reason vs believe

[stone]

Except when they do not ...

The absence of evidence is evidence.


It is an intellectually vapid anology.

Hello Jay

The absence of evidence is not evidence, it is an absense of evidence.

Why is the teapot analogy vapid? It merely states that just because something has not been disproven, it does not mean is has been proven either. The ownes lies with whow ever is making the claim.

 

[McBell]

it is pointless to make judgements and decisions on our life on earth based on the existance teapot until there is evidence that the teapot is there.

And once again: Why Not?

 

[Mister Emu]

they can never know the true nature of god if such a being does exist.

Why not?

 

[Scott C.]

Hello Emu
im sorry to offend you (if i do) but you cant call the belief in an all powerful being that has total control over all the matter in the entire universe reasonable.

Sure it is reasonable. Why is it reasonable to put limits on the intelligence and capacity that a being can possess? I exist and I have some control over some things. Why is not reasonable that a Being exists with ultimate intelligence and control, a Being who has limitless capacity?

 

[stone]

And once again: Why Not?

Sorry i dont undertstand what you mean?

 

[Jayhawker Soule]

Hello Jay

The absence of evidence is not evidence, it is an absense of evidence.

Nonsense.

It's interesting that the phrase was popularized by Sagan. My first exposure to Sagan was many years ago when I read Intelligent Life in the Universe, a book co-authored by Sagan and Shklovskii. In it Sagan debunks the UFO craze by noting that literally thousands of astronomers spend hundreds of thousands of hours monitoring the night sky and yet there is an inordinantly improbable absence of evidence.

 

[stone]

Nonsense.

It's interesting that the phrase was popularized by Sagan. My first exposure to Sagan was many years ago when I read Intelligent Life in the Universe, a book co-authored by Sagan and Shklovskii. In it Sagan debunks the UFO craze by noting that literally thousands of astronomers spend hundreds of thousands of hours monitoring the night sky and yet there is an inordinantly improbable absence of evidence.

Was this a scientific study on the probability of extraterrestrial life visiting earth, or was it just anacdotal evidence gathered from astronomers? If it was the latter then it carries about as much weight as most anecdotal evidence. However Sagans conclusion was based on many other factors. The anecdotal evidence may of been a contributing factor but even Sagan would of dismissed your claim of a lack of evidence equating to evidence by itself.

 

[stone]

Sure it is reasonable. Why is it reasonable to put limits on the intelligence and capacity that a being can possess?

But you are not talking about intelligence and capacity, you are talking about a supposed being that transcendes all we understand (for now). However the god of the gaps theory has been exposed in this forum before.

I exist and I have some control over some things. Why is not reasonable that a Being exists with ultimate intelligence and control, a Being who has limitless capacity?

You exist and there is evidence supporting this claim. There is no evidence supporting the existance of god. All of the supposed evidence all originates from times of scientific ignorance. Why is god hiding from science, surely he would if he existed use this opportunity to help us understand him.

By the same logic why not a giant invisible teapot floating around mars? There is no evidence to show that it does not exist...

 

[Jayhawker Soule]

... even Sagan would of dismissed your claim of a lack of evidence equating to evidence by itself.

Sagan would be wrong.

 

[Scuba Pete]

We have a problem with delineating between "proof" and "evidence" here. If you indicate that there is NO evidence that God exists, you are simply wrong. There is plenty of evidence that is accepted by a rather large number of people on this earth. Denying it's existence to us is about as absurd as denying God. Of course, I surely can understand how someone might interpret the evidence differently than myself, but that does not make the evidence evaporate.

On the other hand, should you ask any of the theists for PROOF that God exists, there are some who would proffer you some pathetic attempt at word play, but in the end there exists no incontrovertible proof that God exists.

 

[Jayhawker Soule]

It is an error to equating evidence with proof.

Absence of Evidence Is Evidence of Absence

From Robyn Dawes's Rational Choice in an Uncertain World:

Post-hoc fitting of evidence to hypothesis was involved in a most grievous chapter in United States history: the internment of Japanese-Americans at the beginning of the Second World War. When California governor Earl Warren testified before a congressional hearing in San Francisco on February 21, 1942, a questioner pointed out that there had been no sabotage or any other type of espionage by the Japanese-Americans up to that time. Warren responded, "I take the view that this lack [of subversive activity] is the most ominous sign in our whole situation. It convinces me more than perhaps any other factor that the sabotage we are to get, the Fifth Column activities are to get, are timed just like Pearl Harbor was timed... I believe we are just being lulled into a false sense of security."​

Consider Warren's argument from a Bayesian perspective. When we see evidence, hypotheses that assigned a higher likelihood to that evidence, gain probability at the expense of hypotheses that assigned a lower likelihood to the evidence. This is a phenomenon of relative likelihoods and relative probabilities. You can assign a high likelihood to the evidence and still lose probability mass to some other hypothesis, if that other hypothesis assigns a likelihood that is even higher.

Warren seems to be arguing that, given that we see no sabotage, this confirms that a Fifth Column exists. You could argue that a Fifth Column might delay its sabotage. But the likelihood is still higher that the absence of a Fifth Column would perform an absence of sabotage.

Let E stand for the observation of sabotage, H1 for the hypothesis of a Japanese-American Fifth Column, and H2 for the hypothesis that no Fifth Column exists. Whatever the likelihood that a Fifth Column would do no sabotage, the probability P(E|H1), it cannot be as large as the likelihood that no Fifth Column does no sabotage, the probability P(E|H2). So observing a lack of sabotage increases the probability that no Fifth Column exists.

