You are incorrect, it has been proven that the human mind does not think in ways of true or false

[citation needed]

Like how I don't share (believe in) Christian beliefs, yet I do not believe in Christian beliefs being false just because I do not share them.

Yes, you do. You necessarily do. Not believing something implies you believe it's falsehood. Otherwise you'd believe it.

I'm not sure you're entirely seeing my point here.

I'm not entirely sure what it is, to be honest.

The negation of a positive assertion necessarily entails some sort of negative evidence.

I have become very interested in epistemology, lately. It's probably the logical extension from my interest in ethics.

OT: I love the Toledot Yeshu.

Nothing's absolutely suitable, either.

That sort of scepticism gets you nowhere.

People who have different degrees of suitability regarding the "truth" of something are just called stupid when they cross a certain threshold.

As long as it can be agreed that one cannot "prove a negative", yeah.

It can't. Of course you can.

So long as prove = evidence to a suitable degree. Since nothing is absolutely provable.

I think you already made a thread about this.

"I do not believe in X" is passive disbelief, whereas "I believe X is false" implies active disbelief.

Saying is passively is the equivalent of tacking on "in my opinion" when you make a subjective statement. It's just a way to placate sensitive people, which... Fuck that.

So it's actually just a null semantic issue, as opposed to a real epistemic one?

Can't say I'm a fan.

Quote from: Meta Cognition on February 08, 2015, 05:56:57 AM

epistemological

Meta's word of the week.

OT: I dunno, there doesn't seem to be a significant difference except in certainty of the belief.

This really is an issue for me because I hear atheists say it all the time (see: Armoured Skeptic on Youtube). Whether or not you assert the falsehood of an entity or assert a lack of belief of an entity. . . It seems the same to me.

It's fucking with my head.

In some instances, socially. No more, however, than men.

I may have to redact my offer of a potential conversation tonight, since I'm going out to celebrate my 18th >.>

I'm on a cross-country trip to Florida, so that kind of discussion isn't really meant to be done from a phone. Tonight at the hotel, maybe?

Sure, I ain't going nowhere.

I'm calling it Meta's Trident because Hume gets his fork and I have a giant ego.

So, I've been working on this for the past hour or so and I thought I'd drop it here. It's essentially an argument against a conception of a theistic (and, perhaps, deistic) deity which relies on three thrusts:
1) Absence of evidence is evidence of absence.
2) Analytic propositions don't entail synthetic conclusions.
3) A purely non-empirical deity has no epistemic value whatsoever.

First:
- I demonstrated this with Bayesian probability is that other, very mathsy thread. I think other people grasp it better if I use an analogy, however. The propositions is this: There exists an invisible unicorn around Loch Ness, which floats around on the surface of the water from dusk till dawn and summons a spiritual bear to kidnap nearby, misbehaving children and transports them to his transdimensional nether-realm.

A group of researchers set up camp for a year, and record the loch every night. Alongside this, they gather data about current and historical instances of missing children within a certain radius of the loch and watch for annual patters while comparing it to the data from other regions. They find nothing. This satisfies the three necessary assumptions of: empirical potential; improbability; and a fruitless search for evidence. Nobody is going to argue we can't reasonable the conclude the probable non-existence of such a unicorn and his bear.

Second:
- Analytic propositions don't entail synthetic conclusions. Do I really need to explain this one? It's the entire reason why the ontological argument doesn't work; you can't simply define something into existence.

Third:
- This cuts to the heart of epistemology, itself. But, fundamentally, epistemology comes down to the functional operation of making sure our conceptual frameworks are non-contradictory, and gathering reliable information about the empirical world. A God which is, by definition, non-empirical has no influence and therefore no epistemic value to us whatsoever.

Quote from: Meta Cognition on February 07, 2015, 06:35:41 AM

A dog.

Why did you kill the dog?

It was going to attack me.

Quote from: Kupo on February 06, 2015, 08:47:29 PM

I believe you never actually went to England.

I did and it fucking sucked.

Fuck you.