this is one of your points
"Epistemic responsibility put a responsibility on the ones who make choices without sufficient evidence"

So how do you get sufficient evidence without a postules. If there are postules there is room for doubt. ( postules are an assumption). So if you can prove that science is correct without need for a postule I will agree with you.

So how do you get sufficient evidence without a postules. If there are postules there is room for doubt. ( postules are an assumption). So if you can provide that science is correct without need for a postule I will agree with you. — hachit

Is your counter-argument that if there are any doubts to the conclusion of trying to falsify a belief you hold, then you don't need to falsify or try and find evidence for what you believe?

Because the entire counter argument you have is built upon proving that if you can't 100% prove something you don't need to do the scientific methods at all.

This is a very binary way of looking at this argument and flawed in actually countering my conclusion, since the conclusion isn't dependent on the deduced conclusion being perfect.

You essentially ditch rational thinking if that rational thinking isn't 100% accurate in its conclusion. It's essentially also like saying that because science doesn't know the entire solution to the universe with its unification theory, then we should just throw all science out the window. You are writing on a computer which is probably filled with technology that came out of science that had a lot of doubts during research, however, they did not ditch that and "believed together the computer"
But we have science and this science has doubts and works with those doubts, but the methods of reaching conclusions with the least amount of errors do exist and those methods should be used to uphold Epistemic Responsibility.

Epistemic responsibility is something you can read about more if you want and the validity of my argument for ethics philosophy still stands since your counter-argument here really doesn't counter it's conclusion at all.

you more or less getting there but not quite. I'm saying that you took others resoning to make your conclusion. I forget the name of the preson that pushed the idea of epistemic responsibility but I had concluded that his argument, (not yours). Had the problem of circular reasoning. Because his argument only works if science is correct but this is a part of what he was saying.

Because his argument only works if science is correct but this is a part of what he was saying. — hachit

But I would argue that it did not need the science to be 100% correct.

- If you believe whatever you want and that ends up killing someone, you had the responsibility of testing that belief in order to avoid the consequence.

- You test your belief and you have doubts, but arrive at a conclusion that was not your initial belief, the man lives. You took responsibility for testing your belief with facts and rational reasoning.

You don't need to reach 100% truth, it's the method of testing belief and not just believe that is the conclusion really. The responsibility is in trying to disprove yourself until you are as certain as you can of the right choice or idea. If you are wrong, at least you can then change. Unsupported belief doesn't work like that, it's simply about believing something and accepting it.

This is where my argument comes in. If belief is so easily corrupted since you are never testing it (falsify). There is a probability that it will eventually and close to always end up in negative outcomes for you, others or people later in history.

Because of this, the conclusion is that belief, because it's so prone to be corrupted in some form or another, is unethical in comparison with living by epistemic responsibility. Belief is like pulling the ring out of a grenade, believing its a dud. Being responsible is evaluating the most possible outcome and not pull the ring. One keeps the grenade safe, the other might explode or it may be a dud until later someone else gets blast to pieces.

Nah. This conclusion doesn't hold. Further, belief in something without sufficient evidence is required to get out of bed in the morning, and into it at night.
— tim wood
Please form a better argument than "Nah". It's not enough. What is not working with the conclusion? Have you actually gone into depth with all the presented premises? — Christoffer

Therefore, religious belief will always lead to hateful, dangerous ideas at some point in time and the responsibility is on all people who believe something without sufficient evidence, rejecting evidence in favor of the necessity of faith or comfort in faith.
Because of this, religious belief is wrong as long as you at the same time agree that harm, harmful behavior, murder and hate to be negative and dangerous attributes of mankind. — Christoffer

You haven't demonstrated that religious beliefs always lead to hateful. and & etc.
You haven't established that people who believe something are responsible for the hateful & etc.
You seem confused about what belief is: if you have sufficient evidence, then you know it.
You seem to fault people for rejecting evidence, without making clear what evidence is being rejected, or what the evidence is evidence of.
"Because of this": the "this" has not been established. The rest is incoherent. Why is religious belief wrong for individuals who "agree that harm, harmful behavior, murder and hate to be negative and dangerous attributes of mankind." Even granting your first conclusion, it does not follow that all the bad you've listed comes from religious belief.

Given this boat don't float, why did you build it? Or is it that you don't know how to build a boat?

There is no such thing as personal belief since you do not exist in a vacuum, detached from the rest of society and other people. As long as you interact with other people and the world, you will project your personal belief into other people’s world-view and influence their choices. — Christoffer

If there is no such thing as personal belief, then there is no such thing as projecting it.

Religious beliefs, in the sense I'm talking about, have two major flaws. They unnecessarily presuppose entities, and they are based upon logical possibility alone.

The Flying Spaghetti Monster shows that that is not enough for warranting certainty in belief.

Unfortunately, this topic uses the term "belief" in an unnecessarily limited scope.

No, you suggest this because you seem to drive an apologist agenda. — Christoffer

Och, och. An apologist agenda? You must not presume so much. Perhaps then you'd be a tad less insufferable to discuss with.

You want to add scientific belief disregarding the fundamental difference between the two. It's crystal clear that you intentionally disregard the nuances of the argument in order to shoehorn in something that is critical against science, but you don't understand the fundamental difference between belief claimed to be truth and a hypothesis that is never claimed to be true. — Christoffer

This isn't the core of the argument.

What I'm proposing is that science, to the degree that it hasn't been replicated by an individual, is pure belief. Belief in words and pictures. The individual may believe these words and pictures based on the authority he projects on a man in a white coat. One may observe consistency and therefore come to find these beliefs more plausible, but until one has done the actual experiments themselves, it is still just a belief that the man in the white coat is telling the truth.

