Should Skeptics, by definition, be Atheists?

[articulett]

It comes down to Bayes theorem, and what prior distribution you have. Then you update this with observations, and the distribution shifts. However, if you give a 0 probability to some set, it will stay 0 whatever you observe. So does a pure skeptic start off with a prior that can be updated?

A person is logical if they update their beliefs based on Bayes theorem, but that still means that two logical people could be in different states based on what they have observed to date and what their starting distributions were. However, for most starting distributions and a lot of observational data most logical people tend to converge to the same distribution.

The amazing thing in many of Randi's videos is that people do not change their minds in a Bayesian way, when they are shown in some sense to be wrong.

So, I think it is possible for someone to put a reason weight on a belief in god, and still behave logically from that point on. So what you should ask is what observations should logically reduce this belief in god.

To me, one's belief in god should dissipate as one realizes others hold contradictory beliefs based on equally compelling "evidence". If some gods are wrong (and some must be for any of them to be right), then the god belief that is correct has no more evidence for it than all the ones that are wrong. If people can believe in things like demons and be wrong, then how do we know that all invisible entities aren't equally wrong and for the same reasons? Those are the kinds of thought that lead to my disbelief.

But Randi has often commented on how none of the people tested change their minds after their failures... they just feel like their powers weren't working or there were bad vibes etc. The human mind is very good at protecting it's ego. I don't understand how anyone can watch Randi's demos and not question their own similar beliefs... and once one examines those beliefs--how can one continue to believe in their validity? It seems like a person must be concluding-- "yes, most people are very easy to fool-- but not me." And that's arrogant to me. Or delusional. Or maybe just protective cognitive dissonance. But whatever it is, it just doesn't seem "skeptical" to me.

 

[Skeptic Ginger]

You mean this thread has gone on for 20 pages and nobody has posted a definition to support their opinion? ...
-Bri

While they are not easy to find among 20 22 pages there have been several definitions proposed and I think to a general consensus.

In the ideal case, yes. Also -- in an ideal case -- a skeptic is a person who uses the methodology of skepticism.

Unfortunately, for some "Skepticism" is now being used in its most fundamental and orthodox sense -- as a system wherein nothing is believed until there exist verifiable facts to support that belief, and that if a person believes even one unverifiable "fact," then that person is not a skeptic.

Much the same idea is shared by neo-conservative Bushites who state that if you disagree with even one of our president's decisions or policies, then you are not an American.

Or religious fundamentalists who declare that if you have even the slightest doubt about even one statement of religious dogma, then you are apostate and doomed to spend eternity in whatever state of damnation their religion embraces.

Therefore:

1) Skepticism is a method for evaluating a particular and specific claim.

2) A skeptic is a person who uses the methodology of skepticism.

No other qualifiers are needed.

Alright then, lets try this again:

Should a skeptic, by definition, be an atheist?

No, because being a skeptic merely requires the application of skepticism. There are no other prerequisites to being a skeptic.

Should a skeptic be an atheist?

This is a different question, and the answer is yes. Through application of empirical skepticism, it is reasonably obvious that the evidence for god is the same as the evidence for bigfoot and the fairies - zilch. If a skeptic believes in god, it doesn't mean that they aren't a skeptic anymore, given that they probably haven't abandoned critical thinking in regards to other topics, but it does mean that they have not applied skepticism to their belief in god, or that they have applied skepticism and decided to believe an admittedly irrational belief. For them to apply skepticism and believe in god without it being one of those two options would require them to have some kind of evidence for the existence of god - if anyone has this I would kindly recommend that they stop keeping it a secret and let the rest of the world know about it pronto.

 

[-Fran-]

You know it didn't even register with me who repeated the 50|50 statement, it just triggered my autopilot reply. No need to defend your position. You're on the 'right' side of the debate.

Yes, I know what you mean. Something Egg said triggered mine, but now I can't even find what it was.

I apologize Egg, I read a lot of stuff from your posts as well as others, and it made me think about it, it wasn't something specific that you said.

No need to defend your position. You're on the 'right' side of the debate.

