Absence of faith

[tolman]

In the presence of someone doubting that anyone would think "there is no historical evidence that Jesus existed" I felt compelled to own up. That is what I believe. In fact I believe there is evidence that he didn't exist!

Some people might only be comfortable assigning probabilities but my internal processes eventually flip over in believing or not. Call it what you like, but I just wanted to point that my belief (or whatever) is that there never was a historical Jesus. And I'm having my doubts about Santa Claus too.

A huge amount depends on what you mean by 'historical Jesus' - what deviations from one or more holy-book descriptions it would take before you would count an actual real person as not matching the religious descriptions.

[Harryprice]

However they were later derived in a field of endeavor called statistical physics. In other words they dropped out of pure mathmatics without recourse to the physical world of sensation and perception.

To say that pure mathematics definitely rules the universe is to make a massive philosophical assumption. It may be correct but we cannot know that. It is simply based on current evidence!

Even a theory derived from mathematics may turn out to be a special case of a more general, currently unknown, mathematical principle. Maths, like science, is always making new discoveries.

Were you to consider the universality of doubt where you acknowlwdge the possibiliy that the reality of your sesnes is somehow faked ...

No need. I already KNOW my senses are faked.

If in fact I found a perpertual motion machine that all my observations indicated was the genuine article then I would still not doubt the Second Law of thermodymaics any more than I would doubt Pythagorus' theorum upon seeing a right angled euclidean triangle whose opposite side had a square which did not add up to the sum of the squares to the adjacents. Instead I would have to conclude that my senses had been somehow fooled.

As I said before, evidence always trumps logic and theory, even that based on pure maths. To deny such evidence is not scientific.

[tolman]

Why should you be any more offended by someone claiming to talk to your relative specifically. Either those claiming to commune with the dead offend you or not, who they think they are communing with is irrelevant, however irritating.

I wouldn't be offended by someone believing in general that they could talk to the dead, any more than I'd be offended by someone believing they were a chicken.

However, if someone seemed to be a fraud, I might well be annoyed by that.
If someone incorrectly claimed to be speaking on behalf of someone I cared about, I might not like that whether the person concerned was alive or dead, and whether the claimed method of contact was magical or not.
If the person were dead, and the supposed medium hadn't been nearly as close to them as I had been, then irrespective of the issue of mediumship, if I didn't actually want to talk about the person with them, and they wouldn't stop talking, I might well get annoyed purely from an invasion of privacy angle. Close relationships can give a feeling of partial ownership/exclusivity, and strangers have limited rights to talk about those things to an individual if the person isn't interested.

If someone was talking publicly about what a dead relative of mine had supposedly told them, the extent to which I got annoyed would depend on what the person was claiming they'd been told, and how self-serving the claims were.

[Matt]

To say that pure mathematics definitely rules the universe is to make a massive philosophical assumption. It may be correct but we cannot know that. It is simply based on current evidence!

Even a theory derived from mathematics may turn out to be a special case of a more general, currently unknown, mathematical principle. Maths, like science, is always making new discoveries.



No need. I already KNOW my senses are faked.



As I said before, evidence always trumps logic and theory, even that based on pure maths. To deny such evidence is not scientific.

OK Okay I get it, you don't understand the concept. I wouldn't make such a big fuss about your cognitive failures if I were you though

[Harryprice]

OK Okay I get it, you don't understand the concept. I wouldn't make such a big fuss about your cognitive failures if I were you though

Fine, I'm stupid. Happy?

[Drop Bear]

I grew up in a family culture in which 'upsetting someone'' was almost a capital crime. I was also taught to respect others and their beliefs as a default position. That is no longer the case.

I accept that people have the right to believe anything they wish,to express those beliefs, and even be offended by disagreement. So do I. The feelings and beliefs of others and their rights to express them are as important as mine,no more and no less.

I don't go around trolling people just for fun, nor do I usually resist expressing an honest opinion,except with my 84 year old mother.BUT, I do not place such rights above my personal safety.

In my opinion,to constantly defer to others for fear of giving offence is to be manipulated and is moral cowardice.

My respect is earned,or not. That may be why I'm contemptuous of most politicians; I assess on their actions,not their words.

No one has the right not to be offended (attributed to John Cleese)

[Dr B]

As I said before, evidence always trumps logic and theory, even that based on pure maths. To deny such evidence is not scientific.

This is not always the case. There are things like false-positives and spurious results - which are forms of evidence that lead to incorrect conclusions. I often see a result I dont believe or I may be aware of other evidence which makes the opposite prediction. I run an experiment - get a different result. Now we have two forms of evidence. It's not as clear cut as you are making it seem here, as it is often the case that logic helps us decide between forms of evidence.

You can argue that my new evidence undermines the old evidence - but it's logic which shows why my new evidence may be of better quality. If my failure to replicate is based on a flawed experiment, then the orginal evidence remains the most likely (even if it is still a false positive) based purely on 'evidence'. However, when logic enters the frame - this helps to put things more into perspective.

Logical arguments make a far bigger contribution to science than many people think. Facts do not speak for themselves!

There is an old saying in some quarters of science "if the facts dont fit the theory, well, it's too bad for the facts".