This is a stupid fallacy of an argument with seemingly no knowledge of what science is or how it works. Irrelevant argument and you are talking complete nonsense with that kind of reasoning. It's close to populistic, anti-climate change crap from uneducated people.

Stop doing fallacies, its a waste of time. — Christoffer

Calling things fallacies doesn't make them so. It's quite easy to call everything one cannot find an easy answer to a fallacy, but it's hardly impressive.

Believing the priest in church is no different from believing the white man in a coat on television. There is literally zero difference.

Faith may be a door that let's in hate and all the evils that follow from it but remember it was and is a door opened to let in goodness. Evil just happens to find the door an easy route too.

You haven't demonstrated that religious beliefs always lead to hateful. and & etc. — tim wood

If there’s a possibility that hateful and dangerous belief-systems will be created, it has a high probability of happening over a long enough timeline.
There is no such thing as personal belief since you do not exist in a vacuum, detached from the rest of society and other people. As long as you interact with other people and the world, you will project your personal belief into other people’s world-view and influence their choices. — Christoffer

Would you say that it's a logical induction that the probability of harmful belief and harmful consequences of belief is very high over a long enough timeline? Meaning, if we don't care about epistemic responsibility, we will always have the rise of some belief that leads to harmful consequences since there is no responsibility of explaining or testing that belief against any form of rationality.

You haven't established that people who believe something are responsible for the hateful & etc. — tim wood

That is not the conclusion. The conclusion is that belief without rationality behind it eventually leads to negative outcomes. If someone believes something that at the time is harmful, but influence people around them and them, in turn, evolve this belief into harmful forms, the irrational belief by the first person is what caused the harmful form it took. Also mentioned in premise 6, personal belief is an illusion because we cannot hold personal belief at the same time as living with others without projecting the result of that belief onto others. So the causality is there, however "personal" someone's belief may be.

You seem confused about what belief is: if you have sufficient evidence, then you know it. — tim wood

In what way am I confused in my argument? A belief in God is unsupported and susceptible to corruption. The same goes for Anti-Vaxxer belief that vaccines cause autism. None of them have any rationality behind them and they don't care for any evidence or rational argument in support of the belief.

If you have evidence, then it's not really belief anymore, right? Then you are following epistemic responsibility. You don't have evidence for belief in God or gods and you don't have evidence that vaccines cause autism, so why hold on to those beliefs when they can be corrupted and lead to negative outcomes. This is my argument.

You seem to fault people for rejecting evidence, without making clear what evidence is being rejected, or what the evidence is evidence of. — tim wood

I fault people for rejecting evidence and not caring for trying to falsify their belief. If any evidence is there, it opens up the belief for scrutiny and if that review of the belief is ignored, it breaks epistemic responsibility. It doesn't matter what the evidence is, it matters that you test your beliefs, otherwise you open the door to spreading misinformation, manipulation and the dangers of corrupted beliefs that might lead to dangerous outcomes.

The point is that unsupported belief that you ignore testing is, per my argument, not only irresponsible but also potentially dangerous.

"Because of this": the "this" has not been established. The rest is incoherent. Why is religious belief wrong for individuals who "agree that harm, harmful behavior, murder and hate to be negative and dangerous attributes of mankind." Even granting your first conclusion, it does not follow that all the bad you've listed comes from religious belief. — tim wood

Is the formulation grammatically flawed here? (I'm not a native English speaker)
The point is that if you agree that harm, harmful behavior, murder and hate are ethically wrong, then you would agree that belief without rational support or proof for that belief is also wrong since the probability of such unsupported belief leading to negative, harmful and dangerous outcomes is very high over a long enough time period. Therefore it is ethically wrong to hold a belief without support for that belief.

If that summery doesn't work help me out with formulating it.

If there is no such thing as personal belief, then there is no such thing as projecting it. — creativesoul

There is no such thing as personal belief because everything you hold personal gets projected externally and therefore it isn't personal belief anymore. I see no flaw in that logic?

Religious beliefs, in the sense I'm talking about, have two major flaws. They unnecessarily presuppose entities, and they are based upon logical possibility alone.

The Flying Spaghetti Monster shows that that is not enough for warranting certainty in belief.

Unfortunately, this topic uses the term "belief" in an unnecessarily limited scope. — creativesoul

Do you mean that "belief" in my argument is limited? Essentially here's my definition of different beliefs:

A) Belief without support: You do not care for proof, rational support/argument but accept this belief as true.
B) Belief within science, i.e a Hypothesis: You care for proof, rational support/argument in support of your hypothesis, but use it in thought experiments to try and find such support for it, you never accept the hypothesis itself as true before support exist to do so, i.e scientific theory.
C) Belief with support: A general beilef without it being a scientific hypothesis, i.e personal belief but still not accepted as truth unless enough support, rationality or proof exist. You believe something, but accept that you might be wrong and always point out that you might be wrong if you externalize that belief. If that belief has enough support but isn't a proven fact you hold onto it along the line of epistemic responsibility.

In case of A, you risk negative and dangerous outcomes, per my argument. In case of B and C you minimize it and follow epistemic responsibility as best you can. A is unethical because of the risks it can lead to, B and C are ethically sound.

Och, och. An apologist agenda? You must not presume so much. Perhaps then you'd be a tad less insufferable to discuss with. — Tzeentch

You haven't done a proper argument, you either intentionally or unintentionally confuse what philosophy you are discussing here. You mix metaphysical ideas with ethical and use counter-arguments that fail to stick to the ethical aspect of this argument.

