Just compare societies with low gun control and societies with high gun control - And then compare that to the statistics of best places to live in the world.

Is there a point to discussing when there's data that point to the truth?

What do all belief have in common that makes them belief?

I've explained the issue clearly. You have no criterion for what counts as belief. You are talking about the ground for belief, not the belief itself.

The question above needs answered. — creativesoul

The question doesn't make sense really. Belief is the ideas in your head about the world around you. They are either supported by something or they are fantasies and delusions.

You are not asking a question, you want your own answer and your question does in no way affect my argument.

The parenthetical content above highlights a flaw.

That is, you've given two kinds of belief. You've explained which kind qualifies as which. Unsupported belief... and all belief that is not unsupported.

Two kinds of belief.

I am asking what makes them all belief. — creativesoul

If that is your problem with the argument, then you simply don't understand the definitions I've given. There's no problem with having them split like that, why would that be a problem?

First, please edit your posts instead of spamming them, just a tip. Gets a bit fragmented otherwise.

That is, you've given two kinds of belief. You've explained which kind qualifies as which. Unsupported belief... and all belief that is not unsupported.

Two kinds of belief.

I am asking what makes them all belief. What do all belief have in common that make them what they are, such that whenever anything has this commonality... it too... is a kind of belief. You've enumerated and explained a plethora of ways that they are different beliefs. You've yet to have delivered a clear cut easy to understand criterion for what counts as being a belief. — creativesoul

I get your point, but I think you are fragmenting belief into the concept's smallest parts. Some of them can be categorized as unsupported, some as supported. If you look at their definitions you'll know where they belong. How I define it is based on a scale of support in which your examples can be fitted. My argument doesn't change if you have a specific belief, since by defining it specifically you know where its at.

Type A-C is the scale that the argument is built upon. Type A being unsupported, i.e all types of belief which have nothing but what you subjectively think about something or information that has as less support as your own thoughts. Meaning if someone communicated their unsupported belief to you and you just take it for granted without backing it up, you adapt that unsupported belief. You can fit whatever type of belief you define as being unsupported by external data, into Type A. This type also handles belief like truth.
Type B is everything that has some external support. You have data, at least some data that makes your belief probable, but you know that it is belief and are careful to not treat it as truth. You can act on it with caution, because you know there's a probability you are wrong. You know it is a belief.
Type C is a scientific belief, i.e hypothesis. Meaning it has enough support in facts to have a high probability of being true in some sense but is just a hypothesis to be tested. Going beyond this you have truth and not a belief anymore.

I'm not sure how this isn't clear cut?
Type A = backed up by nothing, considered true.
Type B = backed up some data/facts, considered belief, not truth.
Type C = backed up by a lot of data and facts, considered a hypothesis, probably true, but not yet proven. (requires a lot of research).

Belief is prior to language. — creativesoul

Not sure what you are referring to here, but if you are talking about having no language and a belief before learning a language, you are talking about a moral landscape that doesn't exist in society or as a society. Essentially you try to counter my moral theory of belief with an example of a society that does not exist. Without language, you have no society, without language, you cannot advance knowledge, meaning, if we are to define it by the belief-types, such a belief is definitely Type A and it will stay there until a language is formed, society is formed and knowledge is gathered and increased. But such a society does not exist and it's irrelevant to the moral theory since ethics are closely linked to society and culture. You cannot have morality if you don't have language since you have nothing to define actions with. Without society, culture and communication you don't have ethics.

Well grounded belief is as well. — creativesoul

Type B, supported belief, if this is a belief that's backed up with some evidence. Might even be Type C depending on the level of evidence. But still within the realm of supported belief and not Type A.

True belief is as well. — creativesoul

Are you referring to justified true belief? That's debunked through Gettier problems. A true belief that is accidentally true is Type A. Doesn't matter if it's true if there's no link to actual knowledge. Accepting that some beliefs might be true, without anything to support it, is groundwork for disaster and that's why I pointed out the probability of such belief to have negative outcomes. What's even worse is that "true belief" is used as some kind of defense for those who try to argue for their unsupported beliefs, by fallaciously argue that their belief might be true and therefore be true belief. So, definitely Type A.

What are your thoughts regarding these claims? — creativesoul

I think you aren't really looking into what I actually present in my argument. Why is the Type-scale not working for you? What is unclear about its definition?

but just extending the time doesn't help much. — Rank Amateur

That's a dismissive simplification of everything.

after proved false or unreasonable is still better. — Rank Amateur

No, your belief is still unsupported before any kind of support backs it up. If you prove it false, it's not unsupported, it's purely delusional.

The point being that unsupported does not mean true or not true, fact or not fact, reasonable or unreasonable - it just means unsupported. — Rank Amateur

And my premises support that there's a higher risk of distorting knowledge and of unreasonable acts because of it. That is just a fact of probability on how unsupported belief works, agreed? In what way would supported belief have a higher probability of doing the same things?

And some unsupported ideas will lead to good things an some to bad and some to neutral. — Rank Amateur

Not if the unsupported belief is turned into believed truths, which is often the case when people believe something long enough. Distorted knowledge is always bad since it's in the way of truth. Compare unsupported belief to supported, which has the highest probability of reaching good things more than the other. There's no question that unsupported belief is worse than supported. I don't really need to make the argument for that probability to be true, right? With how history has been shaped by unsupported belief, the suffering and terror because of it, I don't think anyone can really argue for the value of unsupported belief. What I'm arguing for is that it's morally wrong to even have this as a personal belief, since it eventually leads to projecting that personal belief into the world and distorting knowledge.

I don't see the link you are trying to make - sorry. — Rank Amateur

I think you think you found a big hole and because of it, you dismiss everything. I think that there's a clear definition of what "holding on to unsupported belief" really is and I've made examples of this in my argument. Now you are sort of straw-manning things and stretching it to say that "unsupported belief" doesn't have a timeframe and therefore false. It clearly has a timeframe, as I described in numerous examples.

I've answered the previous concerns you had and now it just feels like you are trying a little too hard with this point, even though its pretty defined. But I can actually redefine this more clearly:

Belief is something you have for a longer period of time. An idea is something you have in an instance. Unsupported belief is therefore not a precursor to supported belief, it is its own thing. Supported belief and unsupported belief starts with an idea, but unsupported belief is settling on that idea without any support for it, while supported belief is doing a rational induction on it to come to a conclusion that is at least reasonable and probable.

That would at least make it much more defined if that's what you felt was lacking.

You were going to well until that part. :razz: (I'm a fan of most blockbusters, and not so much of a fan of the typical Criterion Collection sort of fare) — Terrapin Station

I'm talking about what generally is considered about movies. If you have unlimited freedom you can do whatever you want but that rarely focus your creative mind to think since you can do whatever you want. Restricted budgets force you to make choices and think around problems, which makes you figure out new ideas instead of falling back on comfort.

But this decision is always reversible. There is no enforcement of the authority that you don't do yourself. — Echarmion

Enforcement and authority are not essentially really the same thing.

