Atheism is a religion

[2bits]

Talking about strong atheism, weak atheism, agnosticism, ignosticism, etc is a bit fruitless without defining the god in question. You can have a different stance on each deity concept. Generally, the more truth statements made about a god, the more logical inconsistencies and absurdities, the more we are able to take a strong atheistic position. At the other end of the spectrum is deism and more amorphic/inconsequential gods. I think this is where atheists will start to sound more like agnostics.

[Libertus]

Agnosticism is not the middle ground between theism and atheism. Theism / atheism is about what you believe. Gnosticism / agnosticism is about what you know, claim to know, or what is knowable. Belief and knowledge are separate concepts.

[STer]

Belief and knowledge are separate concepts.

Would you agree that knowledge is a belief that you hold with a confidence level of very close to, if not at, 100%?

[RestoringGuy]

There also seems to be a distinction whether god is even possible.   Most strong atheist hold the belief that not only is god a bogus belief and "god does not exist" is the believed condition, but on top of that, god is a self-contradicting and nonviable concept. 

 

On the other hand, I think god could in principle exist (god is viable much as dinosaurs are viable) but just as a simple matter of the way the universe has emerged "god's existence" (or rather presence anywhere) simply has never came to be, and probably never will.  I am not "neutral" on that belief, but quite certain.  But in theory, a guy could invent god in a garage with power tools, if that guy had sufficient know-how.

[Libertus]

Would you agree that knowledge is a belief that you hold with a confidence level of very close to, if not at, 100%?

 

No. The belief must also be true, and my belief must be connected to, or caused by the the truth somehow - philosophers are still debating how, to this day. However, I'm wondering what your point is. You were just asking a question? I'm saying belief and knowledge are not the same, they are separate concepts, do you agree or disagree with that statement, before we take this any further?

[STer]

No. The belief must also be true, and my belief must be connected to, or caused by the the truth somehow - philosophers are still debating how, to this day. However, I'm wondering what your point is. You were just asking a question? I'm saying belief and knowledge are not the same, they are separate concepts, do you agree or disagree with that statement, before we take this any further?

I'm asking in order to understand exactly what the relationship is, in your view, between belief and knowledge.When you say the belief must be "true," how certain must we be that it is true before we can call it knowledge? You would agree that no scientist would ever claim 100% certainty about the truth of anything right? Everything in science is measured in confidence levels and implicitly understood to be up for questioning at all times.

[RestoringGuy]

When you say the belief must be "true," how certain must we be that it is true before we can call it knowledge? You would agree that no scientist would ever claim 100% certainty about the truth of anything right? Everything in science is measured in confidence levels and implicitly understood to be up for questioning at all times.

I have often wondered about this, and it often seems we have no real access to "truth" in order to make a direct comparison to our beliefs.  We only compare beliefs to other beliefs (I believe the sun is real, and I believe I saw it yesterday).  So as devil's advocate, it could be said "knowledge does not exist", or more specifically we can't ever know which of our beliefs properly should called "knowledge".  Science only talks about how consistent the beliefs are with one another, with some of those beliefs simply being accepted observations.On the other hand, finding consistency itself involves act of believing in the methods needed to detect consistency.  So I can be skeptical and call into question the methodology needed to validate radical skepticism!  Put another way, yes science is measured in confidence levels, but even confidence levels have confidence levels.  If you believe you are 99% confident about some particular thing, that is still a belief and that estimate of confidence is probably wrong.  You are probably confident by a slightly different amount.  So the real confidence number could be as high as 100%.  This reason enables truth to match belief, the match to be certain, and allows epistemology to function normally at least some of the time. 

[STer]

I have often wondered about this, and it often seems we have no real access to "truth" in order to make a direct comparison to our beliefs.  We only compare beliefs to other beliefs (I believe the sun is real, and I believe I saw it yesterday).  So as devil's advocate, it could be said "knowledge does not exist", or more specifically we can't ever know which of our beliefs properly should called "knowledge".  Science only talks about how consistent the beliefs are with one another, with some of those beliefs simply being accepted observations.

Or we can simply define knowledge as having a very high level of confidence rather than 100% confidence.

 

If you believe you are 99% confident about some particular thing, that is still a belief and that estimate of confidence is probably wrong.  You are probably confident by a slightly different amount.  So the real confidence number could be as high as 100%.

