Evolution

[HumanePain]

Originally Posted by Slap Your Love

So sorry if I disappointed you because you're one of the few people
on here who are nice and that I respect.

You didn't disappoint me man.

I am just sayin' to help you sharpen your sword so in future debates you might carry the day. Or as in my case for example, learn something.

The really cool thing about Gnet is it is a place to test one's concepts and ideas and opinions, to hold them up to the light of day and see if they persist, or if they crumble, without any major loss of a friend, a job, a grade etc.

Here on Gnet, one loses nothing if one's idea is shot down, if anything, one learns something. At least debate skills if not get a little closer to truth.

[Godslayer Jillian]

He's going to study philosophy and he doesn't even understand basic Logic. And that's not even an ad hominem; he seriously doesn't understand the concept of burden of proof.
Why are you encouraging him?

[Slap Your Love]

That is an ad hominem. Yes I do. Whether or not I've used it doesn't mean I don't. I don't take any conversation with you seriously.

I wasn't starting an argument on purpose. I was explaining the difference in young earth creationism and progressive creationism.

Once the evolution part was picked out of my explanation of
creationism then an argument started against it even though
I'm just explaining what progressive creationism is because everyone
here kept saying young earth creationism ideas.

I'm not going to argue the ideas of them with those who have strong
beliefs in the opposite. That wasn't my purpose.

and if I had no concept of logic and philosophy then I would be failing
my classes.

[HumanePain]

I am trying to say that if he practices debate skills here on Gnet, and his idea gets shot down it's ok.

Not encouraging his illogical responses. Encouraging entering the arena of logic and fighting the battle on a common ground, so that he can learn the weaknesses in his positions, and so through debate strengthen them where needed, and discard them as well, if warranted.

[Catch]

I like the insults that seem to go nowhere and totally detract from point of any given thread. :P

[Necrophagist]

That's what insults do, dumbshit :P :P

[Catch]

You try, but it goes nowhere.

[Godslayer Jillian]

Originally Posted by Slap Your Love

I wasn't starting an argument on purpose. I was explaining the difference in young earth creationism and progressive creationism.

No no. I'm talking about your bullshit "absence of evidence is not evidence of absence" and all that cal. That was way beyond you started putting in your own obsolete religious beliefs and we merely argued basic logic, but still you decided to argue with us because of the implications it would have on your beliefs.
That's philosophically wrong and was your first argument with the bulk of Gnet who has had enough arguments to understand burden of proof, but I guess you're beyond Logic (i.e. below it to objective observers) and I'm sure you as a freshmen with your basics are way superior to the philosophy majors and graduates that are in here, and the philosophy professors that would tell you how you're wrong.

[Drake Dun]

I think I'll throw my two cents in here, since the whole "absence of evidence" thing has come up quite a few times recently. In my analysis all the confusion on this comes down to an oversimplification. The saying "absence of evidence is not evidence of absence" captures a worthwhile point, but is not strictly correct.

Say I give you a shoebox with a hole in the side big enough for your hand to fit in, and I tell you there is a 15 cm scorpion in there. You stick your hand in, and nothing happens. Does the fact that you didn't get stung prove there's no 15 cm scorpion in there? You should have been stung, right? Well... you would think. So that does seem to suggest there's no scorpion in there. OTOH maybe you stuck your hand in the wrong part of the box or something. Okay, so you wave it around in there and make sure you touch all the sides and stuff. You still can't find the scorpion, but hey, maybe it's a reticent scorpion and is avoiding your hand. So you shake the box, but no clunking sound... and so on and so on. Sooner or later you're going to be satisfied that I've been having you on. And of course you'll be immediately satisfied if I open the lid and you just see a bunch of air.

You're working from negative evidence here. The scorpion didn't sting you. You didn't feel it with your hand. It didn't make a clunking noise when you shook the box. You don't see it when I open the lid. Yet you can feel pretty confident about your conclusion. Clearly absence of evidence does amount to evidence of absence, at some point.

