You are going ape.

Didn't mean to rattle you so. I thought you were more in control. — Frank Apisa

Oh boy... and we were just starting to get along. Too bad you can't stay nice consistently.

In any case, if you want to think that you KNOW that no gods exist, because I cannot "know" my birthday is August 9th...fine with me. — Frank Apisa

Oh boy again... I'm merely explaining why your logic isn't consistent.

Anyway, guess your odd and vague reply just means you can't explain how you can claim to know your birthday but not the non-existence of gods.

I'm glad you had fun. Fun is a big part of these Internet fora...and I also am having fun. This seems to be a win/win situation. — Frank Apisa

Good! I'm glad you're not as irritated as you seemed to be earlier in this thread :)

On what basis do you know that your birthday isn't a mistake? That you weren't switched at birth? We have evidence that people do get switched at birth (in which case your birthday may be August 8th or 7th or even 6th!), whereas we have no evidence that gods exist or even could exist. It's actually far more likely that you're wrong about your birthday than that gods exist.

By your logic, you cannot claim you know your birthday.

Using your exact logic you would be bound to:

"I do not know if the chance that NKBJ is correct and also Frank Apisa's superior in every way which includes her amazingly good looks and supreme intellect exists or not;
I see no reason to suspect the chance that NKBJ is correct and also Frank Apisa's superior in every way which includes her amazingly good looks and supreme intellect CANNOT EXIST...that the existence of the chance that NKBJ is correct and also Frank Apisa's superior in every way which includes her amazingly good looks and supreme intellect is impossible;
I see no reason to suspect that the chance that NKBJ is correct and also Frank Apisa's superior in every way which includes her amazingly good looks and supreme intellect MUST EXIST...that the chance that NKBJ is correct and also Frank Apisa's superior in every way which includes her amazingly good looks and supreme intellect is needed to explain existence;
I do not see enough unambiguous evidence upon which to base a meaningful guess in either direction...

...so I don't."

So yeah, your logic leads to the conclusion that you can't know and can't meaningfully guess at whether I know that there is no God.

(Yes, I had fun writing that :heart: )

Really?

And let's hear your case for that.

You may be right...although I doubt it.

If you are, I will acknowledge it. — Frank Apisa

Ah, but (again, by your logic) you can't know that I'm right. You also can't know that I'm wrong. Absent any way to know either way, you are eternally suspended in an agnostic limbo.

Egads...you've also shown yourself why your reasoning is defective?

Never woulda thunk it. — Frank Apisa

By your own logic you can't "prove" my reasoning is defective.

I've shown you why your reasoning is defective, but you apparently want to insist — Frank Apisa

Ditto :kiss:

The fact that you can make a thing work for one thing...does not mean it works universally. — Frank Apisa

If I can do it for one thing proves it's possible to be done and so there's no reason not to apply it to gods. At least, you haven't supplied one aside from loose and unsubstantiated claims of illogic.

Just saying "this is illogical" doesn't make it so.

Again, Terrapin and I agree. We're on a roll here!

I also think people apply labels to others out of laziness and stubbornness.

They don't want to think someone who ascribes to a, b, c, and d could believe anything but e.

Especially if your entire critique of F-ism depends on your critique of e, it's unnerving if someone says "F but without e" because then you might be forced to give a through d more thought then you had before.

:rofl:

I guess you would claim you don't know you don't have a third hand then.

Also, you are not correct in claiming to know that there are no Gods if there are indeed Gods in spite of the absence of evidence. I — Maureen

I'm just gonna copy and paste what I told Frank about that.

You know how many hands you have. It's probably two, barring special circumstances. You know you don't have three hands. You can search up and down your body and not find a third hand. You have zero proof of a third hand. But you do have a lot of lack of evidence in favor of a third hand. You're perfectly justified in claiming you KNOW you have two hands and no third. — NKBJ

Anyone who tells you (or me) it's illogical to know you don't have a third hand has very simply lost touch with reality. — NKBJ

This is actually an inaccurate definition — Maureen

According to?
That's a pretty standard definition because it basically says that if your justified belief corresponds with reality then it is true and then it is knowledge. It's got nothing to do with absolute certainty.

All that "believing" nonsense. You just cannot call your blind guesses...blind guesses. You have to call them "believing."

You ought to figure out why you do that.

Anyway...you do make sense...providing, of course, that you logic out the window. — Frank Apisa

Again, thanks for agreeing that I make sense!