If you believe you're 99% confident, but even that belief only has a certain confidence level, that could only reduce your overall confidence, not raise it. Being unsure of how certain you are about your 99% confidence level would never ADD certainty.

 

 

 

 

[RestoringGuy]

 

Or we can simply define knowledge as having a very high level of confidence rather than 100% confidence.

 

If you believe you're 99% confident, but even that belief only has a certain confidence level, that could only reduce your overall confidence, not raise it. Being unsure of how certain you are about your 99% confidence level would never ADD certainty.

Smaller confidence than 100% works.  But you sometimes must allow false things to be called "knowledge".  I call these false beliefs no matter how compelling.  You can close your eyes and throw 10 coins on the floor and say "one or more coins is heads up" is "knowledge" because it's better than 99.9% likely to be true.I will disagree that decrease holds uniformly.  Have you ever not attempted to correct an "error", and suddenly discovered you did not actually make the error?  Not like gambling -- but maybe there was an obvious good observable reason you should have been more confident?  Or maybe a deduction you should have made but failed to do so in time.  If the expected value of error can only be smaller, then statistically you have the wrong mean value.  Not every sample can be above average, and our estimations of error are just another act of data sampling.  Standard deviation, etc. provide us with this estimate, and our brains are part of the overall system doing the sampling.  We will on occasion feel less certain of particular results that we should be, just as genetic mutation will on occasion not decrease the quality of the system, but instead improvement can sometimes be made.. 

[STer]

Smaller confidence than 100% works.  But you sometimes must allow false things to be called "knowledge".  I call these false beliefs no matter how compelling.  You can close your eyes and throw 10 coins on the floor and say "one or more coins is heads up" is "knowledge" because it's better than 99.9% likely to be true.

That's an interesting point. I guess it points to the fact that a confidence level, in terms of science, is different than just probability involved in a prediction. There is a difference between the high chance a coin will turn up heads up (the probability involved) and the high confidence level we have about what the probability actually is. That probability is always what it is given the same conditions. We "know" that probability. How the probability manifests on any one throw of the coins is a different animal. 

I will disagree that decrease holds uniformly.  Have you ever not attempted to correct an "error", and suddenly discovered you did not actually make the error?  Not like gambling -- but maybe there was an obvious good observable reason you should have been more confident?  Or maybe a deduction you should have made but failed to do so in time.  If the expected value of error can only be smaller, then statistically you have the wrong mean value.  Not every sample can be above average, and our estimations of error are just another act of data sampling.  Standard deviation, etc. provide us with this estimate, and our brains are part of the overall system doing the sampling.  We will on occasion feel less certain of particular results that we should be, just as genetic mutation will on occasion not decrease the quality of the system, but instead improvement can sometimes be made..

 

I think something isn't being communicated clearly, probably by me. Obviously, when I say knowledge is something we believe with a very high confidence interval, I don't mean that in terms of every individual's beliefs, no matter what their basis. There are people that believe with 100% certainty all sorts of delusions. I wouldn't say they know them. Those delusions aren't adding to the sum of human knowledge. I think what I'm talking about is a confidence interval that can actually be supported, whether empirically or through replication by others. There has to be some basis for that high confidence interval to call it knowledge.

[MaxM]

Not sure if this is a troll thread but, Im in.

 

 

One side of the coin is believing in a theology the other side is disbelief in all ideologies. With all truth claims, the burdon of proof is on the truth claimer. The proof in all theologies is emotional eg feelings, wants, needs, beliefs ect. Everyone who thinks logically can agree that emotional reactions or responses are not a valid reason to claim a theory is fact. If I went up to you and said I am God and my reasons were I can feel it an know it and believe it. Obviously I would immediately be disbelieved because thats bullshit/invalid reason for a truth claim.

 

-Your claim athiesm is a religion

 

Religion as a word. The world religion is insuffent and vague and has near 1000 words as it's definition on wiki. It is a single word to encapsulate cultural, personal, and emotional beliefs that a specific to the individual and the has a different meaning alltogeter to the entire religion, meaning what is religion to you is not religion to someone else and vice versa.

 

There are poitless arguments that claim the word isn't diverse enough to capture it's real meaning . . . because it's an emotional response.  So to say athiesm is religious comes down to your own personal definition which is differnt to many others. It's a bad word and fails its job to have clear and easy definition and understanding.

 

My main point is religion is emotional and that is were all these arguments come from. Arguing emotions is a dead end and have truth to them but they're pointless discussing with from a truth perspective because, bottom line it defines a feeling.

