Bold: No, I've been very consistent with the standard meaning of the phrase. If someone makes a claim, they bear the burden of proof.

Underlined: No. Just... no. Both sides can fail to make their case. I have no clue where you're coming up with this arbitrary assumption except from convenient orifices in your body.

You like to call things that are wrong "common sense." Are you quite certain you understand the meaning of that phrase? It's also very true that "common sense" conclusions are often false.

Oh yeah. I look like I'm a complete moron by insisting that if two people make claims that they both bear the burden of proof to justify the claim. It's totally insane, right? Clearly, one person can just make a claim and not justify it!

Nah. I'll continue with "I believe in things that correspond with the academic understanding" instead of using the "colloquial" meaning of things in order to pretend like I know what I'm talking about.

So... much... irony... coming from the guy who literally makes up facts, doesn't engage intellectually, and pretends like he's posting drunk in order to try to play off like he's not trying that hard.

I disagree. I think trying to distinguish between these statements only serves to cloud the matter.

The interview you quoted with Feynman (ok, I'm a bit of a groupie, I think he is, like, the best scientist of all time), pretty much demonstrates that point.

In the abstract, yes. If I know nothing more than the claim, then I have no reason to accept either claim as being true or false or more likely than the other. Perhaps a more precise way of stating it is that I may refuse to assent to either position.

As I've stated previously, you're working with an assumption of "innocent until proven guilty" which is an entirely different presuppositional attitude towards claims than anything related to the philosophical notion of the burden of proof. I warned you not to go down this path because you're clearly not knowledgeable, and yet here you are.

You must be a Trumpkin. This is what Trump does. Just start rambling about stuff you know nothing about and pretending like you're totally the smartest person. You must be mimicking your hero.

Done.

Of course you disagree! You disagree because he's right!

Just... no.

Wow.

I have little to say to this except I take offence to the implication that I am not an alcoholic. Both my liver and my doctor beg to differ.

You do seem pretty tilted, though. Again...

You seem pretty wrong... again.

Let me know when your brain is back on. Then we'll continue this beatdown.

Are you just trolling now?

Intelligence and rational thought are not always inline. Wishful thinking is so powerful that intelligent people can - and do - fall for it. Hence religion. People also tend to believe what their parents believed.

Have you read the rest of the thread? Grunching with a view that has been debated ad nauseam is not particularly helpful.

Extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence means that if you make a very unusual claim that the amount of evidence needed to establish that claim is higher than normal. Occam's Razor does not imply that the evidence needed to establish an unusual (or more complex) claim is higher than normal, just that all else being equal we should prefer simpler hypotheses.

Can you please just clarify your position and state that you accept the following statement:

"I propose, that any given proposition that any person makes, no matter how nonsensical on its face, is equally probable, prior to being debated, as the counterpoint that his or her proposition is not true".

Thanks.

What does "prefer" mean in this context?

Who made these rules? Why should we accept them? We should want to incentivize people to come up with new ideas, but your article says that doing so incurs an cognitive obligation on the person doing so. Why is that rule better than the rule that says that if someone proposes a claim then the listener incurs an obligation to disprove it?

It is useful to establish who has the burden of proof in situations where we are forced to render a verdict, eg in a courtroom. It's not clear to me what use it is supposed to have in philosophical conversations like this. There is little real sense in which people (at least in the US) are forced to decide whether they believe in god. Sometimes people make decisions that are contingent on their beliefs about god, but these are generally voluntarily chosen commitments and thus involve no external burden.

Here you go.

Your statement is presuppositional. By assuming that you already believe that the statement is nonsensical, you have already passed judgment on the claim before any debate could possibly have happened.

One can say the same thing about an OP that is grunches their own thread and repeats the same errors ad nauseum.

Dynamite was quoting an article that Aaron posted from RationalWiki.

I stated earlier in the thread that I disagree with this article's arguments and its conclusions - those being, that atheists are committing the same fallacy as theists by proposing (what the article says) is a similar argument. I believe the article uses a red herring of suggesting "many gods" to reach this conclusion, whereas this is largely irrelevant to the issue in question. If we reduce the question to one god, which is not an unreasonable position to take (since most of the theists in this thread believe in just the one), then the article ceases to have relevance.

You are never "forced" to render a verdict - you, personally, can always abstain. However, the people involved in the debate would like a verdict rendered, because they believe in the correctness of their position. If you want to sit on the fence, nobody is going to deny you that opportunity - just try to not get too many splinters.

Granted; you may also have noticed the person I was saying that to was supporting my point.

Anyway, calling me out on minor points of hypocrisy, true as they may be, is not going to fix the major gaping holes in your argument.

Re-stated without the subordinate clause that you, for some reason (there's another one), found relevant:

Can you please just clarify your position and state that you accept the following statement:

"I propose, that any given proposition that any person makes, is equally probable, prior to being debated, as the counterpoint that his or her proposition is not true".

Thanks.

Shifting the burden of proof is often considered to be a logical fallacy. Specifically, this means shifting the burden from the one making the claim (the burden to demonstrate the claim) to others (the burden to disprove the claim).

I find your reading of the statement to be unusual. Maybe you're approaching it with a different context in mind than the current conversation?

Can you elaborate on which conversations are "like this"?

A lot of reading for me to do there while I fire up some tourneys tomorrow. I'll get back to you on this once I've read it fully.

I'm not talking about abstaining. I'm saying that believing that god exists (or doesn't exist) doesn't incur an obligation to offer a proof of the belief. There is no such thing as a burden of proof, except in courtrooms. People can decide to offer arguments for their beliefs if they want, but they don't have an obligation to do so. They can sing a song about their beliefs or paint a picture if they want instead. Or do nothing.

You don't think that presupposing a conclusion is relevant in assessing claims? I'm not saying we don't do it, but it would be at least a little odd to assume otherwise.

That would be a rough approximation of my position. If someone claims X, then the only basis upon which I have to evaluate X at that moment is just that X was claimed. Why should I make any sort of assumption about X before assessing it?

But you seem to be implicitly suggesting that the only debate is external, and that there's not at least an internal debate. We have natural "internal discussions" (using a broad brush and painting this with more rationality than is experienced in reality) that evaluate claims as they arrive. Those are forms of bias which may or may not be justified, and it is important to recognize the nature of those biases when listening to the arguments put forth in the debate.

Insofar as the actual debate is concerned, if I'm listening to two people argue about something, I find no error in both sides having the burden of proof (that is, the responsibility to make an argument in favor of their claim).

It's also irrelevant.

That's okay. I'll take my chances with what you perceive to be holes. Up to this point, I do not believe I have introduced false facts into the conversation in order to support my position.

And you can make this point typing into your computer, while texting your friends on your mobile phone, and eating a nice medium rare (hopefully) steak.

If everyone took your view, then you would be sitting in a cave, wondering whether you could hunt down some animal tomorrow, and if you did, whether your god would send some lighting so you could start a fire and warm your hands. And that's if you're younger than 30 or so - if not, you'd probably be dead.

So, before you disparage the scientific method, and science in general, why don't you take a little time to think about what it has given you?