Inference and its role in NS (General)

by xeno6696 , Sonoran Desert, Monday, January 31, 2011, 01:05 (5044 days ago) @ dhw

dhw,-I will continue to serve my function as long as it is appreciated an/or called for! -As a minor aside, I appreciate your willingness to join me in building a framework to discuss these details... but I'm constantly reminded about how impossible it is to exclude the "philosophical" from these discussions...-My opposition to Dawkins is purely in the realm of an adherence to "truth." If we don't have evidence of "truth" we don't have truth. So if we have no evidence of God (as he himself has said publicly) we don't have any evidence based upon which to say "God does not exist." -Dawkins (and similar thinkers) look only upon those religious claims that have been made since the dawn of time and don't consider (mainly for operational reasons) things such as my strawman deism. Sam Harris has taken the position that it is only the claims that have been made that atheism attacks, but being who I am I must point out that all of us are metaphysicians. The corollary here is that if every person is a metaphysician, then every person makes some kind of claim and that atheism in this light is then in the position of attacking every conceivable form of theism.

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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.\"