What I'm proposing is that science, to the degree that it hasn't been replicated by an individual, is pure belief. Belief in words and pictures. The individual may believe these words and pictures based on the authority he projects on a man in a white coat. One may observe consistency and therefore come to find these beliefs more plausible, but until one has done the actual experiments themselves, it is still just a belief that the man in the white coat is telling the truth. — Tzeentch

You are not talking about science but pseudoscience. Pseudoscience gets involved in my argument without the need for putting "science" in it. Because pseudoscience is per nature a belief without proper scientific methods. But you seem to mix proper science with psudoscience in your description of science as a whole. But a scientific hypothesis is not pseudo science, it's an educated guress based on rational argument about something. A pseudoscientist would take that educational guess and present it as scientific "fact" while proper science never accept it as truth, only a stepping stone to finding out a truth.

The fundamental difference is that "belief" as I argue being dangerous is when it is unsupported by logic, rationality or evidence, meaning, a hypothesis that is handled as just that and never truth, doesn't break epistemic responsibility. If you believe something and know that you don't have anything to back it up with you can hold onto it but be clear to others that it is unsupported. Then you aren't breaking epistemic responsibility since you are not acting upon the belief as truth and you aren't projecting that belief as truth to others.

Calling things fallacies doesn't make them so. It's quite easy to call everything one cannot find an easy answer to a fallacy, but it's hardly impressive. — Tzeentch

But it is a fallacy if you simplify my argument before answering to it. If you reduce it to a binary position in order to more easily put forth your counter-argument you are essentially making a fallacy, you understand this right?

Believing the priest in church is no different from believing the white man in a coat on television. There is literally zero difference. — Tzeentch

This argument lacks any complexity to the reality as it is. The priest is all about unsupported faith. The man in a coat on television could be a pseudoscientist and in that case the same, but if he's a true scientist in his field and he is presenting a study that has been falsified into a scientific thoery, how can you say that there is zero difference? This is why it's so hard to take you seriously, because this type of argument is the same as anti-vaxxers and climate change deniers hold.

And it falls down further as epistemic responsibility applies to all people, not just the man in the coat on television or the priest. This means that when you watch the priest and when you watch the man in a coat on television, it is your epistemic responsibility to check that they have the proper authority on the presented idea, meaning, does the priest have rational support for telling people they need to pray to the spaghetti monster or else die? Does the scientist present answers that have proper scientific papers behind it and not just pseudoscience.

The responsibility to deny belief that does not have support is not "others" responsibility, it's every single person's responsibility. If all people follow it, no one would believe in anything that does not hold up to cross checking and peer review.

Faith may be a door that let's in hate and all the evils that follow from it but remember it was and is a door opened to let in goodness. Evil just happens to find the door an easy route too. — TheMadFool

Faith was never a door, faith was the result of trying to explain the unexplainable, corrupted into ideas with less relation to rationally explaining the unexplainable, later corrupted into fairy tales that have little to no relation to that initial unexplainable event and in the end corrupted into a tool of power for institutions. Faith still pops up, every time someone with little to no knowledge tries to explain something unexplainable and instead of proper research fall to the comfort of believing something they invented in order to make peace with the horror of the unknown.

Faith, religion etc. has nothing to do with what it says it does. It's like using the bible to prove the content of the bible. Faith analogies like that adhere to religious morality principles, which are outdated in my opinion and easy to corrupt in order to gain power over a group of people that have little knowledge to rationally explain the unknown around them.

There are no good or evils. There is only knowledge, rationality and balance between harm, empathy, and well-being for all which lay a foundation for our ethics. And it does not need to be corrupted by religious ideas with no foundation in the actual reality around us just because it's more comforting for the mind. Morality is hard work, being a truly balanced good person to the best of one's ability cannot be boiled down to easily followed ideas as per religious doctrines. It needs to be thought about daily, meditated on. And this complexity should be a virtue.

The sloth of mankind should not dictate the parameters of ethics.

You are not talking about science but pseudoscience. — Christoffer

I'm talking about the belief in science of the average person, so I'm not talking about scientists who have carried out the experiments themselves. Call that pseudo-science if you will. It doesn't matter. It is a fact that most people's understanding of science is completely based on belief.

This argument lacks any complexity to the reality as it is. The priest is all about unsupported faith. The man in a coat on television could be a pseudoscientist and in that case the same, but if he's a true scientist in his field and he is presenting a study that has been falsified into a scientific thoery, how can you say that there is zero difference? — Christoffer

Because in both cases, unless one chooses to verify the claim themselves, one chooses to believe (or not) the words of either a priest or a scientist. One may have good reasons to believe these words, but can one be certain? Only if one does the experiment themselves and comes to the same conclusions. Until that happens, one is doing nothing other than believing the words of a person they deem trustworthy. The trustworthiness of such a person is fundamentally uncertain, and the nature of his findings is as well until one replicates the experiment.

How does one discern a "true" scientist?

I'm talking about the belief in science of the average person, so I'm not talking about scientists who have carried out the experiments themselves. Call that pseudo-science if you will. It doesn't matter. It is a fact that most people's understanding of science is completely based on belief. — Tzeentch

Of course, but as my argument points out, epistemic responsibility has nothing to do with specific institutions. It is about every person. If you choose to believe in some idea presented to you, you have the responsibility to figure out if it is true or rational, if not you break epistemic responsibility. This is about ethics for all people, not institutions or figures of authority.

