Decisions we have to make But I haven't anywhere said that beliefs that don't count as fallible insofar as they cannot be in principle disproven are thereby infallible. I already said they are outside the context of fallibility/ infallibility altogether. — John
You give examples of something that has not been disproved relative to some given personal belief.
Not an example of something that cannot be altogether disproved.
You do not have an example of infallible faith except according to a given set of personal standards of proof.
Of course and that would be a spiritual consequence too. The point was only ever that beliefs which are not fallible may have spiritual consequences. And since religious beliefs and beliefs associated with spirituality are generally of that kind.... — John
You have not provided an example of infallible beliefs.
The lack of evidence of chi is
evidence of it's absence.
Of course you will argue
We cannot know with absolute certainty that chi does not exist.
But as I pointed out that just because something is not absolutely disproved in accordance with every standard of proof, this is not the logical equivalent that such a belief is infallible.
Recall my link to the
argument from ignorance.
Argument from ignorance (from Latin: argumentum ad ignorantiam), also known as appeal to ignorance (in which ignorance represents "a lack of contrary evidence"), is a fallacy in informal logic. It asserts that a proposition is true because it has not yet been proved false (or vice versa). This represents a type of false dichotomy in that it excludes a third option, which is that: there may have been an insufficient investigation, and therefore there is insufficient information to prove the proposition be either true or false. Nor does it allow the admission that the choices may in fact not be two (true or false), but may be as many as four,
1. true
2. false
3. unknown between true or false
4. being unknowable (among the first three).
In debates, appeals to ignorance are sometimes used in an attempt to shift the burden of proof.
So again, if you claim that religious or spiritual beliefs fall in line with option 3 or 4, this is not the logical equivalent that they are
infallible
.