Post by IrishMauddib on Jan 14, 2010 9:00:00 GMT
My experience on other forums has taught me to stop trotting out the usual atheist nonsense motto of “Faith is belief without evidence”.
Not only have I discovered this is not true in some ways, but that it is grossly insulting to people who think they have loads of evidence. The most dangerous thing you can do in ANY conversation is say something that kills the conversation and this catchphrase is the quickest single way to stop the other party listening to you and kill any hope of communication.
Instead I have changed my motto to “Faith is the willingness to assume to be true, that which you are trying to show is true”, a form of confirmation bias if you will, practised by everyone from Christians to the people who think that the number 23 is behind every event that occurs on the planet. In other words they have a LOT of evidence, but it is all flawed because it is only applicable if you are assuming what you are proving is already true.
This epiphany has improved my conversations with Theists and people such as Memoids of the 23ist variety immeasurably and I have enjoyed long productive conversations as a result of it. For example I have literally converted people away from 23ism not by telling them they are wrong, or by telling them they have no evidence, but by showing them what they are doing works for every other number too. Everything they thought proved the number 23 was behind everything works exactly and perfectly as well if you do it for, say, 42.
If I could make one change in my life it would be to hammer this realisation home to every Atheist on the planet so they could stop committing this error and making a fool of themselves. Then we could all wait together for someone to get around to providing some evidence for this deity that does not fit into this category, something that has not occurred in 20 years of me asking. I would estimate honestly that 97% of everything I have ever been offered as evidence falls under this error.
Not only have I discovered this is not true in some ways, but that it is grossly insulting to people who think they have loads of evidence. The most dangerous thing you can do in ANY conversation is say something that kills the conversation and this catchphrase is the quickest single way to stop the other party listening to you and kill any hope of communication.
Instead I have changed my motto to “Faith is the willingness to assume to be true, that which you are trying to show is true”, a form of confirmation bias if you will, practised by everyone from Christians to the people who think that the number 23 is behind every event that occurs on the planet. In other words they have a LOT of evidence, but it is all flawed because it is only applicable if you are assuming what you are proving is already true.
This epiphany has improved my conversations with Theists and people such as Memoids of the 23ist variety immeasurably and I have enjoyed long productive conversations as a result of it. For example I have literally converted people away from 23ism not by telling them they are wrong, or by telling them they have no evidence, but by showing them what they are doing works for every other number too. Everything they thought proved the number 23 was behind everything works exactly and perfectly as well if you do it for, say, 42.
If I could make one change in my life it would be to hammer this realisation home to every Atheist on the planet so they could stop committing this error and making a fool of themselves. Then we could all wait together for someone to get around to providing some evidence for this deity that does not fit into this category, something that has not occurred in 20 years of me asking. I would estimate honestly that 97% of everything I have ever been offered as evidence falls under this error.