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ChrisHallquist comments on How confident is your atheism? - Less Wrong Discussion

12 Post author: r_claypool 14 June 2012 08:18PM

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Comment author: ChrisHallquist 16 June 2012 03:29:41AM 1 point [-]

"There is a part of me that wants to say the chance is far less than 1 percent. But when I consider what 1% must mean about my ability to follow complex arguments and base my judgement on the right premises, it seems absurd to say that.

This argument is clearly fallacious, given that we all have things we assign a chace of <<<1% to, regardless of our ability to evaluate arguments. See: story of Joseph Smith and the golden plates, fairies, Xenu, Flying Spaghetti Monster, etc.

And if you go on the omni- definiton of God, my confidence in atheism is higher than my confidence in no-fairies because of the problem of evil.

Comment author: beriukay 16 June 2012 11:32:24AM 2 points [-]

I agree that stronger statements about gods require tighter probability constraints. Eventually, that runs afoul of logical contradiction, and at that point nothing meaningful can be said about the god in question. But I think you're stomping a bit hard when you say that it is an argument (and hence that it is fallacious).

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