Belief is a judgment, a decision to affirm or deny something.

To say you have to believe or disbelieve is a false dichotomy because one can neither affirm nor deny something to be true in some cases. This is called “withholding judgment.” — Noah Te Stroete

I like this argument, Noah. This makes much more sense than the name-calling up to now.

Let's see what I can do with it.

To affirm or to deny something are both cummunicating your opinion to the outside world. You can deny you are married, while you know you are married, and you can affirm you are married, while you are single.

Thus denial and affirmation have potentially nothing to do with your opinion.

If you neither deny, nor affirm, you simply refuse to communicate your knowledge, or your opinion, or your belief, to others.

But you do have a knowledge, an opionion, a belief. You just refuse to communicate what it is.

So while your argument is good, in the sense that you are presenting reasonable thought, it is sitll not an argument to show that Janus's point can be valid.

Another way to state my counter-argument is that given a knowledge, an opinion, a thought, a belief, you can't negate it for your own inner self if it exists in a sense or the other.

I agree to disagree ont his, Noah. I think you have spirit and steadfastness.

I rest my case. — god must be atheist

Unfortunately for you, you don't have a case to rest. So, you are saying it is not possible to be neutral, neither believing nor disbelieving, on any question?

Your example is faulty. For belief you don't need evidence, and yet you hold evidence as a crucial prerequisite for faith. A lot of people believe in god with no evidence. A lot of people believe in no god with no evidence. But knowledge can't be claimed without evidence. Yet you use faith as if it acted on evidence like knowledge does. — god must be atheist

Bringing "knowledge" in here is a red herring. We are discussing belief, not knowledge. The fact that some people may have opinions about whether Trump colluded in the absence of what I would consider to be sufficient evidence is irrelevant to what we are discussing. In empirical matters it is bad form to believe without sufficient evidence. The only people who have a right to call their opinion "knowledge" would be those who have incontrovertible evidence that Trump either did, or did not, collude.

Of course I understand that when it comes to religion, and to questions of the existence of God, which are not empirical matters those who believe do so without what could be considered to be, empirically or inter-subjectively speaking, sufficient evidence. So what? I don't.

I agree that people usually have beliefs and opinions that don’t reach the requirements of knowledge, and I think that a lot of philosophers don’t share these beliefs and opinions openly because they know they cannot be logically defended.

Your language skills are rather poor, Janus. "I neither believe nor disbelieve" excludes both. Both can't be excluded. If you exlcue "I believe" then you necessarily don't believe. If you exlcude "I don't believe" then you necessarily believe. You exclude both. You are really just mincing words now, because you are cornered, and you can't fight your way out of your stated self-contradiction. — god must be atheist

The example I'm considering is the proposition "There is currently a man wearing a hat standing at 10th and 1st in New York City".

Is it not possible to neither believe nor disbelieve this proposition? Which is to say that it I've parsed it and contemplated it, but don't adhere to the truth or falsity of the proposition. I am agnostic on the proposition.

I'm with @Noah Te Stroete (I think) in that in withholding my judgment on this proposition I can neither be accused of believing nor of disbelieving it.

I'm with Noah Te Stroete (I think) in that in withholding my judgment on this proposition I can neither be accused of believing nor of disbelieving it. — JosephS

Yes

@janus I opine you're being simply tiresome. I don't have the energy, interest, and incination to point out your faulty arguments each time you present one.

Like you said,

So, you are saying it is not possible to be neutral, neither believing nor disbelieving, on any question? — Janus

I thought we are arguing about god-belief, not about any question. You are being tiresome. Very. You changed the topic, and strawmanning is a fallacy.

If you take my getting tired of this as an admission to defeat, it is not. But if you insist that one of us is right, and one of us is wrong, and since I have no responses to you any further, I give you the right to claim victory.

However, if you refer to victory in the future, and I see it, based on this argument, then I hold the right to bring the attention of onlookers of the future argument to this argument, and let them decide whehter they agree with your points or with mine.

I had enough of this. I ran out of steam.

This is an important point, because one may have experiences which lead one to believe things which are not rationally or empirically defensible. Say you have an overwhelmingly powerful experience of the presence of God or spirit or whatever you want to name it, as the mystics of both East and West attest to. But any such experience that you have, or that the mystics write about, can never be good evidence for me to believe anything, unless the communication of that experience speaks to some experience of my own which is equally compelling.

