@Tim @AlanFox @Puck_Mendelssohn
I think it’s better to carry the conversation about philosophy, religion, and skepticism to a new thread.
To anyone who wants to participate, I’d appreciate answers to these first:
what is falsifiable about your belief or unbelief? What evidence should we examine?
why is unbelief/belief more plausible to you than belief/unbelief?
I tend to regard “belief” as an emotional commitment to some proposition. Such commitments may be hard to shift even in the face of evidence that undermines that commitment.
Asked and answered @thoughtful
Addendum: this response was meant to be a reply to the thread as a whole, not @AlanFox’s post.
Further addendum:
I already thought that this conversation was getting nowhere on its previous thread. I also had a not-too-dissimilar (and equally unproductive) conversation with @Ashwin_s on https://discourse.peacefulscience.org/t/strident-atheist-atheists/
Maybe other unbelievers like @Faizal_Ali, @T_aquaticus or @Rumraket might be interested?
Ok, is unbelief the same? What about unbelief is falsifiable?
Why didn’t you answer the question? What about unbelief is falsifiable? Why is it more plausible than belief?
You have to distinguish between falsifiable in principle, in isolation from any data, and falsifiable in light of prior observations. Is a hypothesis that has survived a great many attempts at falsification still falsifiable? Consider, for example, the hypothesis that there are things called atoms. Is that falsifiable? Is there anything we could do now to convince us that atoms do not exist?
As for God, he seems unnecessary to explain anything we see, and much of what we see seems inconsistent with his proposed nature of omniscience, omnipotence, and omnibenevolence. Thus I conclude that such a being probably doesn’t exist. What would falsify that conclusion would have been a rather different world, but it’s a bit late for that.
Now, some different sort of God could provide evidence of his existence by manifesting in some way, perhaps as a burning bush or pillar of fire. But given the data of the world, that still wouldn’t be the person you’re thinking of.
For @AlanFox @Tim here are my answers:
What’s falsifiable about Christianity?
Why is belief more plausible than unbelief?
How about a “hello” from God?
Non Belief in Gods or an afterlife makes it easier to live one’s life as one choses. No Gods, No Masters.
Ok, let me rewrite that for you and see if you agree:
What is falsifiable about your belief?
Why is unbelief more plausible than belief?
I see that you have read the words I wrote, but I don’t think you have troubled to understand them. I’m not sure I can do anything further for you.
Ok, that works. Thank you for actually answering the question.
That’s a preference. You haven’t explained why your belief is more plausible just that it’s preferable to you.
If you prefer it, even if it’s not plausible that’s fine. If you also believe it’s more plausible feel free to explain.
You kindly answered my questions, I decided to rewrite them in a simpler way as bullets underneath the questions. I fail to see how misunderstood anything then. Perhaps someone else can explain since I don’t see it.
Yes. I’m sorry, but I don’t have the energy to try any further explanation.
Because it was not a meaningful question.
What about unbelief is falsifiable?
This is not a meaningful question.
There is not a single proposition “unbelief”, it is a compound of lack of belief in a number of propositions: God, Allah, Odin, Angels, Ghosts, etc, etc. Each proposition would need to be evaluated separately.
Each of these individual lack-of-belief-in-X propositions can be falsified, by incontrovertible proof that X (be that X God, or Allah, or Odin, or Angels, or Ghosts, etc, etc) exists.
Why is it more plausible than belief?
Not a meaningful question, as for the reasons I’ve already stated, neither “belief” nor “unbelief” is a single proposition. The only way you can evaluate that question is to evaluate it individually for all values of X.
May I suggest you put more thought into your questions. I am getting rather tired of dealing with woolly and/or incoherent ones. Life is really too short to try and formulate meaningful answers to badly formulated questions.
My feelings exactly.
Ok, so your unbelief is unfalsifiable unless there is incontrovertible proof of a religion or the supernatural. What counts as incontrovertible proof? (Just making sure your unbelief is not completely unfalsifiable)
Ok, your unbelief is more plausible because you have evaluated X?
That is not what I said. And I am getting really really tired of correcting your logical foul-ups.
I don’t think you understood what I was trying to say, and I’m really not interested in trying to explain it further, given the failure of all my previous attempts.
I’m restating what you wrote in terms of the questions I asked to show you that unbelief is not a neutral proposition. In the terms you are defining it as, it starts from the premise that unbelief is unfalsifiable.
Im sure there are other atheists who are open-minded but I don’t think you are.
Edited.
YOU ARE NOT!
The statement ‘X falsifies Y’ does not imply that ‘Y is only falsified by X’
See my edits to my reply to your last post.
Ok, then what else falsifies Y?