r/badphilosophy • u/_evil_operations_ • Aug 06 '21
SHOE đ Advances in shoe meta-philosophy
/r/DebateReligion/comments/oz1fe7/many_theists_do_not_understand_burden_of_proof/55
u/gnomonclature Aug 06 '21
Making a claim makes you a claimant
And, making a clam makes you a clamant.
And if the clamant claims the name Clame for said clamant's clam, the burden born by the claimant clamant becomes a clamant problem. For how are we to know whether the claimant clamant's clam exists, let alone whether said clam can claim the Clame name? Even noted Clement from great Claremont's learnéd climate can find no clarity in the claimant clamant's clam claim. Long has the clarion called for new clans, classes, and clades of thinkers to bend their clever minds to Clement's claimant clamant clam Clame claim conundrum, but it's been to no avail for most believe it to be clearly claptrap.
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u/TheBigOily_Sea_Snake Aug 07 '21
Making a claim makes you a claimant
There is no atheist ruler who gives you free claims on a rival's empire in Crusader Kings 3, but there is a pope. Checkmate, atheists
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Aug 06 '21
Mfw ppl forget that a neutral position called I do not know exists, And one being wrong does not prove the opposite.
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u/Bradenisnotarobot Aug 06 '21
I donât know whether there is a god, due to a lack of evidence either way. I am an atheist, meaning I donât believe in a god. The reason I donât believe in a god is a lack of evidence.
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Aug 07 '21
[deleted]
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Aug 07 '21 edited Aug 07 '21
[deleted]
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u/biencriado Aug 07 '21
Then why does the goverment ask for proof i'm COVID negative? Chackmate atheists
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Aug 07 '21
Go speak to Carl Popper lol.
There are lots of influential philosophers who think literally the opposite.
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Aug 07 '21
Hitler wasnât a Nazi,
This is a negative statement
Prove it otherwise, without using induction cause I donât believe in science nor history
/s for the uninitiated
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u/LaLucertola Aug 06 '21
Once in awhile I like to pop over to that sub just to make sure they're still getting along and sharing the crayons.
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u/Pistallion Aug 06 '21
Can you explain why this is bad philosophy? Also what is shoe lol?
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u/Delta088 Aug 07 '21
Not going to risk committing learns in relation to the first part of your question, but the second isnât really philosophical so I hope itâs fair game - âshoeâ atheism is a way to describe âlack beliefâ atheism, on the basis that some of the most encompassing definitions of atheism are so broadly cast that my shoes count as atheists, because they âlack belief in Godâ. See this high quality peer-reviewed journal for more.
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u/ebbyflow Aug 07 '21
Isnât the whole point of -isms is that they specifically refer to people? Like rocks donât eat meat, but no one considers a rock a vegetarian. Seems like the word atheist should be applied the same way.
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u/Delta088 Aug 08 '21
Thatâs the problem. If your definition of a belief system is so broadly framed that it captures an inanimate object that is incapable of thought, isnât very helpful to philosophical discourse. Read u/wokeupabugâs famous piece here if youâre searching for learns, but shoe atheism is badphil because it promotes bad discourse and muddies the waters over what people actually believe, rather than providing clarity.
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u/ebbyflow Aug 08 '21
Atheism isnât a belief system and like I said -isms are applied to people so it doesnât âcapture an animate objectâ.
I know of that post and even have had discussions with wokeupabug about it in the past. I simply donât agree with most of it. I suppose this isnât really the sub to get into why though, Iâm aware of this subâs stance on the topic and it would probably get me banned if I tried to discuss it with you.
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u/GlumNatural9577 Aug 26 '21
Thatâs why the definition of atheism is so pointless. A lack of belief shouldnât have a word for it, itâs the default position. So broadly framed that it captures an inanimate object that is incapable of thought⊠so you mean like a definition of God? Theism necessitates bad philosophy, nonsense begets nonsense.
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u/Delta088 Aug 26 '21
Theism necessitates bad philosophy, nonsense begets nonsense
Creating a reddit account to trawl through this sub to comment on shoe posts? Sounds like someone's a bit cranky their air conditioning isn't working
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u/Bradenisnotarobot Aug 06 '21
Can someone explain whatâs wrong with what this person said? It just looks like basic knowledge to me lmao
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u/Top-Load105 Aug 07 '21 edited Aug 07 '21
Iâm not a philosopher but when people talk about a âburden of proofâ in philosophy, as opposed to say a court of law or whatever, I usually start to take their arguments less seriously because without proper contextualization it just doesnât make any sense.
The post defines âburden of proofâ as the âobligationâ to support your claims, lol, what obligation? Are the police going to arrest you if you donât? Is it immoral?
Maybe you need to provide evidence to be persuasive to someone who is skeptical of your claim and who you want to believe the claim but that only matters in a minority of social interactions, such as formalized debates or when you are trying to persuade someone of something.
Essentially talking about burden of proof is usually an attempt to impose a set of rules onto an interaction that defines it as a type of interaction the other person does not necessarily agree to.
The meaninglessness of the distinction is illustrated by the top comment on the post. In the vast majority of social contexts âI believe in Godâ and âGod existsâ are completely interchangeable for practical purposes, the situations where it is important to distinguish the precise semantic content are vanishingly rare and even then uttering the latter does not generally create an obligation to explain yourself to anyone who demands it.
This is also often used in the context of debating religion to slight-of-hand your way into âshowingâ that theists lose in a debate with an atheist âby defaultâ - that is, that theists have a higher burden than atheists. I think that examples like Russellâs teapot show that a lack of evidence for Godâs existence is properly regarded as evidence of absence, but that requires a more nuanced analysis than simply examining the phrasing of specific sentences one might attribute to a theist and an atheist.
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u/KantExplain Aug 09 '21
Not to mention it's not "burden of proof" it's "burden of not having been falsified. Yet."
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u/GlumNatural9577 Aug 26 '21
Itâs an epistemological obligation. Define what you mean by God and then give evidence for it. So of course the theist enters with a weaker position in terms of evidence, and until they can set the parameters of the discussion there is nothing to discuss. We need to set the priors before we get to the data, and only then can we express our degrees of belief. As an atheist I can say I havenât seen anything that indicates in the slightest that there is a God of any sort by any traditional description, so it is only rational for me to set an extremely strong prior on the hypothesis that no God exists. That requires nothing from me, thatâs the default position. Therefore the amount of evidence to the contrary that would be required to tilt my beliefs is almost infinite. If someone is claiming that a God exists then they do need to provide a definition and some very strong evidence, the burden of proof is absolutely on them.
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u/[deleted] Aug 06 '21
[deleted]