 

Athiesm is the position of people with a sane respons to an theory claimed as truth with evidence by emotion. The theologist has not provided the evedence required to claim truth.

 

~That which is claimed without evidence can be dismissed without evidence~ Christopher Hitchens.

[RestoringGuy]

My main point is religion is emotional and that is were all these arguments come from. Arguing emotions is a dead end and have truth to them but they're pointless discussing with from a truth perspective because, bottom line it defines a feeling.

Your thinking seems good.  I have thought the same thing about most words.  I have heard things like "black is not a color" or the same thing about white or gray, and some artsy people suggest they are the lack of color.  Yet they seem like colors to me.  Maybe emotion is sometimes good evidence and could be caused by something valid, but it's not something easy to convey to others.  I might say yes atheism is a religion but only in the way black is a color, zero is a number, and penguin is a bird.  Things in the same category do not always have to share specific properties.

[RestoringGuy]

There are people that believe with 100% certainty all sorts of delusions. I wouldn't say they know them. Those delusions aren't adding to the sum of human knowledge. I think what I'm talking about is a confidence interval that can actually be supported, whether empirically or through replication by others. There has to be some basis for that high confidence interval to call it knowledge.

For confidence there is variation depending on how the experiment is designed.  I agree with you totally about observational errors:  a ruler or scale will have built-in error and my vision will introduce more error, and these always accumulate to larger error.  But systematically these errors decrease only by repeating the experiments and averaging the results.  But if you introduce an error in the design and the experiment is repeated, the error cannot be fixed and maybe that is the real confidence interval you are talking about?Anyway, my point here is the observer is part of the system and our estimate of the error could be wrong.  Take for example the Monty Hall Problem.  There are three doors.  Two doors have goats behind and one has a car and you must choose a door to win the car.  You choose a door, but first Monty reveals a different door that shows a goat.  So there are two unrevealed doors (your original choice and another unopened door) and Monty asks "do you want to change your selection"?  Most people say it doesn't matter, because there are two unopened doors and it should be 50/50 whether each unopened door has the car.  Our intuition tells us this.  But no it turns out 1/3 chance of winning if you stay with your original choice, and you should always change your mind.  The amount of "error" in the system is not an obvious result.I bring this up because our estimate of experimental error can sometimes "seem" right.  But depending on design of an experiment, there could be ways to improve the outcome by abandoning previous ways of doing things.  By adopting a fixed percent certainty about knowledge (some call it "warranted belief") it seems we make assumptions about our epistemology that block our maximum capability.  Knowing what percent is the right threshold and for what purposes is one problem, but sometimes we might all be too stupid to estimate our confidence correctly to begin with.  Science attempts to expose this to us with a confidence level, but even knowing that objective confidence level seems subject to further mistakes.  Maybe, due to systematic design, higher confidence is sometimes warranted without your knowing about it. 

[STer]

For confidence there is variation depending on how the experiment is designed.  I agree with you totally about observational errors:  a ruler or scale will have built-in error and my vision will introduce more error, and these always accumulate to larger error.  But systematically these errors decrease only by repeating the experiments and averaging the results.  But if you introduce an error in the design and the experiment is repeated, the error cannot be fixed and maybe that is the real confidence interval you are talking about?Anyway, my point here is the observer is part of the system and our estimate of the error could be wrong.  Take for example the Monty Hall Problem.  There are three doors.  Two doors have goats behind and one has a car and you must choose a door to win the car.  You choose a door, but first Monty reveals a different door that shows a goat.  So there are two unrevealed doors (your original choice and another unopened door) and Monty asks "do you want to change your selection"?  Most people say it doesn't matter, because there are two unopened doors and it should be 50/50 whether each unopened door has the car.  Our intuition tells us this.  But no it turns out 1/3 chance of winning if you stay with your original choice, and you should always change your mind.  The amount of "error" in the system is not an obvious result.I bring this up because our estimate of experimental error can sometimes "seem" right.  But depending on design of an experiment, there could be ways to improve the outcome by abandoning previous ways of doing things.  By adopting a fixed percent certainty about knowledge (some call it "warranted belief") it seems we make assumptions about our epistemology that block our maximum capability.  Knowing what percent is the right threshold and for what purposes is one problem, but sometimes we might all be too stupid to estimate our confidence correctly to begin with.  Science attempts to expose this to us with a confidence level, but even knowing that objective confidence level seems subject to further mistakes.  Maybe, due to systematic design, higher confidence is sometimes warranted without your knowing about it. 