Because in both cases, unless one chooses to verify the claim themselves, one chooses to believe (or not) the words of either a priest or a scientist. One may have good reasons to believe these words, but can one be certain? Only if one does the experiment themselves and comes to the same conclusions. Until that happens, one is doing nothing other than believing the words of a person they deem trustworthy. The trustworthiness of such a person is fundamentally uncertain, and the nature of his findings is as well until one replicates the experiment. — Tzeentch

You don't have to do the experiment yourself, you can fact-check if the study and science have support in peer reviews and falsifiable scrutiny. There's a reason we have scientific methods. If you do the science yourself you will only confirm or deny by one check. This is why hypotheses take time to end up as scientific theories. Scientific methods are relentless with this and it's your responsibility to check behind the curtain before believing in anything.

As I said, this argument is about ALL people acting by the conclusion of the argument. You have, for some reason, changed my argument to be that of institutions and figures of authority rather than every person. My argument is for a core morality on the nature of belief for everyone, not specific people.

How does one discern a "true" scientist? — Tzeentch

Because they do not say truths without a scientific theory and they never assume a hypothesis as truth. A true scientist acts according to scientific methods. If you cannot distinguish between a true scientist and a pseudoscientist you might need to read into the scientific methods and how they form hypothesis and theories as well as interactions between different studies and over time.

How do you discern what is a cup? If you take away the handle and make a hole in the bottom, is it still a cup? If you take away scientific methods and the ethics of doing scientific research, is that a scientist? No, that's a pseudoscientist or an amateur without education into proper methods. Just like the cup isn't a cup and cannot hold its liquid, a pseudoscientist cannot hold a rational idea without the proper properties of what makes a scientist a scientist.

Of course, but as my argument points out, epistemic responsibility has nothing to do with specific institutions. It is about every person. If you choose to believe in some idea presented to you, you have the responsibility to figure out if it is true or rational, if not you break epistemic responsibility. This is about ethics for all people, not institutions or figures of authority. — Christoffer

I'm talking about persons. But if one has to figure out whether his belief is true or not, one has to do the experiment, and after doing that experiment one would no longer be believing, but knowing.

You don't have to do the experiment yourself, you can fact-check if the study and science have support in peer reviews and falsifiable scrutiny. There's a reason we have scientific methods. If you do the science yourself you will only confirm or deny by one check. This is why hypotheses take time to end up as scientific theories. Scientific methods are relentless with this and it's your responsibility to check behind the curtain before believing in anything. — Christoffer

Peer reviews and fact-checking without doing the actual experiments yourself just shifts the belief from one thing to the other. If you read peer reviews or read about facts online, one is back to believing words and pictures again.

As I said, this argument is about ALL people acting by the conclusion of the argument. You have, for some reason, changed my argument to be that of institutions and figures of authority rather than every person. My argument is for a core morality on the nature of belief for everyone, not specific people. — Christoffer

I'm talking about belief and how it is fundamental to human understanding, including many people's understanding of science. I'd say it touches at the heart of the subject you're presenting.

Because they do not say truths without a scientific theory and they never assume a hypothesis as truth. A true scientist acts according to scientific methods. If you cannot distinguish between a true scientist and a pseudoscientist you might need to read into the scientific methods and how they form hypothesis and theories as well as interactions between different studies and over time.

How do you discern what is a cup? If you take away the handle and make a hole in the bottom, is it still a cup? If you take away scientific methods and the ethics of doing scientific research, is that a scientist? No, that's a pseudoscientist or an amateur without education into proper methods. Just like the cup isn't a cup and cannot hold its liquid, a pseudoscientist cannot hold a rational idea without the proper properties of what makes a scientist a scientist. — Christoffer

That may be a theoretical 'true' scientist, but how does one discern one in real life? Lets say you see a man in a white coat on television telling you things about science. How do you determine whether he should be believed?

Is the formulation grammatically flawed here? (I'm not a native English speaker) — Christoffer

Your English is excellent. It's argument and the use of language in argument that's got you. Example: do you agree 2+2=4? Of course you do. But why? Can you prove it? The point is that it's not a matter for debate, rather it's provable. Which is to say, given certain fundamental axioms, definitions, and forms of argument, they can be arrayed in a way to compel your assent - your agreement - that 2+2=4.

Does your argument have any of that, that it can compel assent? Take this sentence:

A belief in God is unsupported and susceptible to corruption. — Christoffer

As it sits it's a categorical claim made without support, using undefined terms and vague and indefinite conditions. It's a place to start: Try to make your sentence clear and definite, and if you're making a claim, support it, because while it may seem both true and obvious to you, it happens as a matter of fact to be either trivially right, or wrong, which depends on what you mean, which is not clear. And as it happens, you chosen a difficult topic to establish clarity in.

I'm talking about persons. But if one has to figure out whether his belief is true or not, one has to do the experiment, and after doing that experiment one would no longer be believing, but knowing. — Tzeentch

No, they need to check the peer-reviewed material and look at falsifiable results. Standard methods for a conclusion. Because only doing the experiment means you only have one result.

Standard methods of science counter your idea that you can only know by doing the thing yourself. It's why our standards of science today are vastly better than before the 20th century. We have excluded the subjective contamination of results.

Peer reviews and fact-checking without doing the actual experiments yourself just shifts the belief from one thing to the other. If you read peer reviews or read about facts online, one is back to believing words and pictures again. — Tzeentch

Now you are back in metaphysical land. Stop straw manning about science. You know well how science works. Because you are saying that facts that we have actually built technology and quality of life upon cannot be, because that science was presented in papers. You know that the device you are writing on is the result of science that has gone through peer reviews, fact-checking and other parts of the scientific process. All people involved with making this device took these papers and used it to create the parts of the device you have. If that was only belief your device wouldn't work.