I'm a little selfconscious about my English sometimes, I am not quite sure how I come across, so sometimes I get into "over-clarifying-stuff-mode"

 

[articulett]

We're still in the position of needing a method to judge if the findings are applicable to everyone. If we use skepticism, wouldn't it just be trying to prove itself with itself?

It's the best method we have... it has built in error correction mechanisms. You don't need to believe that a plane can fly for it to do so. Belief doesn't change reality... but it can change human perception of reality... it can give them a false impression as Randi readily demonstrates. Skepticism takes that into account--hugely... that's why we have things like double blind studies and the notion that "correlation is not causation". Skepticism has as much to do with how people fool themselves and think irrationally as it does with science and evidence. There is no better way to understand the facts than via measurements, terminology, the scientific method, and facts that are the same for everybody...

I'm not sure how we could say that we know that it has been. If skepticism only allows validation if the skeptical approach has been used, how could we know if skepticism doesn't miss things? Aside from error and the fallibility of those interpreting the evidence, if, for example, the doubting process required in skepticism somehow skewed the results itself because of some kind of bias involving people only seeing what they expect to see, would skepticism be able to pick that up in every case?

So what if skepticism misses things-- it's not like any guru or feelings find truth more readily... has faith or feelings or scripture ever lead to any actual verifiable prescient knowledge? Ever? The kind of stuff that could go in a science book-- stuff that's true for everyone.... stuff like the earth being a sphere or people suffering delusions or "confirmation bias" or math?

Doesn't this suggest that we can't trust our own senses, memories and thought processes, let alone anyone else's? Beliefs that everyone holds are based on such things and many wouldn't stand up to skeptic scrutiny.

No... you don't trust them for facts... you don't trust them in areas where you can test them... where you know people can and have been fooled very readily. You can trust yourself to know your preferences and who and how accurate someone might remember your first words? But that is way different than trusting yourself and your mom and your clergy man about an invisible creator of the universe that has human characteristics but no corporeal being. And you can't trust the kindly neighbor who swears your child is possessed either. Why? I maintain that it's for the SAME reasons.

There is a big difference between trusting your judgment about what your mom said or the probability of getting "soaked to the skin" and invisible entities that care about you. If you can't see the difference as to why the former is more likely to be true while the latter isn't... then there is some serious flaws going on in your thinking. One is based on prior evidence of knowledge that you've obtained... and the other is based on absolutely nothing whatsoever! One involves actual people and actual events that have occurred in the past from which one can draw experiences from. The other involves none of that-- just a "belief" because of what other people believed who couldn't have known any more about the veracity of the subject than you-- and probably knew less because people didn't have the same knowledge they do today (and no god clued them in either.)

So if you have a belief in god, how can it be based in anything rational? What is there to show that gods are more rational or more likely to be true than demons. In fact, I suspect they are the invented as an antidote for demons... gods are the imaginary "fighter" of the "nameless fears"

If I think they could stand up to scrutiny, is it reasonable to believe my own results or would it only be reasonable after such scrutiny? If someone else's scrutiny disagrees, why should I believe their results over my own? I know what I saw far better than I know what they saw.

Why not go for the facts--the actual verifiable facts when available? And when there are no facts-- why wouldn't you go with the same approach you use for other entities that have no facts supporting them.

If I am alone somewhere and it rains, it may as well be a subjective experience, just like seeing the monster. There could be other explanations for my experience, so I shouldn't trust that it's actually raining on this evidence alone. Someone comes along and shouts "Hey, get out of the rain! You'll be soaked through to the skin!", but this is anecdotal evidence, so I can't trust that either...anyway you get the idea. I'm trying to determine whether one really should apply skepticism to all parts of their life, or whether such an approach leads to madness and probably an early death.

This is silly. Rain is a fact. Rain will get you wet whether you believe in it or not. Rain has consequences. Monsters must exist in order for them to affect the physical world. Whether you are alone or not, there is still rain and all the consequences that come from that rain--new growth, mud, weather map changes, satellite pictures, mud in your shoes, rain water in your hair. We certainly could not prove that it did not rain... while you should be able to prove that it did. God has no measuarable affect on the physical world. In that regard, he is identical to demons. Identical. And I don't see how this leads to madness. I think it's the sanest thing around to treat things that are indistinguishable from the imaginary as imaginary. What's the difference between your god if real and your god if imaginary? And if you don't know... and nobody else seems to and it all sounds like a big nebulous mind game-- then what else is a skeptic to conclude. All we can conclude is that you are playing semantic games with yourself because you want to believe. And that is fine. But that isn't logical. Your rain analogy is not on par with your god. Demons are on par with your god. Are you skeptical of them? Does it hurt your feelings that most skeptics are equally skeptical of all gods as you are of demons--including yours?