This doesn't seem to change the fact that written down schedules are memory aids and what actually determines my actions is my decision to follow the schedule in my head. — Echarmion

So is a decision to give authority to someone else. You can give authority over your scheduling time to an assistant, lots of people do that and then they follow it. I think you are a bit too semantic about this, I'm talking about the psychological mechanisms and how they make you feel, not what a scheduling calendar really is.

That's seems a rather odd approach to the topic, considering this is a philosophy forum. — Echarmion

The topic is a question about why to feel in a certain way because of it, it's very much a question of psychology. Opinions are irrelevant if there's science behind it.

Amnesia is a special case because it raises the question whether or not the person making the schedule and the person following it are actually the same person. — Echarmion

Yes, but that's really the point. What's the difference if you don't remember the reasons you planned for and if you know them?

Have you read previous posts in this dialectic? Maybe you find answers there. I've written in detail about this numerous times in this thread.

In essence belief (outside of unsupported belief which is just emotional ideas conceptualized out of chaotic memory) is a posteriori out of facts.

You might need to explain your question better if you want another answer.

I'm getting off topic, but I just want to chime in that there are other reasons for (doing things by) schedules and lists, including it aiding in maximizing variety (while it can also avoid too much arbitrariness at the same time), helping one remember things to aid in time management/efficiency, etc. It's more like a tool in those situations than an authority. — Terrapin Station

True, I was just going by the question of why it feels that you are "free" when you give up freedom to restrictions through your own schedule.

There's, of course, another reason that can be interpreted by the question. And it comes back to Sartre as well. If you are free to have unlimited choices, that's overwhelming for the mind to quantify, but limiting choices down and following them organize and structure your mind around the idea of choice as it limits them. You then only have the choice of doing the things or not doing the things you have written down.

All depends on how you interpret the question. A broader look is about giving authority over your time to something else that you follow, the other is the psychological effect unlimited freedom has on us.

It's also why creative people feel they are freer to create when there are restrictions, why many big blockbuster movies feel soulless and smaller movies with restricted budgets more creative.

A schedule is not an external authority though. But even if we go with the AI example: if the AI functions like you programmed it to do, how is that result not in accordance with your will? — Echarmion

Because you give up the responsibility of handling authority over yourself, to that of an external thing/person. (you can read more in the longer post above)

Are you saying I cannot keep mental track of an exact schedule? That seems absurd. Writing it down might help my memory, but would not change the fact that when I act in accordance with the schedule, it's the mental representation of that schedule, not the piece of paper, that generates those thoughts. — Echarmion

Memory is very lucid, it's why witnesses can never be taken as factual in court cases, especially over a longer period of time. If you have two things to do the coming week, sure, but if you have 10 things per day to do at specific times, good luck, would you want that responsibility of keeping track or give that responsibility to something else that can have authority over your week?

Even if it's your decisions you write down I'm speaking of the mechanics of why you feel freedom in giving up the responsibility of what to do.

Think about this: You schedule your coming three months, but then experience an accident that gives you amnesia. You cannot remember anything of what you were supposed to do or why and in order not to fall behind you try and stay on schedule. You are unsure of why you do some of the stuff, but you trust it and it gives you comfort over trying to figure out what to do. Who's the authority here? What if the things on the schedule were things you didn't agree with after amnesia set in? But you still know there are reasons for them and you need to do them.

Your post comes off as very condescending, I don't mind arguing with people but in my experience, it's not very productive discuss things with people who look down on you but perhaps it wasn't your intention. — Judaka

And yours didn't? Go back and read your answer to my post, its close to a fallacy-riddled interpretation of the writing I did instead of trying a more linguistic pragmatic approach before acting like the ideas are beneath you.

It is also concerning to talk to people who seem ignorant of the possibilities for valid alternative interpretations. The Milgram experiment hardly showed that people crave authority, it just showed that people have a proclivity towards obedience in the context provided in the experiment. It doesn't weaken your position but I'm not sure how you think it helps it either. — Judaka

Stop using terms like "ignorant" in such an arrogant way if you at the same time complain about the tone of someone else. A little self-awareness would help.

The Milgram experiment is one of many about authority vs individuality, but it's one of the most famous to show how authority isn't something we can easily spot when we are under the veil of its rule. But it also pointed out how we lean back more when someone is calling the shots, the pressure of choice is reduced, which is why when the variations of the study and the replications of the study were made, they could see how the level of obedience lessened and heightened by the level in which the authority called the shots. If the authority person pointed out that the study "demands them to comply" that "it's not their responsibility", the obedience increased. This behavior is attached to their sense of agency of what they are doing, the more responsible and controlling the authority is, the more obedient they got, i.e the less they acted out on their own free will and even continued past just doing what they were told.

This is closely related to how we are formed by our parent-child relations when growing up and how we view that as a comforting authority, in which when there's a problem our parents would take care of us and guide us. Without such authority, all choices are your own and so is the responsibility, which makes many lean towards authority figures who guide them and "saves" them from that freedom of choice and responsibility.

You are correcting a confusion that never existed, I was not meaning to imply that your views were strange because you thought a schedule was literally an authority that ruled over someone. I don't think it even reads like I implied that - if that is indeed the only criticism you have of my comment. I don't know since you didn't say anything except emphasising "like".

I just don't agree that people feel a tranquillity due to not having the pressure of freedom. I don't know the basis for this claim and what's what I was asking for. — Judaka

So Sartre was wrong according to you?

Let's see if we can make an argument out of it, based on a mentally healthy person:

p1 Freedom in choice always leads to thoughts of responsibility
p2 Responsibility always requires conscious effort and energy
p3 Biologically we are always trying to conserve energy
p4 Conserving energy always leads to taking the path of least resistance.
p5 Responsibility is not a path of least resistance.
p6 Giving away choice always means giving away the responsibility of that choice

Therefore, freedom in choice requires energy in order to think responsibly about the choices and because we strive for conserving energy we seek comfort in paths of least resistance, which we don't find in responsibility, but rather in giving up choice and responsibility to others.

Think about authority figures in your own life. If you would have to make a choice for everything around you, that kind of freedom will soon crush you under the weight of its sheer magnitude. You always give away choices in order to find the path of least resistance, you give others the choices you could have made as long as it doesn't affect you in a bad way. You don't choose what to choose, you only choose when the responsibility is or isn't something you want to give away.

If you think about the topic in this thread and ask yourself. Do you want the responsibility to keep track of every scheduled event the coming week in your head, or would you give that away? Even if a kalender is a physical thing and not a person, it still acts as an authority. You give it information and then let you be controlled by it. Essentially it works as an authority who controls your week and because you don't have to be responsible for holding every piece of information in your head, you feel comfortable in giving it up. Imagine if it was a person, you have an assistant that keeps track of everything and you give authority to them to handle your schedule and you trust them. They could intentionally screw things up for you and they have more control than you think because you gave them that power, that authority to plan and schedule for you.

So in the case of authoritarian regimes. Part of the reason people accept totalitarian authority is that they give up the responsibility of how the country is run, they trust their leader because its comforting. Its the same in religion, you give up authority over yourself to a God or institute in order for the comfort of following a path rather than creating your own.

