[Dragaera] OT: agnosticism (no flame) (was, long ago: (no spoilers) The 17 [Great Weapons])

[Philip Hart]

[reformatted to recapture original layout]

On Sun, 27 May 2007, Mark A. Mandel wrote:

> ----- Original Message ----
From: Philip Hart <philiph at slac.stanford.edu>

But of course there is objective evidence against Rudolph the Red-Nosed
Reindeer's cosmic battles with Mr. Mxtlplk and every other religion -
none has any evidence for it, or explanatory power, or susceptibility
to disproof, or moral utility, or compatibility with reason.  I don't know
the Flying Spaghetti Monster doesn't exist - I just don't believe in Him.
That doesn't require some special belief in itself.

-------

English is ambiguous here, as are many languages. "I don't believe X" can
mean either of
1.I believe not-X
2. It is not the case that I believe X
I think a lot of what's being said in this thread is rooted in confusion
between the two.

Your statement "I don't know the Flying Spaghetti Monster doesn't exist -
I just don't believe in Him", especially with the "just" in there, looks
to me more like #2 than like #1.


--------


Interestingly, I was specifically arguing against the distinction you
make - that is, I think it's unreasonable to distinguish between "I
disbelieve in evidenceless entity X" and "It is not the case that I
believe in evidenceless entity X".  This is from my point of view one
stance.


It used to be the case that there was no direct evidence for neutrino
masses - all other known fermions are massive, but the default
theoretical position was that neutrinos weren't.  I described myself
as believing that neutrinos had mass, but I could have said that I
"expected" it to be the case.  I expect I'm not a brain in a bottle,
for reasons described in Dennett's _Consciousness Explained_, but
what do I know.  If I turn out to be wrong (as I turned out to be
right about neutrinos) I would say, "Huh, that's interesting".  It's
my sense that people describing their belief in entity X would not
respond that way if !X were proven.