You don't really provide an argument or anuthing here except trying to say I'm illogical. But I'll still give you an example of how you can know something doesn't exist:

You know how many hands you have. It's probably two, barring special circumstances. You know you don't have three hands. You can search up and down your body and not find a third hand. You have zero proof of a third hand. But you do have a lot of lack of evidence in favor of a third hand. You're perfectly justified in claiming you KNOW you have two hands and no third.

Anyone who tells you (or me) it's illogical to know you don't have a third hand has very simply lost touch with reality.

what you are saying makes sense — Frank Apisa

Good!

When you come back:
Knowledge is defined as "justified, true belief." I believe there are no gods. It's justified for me to claim there are no gods. And if there are no gods then my belief is true as well.

I might be wrong. It's always possible to be wrong. But I neither believe that I am wrong, nor would I be justified in believing myself to be wrong. So I am fully justified in claiming to know that there are no gods.

Until there is any evidence for gods (or any of the mysterious things you're nebulously pointing to that "might" exist), thus providing any justification whatsoever for the other side, I am correct in claiming to know there are no gods.

Innocent until proven guilty. Or in this case, non-existent until proven otherwise.

And, if you do not care about logic...it makes sense. — Frank Apisa

:roll:

Well, you go off to Princeton and make sure that you watch out for those goblins and chimera and vampires you don't know don't exist on your way!

I'm saying I'm very much justified in saying it doesn't exist given the lack of evidence that it does.

I do not know if gods exist or not;
I see no reason to suspect gods CANNOT EXIST...that the existence of gods is impossible;
I see no reason to suspect that gods MUST EXIST...that gods are needed to explain existence;
I do not see enough unambiguous evidence upon which to base a meaningful guess in either direction...

...so I don't. — Frank Apisa

Insert sun-circling teapot in place of gods and see if you still think it's reasonable.

Then either stop the nonsense about me not making sense...or be on your way. Because if you show me a lack of respect...I WILL return the favor. — Frank Apisa

I said your post wasn't making sense. I didn't attack you as a person.

Okay...they are in the process. When they answer my question about sentient life on any of the planets circling the nearest 25 stars to Sol...get back to me. — Frank Apisa

They still have a meteorite and soil samples and the existence of all of life on earth and you got nothin. So the ball is still in your court: where is a single shred of anything that makes God even a tiny bit more likely than Russell's teapot?

By the way...to the best of our knowledge...no life exists except on planet Earth...not even in our system...which has billions of bodies circling the sun. — Frank Apisa

See my above link.

YOU telling me how to make sense...is like Chris Christie telling me how to stay thin, N. — Frank Apisa

If you're gonna start getting snarky and insulting with me, I'm also gonna go on my merry way.

Also, scientists are in the process of finding actual, physical proof of alien life: https://www2.jpl.nasa.gov/snc/nasa1.html

Where's your God meteorite?

What you "assume"...you assume. I have NOT said anything about that. I, like most people, assume all sorts of things.

But what you assume about sentient beings on any planet circling the nearest 25 stars to Sol...has absolutely NOTHING to do with whether any sentient beings live on any of those planets.

So why did you mention it? — Frank Apisa

Your post doesn't really make sense....but I'll try to wean as much out of it as I can.

I assume there is life on other planets because there is plenty of reason to believe there is. For example, life evolved on this planet, so clearly it's possible for it to happen. You multiply that possibility by the number of inhabitable planets and you get a pretty decent likelihood.

You have no precendent for the existence of gods. Not one. There's not a single reason or piece of evidence to believe they might exist.

Hey--a post that we completely agree on! — Terrapin Station

There's hope for us yet! :wink:

That DOES NOT EVEN logically lead to...it is more likely that no sentient beings exist on any of them...than that at least one has sentient life. — Frank Apisa

In day to day life you continually make choices and live according to that very logic. You don't have any proof that your neighbor/parent/spouse isn't a Korean imposter sent to kill you when you least expect it. Therefore you assume they aren't. You don't have any proof that people turn into pink unicorns when you're not looking, but I bet you still assume they don't.

I mean.... There's an infinite, incomprehensible number of things that we can't (currently) prove don't exist or happen, and yet we're all perfectly safe in assuming that absent any proof that they DO exist or happen, they don't.

Must you prove that Donald Trump exists before we will discuss him with you? — Pattern-chaser

I'd assume everyone already has had enough proof of that and then some.

No-one has the "job" of proving anything. — Pattern-chaser

If they want me to believe it they do. If they don't, then we'll both go on our merry ways.