Your point is irrelevant to the ethical conclusion of my argument. Because the point of my conclusion is that belief in anything should be checked by the person believing them.

Are you saying that it's more ethical to not check if your belief has any truth merits? Or are you saying that it's more ethical to just believe whatever you want, regardless of consequences and without any demand of checking that belief?

Which is more ethical?

I'm talking about belief and how it is fundamental to human understanding, including many people's understanding of science. I'd say it touches at the heart of the subject you're presenting. — Tzeentch

I'd say you are making metaphysical philosophy right now and do not look at the ethics of my argument.

Because if we are to go down your line, then how do we prove anyone is guilty in court if anyone could counter it by saying; "this is only belief, we can only know if the person is guilty if we had been there for ourselves".

Of course, as a metaphysical claim, the lawyer would be right, but are you saying that we should decide the innocence or guilt in that court based on the metaphysical reasoning and in doing so make all ethical evaluation irrelevant?

Because, ethics philosophy needs a form of foundation. We cannot jump back into metaphysics to counter everything with Cartesian-like arguments about that nothing is for certain. The ethical conclusion I made in the argument is all about never accepting a belief that hasn't in any way been put through a rational argument, scrutiny or evidence. To say that peer reviewed and falsified evidence in science still is belief when just looking at the result on those papers does not counter my argument... at all.

That may be a theoretical 'true' scientist, but how does one discern one in real life? Lets say you see a man in a white coat on television telling you things about science. How do you determine whether he should be believed? — Tzeentch

Does the man have a name? Does he present a claim with logic? Are you able to look him up? Are you able to search for those who criticized his claims and look into the logic of their criticism against the logic of this man?

How do you determine? By not being a lazy-ass and just accept everything around you, instead look into the information behind what you are presented with. This is essential in epistemic responsibility. You can choose not to do it, but that's what I call unethical since you are believing something without trying to falsify your own belief and that can be dangerous, just like with anti-vaxxers.

”There's such a thing as proof in logic and mathematics. ...and questionably in matters of physics. But not as regards ultimate reality or Reality as a whole. So it's silly to want proof of God, for example.” — Michael Ossipoff
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So if I believe that killing my neighbor is a good thing. Because I cannot prove this to be true its silly not to kill my neighbor?

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No, I said only that there isn’t such a thing as proof in matters of Ultimate-Reality, Reality as a whole, all of what-is, or God.
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Proof is for verbal subjects, such as the logically-interdependent things and events. You can’t show that words and verbal arguments apply to Reality. That’s all I meant.
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If you get caught up in a murder, it is silly to try and rationally explain your innocence?
The judge say you cannot use math and logic in order to prove why you are the wrong man?
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Do you mean that we cannot prove or rationally explain anything in this world, that science haven't proven anything at all, that the technology that enables your quality of life came out of a fluke luck of the developers of the tech?

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No, of course not. I neither said nor meant any such thing. Logic, mathematics and science are of course valid and useful within their legitimate range of applicability. …the logically-interdependent things, but not Reality itself (…or at least you can’t prove otherwise.)
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”Evidence needn't be proof. Evidence consists of some reason to believe something. There can be evidence on both sides of a y/n question. You may have your reason to believe that someone else's belief is correct. Without knowing all Theists, and all of their beliefs, and all of their evidence for their beliefs, you can't validly evaluate their evidence.” — Michael Ossipoff
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The premise you are answering on is about Kierkegaard and Pascal's arguments for reasons to have faith without any care for evidence that it is true or rational. So I'm not sure what your answer is referring to here?

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You spoke of belief without evidence. So I pointed out that you don’t know that all Theism is without evidence, because you don’t know all Theists, their beliefs, and what they regard as evidence for their beliefs. Remember that evidence needn’t be proof, but is merely an indication that is taken by some (but not necessarily by others) as reason to believe something.
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So my reply was a direct answer to what you’d said.
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Quite aside from that, faith isn’t about evidence, and neither do you know what every Theist’s justification for faith is. For the many diverse Theists, there is evidence &/or faith.
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Is some it valid or justified? Because you haven’t spoken to all Theists, then I suggest that you take the suggestion of Dunning and Kruger, and just admit “I don’t know.” There’s nothing wrong with admitting that, instead of attacking what you don’t know about.
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You could say “I don’t know of evidence, or of reason for faith, for Theists’ beliefs.”, and that would probably be a reliably correct statement.
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”Then Russell was all confused. Religious faith is about the larger matter of what-is, Reality as a whole, ultimate reality. The matter of what there is in space is an entirely different sort of matter, a physical matter subject to such considerations of logic, mathematics, and the standards of science.” — Michael Ossipoff
This has nothing to do with the nature of belief and the ethics of it.

How right you are!
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I wasn’t interested in the ethics. You stated some Atheist premises, and you told why you think that certain moral/ethical conclusions follow from them.
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I wasn’t interested in the moral/ethical conclusions, but I commented on your Atheist premises.
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However, because your premises are questionable, then of course that casts doubt on your conclusions.
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So yes, in that way, what I said bears on moral/ethical conclusions.
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So I don't see what this is a counter-argument to?

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Your conclusion drawn from faulty premises is dubious.
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I take it you are unfamiliar with Russell? He's being falsifiability, you know, the most important tool for doing science without bias.

