Zosimus wrote: ↑June 18th, 2021, 7:33 pm
Sy Borg wrote: ↑June 18th, 2021, 5:48 pmWell, I have no reason to believe you because you made claims but you put up no collateral. You have helped to illustrate my point. There is no cost to you if you are wrong.
If that's the point of your story, then it's a pretty poor story. You can go ahead and gather evidence as to whether the person is actually going to get paid tomorrow. Personally, I don't care. If I have collateral, I don't need evidence. Let him not pay. Who cares?
Requiring collateral is the same as requiring evidence, so you have proved my point. Why do you require evidence when it comes to small sums of money, yet you need no evidence at all to adopt beliefs that affect your entire life?
Zosimus wrote: ↑June 18th, 2021, 7:33 pm
Your example does not work. If dehydrated, I would need evidence that the water was unsafe. That would require a smell test and then a a taste test.
I know exactly how you feel. You remind me of Christians who reason that they need evidence that God
doesn't exist. You know, it reminds me of Pascal's Wager. Since atheism leads to dead and rotting in the ground, maybe we should just put our money on God. We may be wrong, but we will be no worse off than a thirsty man in the desert drinking water that might be unsafe.
No, if I t remind you of such Christians, then you are wildly wrong. The fact is that this is a philosophy forum, where claims are expected to be backed by evidence. Otherwise people will make any manner of claims, so unsubstantiated claims must be challenged.
Pacal's wager is absurd. If God exists, it won't be clueless enough to be fooled by a post-ape's transparent manipulations?
Zosimus wrote: ↑June 18th, 2021, 7:33 pm
Christianity, strikes me as less intelligent and sophisticated than Buddhism, Hinduism, Taoism and even Judaism, relying on emotion rather than understanding for spiritual attainments.
Oh, ok. So, no evidence required. It simply has to
strike you as less intelligent and sophisticated. For example, if evolution struck me as less intelligent and sophisticated than the idea that God created the universe, that would be good enough, right?
We gain impressions over the years. So often I have have seen examples of blatant stupidity, dishonesty and manipulativeness in many, many Christian claims over the years. And every time their dodgy claims are disproved, they NEVER admit being wrong! It's always just a quiet revision of claims so that the God of the Gaps remains possible.
Evolution is obviously real, so what anyone thinks of it doesn't matter. Evolution is indisputable in every possible way - with literal mountains of evidence for and absolutely zero evidence against. Evolution is basically the same process as biological development to maturity, albeit writ large, applying to the entire biosphere. Imagine life without evolution. It would be like being conceived and never changing, never growing from zygote to embryo to foetus to baby to child to teen to adult to dead meat.
If a gods exists, evolution is its main tool. In fact, fundamentalist Christian denial of evolution is one of the best examples of the inherent naiveté of Abrahamic religions as compared with more thoroughly developed and more sophisticated far eastern counterparts, which pragmatically acknowledge natural dynamics. Fundamentalist Abrahamics, on the other hand, pretend that the phenomena don't exist to justify their literal reading of obviously metaphorical passages of the Bible.