 

[articulett]

Yes, I know what you mean. Something Egg said triggered mine, but now I can't even find what it was.

I apologize Egg, I read a lot of stuff from your posts as well as others, and it made me think about it, it wasn't something specific that you said.





I'm a little selfconscious about my English sometimes, I am not quite sure how I come across, so sometimes I get into "over-clarifying-stuff-mode"

From my perspective you are very clear... and make more sense than some of the native speakers. If you understand most of the people... chances are the problem isn't you... For example, I understood your Santa Elf analogy... but I have trouble understanding the poster who didn't see the connection. You are much clearer to me than they are.

 

[articulett]

You have to have a belief in a god to translate an experience as evidence for that god. People who don't believe in god... don't have god related experiences. The same is true of demons and aliens and engrams and schizophrenic delusions. If belief is required to get the evidence, then it probably isn't true.

Airplanes fly whether you believe it or not. The earth was a sphere even when all the humans on it thought otherwise... even long, long before those humans existed.

DNA was being passed along in our genes and sex was making babies even when we thought it was god and magic doing it. Humans make other humans... not gods... and you don't even have to know how they're made to make one... the same for all the other creatures on this planet. Gods are the way humans explained that which they didn't understand. Gods and Demons. If you don't know where your feelings come from-- they can seem to come from an outside source-- the sex drive can make you feel possessed and orgasms can feel like a gift from god... and mortality can be very scary to a thinking brain... a brain that evolved to confuse correlation with causation-- because having a hyper tuned "causation" brain is one damn fine learning mechanism for gaining control of the environment. Gods and demons turned out to be a great often reinvented way of controlling fears AND controlling other humans and forming alliances, in groups, "insurance policies"....

If skeptics in general don't believe in something-- I'd say that is pretty damn good evidence that the belief is false. I can't think of an exception. Because reality is true whether skeptics believe in it or not. And evidence accumulates and our understanding is honed over time when things are real. But if you still have no bigfoot DNA or scat or skeletons or fossils after all these years... no prescient scientific knowledge or actual prophesy or real miracle... no lochness monster.... then it's time to move on. Rest assured, no one will miss the news should anything become evident. When has woo ever beat science to a truth?

 

[-Fran-]

From my perspective you are very clear... and make more sense than some of the native speakers. If you understand most of the people... chances are the problem isn't you... For example, I understood your Santa Elf analogy... but I have trouble understanding the poster who didn't see the connection. You are much clearer to me than they are.

Thank you!!

That's good to know!

 

[-Fran-]

and facts that are the same for everybody...

This reminds me of something I saw posted in another thread just the other day. I thought it illustrated quite well (in a funny way) how, in some situations, two people who have access to the exact same set of facts, can come to widely different conclusions.

boojum wrote this:

This reminds me of a story from James Randi himself. Years ago I read a magazine article in which Randi talked about an exchange he had with a woman who thought she had "magic power" in her hands because the fish in her aquarium moved away when she touched the side of the tank. He wrote back to her and implied that she was frightening her fish, and suggested that she try the experiment with paper taped to the side of the tank. She wrote him again after trying it. She was amazed that the "magic power" didn't extend through paper!

 

[Egg]

Thanks for taking the time to read and respond to my post, Articulett. I've been trying to leave belief in god out of my reasoning at this point to try to avoid bias either way. I won't have time to respond properly this weekend, but I'll give it some thought and get back to you when I have the time.

 

[Beth]

You keep using this argument. Their 'feelings' may be evidence. Their conclusions as to what those 'feelings' mean is not evidence.

I think we'll have to agree to disagree on this point. If I look at the sky and conclude that my perceptions indicate it is gray and rainy, I think my conclusion can be testimonial evidence to others. Sure, I could be mistaken, but there is no reason for my husband to preclude my conclusion from being testimonial evidence to him and decide he should take an umbrella.

