Believe in God #2

[Rumblood]

because...
Note that we're not talking about the case when Grannpappy himself says he does have that thing in his pocket, same as god can't say "I do exist" to get "No you fucking don't" as an anwser, which would be weird indeed.

I assume that if I have no knowledge on the matter, my default stance is "not believing", so I actually have to get a reason to believe in something, not reason not to believe.

Believing what? That I was wearing clothes at the time of that post? When I ask am I wearing clothes, yes or no, your default answer is no?
You have absolutely no basis for that opinion whatsoever. It is illogical to answer either yes or no. The answer is, you don't know and you can't know. As Xant says, the best guess you can make is that it is a 50/50 probability, which is still the same as saying you don't know, nor do you lean one way or the other.

[Brrrak]

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I only get annoyed when people say "My sky-fairy says..." and then tries to shove it down your throat. No, your sky-fairy didn't say anything. Some humans wrote some things down they saw when eating moldy rye bread and said it came from the sky-fairy. Well when I did the same thing, I visited the sky-fairy myself and he told me that in actuality I was the sky-fairy, only the sky-fairy kept me from knowing it until then because really the sky-fairy is the only being in existence and was very lonely and so to overcome this, the sky-fairy splits off parts of itself and hides that knowledge from those parts so that it seems as though the universe is populated with billions of beings instead of just the single lonely sky-fairy. Sad really, but the sky-fairy has done what it could do to fool itself and not be so sad and feel at least a little less lonely, which is the main reason the sky-fairy hides from us all. We would recognize ourselves and the veil would be lifted, putting us back in that miserable lonely existence once again. It was so terrible that we can't go through that again, and so we maintain the farce to keep ourself from being so miserably alone.

So there.

Man, ergot is pretty bleak, isn't it?

[Macropus]

No, you have no reason to assume one way or the other. That means it'd be stupid to say "I don't believe you have X in your pocket, because I don't even know if you're wearing pants." Your map being blank has nothing to do with the state of the territory. If you have no more information than that, a rational agent does not say "I don't believe you." A rational agent says "I have no way of knowing; therefore, it is a 50-50 possibility."

Believing what? That I was wearing clothes at the time of that post? When I ask am I wearing clothes, yes or no, your default answer is no?
You have absolutely no basis for that opinion whatsoever. It is illogical to answer either yes or no. The answer is, you don't know and you can't know. As Xant says, the best guess you can make is that it is a 50/50 probability, which is still the same as saying you don't know, nor do you lean one way or the other.

Eh, where are my english skills to explain that... 
Look, there are two kinds of questions - first kind is whether or not some fact is a fact. Like, "Does God exist?", "Do I have a pocket?". Second kind is whether or not you think/believe some fact is a fact, like "Do you believe in God?", "Do you think I have a pocket?".
Now, the question you asked is from first category. I don't know whether or not you're wearing clothes with pocket as a fact, I just don't have any evidence, as you pointed out, so I can only answer "I don't know". BUT that still allows me to answer to a similar question of the second category - whether or not I think you have pockets. Personally, I do think you have some pockets (note that I still don't know if it's true), just because people usually wear some, it's a guess as Zlisch pointed out.
 Now if we go back to religion. Agnostics do not say "God exists, I know it", or "God doesn't exist, I know it", they say, let me quote Xant: "you don't know and you can't know". (note that religious people usually do know there is God, same as some atheists know there is no God, they might have no evidence but at least they have something they consider as evidence).
Now let's say I'm agnostic, and I think to myself "God may exist or not, I don't know it. But it wouldn't make much sence to me if he does, the world seems to work in other ways, so I think he doesn't exists, so why would I believe in religion".
So in that sentence I state that:
1) I don't know if God exists
2) I DON'T believe in God.
I think that makes some sence.

[Xant]

If you don't have any evidence, why would your default answer then be "no, I don't believe you have this thing in your pocket, because I don't know whether you're wearing clothes right now"? Why is there a "because" in there? Would you believe he had something specific in his pocket if he WAS wearing clothes..? "I don't know" is the only sensible answer.

[Molly]

I didn't read everything so go easy on me but what about experience?

If you don't know whether someone is wearing clothes or not, wouldn't experience tell you that "normally" people wear clothes? You would assume that everyone is wearing some clothes and not being butt-naked.

Just saying...