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That’s wonderful. Falsifiability is a good standard in science and the metaphysics of logically-interdependent things. …as is parsimony and the avoidance of unnecessary brute-facts.
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Materialism doesn’t do so well by those standards, but that’s a topic for a different thread.
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”7 W (South-Solstice WeekDate Calendar)

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...Wednesday of the 7th week of the calendar year that started with the Monday that started closest to the South-Solstice of Gregorian 2017.” — Michael Ossipoff
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What does this have to do with anything?

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It has to do with when I posted that message.
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But, 3 minutes after I posted the passage that you quoted above, I corrected it by removing the words “…of Gregorian 2017”.
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So, it should read (as it does in the current corrected version):
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“…Wednesday of the 7th week of the calendar year that started with the Monday that started closest to the South-Solstice.”
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The added phrase “…of Gregorian 2017” is part of another, different, version of that year-start rule, a somewhat wordier arithmetical version that I don’t bring up when brevity is needed, as in the brief explanation of a signature-date.
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Michael Ossipoff
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7 Th


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Thanks, alright let's see if this one is better:

• No argument has ever been able to prove the existence of God or gods through evidence. Religious belief is therefore based on belief in something that is unsupported by evidence or rational deduction.
• Kierkegaard or Pascal presented reasons to believe in God not linked to the existence of God, but either through Pascal's wager, in which it's most logical to believe than not to. Or by Kierkegaard, to believe because of belief itself.
• Russel's Teapot analogy points out the importance of burden of proof. If you make a claim or believe in something, you have the responsibility to prove it first. You must do this before claiming it to be true or demand others to disprove your belief or claim. If not, you could possibly invent any belief you want, like teapots in space and conclude it to be true since no one has the means to prove against it.
• By Russel’s teapot analogy and according to premise 1-2; religion or other beliefs can be made into whatever people can think of. This opens the door for people with dark and twisted thoughts and ideas to make up any type of belief they want, which could consist of harmful ideas such as murder, rape, torture and other kinds of harm to other people and themselves.
• If there’s a possibility that hateful and dangerous belief-systems will be created, it has a high probability of happening over a long enough timeline.
• There is no such thing as personal belief since you do not exist in a vacuum, detached from the rest of society and other people. As long as you interact with other people and the world, you will project your personal belief into other people’s world-view and influence their choices. The only way to not affect other people is to isolate yourself, but as soon as you interact you are projecting your ideas into the world.
• Epistemic responsibility put a responsibility on the ones who make choices without sufficient evidence. To choose to believe in something that you have no rational reasoning behind or no evidence for, is to accept something as true, without evidence or rational reasoning behind. This, based on premise 6, can lead to you projecting beliefs into others world-view and influence other people's choices and ideas based on a belief that you have not falsified, hold to scrutiny, proved or rationally reasoned behind.
• Belief can be categorized into three parts:
  A) Belief without rational cause, a belief that is without evidence, accepted as truth and acted upon by the believer.
  B) Belief with rational cause, a belief that has rational reasoning and logic and which has gone through falsifiable reasoning as much as possible, acted upon with caution because it is never considered to be true.
  C) Scientific belief, i.e Hypothesis, educated guess based on observations, previous evidence, careful induction, partly researched, but never accepted or acted upon as true before proven into a scientific theory.

Therefore, religious belief or belief of any kind that is of Belief A (Premise 1-5) will always, eventually, lead to hateful, dangerous ideas at some point in time. The responsibility is on all people who believe something without sufficient evidence, Belief A, and who is rejecting evidence in favor of the necessity of faith or comfort in faith/belief (Premise 2), to prove or put their belief through scrutiny and falsifiability methods (Premise 7) in order to end up with either Belief B or Belief C -Otherwise risk the certain causality (Premise 4-6) of dangerous belief that can cause harm, murder, terror, torture, rape and so on in the name of that belief, Belief A.

Therefore, religious or other types of belief that are of type A, should be considered unethical and criticized. The moral obligation should be to always uphold epistemic responsibility (Premise 7) and prioritize belief type B and C as ethical while condemn type A as unethical. This applies to all people for any belief of type A; religious, personal and in institutions, research and politics.

No, they need to check the peer-reviewed material and look at falsifiable results. Standard methods for a conclusion. Because only doing the experiment means you only have one result. — Christoffer

Your point is irrelevant to the ethical conclusion of my argument. Because the point of my conclusion is that belief in anything should be checked by the person believing them. — Christoffer

Even if one were to assume that by doing such things one would acquire knowledge, not many people do this. Let alone for every single belief they hold. In other words, a lot of what people believe to be scientific knowledge is nothing more than belief. Such beliefs can be false and even dangerous and should therefore be added to your list of potentially dangerous beliefs. This has been my position from the start of our debate.

You know that the device you are writing on is the result of science that has gone through peer reviews, fact-checking and other parts of the scientific process. All people involved with making this device took these papers and used it to create the parts of the device you have. If that was only belief your device wouldn't work. — Christoffer

I know my device works, but how it works is an entirely different matter. I could obtain a plausible idea about how it works by reading, etc., but would I know for sure? No. Not until I did the experiments myself. There's nothing metaphysical about this. It's fact. A lot of what we think of as knowledge is actually just belief. Beliefs that may turn out to be right, but beliefs none the less.

