Greetings ,I'm back. Mythicism
This topic contains 96 replies, has 11 voices, and was last updated by 
Davis 4 years, 3 months ago.
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October 19, 2020 at 8:35 pm #33648
You have picked a side. The side the believers are on. And your sort of reasoning gives them oxygen and encouragement to go out and spread the word.
I’ve redacted what I first wrote here. It was just a silly, anoxic observation.
But I was talking to Davis.
October 20, 2020 at 12:05 am #33651On second impression the notion that education with an emphasis in thinking is a solution to our problems is pretty sophomoric.
There is a pink elephant in the pantry. The Bertrand Russells are the exception. It is an open question whether we can be taught to think. Maybe the Russells are born and not created. To the extent that training in thinking makes a difference is it successful often enough to be THE difference? I would like to think so but i doubt it.
I have other thoughts but heck with it…
October 20, 2020 at 1:23 am #33652Teaching critical thinking in school would make an enormous difference. I doubt it would solve the number of problems some say it would but it would certainly limit a few serious toxic problems. Disinformation and stupid-think disseminates so quickly young people really need to skills to analyse sources, confront claims, easily spot fallacies and yada yada yada. It’s already beyond me why it isn’t taught to all arts and humanities students but only mandatory to philosophy students (and an elective to others). It should be taught and reinforced every year of school (which would mean teachers would have to have a rigorous and solid understanding of it themselves).
October 20, 2020 at 2:41 am #33653Davis are you aware of any nations in which there is such teaching? Or even individual schools?
We are on the cusp of a revolution in disinformation/misinformation and perhaps ascribing subjectivity to truth. It has never been more needed. Religion has had a profound negative impact on the aforementioned but the destructive capability of AI coupled with existential crises makes the urgency of countering the trend profound.
October 20, 2020 at 10:33 am #33666Unfortunately Jake I am not. There are voluntary courses here and there. North American schools tend to have a much wider variety of elective and non-traditional courses but so few of them are ever mandatory. If I were a politician I would make education in critical thinking one of my highest priorities (especially using critical thinking while engaging online).
October 20, 2020 at 3:41 pm #33668Davis, it is not in the interest of politicians or religions to have thinking citizens. So i don’t expect it to occur.
But goddamn it would be an intriguing social experiment to have schools focused on producing skeptical and thinking citizens. We as a species are educable. Whether we as a community and without genetic engineering can become thinkers is an open question.
October 20, 2020 at 5:41 pm #33675Teaching critical thinking in school would make an enormous difference. I doubt it would solve the number of problems some say it would but it would certainly limit a few serious toxic problems. Disinformation and stupid-think disseminates so quickly young people really need to skills to analyse sources, confront claims, easily spot fallacies and yada yada yada. It’s already beyond me why it isn’t taught to all arts and humanities students but only mandatory to philosophy students (and an elective to others). It should be taught and reinforced every year of school (which would mean teachers would have to have a rigorous and solid understanding of it themselves).
On this, we agree.
October 20, 2020 at 11:40 pm #33704You position reminds me of a section in Gulliver’s Travels, in Lilliput I think. The Court philosopher is yelling at Gulliver to go away. This because the philosopher has just proved a creature such as Gulliver cannot exist.
My point is that logic is a limited tool for arriving at a truth. Generally speaking rules of inference begin with:
IF A——. IE a logical inference is true if and only if the premise is true.
Taking a hard atheist stance means you have made an affirming claim. IE ;”God does not exist”. That attracts the burden of proof and there’s a major problem with that.IE all claims about god(s) are unfalsifiable .[so far]
I demand empirical evidence pro or contra, and will accept nothing less.
Day to day it’s just semantics; I live as if there are no gods, just as I live as if I have free will, even though I think free will is largely if not completely an illusion.
October 20, 2020 at 11:58 pm #33706That’s a wonderful argument against a claim I haven’t made. If-then conditional arguments depend on the truth of their premises. A contradiction, by contrast, is simply false. Anything else I’ve argued is just additional.
October 21, 2020 at 2:18 am #33714But… didn’t you know? God works in mysterious ways… so presto changeo… whatever can’t be explained with common english words is just our lack of understanding…
October 21, 2020 at 2:40 am #33715But… didn’t you know? God works in mysterious ways… so presto changeo… whatever can’t be explained with common english words is just our lack of understanding…
He exists outside time and space in a place where anything is possible. A place we call…The Twilight Zone.
October 21, 2020 at 3:29 am #33716“That’s a wonderful argument against a claim I haven’t made.”
Yet you said:
“I’m willing to go out on a limb and say that I KNOW there is no God. Prove me wrong.”
(1) That’s an affirming claim
(2) You’re the the one making the claim Up to you to prove your claim, not to me to disprove it***”
“A contradiction, by contrast, is simply false.”
Another claim. Why is it false?
Apologies if I’ve misunderstood and that is just a sample of your wit. (or at least half of it)
(((((((((((((((((((((((((((((((((((((((((((((((((((((9) )))))))))))))))))))))))))))))))))))))))))))))))))
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Russell’s teapot is an analogy, formulated by the philosopher Bertrand Russell (1872–1970), to illustrate that the philosophic burden of proof lies upon a person making unfalsifiable claims, rather than shifting the burden of disproof to others.
Russell specifically applied his analogy in the context of religion.[1] He wrote that if he were to assert, without offering proof, that a teapot, too small to be seen by telescopes, orbits the Sun somewhere in space between the Earth and Mars, he could not expect anyone to believe him solely because his assertion could not be proven wrong.
Russell’s teapot is still invoked in discussions concerning the existence of God, and has had influence in various fields and media.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Russell%27s_teapot
***
October 21, 2020 at 4:31 am #33719“That’s a wonderful argument against a claim I haven’t made.” Yet you said: “I’m willing to go out on a limb and say that I KNOW there is no God. Prove me wrong.” (1) That’s an affirming claim (2) You’re the the one making the claim Up to you to prove your claim, not to me to disprove it***” “A contradiction, by contrast, is simply false.” Another claim. Why is it false?
1) Of course it is. 2) A contradiction is false both because it’s evidently false (common sense) and because logic is axiomatic, rule-based, and a contradiction is anathema to any rational system.
Ultimately, the reason contradictions are false is that they are bad logic and can be used to prove virtually anything, which in logic is not good. Nonsense begets nonsense.
October 21, 2020 at 9:58 pm #33743“A contradiction is false both because it’s evidently false (common sense)”
You mean as self evident truth?
Bullshit.
That claim is simply a form of argument from ignorance. Often used by theist apologists to prove the existence of God; they intuit such being .
“and because logic is axiomatic, rule-based, and a contradiction is anathema to any rational system.”
Yes, a thing cannot be true and untrue at the same time.
Yet you still have not presented evidence to support your position. That’s Ok, didn’t expect you to. Your claim that there is no god is unfalsifiable . Quite happy to agree to differ; I have no no interest in trying to change your mind. Consequently, I will say nothing further to you on this matter. Please feel free to have the last word
October 21, 2020 at 10:47 pm #33745I think a contradiction shows that a system of propositions is impossible, in that they cannot all be true all the time.
Reality makes sense and does not contradict itself. Ultimately, a contradiction proves that a certain entity, described by a system of propositions, cannot exist.
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