[Macropus]

If you don't have any evidence, why would your default answer then be "no, I don't believe you have this thing in your pocket, because I don't know whether you're wearing clothes right now"? Why is there a "because" in there? Would you believe he had something specific in his pocket if he WAS wearing clothes..? "I don't know" is the only sensible answer.

That's correct, the word "because" shouldn't be there since it's just a guess. What I wrote in my last post is still legit though.

I didn't read everything so go easy on me but what about experience?

If you don't know whether someone is wearing clothes or not, wouldn't experience tell you that "normally" people wear clothes? You would assume that everyone is wearing some clothes and not being butt-naked.

Just saying...

That's right, but we're taking all this pocket thing as an example of (not) believing in God, and we can't have any experience regarding God because there's no norm on this matter.

[Huscarlton_Banks]

I think he was trying to say that the default position is not necessarily "I have no way of knowing, therefore it is a 50-50 possibility" for very specific supernatural or incredible claims that defy physical evidence, not a vague claim of a divine being.

A claim that an individual is wearing clothes, and has something in their pockets is different from a claim that an individual is wearing clothes, and has a device that produces infinite energy in their pocket.

[Macropus]

Long story short, the point is that you can still believe or not believe in God even though you don't know for sure if he exists or not. That's why it's called "belief" and not "knowledge".

[Xant]

I didn't read everything so go easy on me but what about experience?

If you don't know whether someone is wearing clothes or not, wouldn't experience tell you that "normally" people wear clothes? You would assume that everyone is wearing some clothes and not being butt-naked.

Just saying...

From a Bayesian perspective, yes. But whether someone has clothes or not (that is, if you have no more data to go on than the question - if you can see someone is naked, then the probability of them having something in their pocket decreases rather sharply..) is more or less irrelevant when asked the question "do I have something in my pocket?"

[Ninja_Khorin]

Do you believe in gods? - No.
Do you believe in the non-existance of gods? - No.
Do you know that gods exists? - No.
Do you know that gods do not exist? - No.

I do not believe in either. I require proof to believe. Since atheism is defined by an absence or rejection of belief in gods, I am an atheist.
Which is what I have, a lack of belief. Obviously either gods exist or they don't, but I don't have to believe either for the time being, but simply because I do not believe in gods I am an atheist. There are so called gnostic atheists who claim to have knowledge and also believe in god's non-existance.

Proving negatives is also practically impossible, so believing in negatives makes no sense, however to be able to function in this world it's much more coherent to not believe things until proven and continue to function as if they did not exist. Otherwise you run into all the teapot, unicorn and spaghetti monster nonsense. God's non-existance will be disproven when we find god, it will never be conclusively proven.

Which comes back to why I am an agnostic atheist. I lack faith in gods, and I lack knowledge of gods.

Whether you have clothes or not, I will answer:
"Do you believe I have clothes?" No
"Do you believe I am naked?" No
"Do you know I have clothes?" No
"Do you know I am naked?" No

However, if you tell me that you have clothes, I will believe you since it is an extremely mundane thing, I still won't technically know, but mundane claims require mundane evidence.

[Clockworkkiller]

I believe in only one god

And that's based god

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[Molly]

[...]But whether someone has clothes or not [...] is more or less irrelevant when asked the question "do I have something in my pocket?"

I don't get that. Isn't it essential to have clothes on to have something in your pocket? So how is the question about clothes irrelevant?

You would have to deny somebody the question about clothes if you want him to answer a question about something in a pocket without it. That doesn't make it irrelevant though.

Tbh, I have to feeling that I am missing the point though.

[Xant]

I don't get that. Isn't it essential to have clothes on to have something in your pocket? So how is the question about clothes irrelevant?

You would have to deny somebody the question about clothes if you want him to answer a question about something in a pocket without it. That doesn't make it irrelevant though.

Tbh, I have to feeling that I am missing the point though.

It's essential to have clothes to have something in your pocket, yes. You can also have clothes with no pockets in them. Or you can have clothes with pockets with nothing in them. The person asking the question either has something in their pockets or they do not. Neither option becomes more or less likely because the person being asked the question doesn't know whether the question-asker is wearing clothes.

[Molly]

Oww, the question was if the asking person is wearing clothes?

That is indeed irrelevant.

[pepejul]

LIARS !

I HAVE NO CLOTHES
BUT I HAVE SOMETHING IN MY POKET !!!

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