am 95% cured. It is not mathematical %age, yet it expresses eloquently.

Actually, if there is a list of symptoms all people with that disease get, then you could say you are 95% cured because 95% of the symptoms are gone now. Or, if a disease lasts a month, you could calculate where you are on the timeline and determine you are 95% done.

Thanks for taking the trouble to re-state your comment, I'm sorry - but I still have no idea what you are trying to say. My apologies.

I think it's about having an absolute as a foundation for comparison. I might have trouble explaining a cell phone to someone who doesn't know what a phone is.

These sources did not exist in their current format 3000 years ago, yet the Universe/s existed with all the facts in it, so the Knowledge was there.

The Quran claims it is "fixing" what the torah and bible say, so with your logic, science post-Quran could be "fixing" that ...

is it? it sounds like you're arguing for a utilitarian definition of truth... There are plenty of things that 'work' but aren't true.

How so? If we make a prediction about something working and it works that way, even if we're confused about WHY it worked, it still worked, right?

The Holy Quran : Chapter 2: Al-Baqarah

How does that relate to knowledge?

How? Please
Regards

Scriptures that claim divine inspiration or outright authorship somehow still require humans to write it, print it, distribute it, etc. No Word of God has, as far as we know, ever been FROM God.

What about Jesus rising from the dead after three days...is that literal?

Depends. Did Jesus literally die? What if Jesus suffered a medical condition (I vote for pleural effusion or congestive heart failure or something similar) and woke up after a three day "sick leave"?

"knowledge is obtainable from any book. But it isn't knowledge of certainty."
Yes. In the ethical, moral and spiritual reams, only revealed religions provide useful knowledge, useful for this world ans also for the hereafter.
Regards

How do we know they aren't just saying things to gain followers?

In many matters one does not need or demand any evidence. Right?
Regards

Personally, I enjoy finding out what evidence there is for many things. If it's one thing I can't stand, it's people telling me things without verifiable reasons, particularly because over the years I've seen just how selfish and narcissistic people can be.

I have not read all thirteen pages. The original post was very brief. Could the original poster expound a bit as to what they mean by source of knowledge? Every human utilizes thought, experience, and so forth. What specifically are you aiming for?

Summary: "The Quran tells us everything relevant to reality. The end."

New Atheists and other evils are just as spiritual as some Theists, they conduct rituals and practice magic; blood sacrifices to a God or Godhead, casting invisibility, and such (I even imagine they dabble in the 'erb), but by way of things that they have worded, and evolved, to be logical; such as by 'telling a joke', or 'group laughter' (where one on the receiving end of the joke is sacrificed). It's a sick ritual that corporations, the state and Academia have us involved in, and they are supported by the New Atheist movement---they cast invisibility upon their overlords, they sacrifice the intelligent to boost their own and Godheads will. And so, their sources of knowledge are prior magic practices, or ritualistic behaviour, worshipped by, New Atheists and other evils, as logic, in effort to pervert the course of justice.

I was just thinking to myself that I've gone for too many days without petulant paranoia. Thanks for catching me up on my quota.

I have to disagree. If I take EVERYTHING as a source of information, then that would include ESP, magical crystals, water dowsing, auras and all sorts of other nonsense. For me, the only source of information is science. It covers EVERYTHING that is testable and verifiable, and all information needs to be tested and verified before we can reasonably accept it as factual.

Science used to be magic, though.

You mean that science cannot unfold the whole truth about a thing, it covers it partially? I get you. Right?
Regards

Religion offers purpose but it doesn't VERIFY said purposes.

 

[sayak83]

You are welcome to the forum.
I don't deal in definitions, sorry. I am an ordinary man in the street with no claim of scholarship and piety whatsoever.
What is your own personal understanding of "secular" as religion? Please
Regards

I do not understand your question. What was difficult to understand about my response? You were asking questions of philosophy, and the answers therefore will be necessarily complex, though not difficult to understand if one tries. I just defined reality as that which exists (in whatever form) and truth as the sum total of all information needed to completely specify what, how and the manner of existence. Knowledge then is some subset or appx. of this information that a sentient being possesses that it uses to more efficiently interact with the world.

