[FamousFourTops]

I am 100%, irrevocably, absolutely, for all time EVER sure that the big guy in the sky doesn't exist, and I will continue to think so until someone actually shows me some proof; Him turning up in front of me would probably be the only thing that would constitute that proof.

[Kri]

(Original post by NaUmarly)
Erm, I think you'll find you're not meeting me soon.

Gotta keep it on the down low now that the bf is around I suppose

[Jepira4661]

Still on the fence about this one. Will probably never know.

[jmj]

(Original post by SsEe)
Thanks for the response. To business! I told you that these aliens are capable of engineering the history associated with the Bible and also capable of giving you this feeling that it's trustworthy and this feeling of a connection with God. So you can't use your trust / the history as a reason for your certainty.

I'll give a cleaner example. How do you know the entire universe didn't just pop into existence 10 seconds ago? Exactly as it was. Your brain filled with memories giving you the illusion that the universe has been here for a long time. In this scenario, God doesn't exist, the Bible was never written by humans and Jesus never existed. Your feeling of trust in the Bible is only there because it appeared in your brain 10 seconds ago. You can examine history. All the evidence will be just as you think it is, but it never really happened.

There's only one way to still claim 100% certainty: blind faith. Not based on evidence or rational thinking. This is by definition. I've set these up to be completely indistinguishable to you so no observation or reasoning can separate them. But in order to have 100% certainty, you have to discard ones in which God doesn't exist and keep those in which he does. For that, you need blind faith. And in that case, I'll ask this: What makes you think that you're so special? That your blind faith is some kind of oracle capable of picking out what's true and what's not?

If you don't claim 100% certainty then you can get away with phrases like "well the evidence points to...". For example, it certainly seems that you're reading this text right now. So perhaps you can be justified in believing that you really are and that this isn't just some illusion. But I wouldn't put the "100% certain" stamp on it. In fact, due to some odd physics, if I had to write down (on the record) my percentage certainty that I existed 10 seconds ago, I'd start 0.00000... and sooner or later I'd get bored of writing out zeros!

Hi Sorry, I think I missed the details of this scenario- i.e. the aliens are capable of engineering and manipulating history and manipulating emotions.

An interesting post. However there's one thing that I'm not sure of still. Let's say this alien scenario actually exists- that the universe appeared 10 seconds ago and everything that points to it having existed for a long time is illusion. Now, in this scenario, you say to claim 100% certainty would be blind faith, but is it blind? It would still be empirical, rational evidence from my point of view.

In my 100% certainty, there is of course faith that makes this 100% certain- but I would not call this blind faith, just as I wouldn't call it blind faith to assume the universe is only 10 seconds old. It is faith based on trust, based on the empirical, rational evidence of the Bible.

[SsEe]

(Original post by jmj)
Hi Sorry, I think I missed the details of this scenario- i.e. the aliens are capable of engineering and manipulating history and manipulating emotions.

An interesting post. However there's one thing that I'm not sure of still. Let's say this alien scenario actually exists- that the universe appeared 10 seconds ago and everything that points to it having existed for a long time is illusion. Now, in this scenario, you say to claim 100% certainty would be blind faith, but is it blind? It would still be empirical, rational evidence from my point of view.

In this scenario your faith is completely wrong - by definition! I'm saying that the possibility of the scenario, even if it's only slim, should prevent 100% certainty in something that must be false if that scenario does turn out to be true. This sounds like something that can be written in modal logic.

You claim to have faith that this scenario is false. There's nothing that really suggests that the universe is older than 10 seconds. In fact it's vastly more likely to have appeared a fraction of a second ago than billions of years ago. But where are you if you go with that? It means the science you based your conclusion on isn't real either! So it's sensible to go with the assumption that the universe is older but you don't put 100% certainty next to that! You have to be completely open about this.

I suppose a good question to you, is this: Do you include this kind of thing into you claim of certainty, or should your claim really be more like "assuming what we see is real, and we're not brains in jars, and aliens didn't play tricks etc then I'm certain" ?

On the blind faith issue, to be honest, I'm not sure what distinguishes faith from blind faith. I'd take the latter to mean "based on no evidence". But then what's the former? Based on very little or bad evidence together with wishful thinking? I don't know.

In my 100% certainty, there is of course faith that makes this 100% certain- but I would not call this blind faith, just as I wouldn't call it blind faith to assume the universe is only 10 seconds old. It is faith based on trust, based on the empirical, rational evidence of the Bible.

To me, it's completely absurd to think that Albert Einstein might have put down a stupid mathematical error that's been missed / covered up by many thousands of scientists and students over the last 100 years. I trust the abilities of these people and I trust that there isn't a conspiracy. Am I 100% sure? Nope. Maybe I feel 100% sure because I can't distinguish 100% sure from 98% sure but if I think about it and put it down on the record, it's not 100%. How sure are you about this? Would you put down 100% ?