Because if we are to go down your line, then how do we prove anyone is guilty in court if anyone could counter it by saying; "this is only belief, we can only know if the person is guilty if we had been there for ourselves". — Christoffer

This is a problem that any judicial system struggles with. One can never be certain about events that happened in the past. Video images prove compelling evidence, but ultimately are falsifiable. How often aren't people convicted to crimes they didn't commit? It happens every day. Why? Because people had beliefs about that person that turned out to be false. In the judicial system it is a calculated risk. The law simply accepts that sometimes it makes wrong decisions and convicts innocent people. It doesn't make the belief that an innocent man is guilty any more valid, though.

Because, ethics philosophy needs a form of foundation. We cannot jump back into metaphysics to counter everything with Cartesian-like arguments about that nothing is for certain. The ethical conclusion I made in the argument is all about never accepting a belief that hasn't in any way been put through a rational argument, scrutiny or evidence. To say that peer reviewed and falsified evidence in science still is belief when just looking at the result on those papers does not counter my argument... at all. — Christoffer

As far as I know, we are still talking about whether people have science-based beliefs and whether they should be added to your list of potentially dangerous beliefs.

Does the man have a name? Does he present a claim with logic? Are you able to look him up? Are you able to search for those who criticized his claims and look into the logic of their criticism against the logic of this man? — Christoffer

Measuring the claims of scientists to one's own sense of logic is rather fallible, unless one is a scientist themselves.

Finally, a point of order:

It seems you don't know what a hypothesis is? — Christoffer

If you can't see or understand this difference I can't help you understand the argument and your misunderstanding of the argument cannot lead to a proper counter-argument to the argument I presented — Christoffer

You are making a biased fallacy-driven case that isn't even close to proving what I said was wrong. — Christoffer

You are just babbling about other stuff — Christoffer

You grasp basic philosophy? — Christoffer

This is a stupid fallacy of an argument with seemingly no knowledge of what science is or how it works. Irrelevant argument and you are talking complete nonsense with that kind of reasoning. It's close to populistic, anti-climate change crap from uneducated people. — Christoffer

you understand this right? — Christoffer

And:

Stop straw manning about science. — Christoffer

You are making a straw man out of this. — Christoffer

Followed by:

If you are going down the Descartes-road — Christoffer

If you mean that nothing is true until you, yourself has seen it, that's just ignorance and ignorance of logic and evidence. — Christoffer

you suggest this because you seem to drive an apologist agenda. — Christoffer

It's crystal clear that you intentionally disregard the nuances of the argument in order to shoehorn in something that is critical against science — Christoffer

Are you saying that it's more ethical to not check if your belief has any truth merits? — Christoffer

but are you saying that — Christoffer

Or are you saying — Christoffer

For the love of god, man. Practice a bit of self-reflection every now and then.

Even if one were to assume that by doing such things one would acquire knowledge, not many people do this. — Tzeentch

That's why I am of the strong opinion that knowledge in fact-checking should be a primary thing in school.

In other words, a lot of what people believe to be scientific knowledge is nothing more than belief. Such beliefs can be false and even dangerous and should therefore be added to your list of potentially dangerous beliefs. This has been my position from the start of our debate. — Tzeentch

Read my new version of the argument above. I do not include the word "scientific" because then it could be twisted into seemingly deem science as only belief. But I mentioned belief as three types and if type A is within institutions and research it applies.

I know my device works, but how it works is an entirely different matter. I could obtain a plausible idea about how it works by reading, etc., but would I know for sure? No. Not until I did the experiments myself. There's nothing metaphysical about this. It's fact. A lot of what we think of as knowledge is actually just belief. Beliefs that may turn out to be right, but beliefs none the less. — Tzeentch

The example with the device was about putting all science under such a divide that we only have proof or we have a scientific belief that is placed in the same category as religious belief. Many of the results of hypotheses in science can be found within your device, meaning you can't put a scientific hypothesis in the same category as religious belief since a hypothesis demands rational reasoning behind it.

This way of binary thinking makes no sense for this argument and as such you are grasping for straws to counter-argue without even actually look at the argument presented, which is an ethics argument that you can't counter by inventing a super-binary view on different belief-systems, just to make your point.

This is a problem that any judicial system struggles with. One can never be certain about events that happened in the past. Video images prove compelling evidence, but ultimately are falsifiable. How often aren't people convicted to crimes they didn't commit? It happens every day. Why? Because people had beliefs about that person that turned out to be false. In the judicial system it is a calculated risk. The law simply accepts that sometimes it makes wrong decisions and convicts innocent people. It doesn't make the belief that an innocent man is guilty any more valid, though. — Tzeentch

Yes, but your binary argument means that we shouldn't even have a court and attempt at trying to prove who is guilty or not. And if you disagree with this, then what is your counter-argument to the argument I presented?

I argue for always trying to prove your belief, it's not about being right it's about attempting to prove and in doing so exclude all belief that has no rational reasoning or proof behind it, since that belief eventually lead to dangers.

As far as I know, we are still talking about whether people have science-based beliefs and whether they should be added to your list of potentially dangerous beliefs. — Tzeentch

Read my updated argument above, that is the argument this is all about. If you have objections or points, derive it from there.

Measuring the claims of scientists to one's own sense of logic is rather fallible, unless one is a scientist themselves. — Tzeentch

If we educate children in how to fact-check everything around them, be critical etc. they will have the methods. And the attempt at fact-checking what you believe is more important than if you are right. The problem is belief without any attempt at trying to fact-check or hold it to scrutiny.

Who would you say is the more ethical of these two?
1. A man who is not a scientist and aren't that educated in fact-checking, but still attempts to ask himself if he is right in his belief and look into if it seems correct in following this belief.
2. A man who believes something and doesn't care to check if it has any truth to it, doesn't care to fact-check or listen to anyone who challenges that belief?

