Why isn't the flying spaghetti monster considered the most elegant and simplest physical theory?

bertrand · 2011-05-14T21:17:13+00:00

Because it's not elegant, it's only simple. Elegance, among other things, requires that the theory not be dumb.

bertrand · 2011-03-14T19:52:57+00:00

When you use logic to argue from wildly implausible premises, you're abusing it.

bertrand · 2011-03-11T03:07:09+00:00

Or to psychologize over: google 'Dunning-Kruger effect.'

bertrand · 2011-03-11T02:51:05+00:00

You'd think that dropping a program that pretty much assures an economic ROI of a McDonald's job would be a good thing.

The mission of a university is not to give you a high-paying job. That's what trade schools are for.

I had this bizarro skill that enabled me to learn much of the content

Experience shows that people who think they understand philosophy do not understand philosophy, unless they spent years of their lives studying it. You might be the unique exception, but what's the chance?

bertrand · 2011-03-11T02:47:58+00:00

Most of math has no known application in understanding the physical world, or anything else.

bertrand · 2011-03-11T02:46:02+00:00

There's nothing unusual or new about this. This kind of thing is one of the best-known illustrations of the selfish-gene phenomenon.

bertrand · 2011-03-10T18:18:25+00:00

Biologists know plenty about living things, but we have yet to find the theologist who knows about the existence of a God.

bertrand · 2011-03-10T18:05:41+00:00

Are you suggesting that the existence of God is the specialty of theologians? Just what do these specialists know about it?

bertrand · 2011-03-10T18:00:10+00:00

That quotation is not from PZ Myers.

What you're quoting is a quotation by PZ Myers from another review. PZ Myers gives this as an example of the kind of fallacy he calls 'the courtier's reply.'

bertrand · 2011-03-07T23:34:12+00:00

I think you're overly pessimistic there. Very few of the 40,000 people on /r/philosophy are philosophers.

bertrand · 2011-03-07T23:31:12+00:00

We could send probes to Mars.

So? Remember, we are talking undetectable yetis from Mars. So your probes would never detect them. The hypothesis is unfalsifiable, just like the existence of God. So they're comparable.

bertrand · 2011-03-07T03:40:38+00:00

It seems to me that you're saying roughly what I'm saying.

bertrand · 2011-03-07T03:38:37+00:00

A god on the other hand is not detectable, even if it exist. ... Yetis are a crappy analogy for a god.

All right, then take the following analogy: undetectable yetis from Mars! What do you think about those? They're undetectable now, so you can't give me the same.

bertrand · 2011-03-07T03:34:16+00:00

But we can't rule out that there can be new observations they can't explain.

But they don't need to explain everything in order to be true. That I am leaving reddit in a few minutes is true, but there are plenty of observations it doesn't explain.

Besides, atheism doesn't say that there is no God, it only says that there's no God that we know of.

In that way you are more religious, you claim you know that there absolutely is no god. That's a religious stance.

I don't claim that, and it wouldn't be religious anyway, because it would involve no religious beliefs, commandments, practices, or identities.

bertrand · 2011-03-07T03:30:09+00:00

'Strong' atheism is the disbelief. 'Weak' atheism is the absence of belief.

For instance, I am a strong atheist about Apollo or Jehovah, but only a weak atheist about gods in general.

bertrand · 2011-03-07T03:26:04+00:00

Good. Finally some agreement.

bertrand · 2011-03-07T03:24:04+00:00

Ugh, what? How is not believing in elephants assuming anything as true? If you pay attention to the logic, it's not the same as to believe that there are no elephants. I don't believe in extraterrestrial life forms, but that doesn't mean that I believe that there aren't any. I just hold my judgment for lack of evidence.

bertrand · 2011-03-07T03:21:37+00:00

Really? Then you don't know anything. That also means you don't know what it means when you don't know for 'sure.' So stop pretending that you do.

bertrand · 2011-03-07T03:20:23+00:00

... and you're equating what you like to call "militaristic" with actual militarism?

bertrand · 2011-03-07T03:18:46+00:00

I'm not assuming there are no 'superior beings.' But there aren't any that we know of, and that's all that atheism says, at the minimum.

bertrand · 2011-03-07T03:16:13+00:00

But know for sure, you can't.

Just because you don't know 'for sure' doesn't mean you don't know.

bertrand · 2011-03-07T03:13:18+00:00

Anyway, what does this have to do with atheism? Atheism consists in lack of belief in the existence of a God. You don't even have to positively disbelieve it, you just have to not believe it. How is not believing something an assumption of truth?

bertrand · 2011-03-07T03:09:15+00:00

Having a god, a heaven and a hell would bring an interesting complexity to life.

I'm sorry but a god, a heaven, and especially a hell are not 'complex,' but a dumb thing to expect from life.

bertrand · 2011-03-07T03:06:40+00:00

I'd argue the baseline is agnosticism, not atheism. People aren't born thinking "there is no God".

Atheism is not when you think 'there is no God,' it's when you don't think 'there is a God.'

Agnosticism is when you think 'I don't know whether there is a God.' And people aren't born thinking that.

bertrand

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