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Discussions and The Burden of Proof Posted on6th November 2022  ByDavidian One of the problems with contemporary social media discourse is jumping around and ahead in the conversation, misusing terms, axioms, and similar and not taking the time to actually have a discussion and understand what the other person is saying. We are too quick to judge people based on the group we think they belong to and forget to appreciate the nuance between positions. A Christian is judged by how we judge all Christians based on previous experiences with Christians. The same can be said for atheists, Muslims or any other group. This form of tribalism and cognitive bias makes use too quick to assume positions, all entailed beliefs and rationality, and you find people just name fallacies (often incorrectly) instead of having a dialogue and reaching some accord. Recap: We often fail to hold conversations and throw out erroneous statements based on poor assumptions. There is a difference between a belief and a claim. A belief is something you accept as true. (Think most likely, conclude is the case etc)A claim is something to say IS true. So, sure, there is a claim that you believe something, but as we don’t have access to anyone’s mental states this isn’t anything we can prove, and really, why would someone say they believe something that they don’t? (Except for outlier cases and cons which again don’t really apply to social media conversations.) When you do or don’t believe something, the only real duty you have is to yourself, and even then this duty only applies if you care about rationality. Recap: Your primary duty to any belief position is to yourself. Rationality deals with the way we reason, using the rules of logic and probability theory. This entails having no strong evidence against your position, no contradiction in your beliefs, not using fallacious reasoning but also realising that bit everything is a fallacy e.g. there are some authorities you can trust without it being a fallay, and this ties into good theories of testimony and all sorts. So, if we care about rationality, our burden is to justify our position, at least to ourselves, so that we can ensure that we are holding a rational position. Recap: rationality deals with the way you reason, everyone has a burden to justify their position to themselves if they care about rationality. You can be wrong (without knowing it) and still be rational, and you can be correct and irrational. However, rationality is definitely something that would usually lead one to truth if all all information was available to you and analysed mitigating all bias – which is hard to do, as bias is built into our wiring. So, one’s rationality is somewhat relative to the information available. Someone in an epistemic bubble could be rational for believing something that outside of that bubble would be wildly irrational. It can be said one can only be as rational as one can be. We should judge a child as a child, they do not have fully developed brains nor learned adequate reasoning skills, and therefore their behaviour is by default less rational on an adult scale. This too relates to the information available. Forming an option based on 3 bits of information that point to a single conclusion and not being able to find anything else would be rational, even if that conclusion was wrong. If you later found additional information that then leads elsewhere and the original conclusion was wrong, it would be irrational to maintain that original conclusion as true. Recap: rationality should be judged in a more relative way, and based on reasoning, not conclusions. Full Article at: Discussions and The Burden of Proof » Answers In Reason (answers-in-reason.com) --- Send in a voice message: https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/freshair/message

Are Religious People More Stupid Than Atheists? We atheists have a number of things in our toolbelts, and one of those is memes. Many of these memes are oversimplifications or just flat out wrong, so I thought I would create a series to address some of our worst memes and explain why they are so bad.... Read More ““Religious People are Dumb” – SciPhi Shortz: BAM!” » The post “Religious People are Dumb” – SciPhi Shortz: BAM! appeared first on Answers In Reason. --- Send in a voice message: https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/freshair/message

Who’d win the Fight, Santa or God? One of the worst comparisons I see us atheists make is comparing God to Santa (or any other mythological character). I understand the reason comparisons like this start. Many of us atheists regard both Santa and god as myths, which is fine, but what is not fine is that is where... Read More ““Santa vs God” – SciPhi Shortz: BAM!” » The post “Santa vs God” – SciPhi Shortz: BAM! appeared first on Answers In Reason. --- Send in a voice message: https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/freshair/message

Is Atheism the Null Hypothesis? It is common to hear folks claim Atheism is the null hypothesis. In this SciPhi Short we will be going over what the null hypothesis is with a few examples. We will start by covering off what a hypothesis is, moving on to the null hypothesis itself, and finishing up... Read More “The Null Hypothesis: How it Relates to Atheism and God – SciPhi Shortz” » The post The Null Hypothesis: How it Relates to Atheism and God – SciPhi Shortz appeared first on Answers In Reason. --- Send in a voice message: https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/freshair/message

Are we Really Born Atheists? We atheists have a number of things in our toolbelts, and one of those is memes.  Many of these memes are oversimplifications or just flat out wrong, so I thought I would create a series to address some of our worst memes and explain why they are so bad. Something that... Read More ““We Are All Born Atheist!” – SciPhi Shortz: BAM!” » The post “We Are All Born Atheist!” – SciPhi Shortz: BAM! appeared first on Answers In Reason. --- Send in a voice message: https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/freshair/message

What does it mean to be rational? It is common to hear that all beliefs are irrational, but is that really the case? In this SciPhi Short we will be briefly examining rationality and how it relates to belief. We will be covering: – What is a Belief – What is Rationality – States of... Read More “Rationality: How Can a Belief Be Rational? – SciPhi Shortz” » The post Rationality: How Can a Belief Be Rational? – SciPhi Shortz appeared first on Answers In Reason. --- Send in a voice message: https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/freshair/message

Conclusively Atheist? I see a lot of memes flying about the internet. Some are great, some are funny, and others are just terrible. As an atheist, I find some of our atheistic memes absolutely awful so I thought I would start a series called “Bad Atheist Memes” or “BAM!” to go over the memes, explain... Read More ““Atheism is a Conclusion, Not a Belief” – SciPhi Shortz: BAM!” » The post “Atheism is a Conclusion, Not a Belief” – SciPhi Shortz: BAM! appeared first on Answers In Reason. --- Send in a voice message: https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/freshair/message