I see I may have missed one of your longer posts a ways back about the MRI. The MRI evidence you gave as an example does not indicate people correctly interpret brain activity. It took the machine to identify brain activity that was consistent with lying. The fact the brain activity was consistent with lying could be verified by actually testing. To claim the brain activity is consistent with real gods and therefore is evidence of gods is not the same at all. You could probably find the brain activity, and it might even be consistent among believers. It still is not evidence people are correctly interpreting it as the result of gods. The brain activity is the evidence. The interpretation of the meaning of the brain activity is not evidence.

I wasn't arguing that the thoughts/brain activity was evidence of god. I was only making the point that thoughts can be scientific evidence. They were in this case.

Claiming that brain activity is the evidence and thoughts the conclusion ignores the reality that in order to create an analysis procedure that correlates brain activity with lying/not-lying required knowledge of those subjective thoughts in the first place. The results of the analysis are then used to form a conclusion on later subjects regarding who is lying and who is not from brain activity alone.

 

[Lonewulf]

I think we'll have to agree to disagree on this point. If I look at the sky and conclude that my perceptions indicate it is gray and rainy, I think my conclusion can be testimonial evidence to others. Sure, I could be mistaken, but there is no reason for my husband to preclude my conclusion from being testimonial evidence to him and decide he should take an umbrella.

Your assumption is that your testimonial evidence was only accepted purely based on the fact that you said it, instead of also acknowledging that there are other lines of premises that have to be arrived at before your testimony was acknowledged.

These include:

*Existance of rain.
*Existance of clouds.
*Possibility of clouds forming.

If you said that you saw an alien flying saucer, would he have bought what you said, or would have the nonexistance of similar premises have gotten in the way?

In short, your testimony was accepted because there was no reason to doubt it. If there were reason to doubt it, would he not wish to verify it for himself? For instance: If he looked outside and it was a pure blue sky, and five minutes later you said there were rain clouds, would he accept your word without verification?

 

[Beth]

In short, your testimony was accepted because there was no reason to doubt it. If there were reason to doubt it, would he not wish to verify it for himself? For instance: If he looked outside and it was a pure blue sky, and five minutes later you said there were rain clouds, would he accept your word without verification?

I'm don't disagree with you on this point. People obviously and rationally subjectively weight testimonial evidence depending on the content, the context, the speaker, etc. Skeptigirl is claiming that only the perception of the color of the sky is evidence and the conclusion 'it's gray and looks like rain' is not. I disagree.

 

[Georg]

I agree those people have to base their belief on something.
I do not agree that it has to be evidence.
My guess, yes, only a guess, is that they base their belief on the lack of evidence for any other explanation for the existence of the universe (what was before the big bang etc.), the earth and everything else.
I do not follow that reasoning, because for me it makes no sense to replace a lack of evidence with a deity for which there is no evidence, and that only takes the question one step further (where does this deity come from?), but I can somehow understand that people arrive at that conclusion.

Say you decided to believe after thinking about Pascal's wager. The wager isn't evidence per se. But you'd be in denial if you claimed that nothing else at all went into your decision to believe.

What I am saying is claiming you are using 'no' evidence is always going to be a false claim. If there really were 'no' evidence, you wouldn't believe. As I said, unless you want to say the belief resulted from some genetic mandate like my dog's hunting behavior, then it was based on things you considered and evaluated, IE evidence. I don't happen to buy the genetic hypothesis but some people have presented it and the evidence is insufficient at this time to know.

But from my point of view, when a skeptic claims they have this 'faith' and no evidence is involved, what they really have is cognitive dissonance and claiming evidence isn't needed is their means of reconciling. I call that rationalizing, not reconciling.

There is no doubt that my conclusions that god beliefs are all equally unsupportable contributes here to my skepticism that people are believing without evidence. Rather it is clear to me they are believing with invalid evidence. If you recognize there is no Zeus and no Pele, you ought to be able to recognize there is no 'God' of the Bible either. Claiming you believe without evidence while otherwise being skeptical about everything else including Zeus and Pele is just plain and simple denial. There is no magical "faith" which explains belief without evidence any more than there are magical gods.