But since the authority is derived from your own authority, doesn't that mean that it's your will that has authority? And if it's your will that has authority, doesn't that make you free? — Echarmion

When you have created an external authority, do you have will over it? If you create an AI that rules over you, it is not you who rules over you, it's your creation.

If you crave ice cream but have a rule against eating ice cream, is freedom following your craving or resisting it? I would say being able to resist makes you more free, not less. — Echarmion

If you write down rules that you must follow, that list of rules has authority over you. Freedom would be to choose whatever you want outside of that list. What I mean is that if you externalize something, it is more than general thoughts bouncing together to form a decision. If you write down exactly what to do over the course of a week, down to the very time to do it and set an alarm to prompt you by it, you can essentially forget everything and let the external thing that govern your week and this is what feels liberating.

Try to hold on to the same thing without externalize it, you wouldn't be able to, since you include the schedule within the thoughts evaluating them.

Where are you getting your information? Authoritative governments rise to power easily because people want to be ruled over? That's a first for me. — Judaka

This is about freedom/authority if you want to go through all aspects of why authoritarian governments rise to power its a much longer post and not about the subject. I suspect that you have the ability to distinguish the specific topic we are discussing and the whole topic of authoritarian governments rising to power?
Of course, there's more to it, but the psychology of how we let authorities begin to rule over us has a foundation in psychology. I think you already know about the Milgram experiment for example?

Most people schedule because it's necessary not because they dislike freedom... Another claim I'm tempted to criticise harshly but if you had anything to back it up I'd like to see. — Judaka

Are you intentionally misunderstanding? Let me break down what I wrote so that you can understand it better

A schedule is like an authority that you invent. You (unintentionally) form its rule over you and when you are (unintentionally) ruled under it you feel that sense of tranquility with not having the pressure of freedom.

It's not a conscious intention to do it, it's the unconscious reality of what it is doing to us.

I really just don't see any of this... — Judaka

Maybe study some psychology and you will understand what I'm talking about.

A computer can create, just as a monkey can, but is what it creates art? Art is virtually impossible to define as it's so subjective, — Tim3003

As I defined it

Art needs to be a creation with intended communication of something.
It then needs to be combined with a receiver (viewer) of that communication.
The communicated message goes through interpretation by the receiver and the combined event between the communicator and receiver through that art is how I define what art is in its most fundamental form. — Christoffer

It doesn't matter if the art is modified and later perceived in the wrong way. Just as Greek statues are collectively considered white marble, they were originally painted (in comparison looked quite ridiculous to the monolithic nature of how they look now), but the fundamental truth is still that they were created by an artist with intention and the receiver interprets the art. If there is no art-intentional agent, there is no art. If anything and everything can be considered art, then everything is art and it loses its specificity in language.

As I also mentioned, an A.I that creates art must be its own art-intention agent, it cannot be programmed to follow rules, it must be able to interpret reality and mix them with subjective thought. An algorithm cannot do this, it is programmed and has no idea of what it is doing. If the computer subjectively knows it creates art, it does so with intention, otherwise its the one programming the computer who did the art through algorithmic randomness. But if a computer reaches the level of doing art by how we define humans doing art, they will need to be treated as artists and individuals of those thoughts.

There are strong observations in psychology and sociology about how we crave authority. Sartre was true in his idea about not being blessed by freedom and makes a strong case for having authority over ourselves, but as it turns out, this freedom can in many cases push people, especially those with a weaker mindset, to crave authority, wanting to live under it. This is why it's so easy for authoritarian figures to rise to power, people want a leader, someone who guides them, a parent figure when they've reached unlimited freedom.

A schedule is like an authority that you invent. You form its rule over you and when you are ruled under it you feel that sense of tranquility with not having the pressure of freedom.

It's unfortunate that our mind is the most self-delusional piece of thinking equipment we have as a being. We must always think beyond ourselves to see truths and the truth is that we want freedom and when having it we want to be ruled. A contradiction between our intellectual ideas and our emotional inner life.

In my belief-argument (another thread) I mention three types (A, B and C). A, being an unsupported belief, irrational, based on nothing more than the personal fantasy surrounding it. B, being supported belief which is essentially a posteriori, an induction based on facts you know, carefully measured to the best of the ability you have within a normal day to day life; a way of thinking that minimize subjective distortion of the idea you have. C, a scientific hypothesis, supported more by facts and observations than type B, but not enough to yet be called a proven scientific theory.

As per the last part of the dialectic between me and Rank, it's clear that it's important to mention that everyone has a belief that is unsupported in the beginning, or rather, everyone has a thought that needs verification. The key is that unsupported belief, as I'm referring to, isn't about the thought process to reach supported belief, but the end in itself. If you hold on to unsupported belief and never push it towards supported belief by verification and falsification, you act and live by that unsupported belief.

In essence, it's like this.
Type A is looking at a door to a room and thinking there's something in there, you are even convinced it's a brightly lit room with a white armchair, maybe even a person in it. You have nothing to support the idea but you are pretty sure that's what's in the room.
Type B is opening the door to see that there's a dark wooden table with a blue vase and a red rose in it. You conclude that this is the case, but you also noticed the room was pretty darkly lit and you might have gotten the colors wrong. You are careful to conclude every fact as true, but you are pretty sure the basic truth is at least a somewhat darkly wooden table with a vase, maybe blue and a red rose in it, probably red because you have knowledge about common roses and it's a greater probability it's red you saw. You draw an inductive conclusion based on all of it.
Type C is getting 50 people, everyone goes into the room one by one and examines the table, vase and rose. When each comes out, they write down all the observations they have about the content in the room, without interaction with any of the other 50. You also enter and you use your own observation and the 50 people's gathered data/observations to conclude that there is, in fact, a dark wooden table, a greenish cyan-colored vase with a red rose with a few dark spots on its green leaves. The light in the room was dark, but in tungsten kelvin, which would affect the color perception of the objects based on the difference with light outside the room, you write this observation down as well and look for other observations from the 50 people which supports this and from those that prove against it. Your conclusion is a scientific hypothesis until you can photograph the content of the room to make a definitive scientific truth about what's in there.

Now, if the different types were to interact with the world about what was in the room, Type A would spread downright fantasies about it, even distort their own fantasy further, changing colors on the white chair and that the person was blond or dark-haired, but always unsupported by any observation. Type B would point out exactly what was in the room but would note at the same time that it was unclear exactly what color the vase had, maybe blue. Type C would have a detailed report which would need confirmation by measurement to reach a scientific theory, but is as close as possible to the truth you can be without a priori data.

You agree that " supported" beliefs start as unsupported beliefs. This simple acknowledgement of fact is by definition in conflict with your premise — Rank Amateur

I think you misunderstand what I meant there. Your comment was that every belief is unsupported in the beginning and this is true; whenever we have an idea, it does not come into our minds with a support attached to it. However, if you hold on to this belief, this unsupported belief, without going further, you are acting upon that belief and act out uninformed acts.

No they often lead to "supported beliefs" after proper evaluation - you can not have one without the other. — Rank Amateur

Do you think that if the premise is changed to: "Holding on to unsupported belief always leads to uninformed acts" is more clear then?

