That’s a phrase that I heard recently, and I think that it’s from some famous philosopher, but uhm…

I don’t know how to debunk it.

I’m doing my best to believe without thinking too much about that.

Some days it gets hard tho, so I’d like to hear you guys’ take on it.

  • Angry_Autist (he/him)@lemmy.worldEnglish
    12·
    16 hours ago

    I myself am an atheist in that I choose to only believe things that I can prove.

    That’s not true, you can’t prove your mother loves you but I’m sure you believe she does

    • immutable@lemmy.zipEnglish
      31·
      15 hours ago

      I should probably say that the weight I give a claim has a direct relationship with the evidence for the claim.

      At some unspecified threshold of weight it become likely enough to be something I believe to be true.

      Taking your counter argument to its extremes you can’t really prove anything. At any point I could go, what proof do you have and I could wave it away as being a trick, you are nothing more than a brain in a jar and I’ve sent you false sensory inputs to make you believe that proof.

      There is a claim, my mother loves me. She cared for me growing up, she sacrificed for me, she proclaims her love for me. I have some evidence for the claim, enough that I believe the claim to be true.

      So I believe that, I don’t truly know it, one could argue you never really know how another feels about you. Actions and words can be false in their nature, many a scammed person believed they were loved by another when that wasn’t the case.

      Now given a claim of the supernatural, one which is predicated on the idea that “this thing is outside of that which can be measured and tested and you have to believe the claim in the absence of evidence” I find that line of reasoning incomprehensible.

      There are many things I could believe, even really nice things, great things, but it doesn’t make them so. I could have believed that my sick old dog would live forever and get better, it would have been nice, but that doesn’t make it true.

      So how should we decide what ideas to give weight to. I find the most sensible way is to give weight to claims based on evidence. My dog will not die but be immortal, that would be great, I love my dog dearly. The claim though runs counter to the experience of all dogs though, so it’s a pretty wild claim. I would need some sort of compelling evidence to believe otherwise. And ultimately, as nice as it would have been for my faithful dog to live forever, to get better and continue enjoying his life alongside me, it was not the case. He and I shared a finite time together and the claims of his immortality were given their rightful weight.