A rational unfalsifyable believe

Arielgenesis

2 A rational unfalsifyable believe

25th Jul 2016

2 min read

2

A rational unfalsifyable believe

I'm trying to argue that it is possible for someone rational to hold on to a believe that is unfalsifyable and remain rational.

There are three people in a room. Adam, Cain, and Able. Able was murdered. Adam and Cain was taken into police custody. The investigation was thorough but it remains inconclusive. The technology was not advanced enough to produce conclusive evidence. The arguments are basically you did it, no, you did it.

Adam has a wife, her name is Eve. Eve believed that Adam is innocent. She believed so because she has known Adam very well and the Adam that she knew, wouldn't commit murder. She uses Adam's character and her personal relationship with him as evidence.

Cain, trying to defend himself, asked Eve. "What does it take for her to change her believe". She replied, "show me the video recording, then I would believe". But there was no video recording. Then she said, "show me any other evidence that is as strong as a video recording". But there was no such evidence as well.

Cain pointed out, "the evidence that you use for your believe is personal relationship and his character. Then if there are evidence against his character, would you change your mind?"

After some thinking and reflection, she finally said. "Yes, if it could be proven that I have been deceived all these years, then I will believe otherwise."

All of Adam's artifact were gathered, collected and analysed. The search was so thorough, there could never be any new evidence about what Adam had did before the custody that could be presented in the future. All points to Adam good character.

Eve was happy. Cain was not. Then he took one step further. He proposed, "Eve, people could change. If Adam change in the future into man of bad character, would you be convinced that he could have been the murderer?"

"Yes, if Adam changed, then I would believe that it is possible for Adam to be the murderer." Eve said.

Unfortunately, Adam died the next day. Cain said to Eve, "how do you propose that your belief about Adam's innocence be falsified now?"

"It cannot be falsified now." Eve replied.

"Then you must be irrational."

Is Eve irrational?
Can believing an unfalsifyable believe be rational?
Can this argument be extended to believe in God?

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2 A rational unfalsifyable believe

by Arielgenesis

25th Jul 2016

2 min read

2

A rational unfalsifyable believe

I'm trying to argue that it is possible for someone rational to hold on to a believe that is unfalsifyable and remain rational.

Cain pointed out, "the evidence that you use for your believe is personal relationship and his character. Then if there are evidence against his character, would you change your mind?"

After some thinking and reflection, she finally said. "Yes, if it could be proven that I have been deceived all these years, then I will believe otherwise."

"Yes, if Adam changed, then I would believe that it is possible for Adam to be the murderer." Eve said.

Unfortunately, Adam died the next day. Cain said to Eve, "how do you propose that your belief about Adam's innocence be falsified now?"

"It cannot be falsified now." Eve replied.

"Then you must be irrational."

Is Eve irrational?
Can believing an unfalsifyable believe be rational?
Can this argument be extended to believe in God?

Personal Blog

2

New Comment

Rendering 0/46 comments, sorted by

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(show more) Click to highlight new comments since: Today at 10:07 PM

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[anonymous]10y10

It is a very interesting quest you have taken on. As an atheist, I am always interested in hearing good arguments in favour of God.

Why don't you start by answering: Why are you a theist? You have looked at all the evidence available to you, and arrived at a posterior where P(God exists) >> P(God does not exist). Explain your reasoning to us. If your reasoning is good enough for you, why would it not be good enough for me?

entirelyuseless10y10

"Explain your reasoning to us. If your reasoning is good enough for you, why would it not be good enough for me?"

Christians will sometimes ask me this, trying to get me to explain why I no longer think that Christianity is true.

And it has a very good answer. There really are good reasons why my reasoning is good enough for me, and would not be good enough for them. Basically, they want me to give a few short arguments which they will, quite rightly, dismiss as unconvincing. I fully understand why they dismiss them as unconvincing. It is because &... (read more)

0Arielgenesis10y

This is very poorly formulated. But there are 2 foundations in my logic. First is, that I am leaning towards presuppositionalism (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Presuppositional_apologetics). The only way to build a 'map', first of all, is to take a list of presuppositions for granted. I am also interested in that (see my post on http://lesswrong.com/lw/nsm/open_thread_jul_25_jul_31_2016/). The idea is that a school could have a non-contradicting collection of self-referential statement that covers the epistemology and axiology and another school have another distinct collection. And due to the expensiveness of computation and lack of information, both maps are equally good and predicting what should and should not happen ("and also what is actually happening and why", what scientist, not rationalist, cares about). The other part is, the basis of this post, personal experience. All of my personal life experience, up until this point, "arrived at a posterior where P(God exists) >> P(God does not exist)" exactly in the same way Eve arrived at hers in this OP. Now I do realize that is very crude and not at all solid, not even presentable. But since you asked, there you go.

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