I am not sure you can bridge this logic flaw in the argument. No idea starts as a supported idea, the support follows. My suggestion is you would need to eliminate the idea of "unsupported" and insert , false or disproved. Which is where I think you are intellectually, IMO you equate "unproven" with false, which they are not. — Rank Amateur

But the explanation is clear about it, if you hold on to unsupported belief you will act out on it, but if you challenge the unsupported belief you either rule it false or find support. I think you are trying to shoehorn in that it's a logical flaw when it really isn't, seems more like it's a misunderstanding because of how the premise is phrased without clarity of what it refers to. But the above change covers it.

Why should fantasy and facts be mixed up in order to make people think? Truth and fantasy should be clearly separated. What was the question?

And conspiracy theories is in my opinion pseudo-intellectualism at its worst.

A social subject creation mechanism in effect. So, I'm sure the Chinese will be delighted with the impression that it's just a transparent attempt at oppression that people will surreptitiously oppose by trying to game the system rather than being a system that will become so transparent it will game them. — Baden

This is why I think the Chinese system, especially since it exists within a highly corrupt and totalitarian political system, won't work at all.

But in a free democracy, as per the A.I system, which might sound like science fiction, but if pushed for would take just a couple of years to be implemented when the technology is ready, might actually work. The big thing though, is that it's hard to quantify the drawbacks to have such a system within a free democracy. Where is the line between progressive disobedience and bad moral acts? As an A.I it needs to, in some way, calculate the benefits of such disobedience and decide if it's for something good or something bad according to morals not present in the current system. It needs to, for example, understand when racists act disobediently with promoting a racist society while promoting for a change in health care is good for the people. Adding parameters like this might be easy for an A.I to adapt to, but it's hard for us to find the balance that is right.

Outside of the A.I example, what might be a real-world implementation of a rubber-band score system? Is there a way to actually have this in a free democracy, without it becoming totalitarian like China or like the Black Mirror episode "Nosedive"? I think it might, but it needs a serious overhaul in comparison to those to extremes in order to keep society free and healthy.

A) not good for one to suppress emotions as they bottle up and later do come back to deal what needs to be delt and B) that its not possible. After having suppressed my emotions I, even after a great amount of time, get nothing that "comes back up" or anything of that kind.

Yet, that is not where my question lies, Is it possible to have a choice whether to feel or not? — Thesailor123

It is not possible to just decide not to feel. We can train ourselves to be instinctively ready for feelings and through that have a conscious cushion that makes it easier to suppress them when they arrive. This is how soldiers and similar occupations train in order to suppress fear and similar emotions.

We use two systems when we navigate through our waking hours, system 1 and system 2, the latter being our calm, thinking, rational self who analyze and find the right answer based on information that we know. But system 2 is never in the driving seat, it's system 1, which goes by pre-programmed responses and feedbacks towards what we experience. It continuously consults system 2 in order to process new information, but can only act on things we know. System 1 is the one acting with emotions so in order to have some control over it you would need to train it to handle those emotions, but you can never get rid of emotions consciously, since you can never switch to using system 2 in the drivers seat.

you have done a lot of work here, and you deserve a proper, reasonable response, so here goes: — Rank Amateur

Thank you, you prove to be a step higher than many others when it comes to a proper dialectic, I appreciate that. :up:

Unsupported and supported belief
Informed and uniformed acts
And distorted knowledge. — Rank Amateur

Supported belief is a belief that has some evidence for it, but cannot be deduced as pure truth yet. Essentially an "inductive belief" compared to a scientific theory which is more of a deductive conclusion, if we were to use those terms. Supported belief, in this case, can be said to be a hypothesis, it needs facts and observations in order to lead to a qualified guess but cannot be pulled from nothing. This belief needs to be supported by something that isn't a belief itself.

Unsupported belief is a belief which has no facts, evidence or logic behind it. Essentially it's pulled from thin air, emotion, prejudice, flawed logic and the list goes on. Its reasoning filled with biases and fallacies, jumpings to conclusion etc. It's a belief that breaks down as soon as the reasons get a dissection and questioned. An example outside of theism is anti-vaxxers, who tries to argue through facts but jump to conclusions and cannot see that their facts don't hold up or connect to their conclusion, essentially they have a belief that vaccines are bad and dangerous, yet have nothing to actually prove it, not even inductively as their facts break apart as soon as the real data of vaccines link to diseases show that there's zero link. In spiritualism, it's a belief in ghosts, yet there's no evidence for any ghosts ever to be filed as proper evidence and no conclusive data of any event that can lead to such conclusion. In social tensions, it's the white guy who won't buy anything from a certain store because the clerk is black. List goes on, essentially as it's named, unsupported belief.


Distorted knowledge is common, general and collective information, considered as truth, but since derived from unsupported belief (above), they aren't true but are considered facts anyway. Like during Nazi Germany, people accepted the ideas of eugenics, not as a belief but as facts. Unsupported belief lead to unsupported facts, i.e distorted knowledge. Same goes for the previous analogy about viruses, where the general public accepted the church's ideas of the poor being responsible for bringing down God's wrath through sickness. Unsupported belief leads to a higher risk of distorting knowledge and create common "truths" based on false grounds.

Secondly, independent of your definitions, there is no causality in your premises.
You would have to add, something like :

An unsupported belief, always or usually, etc leads to uninformed acts.

Without such a link, there is no direct cause one to the other. All your premises turn into - people who like vanilla ice cream leads to uniformed acts. — Rank Amateur

Sure, it's a bit semantical though.

p1 An unsupported belief always leads to uninformed acts.
p2 A supported belief always leads to informed acts.
p3 An unsupported belief always has a high risk of distorting knowledge
p4 A supported belief always has a low risk of distorting knowledge

Reason for using the definitive "always" is that even if the unsupported belief is accidentally correct, the act upon it is still uninformed. While acting by supported belief always include having information for that act, so it's always informed. However you turn it, that's a true however the outcome.
Same goes for the knowledge premises, it's always a higher risk that unsupported belief distorts knowledge. It's statistically true of the probable outcome of each belief types.

Lastly, what are the origins of “ supported beliefs” do such beliefs spring into our collective consciences fully supported?? I would opine, most if not all “supported beliefs” begin their existence as a thought, and idea, an “unsupported belief” that someone works on to validate and if successful turns into a “supported belief” — Rank Amateur

That is true, but the argument is more about the ethical nature of how we live by our beliefs. Let's say you are a white man and media has been pushing a segregating narrative that fuels racist dislikes of black people in the neighborhood. You walk down the street and in front of you there's a black man, nothing strange about him, doesn't look dangerous or anything but you still cross the street to avoid the man. This is acting upon an unsupported belief. But if you instead let that unsupported belief be the "open question" and you directly weight in the facts, how media spins news, how there have not been any problems last week and question why you should fear the man now as you wouldn't have done it last week, you choose to keep walking and not act upon the unsupported belief.

