What is your justification for thinking you know anything for sure?

You want me to justify that it is statistically likely that 95% of statistics are made up on the spot?

It's not about statistics. It's about those who would question the justifications of beliefs they don't share, while thinking that their own beliefs are much more justified or rational.

Regarding "nothing after death" arguments, a principle piece of rationale would seem to be "nothing before birth". Combine with this with the experience of "disunity of self" during dreams, and "absence of self" during deeper unconsciousness such as medical anesthesia and you get a pretty strong case against an afterlife of anything resembling "a self".

Lack of evidence is certainly more likely to lead to something not existing than it is leading to it's existence. But that's just me rationalizing my position.

That sounds reasonable. But we also get a pretty strong case against a life of anything resembling "a self" that is unified and constant. Isn't it true that the justification for most of our scientific knowledge, if not all, is the axioms we start from?

No. I would say that the justification for scientific knowledge is based on "what works". For example, the "constancy of the speed of light" axiom was adopted because its alternative "the luminiferous ether" did not give rise to contingent observations. But axioms can never be set in stone ( following Godel).

Definitely. But lack of evidence can also mean that we are asking the wrong question.

Yes, "what works" is probably a better justification. Regarding "what works", it seems my brain doesn't fall into that category tonight.

My knowledge, to the extent I had knowledge by a mix of reading, observation, and flat out being slapped by life, has varied over lots of decades. Only at the beginning, as I was taught to be a religious person, did I hold assurance, and even then, that assurance was more a kind of faith.

I later worked in a science lab for a bunch of years, and knowing wasn't the ongoing motivation. Quite the opposite, it was "what if?", combined with "let's see".

So, the question premise again doesn't fit to my experience - you seem to insist I know things for sure.

On the contrary. I am suggesting, as your experience seems to indicate, that we may be better off without certainties.
The question of this thread goes out to those who think we can know things for certain sure, things that may never be disproved or turn out to be misconceptions. Truthfully, I do not really know where I am going with this thread.

I never tire of saying two things:
1. there's no phenomenal existence/experience before the formation and after the disintegration of the human body. This is the obvious version of the more subtle reality that "ego-self" does not even exist while there IS a functioning body.
2 axioms tell us more about ourselves " than they do about the World.

People who say atheists claim to know are the ones, not the atheists, who think they know. Atheists simply state: Give me something to know, not supposition and self deception. Then we've got something to discuss.

Aha, then I understand you.

Don't look at me. You asked the question.

None of which alters that there is a world here for us to yammer about, no matter how inept our yammering.

If I understand you correctly (and I'm willing to stipulate that perhaps I do not), then your question is really one of epistemology. You are asking how we justify (to ourselves or to others) the claim of any inconrovertible knowledge at all. Or are you limiting this strictly to questions regarding what on other threads has been termed 'the supernatural'?

That I did. It might have been the wrong question. And it might take us a hundred years to learn that it is the wrong question. In the meantime we might get much good use of the answers this question yields, even though it was the wrong question. It could potentially leave us with much cleaning up to do.

(Not this particular question perhaps. I'm just trying to envision what might happen if we are getting good answers to bad questions, because an important consideration is that while we uncover answers with science, we still have to be creative about which questions to seek answers to.)

We don't necessarily have to limit ourselves to "the supernatural". But our ideas of what is natural seem to set the scale by which we judge what is supernatural.
Knowledge, or answers, can have the effect that we stop asking questions. That isn't always a bad thing, but maybe it isn't all good either?

Some theists never tire of saying that GOD exists.

Some atheists never tire of saying that gods do not exist.

Some agnostics never tire of saying that they do not know if gods exist or not.

So I am not really sure of your point, JL.



How's that?