 

I guess I'm confused about what is the core of what you're trying to get across. Could you give me it boiled down to a couple sentences so I'm sure I'm getting the main idea?

[Libertus]

I'm asking in order to understand exactly what the relationship is, in your view, between belief and knowledge.When you say the belief must be "true," how certain must we be that it is true before we can call it knowledge? You would agree that no scientist would ever claim 100% certainty about the truth of anything right? Everything in science is measured in confidence levels and implicitly understood to be up for questioning at all times.

 

I'd consider answering your questions, but you have chosen not to answer the question I asked you directly.

[STer]

I'd consider answering your questions, but you have chosen not to answer the question I asked you directly.

Sorry. Of course, I agree that knowledge and belief are not exactly the same thing. I've made that clear in my posts since. A person can believe something with 100% certainty that is not true. I would not consider that knowledge though it is indeed a belief.

 

So we agree knowledge and belief are not one and the same. The question is what is the relationship between them?

 

I think we are in the same ballpark. I think knowledge is a belief that is very strongly held and that has a basis for being held so strongly. How strongly and what basis are up for discussion.

 

But the main point is that that basis can never be 100% certain. Knowledge does not require certainty. And the fact that we never really can have certainty doesn't make knowledge impossible as I would define knowledge.

[STer]

 So if atheism is merely some state of mind that doesnt hold the belief in God, then i dont see how it continues to be a view at this point. Since anything that doesnt have this psychological state is therefore an atheist, a baby, a dog, a cabbage perhaps.

This is an interesting point. I never thought of putting it this way.

 

If atheism is simply a lack of belief in God, then are babies, dogs, cabbages atheists? It's a question worth asking.

[RestoringGuy]

It won't work.  Atheism without reflection is like vegetarianism without conscious avoidance.  A meat-eater who eats an apple is not called a vegetarian during the eating of the apple.   It is only coincidence the apple is vegetarian-compatible.  Also, I am not a UFO-skeptic without first pondering whether alien UFOs might exist.

[STer]

It won't work.  Atheism without reflection is like vegetarianism without conscious avoidance.  A meat-eater who eats an apple is not called a vegetarian during the eating of the apple.   It is only coincidence the apple is vegetarian-compatible.  Also, I am not a UFO-skeptic without first pondering whether alien UFOs might exist.

Well if that's the case then the definition of an atheist cannot just be "lacking a belief in God." It would have to be "Lacking a belief in God after reflection on the subject." So we're already starting down the road of having to specify the definition more, which was exactly what I think Dogbyte was pointing out. It's actually not enough to define atheism as just "lacking a belief in God."

 

Vegetarianism is not a good analogy since it requires a particular practice, not just a belief.

 

UFO-skeptic is also a bad analogy as that has to do with specifically questioning whether a particular thing exists, which requires knowing about the concept. But people say atheism is just not having the belief. They do not specify first having to consider it and then reject it. In fact, that's exactly what they avoid saying it is. So Dogbyte's point is excellent.

[Pepin]

This is an interesting point. I never thought of putting it this way.

 

If atheism is simply a lack of belief in God, then are babies, dogs, cabbages atheists? It's a question worth asking.

 

The question is faulty because it is asserting that belief of a deity is something that babies, cabbages, and dog can have. Cabbages cannot have any belief as they lack an ability to think, therefore the question cannot apply to them. Dogs have a capacity for belief, such as after the sound of a ringing bell I will receive food from my caretaker, yet the level of belief can only take on a very limited complexity due to the structure of their neural networks. With babies, even at a verbal story telling age, though the baby/child might be able to give a response that would indicate a belief in a deity, there is no real understanding of the content and would be more akin to a talking parrot.

 

An interesting thought experiment is to think about how you'd convey the idea of a deity without words to someone without any prior preconception... It is a little similar to asking how you'd convey that reality doesn't exist without the use of words.

 

Normal humans that are raised well and past some phase in brain development and have no prior conception of a deity would be capable of assessing the claim of a deity, and therefore could have a belief on the matter. I wouldn't say that the assessing of the claim would be needed to consider them an atheist in the same way that the default state in anything is disbelief. To make that point a little clearer: you are assumed to not believe in a religion you've never heard of; you are assumed to not believe in some animal you have no knowledge of; you are assumed to not believe in mythic beast you've never heard of. It isn't that you might not believe in it upon being informed of it and given evidence, it is just that you couldn't say to have believed in it before learning about it.