All I said is: some people probably use god(s) to fill gaps in the knowledge that mankind has today. Can you really call those "not-available-yet-explanations" that cause the belief "evidence" at all? By what definition? And I had to quote my own post as well, just to make clear (again) that I am on the same side of the fence as you are, since you used "you" quite a lot, which could give the impression that I actually believe. FSM forbid! And of course my try for an explanation only works for a deist type of god, most others are falsifiable.

 

[articulett]

I'm don't disagree with you on this point. People obviously and rationally subjectively weight testimonial evidence depending on the content, the context, the speaker, etc. Skeptigirl is claiming that only the perception of the color of the sky is evidence and the conclusion 'it's gray and looks like rain' is not. I disagree.

No... you are claiming the equivalent of people believing that they are possessed being evidence that people can be possessed. To a skeptic it's only evidence that people can believe crazy things very readily. It is NOT evidence of invisible immeasurable forms of consciousness. There is nothing that can be evidence for such. A million people believing in demonic possession via subjective analysis is not evidence for demonic possession. So all people who claim to have evidence of such are more likely to be in the category of the deluded people who believe in demon possession than they are to actually have evidence that would be valid to any skeptic, scientist, or person interested in reality. The very same is true for all invisible forms of consciousness or divine truths accessible only via faith, feelings, and subjective "evidence".

If you have to believe in a god-- to have a god experience, then that its on par with people who believe they've been probed by aliens or that someone can be possessed by demons. It's a self fulfilling illusion where people interpret facts through the lens of what they've been indoctrinated via culture to believe. Human subjective experiences are not a valid method for determining the truth that is the same for everybody. When you tell me that you've had a divine experience... that is only evidence that you believe you had a divine experience. It is the equivalent of a schizophrenic who really believes they are hearing voices. It is not evidence for the existence of divine experiences, the divine, or voices coming from entities without vocal cords or brains. If you can't tell your beliefs from the known ways that people deceive themselves, then most skeptics would conclude that you are just one of the people deceiving themselves... not the rare individual who may have somehow stumbled across some real super duper evidence of the divine that is only accessible to them.

Why? Because that is what logic dictates. When you add up these 2 stunning facts...

People are readily fooled when it comes to invisible entities

and there is no evidence for any kind of consciousness of any sort outside of a brain

Then the most logical conclusion is that those claiming to experience the latter, are part of the humongous group of the former but somehow they've imagined that they are not subject to the flaws in reasoning that the majority of humans throughout history are subject to.

I would like to think there is a logical skeptical reason for people to have faith in a god. But it just sounds like more conjecture and semantic games and nebulous nothingness designed to support a belief which props up the believers ego or gives them some comfort. And for some I'm guessing that they fear not believing because of indoctrination about consequences of non-belief. That would be true for me as a beginning skeptic.

I think all of this has to do with what Daniel Dennett calls "belief in belief". We've been sold this idea that belief and faith are something good.

But there is no evidence for this being the case. There is no evidence that faith and belief in a god makes people happier or more moral or anything, is there? Is there a good reason to pretend that faith is not the opposite of skepticism?

I think faith makes people feel proud of their ignorance and afraid to find out they might be wrong. As Mark Twain said, it's the permission people give themselves to believe what they know isn't so. Faith and feelings are not tools a skeptic would use to discover the truth. Neither are semantic manipulations.

 

[Skeptic Ginger]

I'm don't disagree with you on this point. People obviously and rationally subjectively weight testimonial evidence depending on the content, the context, the speaker, etc. Skeptigirl is claiming that only the perception of the color of the sky is evidence and the conclusion 'it's gray and looks like rain' is not. I disagree.

Actually, you still don't get the point or understand the difference.

It's unlikely one more time will change that, but then I'm always hopeful.

If I imagine a unicorn, is that evidence unicorns exist?

No. In that example, the unicorn is a pure figment of my imagination.

If I see a horse in the distance and think I see a horn on it, is that evidence there is a unicorn there?

No, in that example the conclusion I drew was wrong.

Putting the two together, I saw something that looked like what I imagined. I now believe I have seen a unicorn. Is that evidence of the existence of unicorns?