A lack of sabotage doesn't prove that no Fifth Column exists. Absence of proof is not proof of absence. In logic, A->B, "A implies B", is not equivalent to ~A->~B, "not-A implies not-B".

But in probability theory, absence of evidence is always evidence of absence. If E is a binary event and P(H|E) > P(H), "seeing E increases the probability of H"; then P(H|~E) < P(H), "failure to observe E decreases the probability of H". P(H) is a weighted mix of P(H|E) and P(H|~E), and necessarily lies between the two. If any of this sounds at all confusing, see An Intuitive Explanation of Bayesian Reasoning.

Under the vast majority of real-life circumstances, a cause may not reliably produce signs of itself, but the absence of the cause is even less likely to produce the signs. The absence of an observation may be strong evidence of absence or very weak evidence of absence, depending on how likely the cause is to produce the observation. The absence of an observation that is only weakly permitted (even if the alternative hypothesis does not allow it at all), is very weak evidence of absence (though it is evidence nonetheless). This is the fallacy of "gaps in the fossil record" - fossils form only rarely; it is futile to trumpet the absence of a weakly permitted observation when many strong positive observations have already been recorded. But if there are no positive observations at all, it is time to worry; hence the Fermi Paradox.

Your strength as a rationalist is your ability to be more confused by fiction than by reality; if you are equally good at explaining any outcome you have zero knowledge. The strength of a model is not what it can explain, but what it can't, for only prohibitions constrain anticipation. If you don't notice when your model makes the evidence unlikely, you might as well have no model, and also you might as well have no evidence; no brain and no eyes. [source]

You go to the doctor and it is determined that you exhibit

• no blocked nose
• no body aches
• no chills
• no dry cough
• no exhaustion
• no fatigue
• no fever
• no headache
• no joint pain
• no limb pain
• no loss of appetite
• no muscle aches
• no myalgia
• no nasal inflammation
• no prostration
• no runny nose
• no sneazing
• no sore throat
• no sweating
• no weakness

and your doctor says ...

• no flue

 

[Scuba Pete]

and your doctor says ...

• no flue

I agree, but unfortunately, most physicians are still "practicing". There are many times where the diagnosis is not as clear, or when there is a no way of COLLECTING evidence. Somehow, we look to material things for evidence about the spiritual. That's like using a thermometer to measure volume or a graduated cylinder to measure lumens.

"Nope, this graduated cylinder does not indicate any lumens in this room, so we must be in the dark!"

Just because you can find no EVIDENCE of lumens does not mean that we are in the dark!

 

[Random]

Truthfully, the problem with science and reason in all ages is that it cannot with any consistent degree of reliability determine what the available evidence is actually proof of.

 

[Jayhawker Soule]

I agree, but ...

Good.

 

[autonomous1one1]

Originally Posted by The Voice of Reason
I cannot remember which of our Non-Theist members made the following statement, but it is apropos for this thread - "In the end, my desire to believe could not overcome my mind's ability to reason".
I would submit that the converse is true for Theists - "In the end, my mind's ability to reason could not overcome my desire to believe."
With all due respect,
TVOR

Thoughts?

source:

http://www.religiousforums.com/forum/showthread.php?t=7655&page=14&highlight=epicurus
post 135:

Greetings. One can comment authoritatively only from one's own experience. For me, neither proposition is true. Science, reason, and logic have been very much a part of my development to the current state of being and of my understanding of that state. My current view is of the school already expressed that reason and belief (or faith) are compatible and need not have conflict although faith must 'go beyond' what reason can provide and will not be totally under control of the individual.

There has been much discussion about evidence and proof of God. Many of our threads in RF seem to move to these questions because they are so fundamental to the discussions beginning with other topics. In my own case, during my agnostic phase of life the evidence of God for me was the experience of others and what they said or wrote. One particular experience was of interest - the experience of union with God - and my quest was to understand what experiencing individuals were talking about whether they were right or wrong. My judgment about reality was held in reserve until the understanding was there. To understand how such statements as the following (that I have posted in other threads) from the religion founders could be made was the goal:

• The kingdom of heaven is within you. (Jesus, Christianity)
• Those who know themselves know their Lord. (Mohammad, Islam)
• He is in all, and all is in Him. (Judaism)
• Those who know completely their own nature, know heaven. (Mencius, Confucianism)
• In the depths of the soul, one sees the Divine, the One. (The Chinese Book of Changes)
• Atman [individual consciousness] and Brahman [universal consciousness] are one. (Hinduism)
• Look within, you are the Buddha. (Buddhism)

My goal was satisfied and with it came the belief that one approach is to look within to find God and prove God for one's self.
Regards,
a..1

 

[Scott C.]

But you are not talking about intelligence and capacity, you are talking about a supposed being that transcendes all we understand (for now). However the god of the gaps theory has been exposed in this forum before.


You exist and there is evidence supporting this claim. There is no evidence supporting the existance of god. All of the supposed evidence all originates from times of scientific ignorance. Why is god hiding from science, surely he would if he existed use this opportunity to help us understand him.

By the same logic why not a giant invisible teapot floating around mars? There is no evidence to show that it does not exist...

The point of my last argument was not to prove God exists. It was to offer food for thought on why it should not seem unreasonable that God exists. If an intelligence can exist (me) and another can exist which is more intelligent (you), it seems reasonable that greater and greater intelligence can exist with no end. God is the ultimate supreme and infinite intelligence.

As far as teapots go, since I'm Mormon and don't drink tea, I refuse to believe in a floating tea pot around Mars.