 

Given how anti-empirical and contradictory the concept of a deity is, I have a difficult time imagining how someone would come up with it as a serious thought. I am pretty sure the concept would come up with history studies, but in the same way that the idea of the flat earth comes up in science. I can perhaps see someone asking "who created the universe?".

[STer]

The question is faulty because it is asserting that belief of a deity is something that babies, cabbages, and dog can have.

The question is not faulty and doesn't assert any such thing. If the definition of atheism is simply "lacking a belief in a God" that does not specify whether the reason for lacking the belief is having considered it and discarded the idea or lacking the capacity to have any belief. That definition is completely open to any and all reasons for lacking the belief. If you want to limit it only to those beings with the capacity for such a belief who nonetheless lack it, then you have to put that in the definition.

[Pepin]

The question is not faulty and doesn't assert any such thing. If the definition of atheism is simply "lacking a belief in a God" that does not specify whether the reason for lacking the belief is having considered it and discarded the idea or lacking the capacity to have any belief. That definition is completely open to any and all reasons for lacking the belief. If you want to limit it only to those beings with the capacity for such a belief who nonetheless lack it, then you have to put that in the definition.

 

I understand what you saying and don't think you are wrong in how you are approaching it, but I would say that the first question to ask is if a concept can apply to the object in question, and if it does not to point out the error in the question. For instance, asking "what color is the number two" is an invalid question because the concept "color" does not apply to numbers. If someone asks you what color an atom is, you wouldn't say that it has no color, but rather you'd explain what color is on the physical level and why the concept doesn't apply to atoms. If you are to asking what the opinion of the average electron is of the weather, you wouldn't say that the electron has no opinion on the weather of no opinion in general, but you'd say that the question doesn't make sense as electrons are not capable of having opinions. If you are inquiring about a particular belief of a cabbage, you'd disregard the particular belief and say that cabbages are incapable of belief.

 

Sorry if this is it sounds like I am being annoyingly technical, but I feel like it is a good distinction to make. There is a difference in asking about a normal adult human's belief in a concept when compared to a block of wood. Saying that a the human does not believe in evolution is not equivalent to saying that a block of wood does not believe in evolution, as one the concept of belief can apply to, and the other not at all.

 

To provide a programming analogy, it is like requesting information on a property the class does not have. The return value is not "0", but it is rather something like "cannot access property of a null object reference".

[STer]

I understand what you saying and don't think you are wrong in how you are approaching it, but I would say that the first question to ask is if a concept can apply to the object in question, and if it does not to point out the error in the question. For instance, asking "what color is the number two" is an invalid question because the concept "color" does not apply to numbers. If someone asks you what color an atom is, you wouldn't say that it has no color, but rather you'd explain what color is on the physical level and why the concept doesn't apply to atoms. If you are to asking what the opinion of the average electron is of the weather, you wouldn't say that the electron has no opinion on the weather of no opinion in general, but you'd say that the question doesn't make sense as electrons are not capable of having opinions. If you are inquiring about a particular belief of a cabbage, you'd disregard the particular belief and say that cabbages are incapable of belief. Sorry if this is it sounds like I am being annoyingly technical, but I feel like it is a good distinction to make. There is a difference in asking about a normal adult human's belief in a concept when compared to a block of wood. Saying that a the human does not believe in evolution is not equivalent to saying that a block of wood does not believe in evolution, as one the concept of belief can apply to, and the other not at all. To provide a programming analogy, it is like requesting information on a property the class does not have. The return value is not "0", but it is rather

something like "cannot access property of a null object reference".

If you want to be "annoyingly technical" then it is correct to say a block of wood does not believe in evolution. That is a completely factual statement.

 

If you ask "What does the wood believe about evolution?" then you are correct. You are asking about a property that doesn't apply to wood. If you say "Wood believes evolution is false," that would also be nonsensical. But to simply say the wood does not believe is accurate.

 

It is the atheists who always are emphatic about how "lack of belief" is not the same as believing anything particular. It is simply the absence of a belief. I continue to find this definition not specific enough to account for the types of cases we're talking about.

[Kawlinz]

I'd say it's more precise to say that the block of would doesn't have the ability to believe in anything, rather than to say it doesn't believe in evolution.