Hume’s take on Testimony and Miracles! After our chat with Bearded Heretic and his take on the problems with testimony from a psychological perspective, we return to the topic through a different lens. We shall start with Hume on miracles and his theory on testimony and see where the conversation takes us. We also have... Read More “Testimony and Miracles – SciPhi” » The post Testimony and Miracles – SciPhi appeared first on Answers In Reason. --- Send in a voice message: https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/freshair/message

What is the Gap? Tonight we return to our discussions on the philosophy of mind. We often hear that physicalism cannot account for consciousness. That there is a gap between the physical explanations and the phenomenal experience. Come join us as we explore the ‘explanatory gap’! What does it mean to explain something? What is... Read More “Mind the Gap! – SciPhi” » The post Mind the Gap! – SciPhi appeared first on Answers In Reason. --- Send in a voice message: https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/freshair/message

What is a Belief? Belief is often a hot topic and a word that is sometimes said with some distaste by many of us atheists. This SciPhi Short hopes to clear up any misconceptions about the word belief, provide a number of definitions, and give examples of how it is used. The SciPhi Shortz Video... Read More “Belief – SciPhi Shortz” » The post Belief – SciPhi Shortz appeared first on Answers In Reason. --- Send in a voice message: https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/freshair/message

Evidence is often a hot topic, and one frequently misunderstood. I covered off a number of different types of evidence before in the post Dirty Words: Belief, Faith and Evidence and we have done a small podcast on the matter too BoPping to The Evidence. Even still, sometimes it is better to see if we can approach things... Read More “Evidentially Evident Evidence” » The post Evidentially Evident Evidence appeared first on Answers In Reason. --- Send in a voice message: https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/freshair/message

The Truth is Out There! What is truth? How can we know if something is true? What is a truth-apt statement? Do all statements hold a truth value? How does truth relate to morality? Can we have a subjective truth? In this stream, we hope to cover off these questions and examine a few theories... Read More “The Truth of it All – SciPhi” » The post The Truth of it All – SciPhi appeared first on Answers In Reason. --- Send in a voice message: https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/freshair/message

The Rationality Thesis We take a look at the rationality thesis and delve into the rationality debate asking; are humans rational creatures that make performance errors or irrational creatures that sometimes demonstrate rationality? Dave talks about slides in this stream which you can find here: To Be or Not Be Rational – The Video This... Read More “To Be or Not To Be (Rational)!? – SciPhi” » The post To Be or Not To Be (Rational)!? – SciPhi appeared first on Answers In Reason. --- Send in a voice message: https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/freshair/message

Testified! Today we will be looking at testimony, and whether or not it is worth anything.   Are our memories to be trusted, or do they contain lots of false information? Can people create fake memories just by using words? How good are people at remembering other’s faces?  We will also be coving off a pet... Read More “Are You Sure About That? – SciPhi” » The post Are You Sure About That? – SciPhi appeared first on Answers In Reason. --- Send in a voice message: https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/freshair/message

The Paradox of Negative Emotions Disgust, Fear and Sadness are all negative emotions we usually avoid.Why would rational agents want to seek out things that cause them such distress? We embark on a journey through the paradox of negative emotions to gain a deeper understanding of this very thing. Disgustingly Enjoyable – The Video To... Read More “Disgustingly Enjoyable – SciPhi” » The post Disgustingly Enjoyable – SciPhi appeared first on Answers In Reason. --- Send in a voice message: https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/freshair/message

Philosophy of Emotion, how sweet it is! Are emotions just chemical reactions? Or can we consider them more than that? Come join us for a basic introduction to the philosophy of emotion! We are also joined last minute by our friend Bearded Heretic (Luke). We look at emotion both through the lens of Philosophy and... Read More “Sweet Emotions – SciPhi” » The post Sweet Emotions – SciPhi appeared first on Answers In Reason. --- Send in a voice message: https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/freshair/message

Another Video Review? Yes, sorry, another one. Having been incredibly busy we thought we would do another video review. We thought that perhaps Haitham Talaat might have produced a better video than his last. It turned out worse. At least in episode 2 he seemed to be trying to engage in an open dialogue but... Read More “Reviewing: Criticism of Atheism 3 – SciPhi” » The post Reviewing: Criticism of Atheism 3 – SciPhi appeared first on Answers In Reason. --- Send in a voice message: https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/freshair/message

Rationality and Hammers? We come back round to rationality, as well as hammers! What do hammers have to do with rationality? Tune in to find out! The conversation will include, but will not be limited to: What is Rationality? How does Rationality relate to Reason? Are there any tools that can help you with rationality?... Read More “Hammering Rationality – SciPhi” » The post Hammering Rationality – SciPhi appeared first on Answers In Reason. --- Send in a voice message: https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/freshair/message

Moral Particularism and Value Pluralism Do particular circumstances affect the moral value of an action? Are there multiple values to assess when looking at moral judgements? Are there any particular standards we should base morality on or is it just what we feel is right at the time? Joi@kriss, @trolleydave and @davidian for tonight’s ethical... Read More “Moral Particularism & Value Pluralism” » The post Moral Particularism & Value Pluralism appeared first on Answers In Reason. --- Send in a voice message: https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/freshair/message

Moral Realism Moral Realism states that there are some moral truths that are agent independent. Whilst not all moral judgements are necessarily objective, some are, at least under moral realism. We explore if morality can indeed be objective as well as answering questions and statements about moral relativism, subjectivism, and discussing truth-apt statements. Objective Morality!?... Read More “Objective Morality? Be Real(ist) – SciPhi” » The post Objective Morality? Be Real(ist) – SciPhi appeared first on Answers In Reason. --- Send in a voice message: https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/freshair/message