You essentially turned the open question of unsupported belief into supported belief. The problem is if you hold onto the unsupported belief. This is rather about the long term and not short term. Say you have a day when some very unsupported beliefs pops into your head and you set out to verify/falsify them. As long as you don't act and live by those unsupported beliefs and accept them as mere thoughts to be proved or disproved, they aren't really beliefs yet. They are current thoughts. But if you give up looking into those unsupported beliefs and you just keep going, after a week you still believe them and you still act upon them, you are walking the dangerous path ethically.

do such beliefs spring into our collective consciences — Rank Amateur

But I don't define beliefs as collective, I define them as personal. I define collective belief as distorted knowledge, as that's when they start becoming common truths, which is the most dangerous consequence of unsupported belief.

Pending you definitions of the above, I have no real issue at all with this statement
And no clue why you need the premises above to arrive at this. — Rank Amateur

To make it definitive in order to continue the argument in its parts. Need to define definitively that unsupported belief is unreasonable. Think of when someone has an unsupported belief that is accidentally true, it can look like a reasonable act, but by showing the connection to being informed or uninformed and the probability of risk, it shows that even if you are accidentally correct in a belief, you still increase the risk of negative outcomes if that's how you live by beliefs.

Reasonable and unreasonable acts
And your definition of
Ethical/unethical — Rank Amateur

Reasonable acts are acts based on rational probability from the reasonable belief (as defined by the first argument). I.e they are acts in direct causal line from the ideas in the reasonable belief.
Unreasonable acts are the opposite of that.
Ethical/unethical is where my other moral argument comes in (which I haven't finished yet), but heard it's close to Sam Harris landscape of morality (which I've yet to read). In essence, it's based on harm/well-being induction bridging many of the common moral theories together. Basically, your actions should be inductively reasoned to a probability of the most well-being for yourself and others combined (simplified).
In this case, it's more ethical that you act upon what is reasonable than what is not, but I'm not sure we really have to go into detail of my own argument for this. I think that even if you apply it to most moral systems, the reasonable act will always be connected to positive morals than negative ones. I.e more ethical.

Also as above, there is no causality in the premises . A does not directly cause B

Cant address any more of this until it is defined and causality is established — Rank Amateur

p1 High reasonable belief always leads to reasonable acts
p2 Low reasonable belief always leads to unreasonable acts
p3 High reasonable acts are always considered ethical
p4 Low reasonable acts are always considered unethical

I don't think there's any doubt that high reasonable belief (as per the previous argument) always lead to reasonable acts. If the act is unreasonable, it's in direct violation against the reasonable belief. It's also important not to view an act as common truth, the act is linked to the intention of the moral agent and a reasonable act is intended to be out of reasonable belief. If the outcome is not intended, it's not the fault of the moral agent if the act is based on reasonable belief. But if the act is unreasonable, based on low reasonable belief it has a corrupted intention and therefore has a high probability of a faulty outcome and the moral agent is responsible for that outcome as the intention was corrupted by the low reasonable belief. It also brings back the definition of ethical and unethical by pointing to carelessness in predicting moral outcomes through unreasonable acts and belief. It's careless not to figure out the consequences of your acts essentially.

Define – theism
And as above
You need to establish casualty — Rank Amateur

I define theism by a belief in God. It's also more broadly defined as "the belief in the existence of the Supreme Being or deities" as opposed to deism, even though deism is also still an unsupported belief type.

p1 Unsupported belief is always unethical
p2 Supported belief is always ethical
p3 Theism always relies on an unsupported belief

Definition of why theism always relies on unsupported belief is because if it's proven and we can measure it, it's deism. But even in deism, if we measure it and find God, it's not deism anymore but scientific fact. If "belief" is gone from both theism and deism, it's no longer definable as either theism or deism are defined. They are in opposition to scientific fact through this definition, and since none of them rely on hypotheses based on supported belief, like for instance the M-Theory which has a lot of math supporting it, but cannot be finished before predicted observations are shown and it becomes a scientific theory, theism is based on unsupported belief.

I am not going to spend any more time arguing the reasonability of an argument that has lasted over 700 years. — Rank Amateur

As all others when pointing out these flaws. The problem with the arguments is that they were made long before any of the modern understanding and knowledge about physics, spacetime, quantum physics and the Big Bang. There are plenty of issues with the arguments and whenever they are brought up, the response is that "they are old arguments and because they are still around, they are valid". I can easily counter that with; "they are old, so why are they still not considered as scientific theories if they are supposed to support the idea of God with solid validity?". That's because they rely on faith and belief in order to work, in order to connect "God" with their conclusions. Just because they are old, doesn't mean they are valid. Or should we bring back old Ancient Greek theories that everything is made of water, just because that is old as well?

I am saying it shows such a thing as God, is a resonable possibility. — Rank Amateur

So theism is relying on a reasonable possibility, no real support? How is that changing it from unsupported belief to supported belief? Believing the Wheeler–DeWitt equation has support in its math, that is supported belief. And how do you measure that reasonable possibility? Do you need belief in order to measure the number? So if you believe in God the reasonable possibility is 90%? If not its 10%? Agnostic 50%? How is "reasonable possibility" changing theism into supported belief when the conclusion to CA could be anything? There's a reasonable possibility that its an out-of-spacetime-dog that kickstarted the universe since we don't know, how can that not be a possibility as well?

It all boils down to a belief that doesn't have true support in conclusions, only speculations based on a possibility that sounds more like wishful thinking than actual logic to the reasoning of the arguments.

And for your argument to stand you need to show the CA is outside reason. You have not done so, and your counter arguments are not making any headway in doing this. — Rank Amateur

I have shown that it has nothing to do with God. Theism requires God. Theism is not about an out-of-spacetime-dog, it is about God. The validity of CA can be discussed and there are plenty of more counter-arguments that I can bring up, but the point is still that you cannot attach God to its conclusions since that requires a belief without the support of an actual connection, i.e my premise still holds that theism is unsupported belief.

Just saying I'm wrong does not work if we take this as a dialectic. And criticizing that my arguments don't hold with making a point that the arguments lasted 700 years is just a fallacy. I can list plenty of arguments that won't hold the test of time.

proving what happened before the Big Bang is outside physics is the entire darn point of the argument. You are making no sense at all with this line of logic — Rank Amateur

That is not what I said, is it? "proving what happened before the Big Bang is outside physics" is not the same as "How can it prove something outside known physics without assuming the properties of what is outside known physics?

Is it?

And even so, how does that in any way relate to God? Theism is about God, if God is whatever there is before Big Bang, it's still belief without support. Since you can conclude the argument with "there is something in the beginning". But by attaching "God" to that makes it speculation, it becomes belief and does not in any way or form have support.

Therefore, theism is relying on unsupported belief.

Also, in what way does CA in any way make p3 Theism relies on an unsupported belief false?
How many assumptions must be needed before a belief in God can be concluded unsupported belief?

It's like if a soccer football came rolling down the road from a couple of houses and you can't see its source. You conclude that something set it in motion, there are a force and a speed to it. You listen and hear nothing. Drawing a conclusion on what set that soccer ball in motion has nothing else than the ball itself and its motion as proof, but the conclusion drawn is that a soccer player must have kicked it.