This is an important point, because one may have experiences which lead one to believe things which are not rationally or empirically defensible. Say you have an overwhelmingly powerful experience of the presence of God or spirit or whatever you want to name it, as the mystics of both East and West attest to. But any such experience that you have, or that the mystics write about, can never be good evidence for me to believe anything, unless the communication of that experience speaks to some experience of my own which is equally compelling. — Janus

Yes

I give you the right to claim victory. — god must be atheist

I am not interested in "claiming victory" just in clarifying thought and argument. If you don't have the energy for it, that's OK.

I am not interested in "claiming victory" just in clarifying thought and argument. If you don't have the energy for it, that's OK. — Janus

Cool. Thanks for understanding my tiredness.

A couple of corollaries, if you will, to this are:
- A rock is not an atheist as it is not capable of conceptualization
- A newborn is neither theist, atheist, nor agnostic as these all require the conceptualization of the proposition that 'there exist(s) a god(s)'

Or have I taken it too far?

This seems right to me. Where are you going with this?

curiously, however, you will notice that the default stance on forums such as this is that 'miracles never occur'. This is usually said on the basis that the biblical accounts, or accounts in other traditions, haven't been and probably never could be validated by scientific observation, as it's difficult or impossible to validate such things in a laboratory or even by observation.

But if you witnessed something of the kind, something for which there is no apparent rational explanation, then you would be justified in believing that as 'evidence', don't you think?

Just something that I've mulled over a few times in my head without any validation one way or another.

Wasn't sure if there was a confounding epistemological principle that I had missed.

Basically, that to believe X pre-supposes:
- the capability to hold a concept
- the ability to parse the concept X
- the consideration of the parsed concept

Wasn't sure if there was a confounding epistemological principle that I had missed. — JosephS

Well, I don’t know about any epistemological principle that it violates. I’ve only taken one course on the theory of knowledge, but all of the rest of my philosophy courses dealt with epistemology. You should ask some more experienced philosophers. That said, to me it passes the smell test.

Thanks. I'm just a data analyst with an interest in philosophy.

Thanks. I'm just a data analyst with an interest in philosophy. — JosephS

Oh! So you actually studied something that society values. :smile: Philosophy is something valuable to a lot of people personally, but there’s no money in it. Studying philosophy in college, for me, was like several years of therapy, something I just needed to keep on living.

But if you witnessed something of the kind, something for which there is no apparent rational explanation, then you would be justified in believing that as 'evidence', don't you think? — Wayfarer

Yes, I think so. "Seeing is believing" as they say. As we have discussed before, I have had quite a few what I would consider numinous experiences, variously psychedelically induced, during art, music and literary practice and during meditation. So, I have a "sense of the numinous" that I feel somehow informs my poetry, my painting and my musical improvisation (on the piano). But I don't have any definite beliefs about spiritual beings, God, karma, afterlife, the transcendent, the real possibility of enlightenment or awakening and so on. In fact I tend to think that we cannot speak propositionally about such things with any coherence at all. I think this is the precise point where many become confused when it comes to religion and spirituality.

Philosophy is something valuable to a lot of people personally, but there’s no money in it. — Noah Te Stroete

It's significant that there is no Nobel Prize for philosophy.

No problem, man, take it easy...

Yes they do. Core claims in Christianity: God exists, there's an afterlife, Jesus is the son of God, The Holy Spirit of Jesus rose from the grave. — S

That there is a God is not incompatible with science. It is just not supported. SAme with the afterlife. There are several interpretations of Jesus being the son of God.

Science has a method. Application of that method does not result in the above. — S

Which is what is called 'does not support'.

So you can't both adhere to the scientific method, which would result in scepticism at best, and at the same time hold beliefs which fly in the face of that scepticism.

How can anyone be so blind to the obvious incompatibility here? — S

And there you go again with the attitude.

Here's what I notice: you are supposedly representing rationality and science. But in the discussion me so far, you do not respond to points I made, most importantly the one's I made related to the difference between incompatibility and 'not support by' and what your position would mean in relation to changes inside the history of science. IOW you ignored the main point of my post. And then you also go implicity ad hom.

Repeating your position is not responding in a philosophical discussion.

And yet you are supposedly the rational one with the scientific attitude.

Your responses have been rude and hypocritical.

Now I could go on an explain my points a third time - since I posted the same points earlier in the thread and you did not respond - yes, this happens, but now you have specifically ignored them.

But I'll ignore you from here on out. There are perfectly rational atheists and agnostics to have such discussions with. And it is certainly not that they suddenly give up in the face of my arguments, in fact they read them and respond to them and manage not to go ad hom.

IOW they do not smugly waste my time. And yes, I have now gone ad hom also.

