The reason I am skeptical about this is because I find this hard to accept with complete certainty that our memories represent what actually happened in the past. Is it possible to convince yourself that what actually happened in the past is really stored in your memory?

After reading through what I just wrote, this means that, I'm not actually skeptical of your argument, but of existence itself. Hmm

Since "God" is a placeholder for various different postulated entities, it doesn't make a lot of sense to have the same position wrt them all. Some of them are actually contradicted by evidence, others might be logically contradictory, yet others might be consistent with everything.
As a matter of psychological fact, I don't believe in any version of god I've ever encountered even the slightest bit, but my second-order-belief about whether that disbelief is justified varies, depending on what god we're talking about.

I think it's interesting that you use "know" with the theists and know for the atheists. That suggests that you are applying two different meanings of the word.

There's a lot wrong with what you said in your first post and what you're saying here, but since you say you're as closed-minded as the group you're talking about, it's probably not worth the effort to break it down for you.

The really interesting question is what you think the "real argument" is about. I'm pretty sure it's not what you think it is.

I didn't say there was a single "real argument". I said your first post had nothing of substance to it. All you said was call my post ironic, it had no argument. I don't see how I was being closed minded there. Point out to me how it's unreasonable to think theists seem to be more closed minded because a much higher percentage of them know their god exists. Is anybody ever able to say a different group is more closed minded without being ironic?

There's a lot wrong with your posts, but it's not worth my time trying to explain it to you.

See how you threw in that extra word "single"? This is like throwing in quotes around "know" for theists but not for atheists.

Correct. I never claimed to have made an argument. I don't think I need to.

You tell me.

If the answer is "no" then my comment stands with no further discussion necessary.

If the answer is "yes" then you have some work to do:

This isn't how it works. You're the one who made the positive assertion about the closed-mindedness of theists relative to atheists based on the data in the poll. You're the one who need to present the argument as to why your position make sense. It's not on me to prove that you're wrong.

My position is that open-mindedness and closed-mindedness is not reflected at all in the poll as it's presented. The argument is structured around the self-describing nature of the poll, as OP has stated as his intention.

It's okay if you don't want to. But for now, things stand with you making the positive assertion and failing to present a substantive argument to support it.

I'll take this step-by-step for you, since given the opportunity you enjoy derailing every thread into semantic masturbation.

(1) Gnostic theists believe in something for which there is no empirically validated evidence.

Agree or disagree?

Agree, but it matters not at all.

The basic issue at hand with (1) is that you're defining a sense of knowing which is not implied by OP's poll. Therefore, any inference based on defining "knowing" by "empirically validated evidence" is not a valid implication of the poll.

"Empirically validated evidence" is a standard that is not particularly useful when it comes to measuring most claims. It cannot be empirically validated that I just clapped my hands. Nevertheless, I just clapped my hands. (See also OP's statement about petting his cat. He's quite explicit that the individual is free to define the sense of knowing.)

That being said, I don't reject the claim you've made about "empirically validated evidence" with the meaning that your claim suggests.

Disagree.

For one thing history could count as evidence. Look at mangler241's thread on the day of Jesus' resurrection. It's a historical account provided by the bible and validated by historians.

They use history on people to make decisions in real life, too. In court cases, in employment decisions, in apartment rentals, etc.

That's my only observation.

Weigh it (think on it). I don't want to debate it.

(2) A person who's beliefs align more with empirical - and other scientific evidence - are more likely to value evidence higher than a person who's beliefs align more with weaker anecdotal forms of evidence - e.g. circumstantial, subjective, etc.

E.g. palm reader or astrologer versus researcher or medical doctor. On average, the researcher and medical doctor would value scientific evidence more.

Agree or disagree?

Confused.

The conflation of "empirical" and "evidence" (as two separate categories of ideas, not as the singular category called "empirical evidence") with "science" is really slippery. Also, the connection with (1) is completely absent.

(In addition, "alignment" does not imply any "value" statements.)

Wouldn't it be much simpler and far more intellectually honest to say up front whatever it is your argument actually is?

Why is me separating empirical evidence from other scientific evidence confusing you? And if it is, then feel free to combine them - it really doesn't matter, so long as you understand what I'm asking you. The connection with (1) is not important right now, and will only lead you astray - as I haven't explained enough yet.

Finally, it wouldn't be better if I say my argument up front because I've tried that before and you always pick on something small and go off on semantic tangents. I'm thinking that maybe this way, one may be able to effectively engage in a dialogue with you - without drifting astray.

With all due respect, there is a problem with letting you control the discussion without any idea of where you are heading. As long as your statements are clear and unambigous, there is no problem with agreeing with them. But when you start to make statements with unclear content, it becomes difficult to say yes or no.

If you have an argument that you think establishes a clear point, you should lay it out. Then we can judge its quality clearly without confusion and raise objections where appropriate. If you lay it out piecemeal we are forced to debate each nitpicky point along the way whether it is important to your final conclusion or not, since we don't know what your final conclusion is.

For example, I am with Aaron and would have no problem agreeing with (1). You can see from my posts that I wanted to clearly distinguish "to know" from the requirement for empirical evidence before I voted. (2) is a lot more problematic and I think misleading. I am a scientist and a researcher. I clearly value scientific evidence very highly when I am trying to answer scientific questions. But if the question is not a scientific question, then I have no expectation that scientific evidence is of any utility. I doubt if any scientist or researcher would. But a palm reader might because a palm reader is probably not capable of distinguishing a scientific question from any other.

Perhaps you might want to share the depth of your scientific training so that we can assess your likely capability for identifying a scientific question and what constitutes scientific evidence before we proceed.

It does matter because your claim is unclear, and probably false. Part of the question comes down to the particular domains of discussion. But I can't quite tell. Here's what you wrote:

Let's break it down to get rid of the excess words and rephrase it:

"A person whose beliefs align more with [empirical stuff] are more likely to value [empirical stuff] more than a person who places a lower value on [empirical stuff]"

I disagree with this. I see no necessary connection between alignment of beliefs about empirical evidence with the valuing of such evidence. Even if the palm reader doesn't value empirical evidence, his beliefs may align better with that empirical data than a young college student who aspires to be a scientist and ascribes to a highly empirical epistemology simply on the basis of actual life experiences.

As noted before, you're also carving out for yourself a particularly small subset of the human experience, as much of that human experience is not subject to the type of empirical validation that you're implying in (1).

I hope you get to it.

I'm going to pick on the same things either way.

If you just take a step back and think about the target you're shooting for, it seems fairly reasonable (at least to me) that there's little chance of making this work. How you're going to get from a self-identification of what it means to "know" something, to some very broad claim about open-mindedness and closed-mindedness of a broad category of persons seems to me basically an insurmountable gap. You might be able to prove me wrong, but I'm highly doubtful.

Great. Just to slightly rephrase what you said (for sake of simplicity/added clarity):

A person's beliefs can coincidentally align with empirically correct evidence, regardless of their preference or value for one type of evidence over other types (e.g. your palm reader example).

In the same way as above:

(3) Can a person's beliefs also coincidentally align with disproven/inaccurate/unreliable evidence, regardless of their preference of type of evidence/their awareness?

Yes or no?

Oh wow, so much this.

"Did you eat that ice cream?"

"Well that depends on what you mean by 'eat', 'ice-cream', 'did' and 'you'. It's impossible to answer this in any meaningful way given the information provided." *sits back and strokes beard*

What's with adding "awareness"? The previous statement merely talked about "value."

This argument is reminding me of one I had with la6ki a long time ago, in which he basically framed his position that it didn't matter how I responded, he could complete his argument. I told him to present both arguments, and he refused. My suspicion at the time was that he didn't actually have either argument, and that he was making it up as he went. This drawn out argument style feels like you're doing the same thing.

You also added "preference" with value and "correct" with empirical. At this time, I don't see any harm with that, but since you're adding more words into your argument, it's worth pointing out that you've added those as well.

Edit: For clarity, here's your argument so far:

(1) Gnostic theists believe in something for which there is no empirically validated evidence.
(2) A person's beliefs can coincidentally align with empirically correct evidence, regardless of their preference or value for one type of evidence over other types.
(?) Can a person's beliefs also coincidentally align with disproven/inaccurate/unreliable evidence, regardless of their preference of type of evidence/their awareness?

Luckily, the fifth seems tailor-made for you.

Your atheism is a reflection of being a skeptic. It just so happens that, for religious beliefs, the skeptical position has been given a name.

There is a probably only a small difference between an agnostic atheist and a gnostic atheist, with the difference mostly coming down to how comfortable they are with their level of certainty being close enough to what they call "knowledge".


As for the closed-minded derail, there's an easy test: ask the subject something along the lines of "what would it take to change your position"? I've only seen small numbers of people respond to such a question but so far I have never heard an atheist answer "nothing", but I have heard theists say it. These same theists have been known to call atheists close-minded.

Splendour. The more posts I read of yours, the more baffling I find that you stick to what you say. What you say is obviously either hinting at a non-logical statement (that is, something is true for some cases implies that it is always true), or you're saying something that I am completely missing the point of.

I do wonder if you are trying to defend a lie by avoiding standard logic, or if God is real and there is no normal logic/language which can describe him and/or you don't use standard logic in arguments because your worldview is different from people who base their beliefs on standard logic.

If God is real and no "standard reason or logic" to understand him, then by what means do you determine if he is real? Or if anything in the Bible is true? If you don't use the historical methods to determine if what is written in the Bible is historically accurate, then what method do you use? Why do you use that method?

This is interesting. Do most people value/care about their beliefs?

Well I mostly reason from the bible these days but I suspect I was touched by God before birth so I'd be receptive to his teachings.

I have a lot in common with the way this man reasons: Heraclitus (fl. c.500 BCE)
http://www.iep.utm.edu/heraclit/

I'm not formally trained in logic nor do I have one of the personalities like ISTJ that is disposed to exalt it.

I rely a lot on my observations of the world and people to line my views up with the God of the bible. When you do that then you're forced to be aware that things are multi-dimensional in nature and not just lined up on one strand of logic. A lot of mysteries are covered over by psychology and history and when you dig into these subjects you reveal more and more truth in my opinion.

Why would anyone value science over the psychology of religion or the history of men's doings to arrive at a value judgment on religion? Science is only one strand in a multidisciplinarian approach to understand God and His creation.

I do need to read up on criticisms of the scientific method. But after accepting the existence of an external reality, one thing that science seems to do on the surface is to make repeatable and accurate predictions and provides explanations for the way things are the way they are. And to say that religion and science are compatible is either ridiculous or far too many levels ahead of me, based on my experience. But then again, it may be many levels ahead of me and I don't deny that my experience and outlook on the world is currently limited.

Also, just to let you know how you sound to me:

1. Whenever you (Splendour) make an argument, you are arguing for something that almost certainly doesn't exist. Therefore all your "points" I have seen you make on this forum can be made for the flying spaghetti monster. Moreover, the reasons I am skeptical about existence of God//supernatural/non-documented claims in the Bible is the same reasons of that for the flying spaghetti monster. This makes me wonder: does this mean I'm not taking religion/God seriously, or that religion/God is ridiculous?

There are lots of passive beliefs that we hold. I would say that most of our beliefs fit that category. We're only actively engaged with a small number of beliefs in any given moment in time, and there are wide areas of beliefs that we hold (say, most of what you learn in school) which are both "empirically validated" and which we don't think about very often. Simply growing up in an educated country instead of a non-educated one, you have a much more broad collection of these types of beliefs.

And all of this is independent of how much you "value" empirically validated evidence.

Yes, when you keep getting confirmations of repeatable observations it does make external reality seem to be more likely.

But I keep getting repeatable confirmations that there is a God in life and in multiple fields of inquiry.

How do you merge the two lines? By openness and seeking. I always preferred seeking God on His terms. He's infallible. I make a lot of mistakes. I'd say that's a reasonable observation about most people: they make lots of mistakes but they usually keep on going in life unless something derails their thinking.