Hterag

Hi Threebobs, That's a very generous offer, not sure if I'll be heading that far in the near future but I'll keep it in mind. I've actually heard a bit about there being more rationalist/libertarian/voluntaryist etc. communities up in Shanghai. I'd actually expected to find more in Hong Kong but so far I've been unsuccessful.

I'm getting pretty tired of being the only rational person I know, anyone else around these parts? Bit about me: I'm originally from the UK but I've been in China almost 4 years, I've worked in a number of different places in the south (of China) and regularly visit Hong Kong. I'd love to get in touch with some people to have meet-ups and philosophise, chat and complain about the world.

That's what I was waiting for you to say. This discussion is over because you're claiming we can more accurately represent how we personally feel about the truth value of a statement yet you're saying different people will arrive at it in different ways. So, it's still no more accurate because what I say is, "60%" may be something you arrive at as, "12%". Assuming you're correct, we can safely say that our conclusions can be totally different and don't give any additional clarification. If you'd given me an objective way of deriving truth (like the scientific method) then clearly you'd have already accepted that it can be objective and that there are things we can say are true/false (pending review of possible contradictory evidence in the future etc.) anyway. Thanks for giving me the chance to think this stuff through but I'm out at this point unless something staggeringly new comes to the table. EDIT: And one last thing, you should really look into Socratic dialogue because the essense of that is about discussing personal experience and not appealing to other sources.

I have neither the patience nor the motivation to respond to every single thing someone says in a forum so I'll focus on this one point: I understand what you're saying but I'm asking you to tell me how you derive these numbers. How do you think bookies get these odds? They don't just give it out at random and if they do then they're going to lose a lot of money. They base it on massive amounts of data, previous records for teams/horses/players, the weather, etc. The same with insurance companies, they set the price you pay per month based on enormous amounts of data they collect from all of their customers. Even things like the stock market. I can't just say, "Ah, this commodity should be worth $17.14" because I don't have enough information to say that. The market sets the price and the price is based on millions of people interacting together and using their combined information and predictions to say what they're willing to pay and sell for. This is the problem I have with your proposition and this is what I'd like you to clarify: How do you personally get these numbers? I don't care what other people may or may not say, I'm talking to you. If you don't address this, I'm very unlikely (78.65%) to reply again as it's getting tiring.

It is a tangent and I only mentioned it in passing because I wanted to get at the idea that if I say, "I believe that an invisible intangible unicorn floats around the universe but never comes within 100 billion light years of Earth." then it's not going to affect how I live my life in any significant way other than me possibly talking about it compared to if I think that chocolate ice cream is a daily necessity then I'll be eating chocolate ice cream daily but I don't think it's worth taking this any further. It seems to me that you might be worried that when I say, "I know..." or, "I believe..." that that's the end of it. It's really not. I say right now that I believe Australia exists, despite not having been there. If it turned out that it was all a big conspiracy and someone showed me that the photos were faked, the animals were all in Africa or something then of course I'd have to change my position. Saying, "I believe it." just means, "Given the evidence I've been presented and my understanding of reality until this point, it seems more likely than not to be true." I've changed my position on the moon landings a few times, though, whether it were true or not isn't going to change much for me. When it comes to most religious people, they'll use an example like, "I believe it because look at all the animals. Something must have created them." and after presenting all the evidence for evolution the position doesn't change. "I still believe it. I have faith." and that's where we have problems. That's where we have, "certainty" where certainty has no justification. The certainty comes from somewhere else, perhaps fear of rejecting the idea and facing the scarier reality, the anxiety of societal rejection and loss of social network, the idea that the time invested already was a waste... Etc. I think that might be where you're coming from but I want to ask if you could explain exactly how you arrive at the numbers. You've given some example numbers already but you're saying what you think is totally irrelevant. I think it's absolutely essential to help me understand your methodology. How exactly do you quantify it and so make it more accurate?