Without knowing if it was rather a dog, a random kid, the wind that pushed it from a high place so that it rolled down the road. Without any further data, you still draw the conclusion of the soccer player kicking it. But that is pure speculation, not a valid conclusion. Then saying that such a conclusion is giving support to a personal belief that the couple of houses up the road are homes for professional soccer players is pushing the assumptions and speculations even further. Causation ≠ correlation. Therefore theism relies on an unsupported belief.

P3 is patently false, the entire point of the CA is the creation of the universe is outside physics, that it is supernatural. so then p4 is redundantly false — Rank Amateur

How can it prove something outside known physics without assuming the properties of what is outside known physics? That is assuming a lot that hasn't even been proven through theoretical physics and drawing a conclusion on that, is false.

P4 is true, we don't have any data about what was or what the properties or physics were before Big Bang, this is a fact. How can you say this premise is false? Do you have the data but no other in the entire world?

Wow, so the argument that concludes the beginning was supernatural needs a scientific explanation of what it is trying to argue. You realize absolutely none of that paragraph makes any sense at all. — Rank Amateur

How can it conclude it to be supernatural when it doesn't know if our laws of physics existed before Big Bang? How can it conclude it to be supernatural at all without knowing anything about pre-Big Bang? That's jumping to conclusions in the argument. Answer me how the arguments can prove anything at all? Any properties of pre-Big Bang, prove that it was or wasn't supernatural? If you can't answer that, how can you conclude those arguments to be valid?

And hate to do this, but the rest of the post is worse. That well could be the single worst argument against the CA I have ever seen. — Rank Amateur

Yeah, I keep hearing it, but I never get any rational counter-argument to the criticism of the those arguments. They assume a lot without even including modern physics or a rational falsification of their own premises.

The cosmological argument requires a lot of knowledge about pre-Big Bang. Without it, it's just assumptions and guesses about it and if you conclude it to be supernatural, you need support to why it is supernatural, which need actual facts and evidence in science to prove such a conclusion.

There's a reason these arguments haven't proven anything related to their conclusions and the world's population haven't accepted them as true, because they are flawed and might not even comply with today's understanding of physics. Like, you need to at least disprove or counter the Wheeler–DeWitt equation before concluding that causality can occur before Big bang.

So please address the issues and tone down the arrogant tone.

i would counter P3 is false, both the cosmological argument, and some design arguments are valid. Valid meaning the premises are true, and the conclusions follow. That does not mean, there are not counter arguments against, but none of them overwhelm the arguments. — Rank Amateur

They are valid in that they point to a first cause but...

p1 Cosmological and design arguments point to an original point of origin for the universe.
p2 Cosmological and design arguments does not incorporate attributes and properties outside of the known laws of physics.
p3 Cosmological and design arguments require known laws of physics to exist before Big Bang.
p4 There is no data to support known laws of physics to exist before Big Bang.

Therefore cosmological and design arguments only works within known laws of physics and therefore dismiss any other explanation about pre-Big Bang that does not function by our known laws of physics.

This is why the cosmological and design argument is failing since it needs to have in their premises exactly what was before Big Bang and that everything there followed the known laws of physics. This is not known yet and scientists don't know what happened before Big Bang, so how can those with the cosmological and design arguments make claims that need truths about pre-Big Bang but still have a valid argument?

Then, on top of that:

p1 Cosmological argument does not point directly to a God.
p2 Design arguments does not prove a link between universe complexity and intentional design without assuming there to be one before the conclusion.
p3 Design arguments does not point directly to a God.
p4 Theism requires God

Therefore, cosmological and design arguments do not support an existence of God.

Not only do the cosmological and design arguments not really hold up as arguments, but even if we ignore the fact that those arguments ignore the lack of data about pre-Big Bang, they don't directly point to God and Theism require God.

Therefore I cannot see how my p3 is false as these arguments don't really give support to theism having supported belief. To use those arguments to conclude that theism has supported belief requires them to be bullet proof in evidence, which they aren't because of the mentioned flaws AND that they without flaws point directly to a God, which they don't. There's a lot of assumptions made before those can conclude theism being backed by supported belief.

your argument does not work unless theism is shown unsupported /unreasonable - becomes circular. — Rank Amateur

I had a line of premises concluding on theism, but didn't want to see pitchforks but, anyway, here's the third part of that argument:

p1 Unsupported belief is unethical
p2 Supported belief is ethical
p3 Theism relies on an unsupported belief

Therefore, theism is unethical.

How can you hold onto theism without unsupported belief?

I can form an argument as to why irrational unsupported belief is unreasonable, as I did in my belief-argument thread. It's still evolving though, per the dialectic. Although it hit a roadblock when religious evangelists came in and got banned, spammed posts that got erased etc. Gonna look over it some more, but essentially it's the argument.

The question then becomes; can that be combined with theism? Or is it essentially that because unsupported belief is an essential property of theism, it falls under the bus of that argument's conclusion? How can you support theism without such belief as a core attribute?

But in a shorter and simpler version of the longer argument in the other thread:

p1 An unsupported belief leads to uninformed acts.
p2 A supported belief leads to informed acts.
p3 An unsupported belief has a high risk of distorting knowledge
p4 A supported belief has a low risk of distorting knowledge

Therefore, unsupported belief is less reasonable than supported belief.

Then

p1 High reasonable belief leads to reasonable acts
p2 Low reasonable belief leads to unreasonable acts
p3 High reasonable acts are considered ethical
p4 Low reasonable acts are considered unethical

Therefore, a low reasonable belief is unethical.


The other argument goes more into detail about what unsupported and supported beliefs are etc.

So if I make a claim that such a thing as love exists, and i want you to believe as I do that love exists, it is my burden to make an argument that convinces you. If however, you establish a burden of proof that is, by definition, outside any possibility, do to the nature of the claim. Than that person has established an impossible burden. If in the case above, you tell me you will believe in love, it I can bring you a box with a pound of love in it. Without that proof - you tell me i have not made my argument, and you have no reason to believe such a thing as love exists. All your position turns into is I don't believe you, because I don't believe you. — Rank Amateur

Except that in the case of love I actually don't "believe in love", I rationalize that it is a concept that we use in language to describe our attachments through chemical reactions and psychological factors based on social constructs around those emotions. I could probably make this case for almost anything and for that which I cannot explain I can do educated guesses, hypotheses, as long as I try to stay within what I previously know and not apply personal belief to that hypothesis. In the case of love, I could, through the sciences of psychology, sociology, biology and anthropology, argue that love is simply a concept, it does not exist as it's own thing and I could probably prove this point through all the different aspects of the above sciences and the only counter-claim would be a belief that it's something more anyway for which I would demand counter-proof that holds against the science.

But that wasn't the actual point, I get that. However, I would argue that there are very few things we couldn't categorize within more responsible handling of epistēmē.

And with this, I'm going back into my own argument about irrational belief being unethical, a thread you've been posting in. Through that, I argue that irrational belief is always wrong and that we can only hold a belief that has some support as long as we treat it as a non-value in our actions, until proven. Meaning, any time acting on a belief that doesn't have any support, we break epistemic responsibility and it creates a risk of distorting knowledge and how people act upon that knowledge.

