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Dear David F,

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In my previous post to you, I have just noticed I added a colon punction-mark after the data processing link which, unfortunately, prevents it from finding the reference.

Here it is again, without the colon:

http://forum.onlineopinion.com.au/thread.asp?article=10725&page=8

Thank you for an excellent text on freedom of expression.

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Dear Squeers,

Thanks for that. We generally have to decide things on the basis of limited knowledge and prejudice. If we wait to make the decision until we have better knowledge the optimum time for making the decision will usually have passed. I assume in such a case most of us would not marry.

In OLO we can scatter our opinions and prejudices without having to make any decisions.

"The Atlas of World Population History" has many maps of population changes for the last 2400 years in various countries and parts of the world. Population data until recently is questionable. Capitalism is a recent phenomenon in modern history. My feeling about social change is that it is primarily driven by technology and the competition for resources.

One example of technological change driving population growth is the seed drill. The invention of inserting seeds in the ground rather than scattering it by hand appeared in China about 2,200 years ago. It did not reach all of Europe until the early twentieth century when it arrived in Sicily. With the seed drill grain yield from seed grain is about 20 to 1 rather than about 4 or 5 to 1 from hand scattering. That in conjunction with the human seed drill helped produce the early large populations in China and India.

Dear Oliver,

I thought we have “rounded of” (as Dan put it), this discussion but since you continue I take it as a challenge to continue as well, although I am afraid - like many times in the past - we are starting to go in circles, to repeat ourselves.

I agree with the summary in your first paragraph, except that, I repeat, we should not confuse delineating the world-world view alternatives with arguments in favour of this or that.

First Cause is a classical argument for the existence of a Being beyond the physical world. It is convincing for those who already believe in Him (for whatever reasons), not for others. In the next paragraph you seem to be outlining arguments in support of “unbelief”, the Sagan maxim, again convincing only for those who already believe in Sagan’s maxim (you also mix these arguments with things that are the subject of what physicists - whether theists or atheists - have to decide about).

You use the elusive term “evidence”. I know many atheists like that word, perhaps not unlike the way many theists like the word “truth”. I believe there is “absolute truth” about what iactually exists, though we cannot know it. And I believe there is “evidence” for all sorts of banal, everyday claims, evidence that is convincing to everybody, but there is no evidence convincing to atheists, regarding the existence of that Something that is not reducible to the physical. There is evidence for It that is convincing to myself, and others, but this evidence cannot be communicated - i.e. made convincing - to everybody. Besides, there is also something called circumstantial evidence.

Sorry, this brings me too far away from my undertaking to only clarify the alternatives, not to argue. (ctd)

(ctd)
The four possibilities in your last paragraph are not necessarily mutually exclusive. You might remember the discussion I - and others - had on this OLO with Peter Sellick about the God of Abraham, Jacob and Isaac (seen through “the lens of Nicaean scripture”) versus the God of philosophers (and theist scientists). They are two faces of the same God. This symbol is intrinsic to the Christian tradition, the Christian model of the numinous Something, but I think a similar situation can be discerned when viewing the numinous Something from within other “higher” religions. Also, I am not sure what you mean by this numinous Soemthing being "not divine" or a "specific religion", except for what I said in the previous sentence.

Again, thanks for your comments that make me think over and (hopefully) better formulate my own ideas.

George wrote: "You use the elusive term “evidence”. I know many atheists like that word, perhaps not unlike the way many theists like the word “truth”."

Dear George,

Believers in something beyond the natural may use the word, truth, to label that belief.

I do not think the word, evidence, is used in that way.

Religionists sometimes try to label atheism as a form of belief. It isn't. Rejection of belief is not belief.

I think your statement about evidence and belief is a variant of labelling atheism as a belief.

I don't think evidence is an elusive term.

Dear david f,

I am sorry if you had the impression that I "labeled atheism as a form of (religious) belief", since I never claimed that. I simply mentioned two WORDS (truth and evidence) that are favoured by certain groups of people, albeit two different groups. And I added that in both cases these groups see them as absolute, i.e. independent of the position of the person who uses these words, and that this apriorism is questionable.

I agree, neither “evidence” nor “truth” are elusive, when referring to everyday situations (or formal situation e.g. in mathematics). However, I think one has to be more careful when applying these terms in support of one’s world-view “axioms”, the choice between the two alternatives discussed with Oliver. When talking about world-view positions, what I see as truth might not be seen as truth by you, and what I see as evidence might not be seen as evidence by you. And, of course, vice versa. So a statement like “I shall believe in God if you show me evidence that will convince me” is in a certain sense a tautology.

"Belief" in my dictionary is “an acceptance that a statement is true or that something exists” or “something one accepts as true or real; a firmly held opinion or conviction” or a religious conviction. Thus, except for the last case, belief always has to refer to something, usually a statement, e.g. about the existence of something.

I understand if somebody has no religious belief. This used to be expressed as not believing in God (when the concept of God was uniformly understood), which I reformulated - also inspired by discussions on this OLO - as Sagan’s maxim, believing that nothing exists that cannot be (potentially) investigated by science.

I do not understand what it means that somebody has no belief at all, i.e. does not believe in anything about this world (see my reference to Molière’s character in my post to Squeers).

What is also confusing is the inability of many languages to distinguish between religious belief and faith or between evidence and proof.