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Originally Posted by ubertuber
Isn't the difference between faith and expectation in the observations and repeatability of predictions? That's what science is all about. That's why crossing a bridge is different from believing all the stuff in the bible.
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Theoretically, i think, the answer is yes. In practice, such things are less certain. Not everything is testable, most things are not. The farther i get in my engineering education the more i come to understand how much of an approximation everything is. In actual reality, you can only make educated guesses as to whether the bridge is going to collapse, because as 35w showed, the fact that you can get some experts to sign off on the safety of a bridge doesn't make it safe.
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Originally Posted by willravel
And what are the odds of a bridge collapsing while I'm under it? 58 out of all major bridges in the world have ever collapsed. That's it. Statistically speaking, I'm safe. I have every way to know based on precedence.
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I'm sure everybody who happens to be on a collapsing bridge absolutely
knew that it was safe (except for the tacoma narrows bridge). Right? I mean, 58 out of all major bridges in the world have collapsed, so what are the odds of both a bridge collapsing, and that a specific person, out of the billions on this planet, would happen to be on it? They've got to be astronomical. I'm starting to convince myself it never happened- how could it, the odds are against it?
Likewise? I'm sorry, i'm not sure what you're getting at here.
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You're asking a vague question. What do you mean by existing?
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It's not vague, its impossible. We know nothing of nonexistence, how can we prove that we exist when we can't even prove that there is a single specific thing that doesn't exist?
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If we're talking about quantum physics, then matter tends to exist. What I'm talking about is way more basic. No real evidence exists to suggest that the JudeoChristian god exists, yet people say he's real. That's no logical or reasonable. Reason dictates that if something exists, in order to demonstrate or prove it's existence there is evidence.
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Reason dictates? Why? Why would reason dictate anything? You're putting the cart before the horse here; you're reasoning that it is unreasonable for something to exist for which there is no evidence. What sort of evidence can you possibly have to make such a bold claim? What kinds of assumptions are you making about the nature of existence and what sort of rigorous justification can you offer in their defense?
No real evidence exists to suggest that the JudeoChristian god exists, that's true. No real evidence exists to suggest that we exist either because all of the evidence that we could ever hope to gather is based on the assumption that we exist- i think, therefore i am. Just like all the evidence one could gather to support the notion that there is a god is based on the assumption that there is a god(at least it is as long as god continues this curious vow of silence
). Nobody can prove that we exist, and if you really think about it you can see that it functionally doesn't even matter if we really exist or not. If somehow it was shown that we don't actually exist, absolutely nothing would change about anything that we do.
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I exist from your perspective because there are words being typed in argument against your points. Since words don't come from nowhere, and even complex computers can't formulate arguments like this, reason dictates that you're arguing with at least someone. If you were ever in the area and we bumped into each other, your eyes would provide evidence that I was real. You must understand that you can trust your eyes, otherwise how can you believe what they read in the bible?
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I don't know that i can always trusts my senses. I know people who've gone crazy- they're pretty fucking convinced about some pretty, well, crazy, shit.