So if you actually came to me with the love question, I would not say I believe in love, I would say that the most rational explanation for love is through the evidence of why we humans act according to the concept of love. If you hold a belief that love exists outside of the concepts we can measure, I would ask for a burden of proof, just as with any other belief and because you cannot bring a box of love as proof, I would not say that I don't believe you, or that I believe you, I would say that I have no reason to even accept the idea of such a belief as it's a concept with no attachment in reality outside of fantasy (for which I can also probably explain why people have fantasies about love as magical concepts).

This is why I could probably call myself the most atheist member of all on this board since I don't even hold "belief" as a valid concept outside of educated guesses/hypotheses. Irrational beliefs are just fantasies we've made up to explain the unexplainable, we believe a lot as children and less and less the older we get, but because of human psychology, we are prone to always lean towards believing something before actually explaining something. This is the point of my belief-argument, that we need to stop accepting things as truths just because it's comfortable and feels nice and instead take that personal belief that we take for granted as truths, and exile it completely from our minds and emotions.

And I am fine with all of that, except that the atheist does not want it to end there. As on this board and almost everywhere else the atheist wants to challenge the belief that God is, with the implicit claim God is not, with a semantic excuse they don't have to prove it. I find this disingenuous, and pure tactic. — Rank Amateur

I can say the same about theists. There's a lot of religious nutjobs joining and writing total nonsense and sending private messages about how to "save me from my devilish atheism". I rarely see true atheists acting in the same way, probably since more atheists than theists don't let their emotions guide their reasoning (of course some do, but I would call them uneducated and just as irrationally emotional as any of those religious people). But if you look at a broader picture of the world's population, I would argue, statistically that more religious people behave irrationally and dangerous than atheists. Which is a statistic in support of my belief-argument.

And my belief-argument thread is a good example of this. The actual argument is about irrational belief, both religious and non-religious, but most of the posts are about God's existence or not, and vague semantical counter-arguments with emotional outbursts rather than dialectics; just because those theists have a problem with my argument challenging their core property of "belief". To criticize belief when that belief does not correlate with anything but fantasy, makes theists grab their pitchforks since they need belief they cannot prove, in order to hold onto the truths they live by. There's no wonder one of them got banned and another got most of his posts deleted after spamming nonsense.

Is it evangelistic to make an argument that irrational belief without support can be a dangerous moral road to take? And that belief that has support, a belief that is only considered belief and acted upon with caution because of it, to be acceptable? Or is it simply that theists lash out emotionally when their personal core values are threatened by an argument like that? You cannot threaten atheists core values in the same way since there are no core values other than searching for truth and rationality.

I don't challenge religious belief because I'm an atheist, I challenge it because it's irrational, it's without support, with its arguments filled with fallacies and biases and often become painfully flawed to a point it's not even obvious to the one making it. Theists often demand atheists to just accept their argument without explaining further and why, while atheists demand theists to have solid arguments when they don't. I haven't seen atheistic argument fail in the same way as theists arguments when looking at their validity as arguments. And if they do, those atheists making those arguments seem more willing to go through dialectics and changing the argument to actually make sense while theists just say "you don't' get it" and then posts another, equally flawed argument. I'm of course not saying that atheists are always right in their arguments, I'm just tired of hearing the same fallacies and biases by theists while they blame atheists for challenging their personal beliefs. Especially since philosophical dialectic is all about challenging anyone's argument if it seems flawed.

It's irrational by theists to demand more than they can bring to the table themselves. Theists and atheists should make their case with equal demand for rational reasoning, no one has more validity over the other and everything else is just emotionally driven opinions.

i understand your point now, but that is again trying to get the argument you want, not the one I am making. — Rank Amateur

But in order for your point to be an argument, even inductively, you need true premises and if there's a chance one of them isn't you need to modify it to be true in order to make the argument valid.

My premise, the definition of the "no seeum" argument, is not false, because it is not worded the way you like. It is worded the way it is often argued. I stand by the definition - and the conclusion that follows. — Rank Amateur

That would mean instead that the argument you make is about how people use that argument, not the argument itself. You are essentially criticizing that people use that argument to prove that [blank] doesn't exist and if it's the use of the argument that is the problem, I agree with you, but then your argument needs to reflect and support that conclusion, not specifically a conclusion about the no-seeum argument.

If you want to acknowledge that no-seeum arguments, as i defined them say nothing at all about existence, we can get on to the argument you want - Russell — Rank Amateur

What I meant with Russel is that his teapot analogy reflects the actual conclusion to be drawn from the argument. If some atheists or whatever use this argument as definite proof of no existence, that is just as wrong as the opposite, but that itself is the personal use of the argument, in my opinion in the wrong way.

this is my proposition on a definition of what a "no-seemum" argument is. I am making no conclusion in the proposition at all.

What I am saying is - people, maybe you, make statements like " there is no proof of God, or fill in the blank, therefore they, maybe you, because of lack of proof, chose to believe there is no God or fill in the blank. That is not a conclusion - that is a statement I am making that I propose is true. It says NOT ONE THING at all about if God does or does not exist. All is says is a definition of an argument some people make about if God does or does not exists. IT IS NOT ABOUT GOD, IT IS ABOUT THE ARGUMENT. — Rank Amateur

This is exactly the point I've been discussing throughout. You propose a conclusion that is definitive, meaning, you see it as black and white, either the argument concludes in "therefore there is a [blank]" or it's "therefore there's not a [blank]".

But if the conclusion is "there's no reason to believe it to exist", it is neither "it exist" or "it doesn't exist", it's not even agnostic, it's a denial of any conclusion at all since you can't make one without facts, observations and correct correlations. You propose the conclusion to be a definitive answer to either existence or no existence by saying that the no-seeum argument concludes with a definitive answer. But to use the lack of evidence, burden of proof etc. as a reason not to arrive at a conclusion at all with "there's no reason to believe it to exist", is what the argument is about.

So you dismiss the argument based on your own proposition of the conclusion but won't accept there to be another conclusion that is neither "it exist" or "it doesn't exist".

This is p1
p1. - people make no-seeum arguments

what in the world are you talking about ?? — Rank Amateur

Sorry, meant p2

"conclusion - all no seeum arguments fail as proof of either existence or non existence of anything."

your point? — Rank Amateur

I asked about p1, your conclusion of the no-seeum argument.

If the conclusion you mention in p1 is instead "there's no reason to believe it to exist", then the conclusion to your counter-argument does not hold up since the conclusion you criticize isn't about either existence or non-existence. As I described earlier what "there's no reason to believe it to exist" is really about.

What I mean is that you propose a conclusion in p1 that I don't really see is the actual conclusion of the argument you are criticizing.

may well be the most convoluted sentence i have ever read. — Rank Amateur

You proposed a conclusion to the argument you are criticizing. I asked if that is the actual conclusion or if the actual conclusion is "there's no reason to believe it to exist".

