Facts vs evidence

[Dan From Smithville]

I have other things to do today and I don't imagine they will disappear. Although, I understand it is possible. But I doubt the likelihood.

 

[mikkel_the_dane]

Honestly, I need to refresh my acquaintance with a broad swath of philosophy.

Well, I generally use philosophy as a tool to test for the limits in human behavior including cognition and logic. But that makes sense since I am general skeptic.

 

[muhammad_isa]

I know they have causes, but there is no evidence they occurred with a purpose.

..mere word play..
You use the word "natural" as to imply that events do NOT have a reason for happening.
..but they do.

Example .. Why did the volcano erupt? Answer - because the pressure on the earth's crust became high.
You cannot claim that it happened without a purpose, because it did.

 

[Dan From Smithville]

..mere word play..
You use the word "natural" as to imply that events do NOT have a reason for happening.
..but they do.

Example .. Why did the volcano erupt? Answer - because the pressure on the earth's crust became high.
You cannot claim that it happened without a purpose, because it did.

No. Not wordplay. Trying that escape route won't help you.

The volcano erupted for a reason, but there is no evidence of purpose.

I answered your post with purpose.

 

[Dan From Smithville]

Well, I generally use philosophy as a tool to test for the limits in human behavior including cognition and logic. But that makes sense since I am general skeptic.

I'm not sure what I am. A rational believer if that makes any sense. Or maybe skeptical believer or...?

 

[Dan From Smithville]

I have other things to do today and I don't imagine they will disappear. Although, I understand it is possible. But I doubt the likelihood.

Whadda ya know. It did disappear. But that is the point of sweeping.

Can't just imagine a mess will disappear and logically it is so.

 

[mikkel_the_dane]

I'm not sure what I am. A rational believer if that makes any sense. Or maybe skeptical believer or...?

In general if you are skeptical believer, you are an agnostic in some sense.
I take it that by rational you mean a version of skepticism.

 

[Yerda]

I am religious, but I agree.
But the side-effect of accepting the replication of the fittest genes, you in effect get in part physical/natural and subjective. The subjective doesn't sit well with some people even among some non-religious people.

I'm not sure I'm following what you're saying here. Can you rephrase it for dummies?

 

[muhammad_isa]

The volcano erupted for a reason, but there is no evidence of purpose.

You mean that you do not understand the purpose..
It does not mean that there is no purpose.

You can claim that the rain has no purpose, but many others would disagree,
and see that it DOES have purpose.

 

[Subduction Zone]

No. Not wordplay. Trying that escape route won't help you.

The volcano erupted for a reason, but there is no evidence of purpose.

I answered your post with purpose.

You know the reason. How long has it been since someone sacrificed a virgin to that volcano?

 

[Dan From Smithville]

You know the reason. How long has it been since someone sacrificed a virgin to that volcano?

I keep telling you it was an accident. I tripped on the way up the volcano.

 

[Dan From Smithville]

You mean that you do not understand the purpose..
It does not mean that there is no purpose.

You can claim that the rain has no purpose, but many others would disagree,
and see that it DOES have purpose.

No. I mean that you don't understand that in order to assign purpose you have to have evidence of it.

There could be purpose, but you haven't given any evidence of it.

Others will disagree when they are completely wrong. So what.

 

[Ella S.]

Well, let us play all of the world and observe including inference as to the theory of mind, that other people have first person subjective states.

And now we go through that with categorical logic.
Is it so that all humans with a function brain think/feel? Yes.
Is it so that all humans with a function brain think/feel the same for all cases of time and space? No.

Do you then agree that we can't apply strong logic for the case of "is", because it is not so in all contexts.

Of course we often use "is" in a broader sense than the narrow, formalized use it has in logic. What is the relevance?

We can often translate informal language into formal statements, as long as we understand what concepts are being communicated. When we do that, then "is" only has one meaning.

 

[Dan From Smithville]

In general if you are skeptical believer, you are an agnostic in some sense.
I take it that by rational you mean a version of skepticism.

I believe in God on faith, but I don't subscribe to a literal interpretation of the Bible.

I accept science based on my understanding of the methods, results and evidence.

