The Nature of this Conflict (Humans)

by xeno6696 , Sonoran Desert, Friday, January 15, 2010, 18:13 (5425 days ago)

I recently got into a bad argument with my brother in law over the nature of science and how it relates to agnosticism and atheism. It started when he told me that he didn't respect David Attenborough because he was an agnostic. I told him that I thought that agnosticism was a reasonable position, to which he responded with the Dawkins-rhetorical reply, (paraph.) "Because science said so," and the genuine "burden of proof," argument. -The problem here is that as I've argued before, science is about model-building, and science does not inform us at all about anything that isn't physical. I think he got further confused when I argued that zero evidence of God doesn't allow us to say in the definitive "God does not exist." Safer is the claim, "God probably doesn't exist," or my preferred, "I have no reason to believe in God."-The Dawkins view is that if you have zero evidence of something, then you are justified in saying that it doesn't happen or doesn't exist. To me, this isn't the behavior of a detached observer, but that of a judge. As far as I'm concerned, it is at this point that you stop being a scientist and become a layperson. (Of course, bringing up a supernatural being at large means you're not practicing science.) -That argument (which ended in me being called self-righteous) made me think hard about the zero-evidence problem. It is right and true, that the person making the claim must provide evidence of their claim, but the problem between materialists and immaterialists is that they have drastically different criteria as to what they consider valid evidence. This reared its head recently in the scientism post by David. -Materialists only view as evidence those things that they can isolate or manipulate, whereas it seems immaterialists (to my eyes) seem to think anything and everything is valid evidence. The problem with this is that there is no happy medium, and everyone just ends up fighting in circles; materialists being accused of scientism, and immaterialists as stupid. -Bottom line, unless you can agree on what is valid evidence, there is no way to effectively implement the burden of proof issue on this topic.

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\"Why is it, Master, that ascetics fight with ascetics?\"

\"It is, brahmin, because of attachment to views, adherence to views, fixation on views, addiction to views, obsession with views, holding firmly to views that ascetics fight with ascetics.\"