Without the conclusion being exactly as you proposed, your conclusion of the counter-argument ends up misunderstanding the original argument.

the point of the virus has nothing at all to do with the point you are making above, all it is saying is, that until we are aware of such things - our unawareness of them says nothing at all about there existence, or lack there of. Your point here just begs the question. — Rank Amateur

My point is that to say "it exist" or "it does not exist" is irrelevant since a belief in either doesn't follow epistemic responsibility. Any claim of God's existence is irresponsible to how we treat knowledge and act with the knowledge that we have. Just like blaming the poor for Gods wrath through sickness instead of actually looking into what sickness is. This is why we have modern methods to arrive at facts and not beliefs.

I did not conclude any such thing - i proposed that is what the no-seeum argument concludes - that i am arguing against !!!! that is twice now that you have misunderstood a simple statement by 180 deg. Slow down - — Rank Amateur

I'm asking if that conclusion is the actual conclusion you are arguing against or if your conclusion is changed to a definitive in order to make your arguments point? You proposed it to be the conclusion, could the conclusion just as much be "there's no reason to believe it to exist"?

" we looked we didn't see anything - it does not exist" — Rank Amateur

Why do you conclude it with "it does not exist" and not "there's no reason to believe it to exist"?

Can you spot the difference between those two? One is a statement that requires knowing the truth, the other is a statement requiring a burden of proof from those making the original claim. If people were to follow epistemic responsibility, they lack responsibility if they either go for "it does not exist", but also if they go for "it exist", which is what theists do with their fallacious arguments. "there's no reason to believe it to exist" take epistemic responsibility as it does not conclude anything at all until a correlation between two things has been established. Without it, you can invent any reason something does not or does exist. The core value of this is to never believe anything that doesn't have support, but the theist approach is to believe what you want to believe because of the lack of support of that it isn't.

Tu quoque

So i make a point, you get the point 180 degrees wrong, I point it out to you, and you say it doesn't matter you got it wrong - and then ask me why I don't want to engage. — Rank Amateur

And you stop reading, don't understand the core conclusion of my counter-argument and use the missed point as your reason to ignore the counter-argument. That's called a fallacy fallacy.

p1. - people make no-seeum arguments
p2. - these arguments basically say " we know what we are looking for, we have looked in lots of places, and we don't see it, therefore it does not exist.
p3. - there are almost countless examples of things that people where unaware of, did not believe existed, but actually did exist.
p4. - all a no seeum argument shows is that there is something you can't see it

conclusion - all no seeum arguments fail as proof of either existence or non existence of anything.

If you want to directly answer this - happy to engage. — Rank Amateur

p2 is not really true. The criticism is not that it doesn't exist, it's that there's no reason to say that it exists if it cannot have observed correlation. This is the foundation of the Russel analogy. If you can make up whatever you want to exist and then "prove it" by saying that because no one can see it it must exist, you essentially just invent anything you want as existing, without any epistemic responsibility of any kind. You don't seem to understand the actual conclusion of Russel's analogy and instead, strawman it into a black and white "does not exist", which isn't the actual conclusion of the criticism through Russel's analogy.

p3 is a true premise but does not really support the conclusion, since things like viruses have a direct correlation that can be observed. I've countered this in the virus analogy I made, which essentially points to how religion continuously changed their view of the world and universe to fit the results of scientific theories. The only thing that your p3 points to is that there are things we don't know the reason for in the universe, but when we do they will be proven facts and in the meanwhile, people will slap "God" onto the reasons why without any real correlation between them.

What happens if I say that a teapot is responsible for those unexplained things? You cannot say that a teapot isn't responsible because throughout history there have been things that people didn't know about and therefore, before we know for sure, a teapot can be responsible for everything. This is the logic of your argument. Just replace the teapot with God.

conclusion - all no seeum arguments fail as proof of either existence or non existence of anything. — Rank Amateur

And how is what we don't know in any correlation with God and not a teapot?

Why do you even bother doing philosophy if that's your response to a counter-argument? I recommend that you look at your reasoning with the last thing I wrote in mind.

In order to make a valid hypothesis, you need to collect data that is in actual support of something, not in support of something vague that you can slap "God" onto in order to conclude it to be God. This is why no one has ever been able to prove the existence of God through reasoning because the reasoning is inherently flawed and ignores all methods needed to actually reach a truth as a scientific theory. And even if just a probability is proposed, that probability is as vague as the probability that a cat will pop into existence from non-existence, right before my eyes. The correlation isn't there, i.e causation ≠ correlation and jumping to conclusions. Using personal belief to change the actual conclusion of an argument. — Christoffer

It doesn't matter if your point was misinterpreted since you still talk about existing things not yet proven but do not see the difference with observable properties as basis for a hypothesis that can be tested, verified, falsified and concluded - and a causation ≠ correlation fallacy jumping to conclusions.

You are trying to argue that there are observable consequences in the universe that makes for a foundation to a hypothesis of a God and use the idea that viruses existed before observed and proven. However, as I pointed out, a virus exists with direct observable consequences that can be studied. To apply a hypothesis of God to whatever you like is like having a hypothesis about sickness being caused by saying "Hello" whenever someone walks by with a cow. There's no direct and rational correlation between "God" and something you observe, which leads to jumping to conclusion and a causation ≠ correlation fallacy, which is almost always present in any argument around God.

The analogy is simply like this. People back when viruses were unknown, attached to the idea of God's punishment through sickness. Much like the consequences, causality and unknowns of the universe are attached to God in those God-arguments. But scientists who make an actual hypothesis about what they observe do not jump to conclusions, they do not invent a correlation where they see fit, which is what Russel pointed out to with his critique against such ideas in science, calling them pseudoscience. Scientists and the scientific method, in order to actually explain something observed in nature and the universe, is about looking for actual causation. The ones who discovered viruses looked at how sickness spread and found that there are correlations between interactions between people, how water supplies were handled etc. by carefully going through these actual causations, they could draw actual correlations which informed that there's something invisible to the naked eye that caused these sicknesses. That's when they started observing things people interacted with and found microbes, viruses etc. Because of this observation, this data, they concluded a scientific theory about viruses and bacteria.

But to invent false hypotheses around flawed correlation ideas is what the people before the scientists did with their ideas about God punishing people with sickness. They jumped to conclusions and saw all kinds of correlations which they used to prove after the fact that God was responsible. Like he punished only the poor because they committed more crimes than others. It all cumulated into a long list in support of a conclusion that sickness related to God, not anything else. It's because of this flawed reasoning that the argument for God by looking at certain causations or complexities in nature always ends up fallacious. It's out of both a lack of knowledge into the actual science that exists and a failure of methods to correctly analyze what can be observed.

In order to make a valid hypothesis, you need to collect data that is in actual support of something, not in support of something vague that you can slap "God" onto in order to conclude it to be God. This is why no one has ever been able to prove the existence of God through reasoning because the reasoning is inherently flawed and ignores all methods needed to actually reach a truth as a scientific theory. And even if just a probability is proposed, that probability is as vague as the probability that a cat will pop into existence from non-existence, right before my eyes. The correlation isn't there, i.e causation ≠ correlation and jumping to conclusions. Using personal belief to change the actual conclusion of an argument.

you are missing the point ot the entire argument - read again please - — Rank Amateur

And you should read my whole post before directly answering.