I saw something. That is a fact. That is evidence.

I concluded what I saw was a unicorn. My conclusion is not evidence.

 

[Skeptic Ginger]

I wanted to make the above point without cluttering the post with other points. So now let me address the gray sky example.

You see a gray sky.

Is that evidence of a gray sky?

Yes, because it is verifiable. In addition, we know how vision works. Observations are empirical evidence.

Your conclusion can still be wrong. Every single observation you make does not automatically lead you to the correct conclusion about what you observed. In the case of the gray sky, we have multiple ways of detecting and interpreting light waves and the colors which specific wavelengths cause us to see. Should you be colorblind, as some people are, you may be unaware you are drawing the wrong conclusion about the color you see. Most people's vision correlates with the visible light spectrum. If you conclude the sky is gray it probably is.

But if we measure the light frequency in the electromagnetic spectrum and find you are color blind and the sky is really blue, we would take the light wave as measured by the instrument as being correct and tell you that the measurement indicates you are colorblind. Now your observation was evidence. But again, your conclusion was not.

 

[Beth]

I saw something. That is a fact. That is evidence.

I concluded what I saw was a unicorn. My conclusion is not evidence.

If you tell someone else that you saw a unicorn, that is testimonial evidence for the existance of unicorns to someone who did not see what you saw. They may or may not choose to believe you based on their knowledge of you,your imagination, their previous belief in unicorns, and whatever other details may be pertinent.

Testimonial evidence is not very good. We have no disagreement on that point. When hearing and evaluating it, it's important to keep that in mind. But it's still evidence to the person who hears you relate it.

If they then tell someone else, it becomes hearsay evidence, which is of such poor quality that it isn't permitted in courtroom testimony.

Telling someone that the sky is gray and rainy and telling someone you saw a unicorn from a distance are both testimonial evidence. You can try and delinate what is being described from what the witness concluded they had seen, but it seems an artificial and petty distinction to me. It's all testimonial evidence to the person hearing it.

Some testimony is better than others. My husband can rely on me to accurately assess the sky and tell the truth about what I see. But the kid with the thick glasses and eyepatch that lives across the street and loves to tell outragious whoppers isn't likely to get much of a reaction to a claim of having seen a unicorn at a distance.

 

[Skeptic Ginger]

All I said is: some people probably use god(s) to fill gaps in the knowledge that mankind has today. Can you really call those "not-available-yet-explanations" that cause the belief "evidence" at all? By what definition? And I had to quote my own post as well, just to make clear (again) that I am on the same side of the fence as you are, since you used "you" quite a lot, which could give the impression that I actually believe. FSM forbid! And of course my try for an explanation only works for a deist type of god, most others are falsifiable.

I meant the "you" only as the proverbial "one" in an example.

But as for your example, I think that may be one case where 'one' believes with at least a minimum of evidence.

One decides that a god is the only way to explain the Universe. Still, I can't buy that such a conclusion is the only thing that the person is considering.

If you were growing up and you concluded there is no way science is ever going to answer these questions. Then someone proposes the answer is magic. Fine, maybe without evidence you are going to believe in the proposed answer.

But what really happens is people grow up being told gods exist. They have all kinds of influences which shape those god beliefs. Then (taking the Deist believer) they see that all the evidence points to natural explanations for everything. No god is required. That person doesn't say god is the answer to the gaps. That person says maybe there is an undetectable god, perhaps one that made everything all at once to follow the natural path but doesn't interfere beyond that.

But say they decide 'god' is an explanation for the initiation of all things natural for the reasons you describe. That decision would never have occurred had the person not been given all the 'evidence' which earlier on convinced them a 'god' was the best explanation for the existence of the Universe.

I think it boils down to either accepting the rationalization one is believing without evidence, or doubting the claim and concluding the rationalization is the person's way of denying the blind spot, the inconsistency, the exception, being made. They can't let go of god so they construct a god that can't be tested to fit into the natural universe. If the evidence is overwhelmingly against the existence of gods, just change the god.