And I mean ad hom in the sense of 'to the man' and not the formal fallacy. This last was actually an appeal to incredulity on your part.

According to science, the scientific method, there is insufficient evidence to support the proposition that there is a god. That is to say, conclusions that there is a god are not scientific. — DingoJones

Who gets to decide what counts as "sufficient evidence"? Scientists talk about other universes and about dark energy, yet I'm sure you don't treat those like you treat god, why the double standard? Or if you say that conclusions there are other universes or that there is dark energy are not scientific, then you agree that scientists make unscientific conclusions.

Its not that complex. Just because someone believes in science and believes in god doesn't mean the two are compatible. Its called cognitive dissonance I believe.
If science is your standard, you cannot believe in god. If you have some other standard, “faith” probably, then have it but it isnt science. Thats it. Simple. — DingoJones

Some scientists treat other universes and dark energy as hypotheses, some other scientists believe in them, why don't you tell those who believe in them that they have cognitive dissonance?

Believing in god and applying scientific standards isn't incompatible, what's incompatible is believing in god and believing in science and believing that science proves there is no god.

And to those discussing the open mindedness, perhaps some knows who said this (rough paraphrase) “do not have a mind so open that your brain falls out”. — DingoJones

That's the saying I had in mind, and it's quite a shit metaphor: the mind is not the skull.

Also, the traits you specify scientists possess apply to the wider population. Its a human thing, not a scientist thing. — DingoJones

So if scientists contradict themselves to push the theories they like and dismiss the theories they don't like, it's ok because other humans do it too, that has zero repercussion on the scientific enterprise?

...

Sufficient evidence according to the scientific method, including peer review and testability. Yes, scientists can reach unscientific conclusions, humans make mistakes, they can fail to properly apply the scientific method.
I wouldnt apply cognitive dissonance to your example because that isnt the error the dark energy believer would be making.
Science doesnt prove there is no god, thats not a falsifiable claim just like invisible unicorns and magical butt monkeys or pasta monsters. Rather, science says there is insufficient evidence. You need to understand that distinction to understand science.
Lastly, another strawman for the offering. I didnt say its ok because other humans do it, I said its a human trait not a scientist trait...therefore, incorrect to single out scientists. Also, I didnt say it had zero repercussions on scientific enterprise. You conjured both those things out of thin air.

"Core claims in Christianity"

This would be the fallacy of overgeneralization. Christianity is not religion, any more than you are "humanity."

The topic is not "Are science and scripture compatible" or "Are science and Christianity compatible". — Pantagruel

It was an example of a religion. The biggest one, by the way. The topic is religion. That is of obvious relevance to the topic. My points have only ever been about some religions, not all religions.

Descartes is the father of methodological skepticism, of the strictest kind. And he was a devout Catholic. Maybe it just requires exceptional abilities. — Pantagruel

He was a devout Catholic and he wasn't a skeptic, so there's no contradiction.

According to science, the scientific method, there is insufficient evidence to support the proposition that there is a god. That is to say, conclusions that there is a god are not scientific.
The two are not compatible.
Its not that complex. Just because someone believes in science and believes in god doesn't mean the two are compatible. Its called cognitive dissonance I believe.
If science is your standard, you cannot believe in god. If you have some other standard, “faith” probably, then have it but it isnt science. Thats it. Simple.
And to those discussing the open mindedness, perhaps some knows who said this (rough paraphrase) “do not have a mind so open that your brain falls out”. Also, the traits you specify scientists possess apply to the wider population. Its a human thing, not a scientist thing. — DingoJones

Exactly.

Science and religion are different domains, that's all. — Pantagruel

That's nothing but a self-serving delusion. You turn a blind eye to those religious claims of fact. These claims are open to scientific examination, whether you like it or not. And trying to distract attention away from these claims, as you've consistently done here, won't achieve anything, logically speaking.

I think people should know what the epistemological term “consistency” means.

For example, it is not possible to determine if the Battle of Waterloo took place in 1815 using the method of experimental testing. The question is simply part of another epistemic domain, i.e. the historical method, and can only be handled by corroborating witness depositions. — alcontali

The historical method doesn't support the incredible claims of religion either.

Therefore, scientism is an irritating absurdity:

Scientism is an ideology that promotes science as the only objective means by which society should determine normative and epistemological values. The term scientism is generally used critically, pointing to the cosmetic application of science in unwarranted situations not amenable to application of the scientific method or similar scientific standards. — alcontali

Scientism is a red herring used in discussions such as this as a smear by people who can't win arguments.