[STer]

I'd say it's more precise to say that the block of would doesn't have the ability to believe in anything, rather than to say it doesn't believe in evolution.

I would say it's more precise to say that the block of wood does not believe in evolution because it doesn't have the ability to believe in anything. Both statements are not only true, but linked to each other.

[Kawlinz]

if I had to choose one, and only one, I'd choose the later, as it includes the former. 

[STer]

if I had to choose one, and only one, I'd choose the later, as it includes the former. 

But you don't have to choose one and only one. The question is whether they are both true. They are both true.

[RestoringGuy]

It does not seem necessary to explicitly include capacity for belief in word definitions, because it's implicit in the nature of belief.  An inanimate object is not an atheist just as an unconscious Buddist is not momentarity an atheist.  It is about the answer when those answers are given.  Words are defined in terms of other words, and ultimately one must rely on examples and artifacts to demonstrate meaning.  I think belief and disbelief are demonstrated by how you answer questions.  Disbelief is not a default position because a person or thing that fails to express its belief simply has not presented to us one way or the other.  We can only know belief or disbelief by hearing an answer to a question "what do you believe".  For the same reason inanimate objects are also not agnostic, because "I don't know" is also an answer.

[STer]

Someone's answer when asked directly about their beliefs is not at all a reliable way to determine beliefs. People lie. People also have unconscious beliefs that are reflected in their behavior even while they deny them (something people on FDR are surely deeply familiar with.) They even can have two conflicting beliefs at the same time coming from different parts of their psyche.

 

Ultimately, what someone believes is an internal factor. We can try to figure it out from various external indicators (their verbal responses to questions being just one of those and not always, or even usually, the most effective). Perhaps one day neuroscience will give us ways - for better or worse - to identify beliefs directly in some manner.

 

More importantly, I find it very telling how atheists bend over backwards to AVOID specifying capacity for belief as necessary or qualifying the definition of atheism in any way. Even if you were right that it's not necessary, it can only help to be more precise. But atheists often don't want to do that because it starts to chip away at their constant refrain that it's just an absence of belief that is sort of the default position.

[seventwentyseven]

If the words god or deity were replaced by Santa Claus or The Easter Bunny, this thread would only be one comment long, not 2 pages.

 

What would the methodology be for proving absence of something?

 

Does anyone here wake up on Christmas surprised that Santa didn't bring any gifts?

 

When I drive to work, I can't prove with 100% certainty that there is no brick wall across the highway, but I don't slow down. I drive with the speed of traffic as if there is no brick wall since there is no evidence of it being there.

[STer]

If the words god or deity were replaced by Santa Claus or The Easter Bunny, this thread would only be one comment long, not 2 pages.

 

What would the methodology be for proving absence of something?

 

Does anyone here wake up on Christmas surprised that Santa didn't bring any gifts?

 

When I drive to work, I can't prove with 100% certainty that there is no brick wall across the highway, but I don't slow down. I drive with the speed of traffic as if there is no brick wall since there is no evidence of it being there.

All you've proven there is that we act based on probabilities so even when the probability of something is less than 100%, if it is close enough - and what is close enough differs for different things depending on our values - it motivates us. 

[seventwentyseven]

All you've proven there is that we act based on probabilities so even when the probability of something is less than 100%, if it is close enough - and what is close enough differs for different things depending on our values - it motivates us.

That's not an answer to the first question. What would the methodology be for proving absence of something?

[STer]

That's not an answer to the first question. What would the methodology be for proving absence of something?

I don't believe you can prove the absence of something with 100% certainty - which is precisely the point agnostics are making.

[PatrickC]

I don't believe you can prove the absence of something with 100% certainty - which is precisely the point agnostics are making.

 

Which is why debating this any further will be frustrating for all concerned.. STer's position is that 'probability' is the most rational position from his perspective.. Accept 'probability' by definition cannot prove anything  other than a stronger or weaker possibility depending on its gradient.. This is why you're a minarchist of course STer.

[STer]

Which is why debating this any further will be frustrating for all concerned.. STer's position is that 'probability' is the most rational position from his perspective.. Accept 'probability' by definition cannot prove anything  other than a stronger or weaker possibility depending on its gradient.. This is why you're a minarchist of course STer.

1) Probability isn't a "rational position." It's just a truism that the human mind assesses probabilities and acts based on them. What else can it possibly do? Are you claiming otherwise?

 

2) I've never made any statement of my position on the optimal size of government.