 

[articulett]

Beth--
Yes, but no human can rely on another human to tell them about invisible immeasurable entities that only seem to give subjective evidence to those who believe in them in the first place! Your evidence that a god exists is based on eons of hearsay... the facts you interpret as evidence of those gods are confirmation bias based on what you've been lead to believe. We have no reason to believe any body's claims for divine knowledge are any more likely to be true than their claims to have seen a unicorn or to have witnessed demon possession or been probed by aliens!

Your husband may be gullible enough to believe that your experiences mean that god is real, but the skeptical community would say your experiences are evidence of confirmation bias-- not evidence that gods exist-- in the exact same way that tragedies attributed to demons are not evidence of demons!

You are just so confused sounding Beth. There's observation, evidence, and inference. You observe gray clouds and infer it will rain... that is based on some degree of evidence. But when people have a subjective experience and infer that it is a sign of god-- that cannot be based on any evidence. There is no measurable evidence for god-- there is no proof that god or unicorns or demons or anything like that exist. There's lots of evidence that people who believe in such things will infer that subjective experiences are proof of those things, on the other hand.

No rational person would take someone's subjective experience as "proof" that some invisible immeasurable entity is talking to that person or communicating with that person or giving that person wisdom or divine truths.... for the exact same reasons we would not take the dream of a hijacker's family member as evidence that the hijackers are experiencing the heaven they envisioned. Why don't you see that these two sorts of claims are equal in regards to evidence for divine communication?

When you make an extraordinary claim-- such as the existence of something that cannot be demonstrated to exist-- then it behooves you to present evidence if you want someone other than yourself to take your claim seriously. It's ridiculous for you to assume that another person can't be fooled-- and equally ridiculous to assume that you haven't been. If I saw a "unicorn", I'd be damn interested in finding out what I really saw... and seeing it would not be enough to prove anything even to me. Until such entities are proven to exist-- the only logical position is that the person (even if the person is you) has misinterpreted the evidence.

So how in the world do believers manage to use such non-evidence of murky quality to make claims about stuff that NO human could actually know about even if it were "real"? How can anything be known about invisible immeasurable entities that are indistinguishable from known delusions?? And why are such people so unwilling to test the null hypothesis-- the idea that they may have been fooling themselves? That's the logical position isn't it--that such people are mistaken? So how can it be skeptical to assume otherwise. How can someone claim to be a skeptic and at the same time claim to have "divine knowledge" about something that purports to be "truth" (not subjective feelings) that is not accessible by any means of measurement or an scientist in any way? How can it be skeptical to conclude that something exists for which there is no measurable evidence-- for something that is indistinguishable from claims of demons? Beth, do you think it's skeptical to believe in demons? Do you think it's any more logical to believe in gods? What makes a god more believable than a demon or Satan or ghosts or angels? You seem to give a special pass and deference to your god beliefs and god beliefs in general that I don't see you endorsing for other invisible entities. Why? You seem to presume that belief in gods is more rational than belief in other invisible entities. How do you make this illogical leap? Do you pretend that god is on par with rain in regards to evidence? Or "grey"-- because he's not, you know. He's on par with demons and all other invisible entities that humans are known to invent.

 

[articulett]

To me, it seems when people want to prop up their god belief, they resort to semantic games and bad analogies... like the rain example or love or the "redness" of an apple...

But these are all things that are measurable on some level-- they are things that can be defined and pinned down-- but gods aren't. They are the same as demons or "fictional characters in general" in regards to how varied the definitions are and how nebulous the concept is. I want to know why people think a god of some sort is more likely to exist than demons or Satan... if they believe in such. I can't see any reason to treat claims about either differently... nor "evidence" that is supposed to "prove" such entities. I don't understand how theistic skeptics justify skepticism of one that they don't give to the other.

I think it's because god belief makes them feel good or safe and "chosen--they want it to be true so they turn up their "confirmation bias" detectors... and they don't want demons to be true, so they automatically negate, ignore, or explain away similar evidence for "bad invisible entities". They find the evidence they want and give it the weight they want to give it in order to believe the thing they want to believe. While being skeptical of all claims of similar caliber that they don't want to believe.

But I want the truth. I want to know if there is any logical or skeptical reason to give god belief greater leeway than demon belief. Are gods more likely than demons? I can't imagine how that could be so.