Yes, this is true for a belief that, if you hold it and don't want to be hypocritical, you have to act on it. Like, if I believe that hitting people is the best way to solve problems then I'll be acting in that way. This is where I'd like to make a distinction between belief and knowledge. If I ask, "Do you believe Australia exists?" then would you really say, "99.9999%"? I don't know, maybe you would... But here's another example. A guy steals your car, you know who did it but now you have to convince a DRO/jury or whatever. You present your case, show the CCTV footage and his finger prints etc. He presents his case, calls his alibi, etc. to show how he didn't steal it and the jury decides a vote of 54% guilty. Well, what do we do with that? Does he now pay 54% of the restitution? Or would they just say, "He is guilty and should pay restitution."? Of course it's whether they believe you or not and if they say 10%, what then? Does he still pay 10% restitution? My problem with this is how it would actually apply if I were to live like this. I can't imagine myself using this kind of percentile belief system in many things. Yeah, abstract ideas that are fun to discuss... Fine. How do I then apply the same things to every other aspect of my life? It seems like it'd be incredibly inefficient when I can just say, "Yes, I believe what you're saying." or, "No, I don't believe what you're saying." These things are all based on the fact that I don't know. If I know, I don't say, "I believe you." I say, "Yes, that's true. I know it's true. If I know that fire burns, I don't want to say, "Well, there's a 99.999999% chance that you'll get burned if you touch it." I'll just say, "Don't touch it, it'll burn you." because I know from direct sensual and empirical evidence.

I've just spent a bit of time reading through this whole thread and all I'm seeing is STer using words then saying not to use words and people correcting the use of those words. I'd like to share some thoughts and see if I can help to move the discussion on a bit. I'm mostly replying to STer here. You're right, the terms, "atheist", "theist", "agnostic", "gnostic", "agnostic theist", etc. are used all over the world on forums and in debates on the topic of religion and there is an immense amount of deliberate confusion and misunderstanding surrounding them. Though not so important, I totally agree with Libertus' definition of the terms - that theism is a belief and atheism is not believing. For example: I can say, "I have $1 million." and you can believe me or not. You can look at me and see what kind of clothes I have and check my facial expressions etc. to gather some evidence for why you would believe me or not. You could also, as STer says, assign a, "percentage" to that certainty but reality is binary. I either have $1 million or I don't. If you say you think there's a 60% chance I have $1 million then that doesn't mean I do (unless I'm the government) or that I have $600,000 or something, as much as I'd like it to... A claim is either true or not. How likely you think it is or how much you want it doesn't change reality. That said, I think it really is important to describe what you're talking about. If someone says, "Do you believe in God?" then my first question is, "What do you mean?" I act like it's a totally new word to me because so often it is. We can then proceed with their definition as recently someone said, "Well, you know, God. The creator of the universe..." to which I said no. I'll show you how I arrive at my, "beliefs": If you say to me, "Do you believe that Australia exists?" then we go over what you mean by Australia and find it's the land mass in the southern hemisphere etc. then I can say, "Yes. I believe Australia exists despite having no direct sensual evidence since what you're claiming is logically consistent and conforms to my other experiences of the world. You're claiming it's a big island with people, kangaroos, koalas, diggery doos and lots of barbecues, all of which I've seen before and have experience of... So, yes. Yes, I do believe Australia exists. I also know that practically everyone else around me thinks it's real and I have friends who claim to have gone there so I would be incredibly surprised if it doesn't exist and turns out to be a big hoax/conspiracy." If, on the other hand, you say, "Do you believe that there's an island on the back of a giant turtle made of gold which moves around singing Christmas carols for all the orphans on the moon?" Well, of course I'm going to say, "No, I don't believe that exists. I have no direct sensual evidence and I've never seen anything even remotely similar and it totally goes against stuff I do have empirical evidence for." In conclusion, I think defining terms is very important if there's any ambiguity. You (STer) have yet to do that with respect to the term, "God" but you've said you're not interested in discussing it, which is fine. I don't think anyone here would disagree that defining terms is very important and so I think your purpose has already been fulfilled. You said you wanted to get this point across and it seems to me that everyone is already acting in a way that suggests they agree (in that they're defining or attempting to define terms). The problem seems to be: "X means abc." "No it doesn't! X means def!" "What? X means ghi!" People aren't just saying, "Let's forget what X means and focus on whether you accept/believe abc, def and ghi." What are your thoughts?