Notice how much negative evidence you needed, though. A searing pain in your hand during the first experiment is the only positive evidence you would have needed to conclude that the scorpion (or something) did in fact exist. For negative evidence to be of much use, you usually need rather a lot of it. Put it another way:

"x is a dog" - that tells you a lot about x
"y is not a dog" - that does tell you something about x, but very little

The situation is even worse with gods, of course, because they have been progressively redefined into gaps where we can't look. We can't just pull the lid off the box, because if we do, next we hear that it's the wrong box. The scorpion is invisible. Its sting can't be felt except with your spiritual hand, and that only works if you already believe in the scorpion. And so on.

In Genesis, Jacob kicks God's butt in a wrestling match, and God has to knock down a tower to keep door-crashers out of heaven. But when people figured out that was all crap, they didn't get rid of God. Instead they decided to move him higher, further, whatever. Anyplace honest inquiry can't reach, so that in modern times you can get religious people to look you in the eyes and say with a completely straight face, "God exists outside space and time." They'll even get offended when you start laughing. It's quite surreal.

This would be an opportune time to go into Occam's razor and what not, but maybe another time. The point is, the standard as explicitly stated by many believers is that if you can't prove that it doesn't exist, it's reasonable to conclude that it does (and in Christianity, belief in the ridiculous is hailed as a positive virtue). I have yet to see ONE religious person EVER admit that the same thinking is equally valid when extended to someone else's invisible friend, but that's a rant for another time (and another, and another).

Anyway, the expression should probably be "Absence of evidence is evidence of absence, but it's relatively crappy evidence unless the phenomenon in question is defined narrowly." That's not very clippy though.

[Slap Your Love]

Absence of evidence is evidence of absence is not foolproof.
You cannot doubt the existence of something because there may be undiscovered evidence or evidence that cannot be discovered by
humans.

Absence of evidence is absence of evidence.

I know many professors that agree with me here Alan. Including
the professor I have.

[Godslayer Jillian]

Drake, let me quote the beginning of all this, because I don't remember you on that conversation:

Originally Posted by Slap Your Love

This statement provided on the Why Atheism page is
a complete failure:

"Absence of evidence is evidence of absence."

This is why Agnosticism>Atheism. There is not
enough proof to prove or disprove the existence of
a God. The rest is faith.

Originally Posted by Godslayer Jillian

Actually you've just proven you are the one erroneous, because for all intents and purposes absence of evidence is indeed evidence of absence.
The old saying goes backwards, but there's no actual grounding behind it. Saying "absence of evidence is not evidence of absence" really means nothing. What is the philosophical ground for believing that saying? It is entirely arbitrary.

Granted, the appeal to ignorance goes both ways. Not seeing evidence of something does not mean that that something is inexistent; it merely means that the evidence for it has not been found.
But if we were to postulate we have discovered all information and we still have no evidence for a ridiculous claim, then the absence of such evidence is inherently and invariably evidence of absence.

Agnosticism then is not philosophically sound nor temporally practical.

I never said if we don't see it, it doesn't exist. However his appeal to "absence of evidence is not evidence of absence" to say that 'agnosticism > atheism' is entirely wrong.
If he told them the actual argument instead of just saying "yeah there's this guy that argues with me because he says if he doesn't see it, it doesn't exist" then there's no fucking way any respectable philosopher would agree with him.

Just look at his own arguments. Stemming from what he said above, he went on to saying to GM that in fact Gothicus has no way of knowing whether his "pet afghani unicorn bigfoot that is invisible and incorporeal to all but [him]" doesn't exist!

[Slap Your Love]

What The Fuck?! I Never Said It Doesn't Exist.

And I do believe agnosticism is > atheism. Because one is more
open minded.

[gothicusmaximus]

Originally Posted by Slap Your Love

What The Fuck?! I Never Said It Doesn't Exist.

Not only did you fail to comprehend Jillian's post, which was actually denigrating you for claiming that one can't definitively say whether or not I possess a pet afghani unicorn bigfoot that is invisible and incorporeal to all but me, but you attempted to defend yourself by way of, "WHAT THE FUCK!? I NEVER SAID [GOTHICUS MAXIMUS' PET AFGHANI UNICORN BIGFOOT] DOESN'T EXIST," which declaration essentially renders every opinion you've ever expressed, or ever will express, through any medium to be thoroughly invalid.