 

[Milton Platt]

In whic

Hi Paar. I am new to this forum and wish to jump into the conversation here. Let start with a few rough definitions.
Reality:- Let me assume that a reality of some kind exists. That is something exists, and the things that exist exist in certain ways rather than in other ways it could possibly exist.
Truth-Set:- The entire information data set that is fully able to describe all of reality as it exists. If reality exists than this information set also exists.
Knowledge:- A information set possessed by a sentient being that makes it possible for that being to successfully interact with some aspects of the reality. This information set has to stand in some relation with the information set which I am calling truth about reality. It may a useful approximation of a subset of the truth for example.
Then epistemology is the study of how best to acquire knowledge for various applications and conditions the sentient being finds itself in. It seems that the primary sources involve 1)experience, 2)analysis of experience through reasoning and discussion and 3)expert testimony of others. The test of reliability is how successful I am in using that knowledge for my various needs of interacting with reality.

Now, in this, almost every body agrees. The disagreement is what are criteria of reliability in either of the three categories. For example atheists do not consider revelation to be a reliable form of expert testimony while theists do. That's it.[/QUOTE

In

The scientific method has been so designed that it can provide only physical and material aspects of a thing that is a partial aspect. Right?
Regards

You mean that science cannot unfold the whole truth about a thing, it covers it partially? I get you. Right?
Regards

 

[Milton Platt]

You are welcome to the forum.
I don't deal in definitions, sorry. I am an ordinary man in the street with no claim of scholarship and piety whatsoever.
What is your own personal understanding of "secular" as religion? Please
Regards

If you don't deal in definitions you should not ask others to do so.

 

[gnostic]

If you don't deal in definitions you should not ask others to do so.

Yeah, right.

Do you really think for a moment that he will do as you ask?

He has a reputation for ignoring advice and refusing to learn from his mistakes, and he is famous for being evasive with direct questions.

In another thread "Was Islam spread by the sword?", he would each week spit out one or more Wikipedia of each country which has Islam. He often ignored the parts which does say that people did convert after they were conquered. Which show that he doesn't often read the article he copy-and-paste.

 

[Milton Platt]

Yeah, right.

Do you really think for a moment that he will do as you ask?

He has a reputation for ignoring advice and refusing to learn from his mistakes, and he is famous for being evasive with direct questions.

In another thread "Was Islam spread by the sword?", he would each week spit out one or more Wikipedia of each country which has Islam. He often ignored the parts which does say that people did convert after they were conquered. Which show that he doesn't often read the article he copy-and-paste.

Yeah, I have been watching this thread for a couple of days. Sometimes it is if he didn't even read the post he was replying to. It's why my few posts have been only one or two liners. Unless he is going to actively engage others, he may as well not start a thread. And you are correct.....he never answers questions and then asks questions that use ill-defined words or concepts and refuses (or is incapalbe of) defining his own posiotons. His snarky post a little while back about not doing definitions is just ignorant. If you cannot define your terms, a conversation is virtually meaningless.

 

[serp777]

You are welcome to the forum.
I don't deal in definitions, sorry. I am an ordinary man in the street with no claim of scholarship and piety whatsoever.
What is your own personal understanding of "secular" as religion? Please
Regards

You don't deal in definitions and yet your arguments completely rely on definitions. No one can argue with you then since nobody knows what you're talking about.

 

[paarsurrey]

If you don't deal in definitions you should not ask others to do so.

Did I ever say it? Please quote from me or give the post # and thread name.
I know the dictionary definitions are only opinions and are never 100% correct. Under a process the words come into existence and then become extinct. I therefore request my friends to give their own understanding of something, that is simple and works for me.
Regards