But I still disagree with your use of "God" which has rather obvious shortcomings and will likely cause confusion. — S
Certainly you wouldn't expect courts to let someone go free merely because only witness testimony is available. — Echarmion
I use "god" because I believe that what I call the experience of god is closely related to a belief in god. There is an experience which many people have that influences them to believe in god. Not to start us off on a new tangent, but that can also be said of love, pain, anger, and celery. Which is not to say that, if you have the experience, you have to believe. — T Clark
Your claim that my kind of atheism is "just faith" is not only unwarranted, but ludicrous. — S
Your suggestion that reason is unqualified for the task at hand is self-defeating through performative contradiction. You rely on reason to reach the same conclusion that I do. — S
What's so absurd about your rhetoric, is that behind it all, I have reached the same conclusions that you have, and we've both done this through reason. — S
Is it that you see the word "atheist" and you become like a wild bull who has seen red? That's what I suspect. A bit like "nuclear weapons". It's just a word. We don't even have to call it that. You don't have to get so triggered at the mere mention of it. Calm down, dear. You're not being reasonable when you get yourself all worked up and start spouting nonsense. — S
no just don't want to waste time with you. — Rank Amateur
Most definitely I would. That we can convict someone on testimony only is a horrible, horrible idea in my opinion. — Terrapin Station
↪Frank Apisa
Well, in my humble opinion you should reconsider the matter. In the theism-atheism debate we have arguments from both sides. Yes, none of these arguments are perfectly sound and so the problem. But people believe what they believe only based on a logical argument they connect with. For example problem of evil is quite convincing atheistic argument and the ontological argument is a ''sound'' theistic argument.
All I'm saying is people believe based on logic and it's not just guesswork. — TheMadFool
So, according to you, we should ignore any kind of abuse that doesn't leave lasting marks? — Echarmion
, I cannot really know anything about the live of other people, unless I was actually physically there. — Echarmion
Given that your justification is that witnesses are inherently unreliable — Echarmion
I am fairly certain you cannot actually apply that standard in everyday life. — Echarmion
Legally, in my view we should not prosecute anyone where there isn't "physical evidence" of someone being a perpetrator, yes, definitely. I also think it's outrageous that we prosecute people for murder, say, when there is physical evidence but no body. — Terrapin Station
Only I didn't actually say that, and I rather explicitly said otherwise. There just needs to be "physical evidence" at some stage of the process if we're dealing with empirical claims, and then removed from that, good evidence that there was reliable access to physical evidence at some stage in the process. — Terrapin Station
For example, having evidence that so and so won't testify to something unless they had solid physical evidence to support the testimony, even then the person removed from the physical evidence there didn't actually witness the initial physical evidence themselves. — Terrapin Station
For legal purposes, I'd make direct presentation of evidence necessary, because the future of others' lives is in the balance, but not everything is the legal system. — Terrapin Station
Again, I didn't say that. — Terrapin Station
The grounding is that the facts can't be wrong about the facts. But a reporter can be, including that reporters can be dishonest/they can weave fictions (so that it would turn out that they're not actually reporters at all), they are biased in many different ways, etc. — Terrapin Station
I also didn't say, and there's no reason for you to have known, that on my view relying on testimony only (sans good evidence of reliable access to physical evidence at the initial stage) is worthwhile proportionate to just how important or significant the upshots of trusting the testimony are. — Terrapin Station
You're saying we should ignore evidence — Echarmion
even if there are no grounds to distrust the specific evidence in question, on the grounds that such evidence could potentially be forged. — Echarmion
For the quoted bit, no such physical evidence exists. — Echarmion
Yeah, when it's only people making accusations. — Terrapin Station
The grounds are that there's no way to bootstrap testimony-only. — Terrapin Station
Say what? No idea what you have in mind there.
I'll answer the rest later, but I don't want to get into increasingly longer posts back and forth. I hate doing that. I'll let you answer this first, and then I'll get back to the rest afterwards . . . unless you respond to this with another couple thousand words. Hopefully not, though. — Terrapin Station
So you're fine with me walking up to you in the middle of the street, punching you in the face and walking away free? You only have your testimony, and perhaps the testimony of others to convict me. — Echarmion
Why wouldn't there be physical evidence re my face and your fist? The bruise on my face, the abrasions or bruise on your fist, etc. aren't only someone making an accusation. — Terrapin Station
It's very unlikely you can detect any damage on my fist from one punch, — Echarmion
Obviously you can hurt people in ways that don't leave lasting marks. — Echarmion
I'm not sure what you're referring to here, but I'd not have any hurt that doesn't have a longer-term physical effect as something that's legally prosecutable anyway. — Terrapin Station
What's the physical evidence for everyday events? A red car drove by. I saw you punch someone. I performed experiment X with result Y. Do these count as "physical testimony"? — Echarmion
Okay, so, just to be clear, you're signalling that you'd rather focus on irrelevancies and trivialities than the main philosophical point I made. I will try to remember that when I next consider addressing something you've said. — S
Yes, it's coming back to me now. We've had this problem before. You are the type of person who has a tendency to care more about tone or wording than philosophical substance, even to the extent that you'll ignore the latter and only focus on the former, whereas I'm very much the opposite. — S
Then there's your stated opinion I don't care about, namely that, for you, the experience matters, but the explanation doesn't. Well, if you don't care about the explanation, which is a very unphilosophical attitude, then don't bother me with your opinion, just keep quiet about it or go bother someone else. — S
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