You can present all of the evidence you want to support your claim, but at the end of the day you may as well just admit that you don t know if God does or does not exist, because that is the actual truth. — Maureen

I think a lot of atheists are willing to admit that there's no definitive proof that something doesn't exist. But, as famously explained by Russell's teapot you don't have to disprove the existence of something in order to go about your merry way rightly assuming that it doesn't exist. It's the job of the believer to prove that God does exist and until the day there is such evidence, I will assume there are as many gods as there are sun-circling teapots...which is none.

Thanks! And I'll keep that in mind :wink:

You must teach in a more hostile environment than I was taught in. Do you work at a poorly funded school, or is there just some kind of discipline problem? — TogetherTurtle

I actually work in a pretty nice community. There's two main reasons I can tell for more unstable students in mainstream schools:

the nation's opioid epidemic is reaching pretty much every community nowadays. Kids either abusing hard drugs or coming from homes where parents are means you get kids with a lot of issues. (Most of them are non-violent, but most violent kids do come from such scenarios.)

And, the budget cuts for schools and public mental health programs means we're pushed to keep unstable students in thw mainstream population much longer than we should. There's simply not enough money or beds for all the kids who need to be in special programs for a while.

Interesting, but I have to head out and so will pick this back up tomorrow, if that's OK. — Isaac

Looking forward to it! Have fun with whatever you're doing :smile:

You can defend the stupidity required to confuse this and the message she received, but is that not just proving my point? — TogetherTurtle

What of you? Would you take that message seriously under any circumstances? I would certainly not. — TogetherTurtle

Under some, yes. I would at least take seriously enough to forward it to the police/authorities or keep it in a file in case things escalate from there. But, then, I'm a teacher, and I'm required by law to do so if it's
a student/colleague/other person connected to the students and or the school.

But also I've already seen/heard some of the weird and deranged things students write/say to people before they attack them in the cafeteria with a knife and are then put in mental health facilities.

No, all interpretations are possible, at least one interpretation is objective — Isaac

Hmm... okay, we'll call them "possible" (from my perspective in a very loose sense). But are they "plausible"? Does it make sense to have such interpretations?

Another question: can't we say that there are thoughts and ideas that may be triggered for a particular individual rather randomly by an art piece, but which actually have nothing to do with said piece? And in which case, we must ask ourselves, is that really an interpretation of the art piece? Isn't it more aptly described as a random firing of the brain?

For example, I might read Hamlet and by some word or phrase or image be reminded of afternoons in my grandmother's kitchen. HOWEVER, that memory is not an interpretation of the art piece.

That the words have at least one objective meaning is a consequence of the fact that they are moves in a game (with rules) and if you don't play by those rules then you are simply not playing the game.

Additional meanings are not part of the game — Isaac

Ah... so there IS an objective framework of possible interpretations. :snicker:

obvious attempt at a joke — TogetherTurtle

How in the world is it obvious? You do realize that the New Zealand mosque shooter posted an entire manifesto on the internet before actually killing people? That multiple mass murderers have written long and rambling manifestos before committing atrocities?

She was not "in" on the joke. Therefore, her reaction doesn't seem exaggerated to me at all.

In context yes. If you and I gave pet names to our musical instruments and your piano was called "cat", then cat also mean piano. — Isaac

Sooo.... that would mean I cannot read Hamlet's soliloquy (or the standard directions on shampoo bottles, for that matter), and claim that these are about green hippos and twenty-foot tall centipedes visiting earth from a planet called Garoomba?

Can I say that that "cat" also means "piano"?

any additional meaning(s) are subjective. — Isaac

And thus are "true" interpretations? They are "true" about the book or bottle or whatever?

The total number of things a word or phrase means is not objectively measurable. — Isaac

Really? So if I say "chair" and you interpret "elephant" that's just your subjective, totally admissible opinion?

The fraudulence is not in the reading of depth, but in the illusion that some things produce depth whilst others don't — Isaac

Does, in your view, the phrase "the epistemological implications of Kantian metaphysics" mean the same thing as "rinse and repeat"?

I don't understand how this is an example of Boomers (or anyone) taking things too seriously.

1) She didn't know the backstory to these things, so how was she supposed to know it wasn't real? It would only be funny to someone who understands what a copy pasta is...

2) even then, it's not funny (imho, and I'm no Boomer). There's nothing witty or clever about it. It's just a profane, violent rant that is actually the kind of thing some people say who are deranged and dangerous.

Now excuse me while I go watch the Honeymooners. Now THAT'S funny. :wink: