Statements such as these require very little to be seen as self-defeating. Have you empirically determined that this is true? How did you measure "honest" or "dishonest" platforms?

Yes I have empirically verified that this is true. Empiricism works, its contenders do not.

Explain how empiricism self-verifies and simultaneously rejects its "contenders."

It does so by making no assumptions about reality. Not even rationalism can beat that.

jedism>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>scientologysm

You'd better define empiricism, then...

I forget exactly how it went, but she said something along the lines of how she was an atheist because she knew god wasn't real. I asked her how she "knew". Of course, she can't "know". No one "knows". I thought it was important that she admit (or understood) that she didn't know.

Again, I want to be careful with my kids because so many have an incorrect view of what atheism really is (just look at all the erroneous comments made by theists on this forum). It is NOT a belief. It is NOT a way of life. It is simply skepticism toward an unsubstantiated claim. I consider myself an atheist only so far as I'm also a-gremlinists, a-toothfairists, and a-goblinists.

Telling your children he/she is going to hell if they don't obey certain rules is child abuse. Let them make their own decisions, and only teach your children about things that are based on fact.

The assumption that knowledge comes from sensory experience.

What exactly are you saying?

Geez, that is not an assumption about reality. It's a working assumption or a starter point. It's best understood by being blindfolded and led into an unknown room with random objects in it and be asked to find the exit.

The only philosophy that will aid you is empiricism, and like empiricism you simply set a starter point and bootstrap your knowledge. It doesn't mean you see this starting point as having any particular value.

I'm more curious as to what you thought you were implying tbh.

This doesn't make any sense. A starting point for what? Working assumption for what?

Sorry, but the example requires an assumption about reality. For example, the existence of an exit. I don't really get this analogy at all.

I think this was the sort of thing I was asking you to prove, and all you've done is go in circles.

1) You have somehow reached a conclusion about "discovering truth" from something that makes "no assumptions about reality."
2) You've claimed that empiricism self-verifies, and your proof is that empiricism makes "no assumptions about reality."
3) You state that empiricism is "the assumption that knowledge comes from sensory experience" but is somehow free from "bias."

It doesn't make sense at all.

...

This:

The dark room analogy describes it pretty much as well as I can (and pretty damn well I might add), but now I regret making the effort.

Knowledge is just a representation of your current status in "the dark room", it has nothing to with reality. This entire thing is far too simple to throw a lot of fancy words at.

Grunching...

I think you are way off base if you think $cientology is significantly or substantially different from any other modern religion, i.e. Moronism, 7th Day Adventist, Christian Science, etc..

Just because it was relatively recently invented by an individual, as opposed to coming together organically in the ancient past, does not mean that it is obvious to anyone with a will to believe that it is fake.

And I just don't see any evidence that it is by and large any more or less dangerous for children than any other religion.

If anything, I would assume that being part of a religious minority might make children wonder how "everyone around them" can be wrong... and then one thing might lead to another, and they might start thinking that all religions are just fairy tales.

Don't get me wrong, even in the pre-internet days of BBS bulletin boards, I was very much into reading about how awful the Co$ was... And the people at the top are certainly in it for the money. But do you really think that the people who make comfortable livings via any other religion are entirely pure and good? All of them? Even the TV preachers, and all the *******s preaching about how Christ wants people to be wealthy? Religious leadership in any country grants a person a lot of power and dominance over people, and usually money too. The Co$ is just as peopled with deluded followers, well wishers, good doers, bad doers, perverts, thieves, ordinary people, happy people, sad people, etc., as any of them.

Sorry. This is confusing me more. "Knowledge" is the actual status in the dark room, or "knowledge" is the current understanding of the dark room (independent of what may or may not actually be there)?

But even assuming I can make sense of your dark room analogy, how do you get from the dark room analogy to a sensible statement about "truth"? Maybe you also need to define "truth."

im confused. where did i say this, or even hint at it?

Well all i know if i had to chose between a Scientologist, a kkk Christian dude, or a Muslim that wants to kill all infidels, ill take the Scientologist as my neighbor.

I'm sure you are horribly confused. But anyways, even though your broken record tactic is annoying there might be others who are actually wondering, so I'll answer for their sake.

According to the argumentation you normally like to use you are looking at a very large set of data (the universe) with no formal system you can know is true. This is actually great, because it means the following answers are very straightforward:

1. So where do you begin? Anywhere.
2. Where do you go? Somewhere.
3. What do you do? Adjust what you know and maybe goto 1 or 2 respectively based on the new information.
4. Where are you heading? We'll figure that out when we get there.

Does this mean all truths are equally valid? No. that only follows if you're to afraid to handle the answers given by the aforementioned exploration.

How do you know if it works? By correct prediction or failure to falsify.

How do you know it is The One Absolute Truth? You never will, but you'll have a great system for figuring out a lot of what isn't.

I'm sorry if this somehow strikes you as very uncomplex and thus wrong. As a former (and rather decent at that) computer dabbler I don't see the need to choose complex methods where none are needed.

(People who ponder where the dark room analogy comes into play can simply go through the above questions/answers with the idea of being trapped in a randomized dark room in mind, and they'll see what it's about).

You didn't say it, and that is probably why I wrote the bolded portion the way I did. But I thought it was gently hinted at it here:

And here:

And here:

...because of the way you singled out $cientology.

If you actually meant that all religions, or all recently founded religions, are demonstrably false, very detrimental to people's well being, and bad enough to count as child abuse, then personally I might have written the OP a little differently if I were you.
---

Did you agree or disagree substantially with anything else I write? Because perhaps where I wasn't clear was in specifying that I only class $cientology with those other religions because of the fact that it is new; aside from having been founded recently, I would say that all of them are substantially similar their older counterparts.

*shrug*

Uncomplex does not imply wrong. It never has. Regardless of what you think of this meta-heuristic for knowledge that you've developed, you have clearly failed to demonstrate the statements you have claimed.

You call it a broken record tactic, and I call it keeping on point and not getting distracted by irrelevant ideas.

Based on what you've said, "truth" simply means whatever someone wants to believe.

I'm not particularly interested in truth no, I think its value is incredibly slim. Knowledge however is of outmost importance.

However, considering your throwing at me the responsibility of taking 300 years of western philosophy and reworking it all in order to make a viable justification of my views and I have only whatever spare time I bother to waste on an internet forum to work with I'm fairly happy with what I have said.

umm, i singled out scientology because that is what a lot of people have been talking about lately on here, and thats what i wanted to talk about.

If you say so...

Well, I meant knowledge. My apologies. When it comes to truth I find it to be a rather crude term. No empirical model has truth value outside formal logic, and thus is meaningless for anything resembling realism.

The models are fine for testing truth claims however. But that is as they say...something completely different.

As you might have guessed at this point "reality" does not interest me, it's as naive a concept as god. You don't need to invent reasons to explain a dataset, as far as expanding knowledge goes it has only negative consequences.

I've enjoyed a number of Aaron posts but this is one the worsts.

As there are different kinds of theists, being an atheists says little about how a person got their or their intellectual journey. To say atheism is an intellectual void is almost jibberish. Also- raising a kid as an atheist doesn't mean teaching a kid nothing at all. I would expect to read such nonsense from splendour but have come to expect more from Aaron.

One could raise a kid to be an atheism simply by teaching them nothing. Or, they could teach them to reason and consider the world and ultimately come to the decision on their own as an informed choice. If a child is raised this way, to argue that they're been taught nothing and suffer an intellectual void would be just wrong.