Re: % of religious homeschoolers

<montestruc@xxxxxxxxx> wrote in message
>
> Karl Johanson wrote:
>> <montestruc@xxxxxxxxx> wrote in message
>> news:1127826587.537944.293130@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
> -----------------snip
>> > I hold that atheism requires faith in the non-existance of god(s).
>>
>> No it doesn't, it just requires not believing. Doesn't mean you have
>> to
>> believe that there is no god, you just avoid using belief (or faith)
>> as
>> a tool.
>
> Nope -- disbelief in soemthing that cannot be proven one way or
> another
> is an act of faith.
>
> As a matter of fact in physics many things that have been eventually
> proven seemed most unreasonable to people who lived before. Many of
> these people "disbelived" in gravity, atoms, heat, electricity, and a
> long laundry list of other things.
>
> The honest approach is to accept that what cannot be proven one way or
> another is something you do not know one way or another. To puff up
> and
> assert that god(s) does (do) not exist, is to perform an act of faith.

I haven't asserted god doesn't exist. Merely that I don't believe it
does, as I don't use belief.

You can believe an assertion. You can disbelieve an assertion. You can
not believe an assertion (whether or not belief is a tool you tend to
use).

>> > I
>> > am a militant agnostic. Militant in that I assert that I do not
>> > know
>> > the answers to religious questions, and unless you have proof, YOU
>> > DON'T EITHER. That last being the militant part.
>>
>> I know that there are an infinite number of possible untestable
>> religious conjectures. As they're untestable, and without anything
>> else
>> to go on, the odds
>
> Odds mean nothing other than a statement of one's own ignorance.

Yeah, so? With odds like one in infinity that someone who chooses to
believe an untestable religious conjecture has the right one (assuming
one of them is correct), the level of ignorance is pretty high.

>If
> you hold a six shot revolver in your hand with one live shell in a
> chamber, then spin the cylinder and close it and hold the gun to your
> head, the "odds" are 5/6 that you will live if you pull the trigger.
> The fact is however that either the loaded chamber is under the
> hammer,
> or it is not, and odds are only a statement that you are ignorant of
> where the loaded chamber is relitive to the hammer.

Yeah.

> In this case, you have no way to even calculate proababilities at all,
> as too much is hidden from view. Imagine if you are playing russian
> roulett with a revolver someone else either loaded with an unknown
> number of shells, or did not load at all.

Yes. An infinite number of possible chambers and maybe one is loaded and
maybe not. Odds so small as to not be concerned about. I'm not worried
about being shot by such a gun, and I'm not worried about Elohim dumping
me in burning pitch for eternity after I die.

>That is the state of your
> ignorance about the existence, or lack of same about god(s). Your
> disbelief is an act of faith.

Don't drag me into your personal hell. I'm 'not believing', not
'disbelieving'. I'm not using belief. My intellect tells me that the
odds of any given god out of the infinite number of conjecturable
ones, are vanishingly small, so I don't believe. My intellect similarly
tells me that the odds of the existence of the Easter Bunny is so small
that I
don't believe.

> FYI - I did a lot of experimental work in graduate school, and took
> advanced courses in statistics.

Good on ya.

>That bit about odds being a statement
> about your ignorance is the truth.

Well I always think people are way more right when they tell me
something, then tell me it's the truth.

> It is possible, sometimes, to quantify your level of ignorance.

That's what I did.

>That is where one can honestly talk about "odds".

Karl Johanson



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