I recognize that some believers think that a claim is evidence for what is claimed. I don't.

I know that to many this seems contradictory, but there are a lot of us. But just me or a few posting here.

I tend to get more meaning out of conversations with atheists and agnostics than many theists here, since most of those will respond to what I wrote and not to some imagined thing I did not.

 

[Trailblazer]

When an Abrahamic theist writes, "God," he is referring to the god of the Old Testament,

I do not know how you define an Abrahamic theist, but when I write "God" I am not referring to the God of the Old Testament, who I consider largely anthropomorphic.

 

[It Aint Necessarily So]

I do not know how you define an Abrahamic theist, but when I write "God" I am not referring to the God of the Old Testament, who I consider largely anthropomorphic.

Interesting observation. The Baha'i faith is considered one of the Abrahamic religions. I don't know much about the god you believe in, but you've indicated that it disapproves of homosexuality. Where does that idea come from if not the Old Testament?

What characterizes the god of the Abraham is that it is an immaterial personage (they say a personal god, or as you say, anthropomorphic) separate from nature and which gives man moral commandments. What other religions have that part from Judaism, Christianity, Islam, and Baha'ism? Do you believe a perfect tri-omni God created man (and the world)? In his own image? With an immortal soul? If so, I'd say that your god is the god of Abraham. Do you disagree?

This is from the Wiki called Abrahamic Faiths.

"The Baháʼí Faith, which developed from Shi'a Islam during the late 19th century, is a world religion that has been listed as Abrahamic by scholarly sources in various fields. Monotheistic, it recognizes Abraham as one of a number of Manifestations of God including Adam, Moses, Zoroaster, Krishna, Gautama Buddha, Jesus, Muhammad, the Báb, and ultimately Baháʼu'lláh. God communicates his will and purpose to humanity through these intermediaries, in a process known as progressive revelation."

 

[muhammad_isa]

No. I mean that you don't understand that in order to assign purpose you have to have evidence of it.

There could be purpose, but you haven't given any evidence of it.

Of course people can deny that there is a purpose .. so what..
If people think that life is just a game that ends with death, then they are in for a shock.

I know .. where's my evidence ..I don't need to argue with foolish people, that claim that life
is just a game without any real consequence in the long run.
We all have a conscience, and we can deny whatever we like .. evidence or no evidence.

 

[Ella S.]

That is just one version of empiricism. In my country we in effect use another version of empiricism and thus have a different version of science.
So in effect there is no one philosophy of science but let not that stop you.

"Science" can be understood in two senses: broadly, as a general academic discipline concerned with the pursuit of knowledge, under which some countries also include fields like ethical philosophy and theology; or narrowly, as an experimental methodology which sets out to falsify hypotheses with measurable observations and the proper documentation and peer-review of said experiments, as well as the collection of data and formulation of theoretical models to help guide these experiments.

Your country almost certainly still uses the narrow sense of science. It's become almost universally recognized for its fruits. It is world-renown for being able to discover true knowledge about external reality. That's not just a Western cultural narrative; there are scientists in every major country across the globe.

The problem is that many people use "other ways of knowing" alongside science which might even contradict science, such as faith, magical thinking, emotional reasoning, motivated reasoning, deference to authority, and any number of biased, fallacious, or pathological thought patterns. Sometimes those wind up in the more broad sense of the term, especially in fields like theology, but these are not to be confused for the more narrow understanding of science.

 

[exchemist]

It's a question I have constructed, because that is the implication of
"It is possible that God exists, but is unlikely"

No it’s a quite different question. A cause for the existence of the universe (if that is what you mean by “reason”) need not involve anything supernatural.

Or maybe there was no cause. I’ve read a speculation that -ve gravitational potential energy and +ve energy in matter may exactly cancel, so that the universe may have popped into existence by chance without anything being created.

Science works by assuming methodological naturalism, so it’s perfectly rational not to invoke a deity as creator if one works purely within science. Then again, in science nothing is ever proved true, so one is back to taking a view, rather provisionally in this case due to the lack of evidence about the process.

 

[exchemist]

I can see causes, but I don't know that causes have reasoning behind them. I might believe some or all do, but I don't know if any do.

A valuable distinction to draw.