It's about a basic level of behavior that is not a virtue in society at this time. And in these times, when people hold the act of having an opinion with more virtue than the act of trying to be right.
This is an important ethical inquiry.

For the love of god, man. Practice a bit of self-reflection every now and then. — Tzeentch

For the love of god, man. Practice keeping to the argument without cherry-picking points to complain about that has no real relation to the argument at hand.

Do you know what a fallacy fallacy is? If so, stop making such a point list, it's arrogant. I'm trying to debate my argument with people who don't seem to hold to Socratic methods and they pick fights with stuff that rubs them the wrong way rather than keep their eye on the argument presented. To complain about the quality of answers to such arguments is to essentially complain about the initial counter-arguments. Had you been more precise in your counter-argument, with references to points in the argument it would have been easier. I even asked for a proper dialectic in my first post.

Going by Kierkegaard or Pascal, you might reject evidence in favor of the act of belief as a probability of the reward or belief alone as meaningful in itself. — Christoffer

Pascal said a number of times that the "scandal" of the Christian narrative overturning a particular rational deliberation was a reflection of the human condition that "fit" the phenomena better than other models.

Kierkegaard went further in that direction by developing the idea of a limit to psychology in regards to illuminating the crisis of being a single individual.

Both writers argued from the basis of evidence. They were putting "rationality" on trial using reason. That is not the same as saying "belief is meaningful in itself." If that was the case, why bother with all of that?

In any case, from their point of view, "you" are the one who is epistemologically irresponsible.

The point of that premise is not about dissecting their points, but to illuminate on alternatives to belief in which you might even be agnostic, but you believe anyway.

The premise is part of different perspectives on reasons to have faith.

In any case, from their point of view, "you" are the one who is epistemologically irresponsible. — Valentinus

Are you directing this at me specifically? Because in that case, I think you've misunderstood the entire point of the ethics argument I've made.

Anyway, I have updated it now due to some comments and some people's misunderstanding of it. If you can look at that point once more and maybe do the Socratic way of helping me modify it so that it gets to the premise point instead of you ridiculing it?

Original argument has been updated.

I am not ridiculing your argument.
I read the update.
I don't agree with one of your assumptions because your description does not square with my experience of those texts.
I put the "you" in quotes because it is not about you.
If my observation is not interesting, just forget it and carry on.

If my observation is not interesting, just forget it and carry on. — Valentinus

No, it is of interest, maybe this far I've seen too many objections without any relation to my actual argument, so I'm a bit on a defensive side. Though I knew belief and religion always rubs many people the wrong way, I feel there are a bit too many apologists on this forum who have another agenda than philosophical discourse. I've seen it plenty of time in the personal inbox of this forum.

Which premise (I presume the one about Pascal and Kierkegaard again?) is it you have a problem with and why? I changed it to pinpoint closer to their ideas. As I understand Kierkegaard, his leap of faith is about taking that leap because faith relates to something unknowable and cannot be reached without that leap. I do not criticize it in this premise, I criticize how people use it to justify not needing to prove some belief, even though it doesn't have to be about specifically God. They use ideas like leap of faith as a "cop-outs" to get out of any reason to explain themselves. Be it a distortion of his ideas, but I've seen it, even if that recall is anecdotal. Pascal's wager is also on point with this premise, people use it to justify not needing to explain their belief in anything. They simply use the wager to argue that there is no other reason not to believe what they believe and therefore they don't need to explain themselves.

So I'm referring to the use of these ideas, it's not a critique of them in their entirety.

The premise's point is that people use ideas like these to justify their unwillingness to prove or explain their belief. This is the premise's point. Maybe Kierkegaard and Pascal might be wrong examples, but I've seen first-hand people using them specifically. So, since you seem to have read them a bit more in detail, you could maybe give me some more insight into what's gone wrong in that premise?

For myself, the idea of being responsible for what is happening now is the most interesting thing.
Whether that happens through the register of religion or something else is not as interesting as the idea by itself, that individuals influence what is happening now.
So, how does one get to that place?

Faith was never a door, faith was the result of trying to explain the unexplainable, corrupted into ideas with less relation to rationally explaining the unexplainable, later corrupted into fairy tales that have little to no relation to that initial unexplainable event and in the end corrupted into a tool of power for institutions. Faith still pops up, every time someone with little to no knowledge tries to explain something unexplainable and instead of proper research fall to the comfort of believing something they invented in order to make peace with the horror of the unknown.

Faith, religion etc. has nothing to do with what it says it does. It's like using the bible to prove the content of the bible. Faith analogies like that adhere to religious morality principles, which are outdated in my opinion and easy to corrupt in order to gain power over a group of people that have little knowledge to rationally explain the unknown around them.

There are no good or evils. There is only knowledge, rationality and balance between harm, empathy, and well-being for all which lay a foundation for our ethics. And it does not need to be corrupted by religious ideas with no foundation in the actual reality around us just because it's more comforting for the mind. Morality is hard work, being a truly balanced good person to the best of one's ability cannot be boiled down to easily followed ideas as per religious doctrines. It needs to be thought about daily, meditated on. And this complexity should be a virtue.

The sloth of mankind should not dictate the parameters of ethics. — Christoffer

I don't know if we can so categorically say that religious faith is a bad thing. Religion has been a cause of many atrocities but they also kept the flame of morality burning until philosophers took the responsibility of studying it in earnest. In fact I'd go so far as to say that moral theory arose from religion, faith based as it is.