Dialogue with a skeptic

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darinhouston
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Re: Dialogue with a skeptic

Post by darinhouston » Wed Mar 28, 2012 7:23 pm

He was referring to the present dialogue with me. Here's my response I'm going to post tonight after I read it again.
Perhaps the two of us approach learning and knowledge differently. Perhaps, this is the root of the problem in my discourses with atheists/secular humanists, but I don’t think anything of this nature is worth discussing at 4 sentences at a time. I have no problem with length or depth, but if a limit is of value (and it is), I would propose we stick to one topic per sentence, or even one per paragraph.

Just for the record - since you questioned a factual assertion, (and because you insinuate I’m uninformed and fail to do my own research) I concede that it wasn't a 3.99 out of 4 -- my memory failed but I don't need to research it since I heard it from him with my own ears -- I went back and re-watched that portion of the debate – when pressed, what he said was he's not one of those silly 50/50 agnostics, he was more like a 6.9 out of 7 agnostic even though he previously said he was a 6 out of 7 agnostic (explaining his lack of ability to know ANYTHING with absolute certainty).

AK - You, I think, Richard, believe you have a disproof of God’s existence.
RD – no, no I don’t… You were wrong when you said that. I constructed, in the God Delusion, a seven point scale, of which 1 was I KNOW God exists, 7 is I know God doesn’t exist, and I called myself a 6.
AK – Why don’t you call yourself an Agnostic, then?!
RD – I do! Um, but I think …
AK – You are “described” as the world’s most famous atheist…
RD – Not by me, not by me. I’m a 6.9!
AK – You have your Boeing 747 argument to show it’s highly improbable…
RD – I believe that when you talk about agnosticism, it’s important to distinguish between “I don’t know whether x is true or not, therefore it’s 50/50 likely or not,” and that’s the type of agnostic that I am most definitely not! Um, I think one can place estimates of probability on these things, and I think the probability of any supernatural creator existing is very, very low, so let’s say I’m a 6.9. But, that still doesn’t mean that I am absolutely confident, that I absolutely KNOW, because I don’t.


This is silly but gets at what strikes me as an apparent intellectual snobbery common to those in your position – though my original recollection of 3.99/4 (99.75%) is factually incorrect (though I said 3.9 OR 3.99 and further that I was paraphrasing), note 3.9 would be 97.5%. You “corrected” me with 6 out of 7 (closer to his actual quote, but you assumed one source and I was referring to a recent exchange just this month). So, 6.9/7 is more like 98.6% -- within my 97.5-99.75 range and well above your 85.75 corrective. My point remains – he is as certain as to the non-existence of God as anything he knows to be true, and I think atheists who are afraid to “know” anything are just being plain silly and dishonest (at least with themselves). We all “know” what we mean by “know” and a 6/7 or 6.9/7 or WHATEVER is still a position of belief. Beyond sophomoric Matrix-style philosophies that "nothing is knowable," the fact remains that Dawkins is as certain of God’s non-existence as I am his existence. That was my point, and the point remains.

As to your other points, I won’t be spending time responding to them unless and until you fully respond to the open questions in our previous extensive discussion involving Steve Gregg. Except to say – you seem to have missed one of my posts which may not directly answer every specific question you’ve asked but gets at the heart of the premises superseding them (or we discussed previously). I have avoided nothing worthy of a response.

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