@rosborne979,
rosborne979 wrote:
The Edge wrote:"WHAT DO YOU BELIEVE IS TRUE EVEN THOUGH YOU CANNOT PROVE IT?"
Great minds can sometimes guess the truth before they have either the evidence or arguments for it (Diderot called it having the "esprit de divination"). What do you believe is true even though you cannot prove it?
This question was asked of "Great Minds" and some of their answers can be found in this link:
http://www.edge.org/q2005/q05_2.html. It makes for some very interesting reading.
But I thought it might be fun to ask the minds of A2K the same question...
Everything is connected...i have no evidence of "everything", but the connections i can observe seem to go everywhere.
Setanta wrote:
You may get people trying to bullsh*t you that they don't believe anything without evidence or that they "don't do belief." Don't you listen to that. There are things we may believe which cannot be proven, but about which we don't care that it can't be proven. Then there are things which we believe for what we consider to be good reason, but which are entirely subjective in nature.
Well said.
Frank Apisa wrote:
Fil...I DO NOT HAVE BELIEFS. I have guesses and I have expectations and I make estimates...
...BUT I DO NOT HAVE BELIEFS.
You are not required to accept that...and continue to suppose you know more about me than I know about me if you choose. That will not change things.
No offense, Frank, but i have to assume that your argument is the product of semantic intransigence or finagling. "Belief" is a pretty flexible term.
It seems to me that scientific hypotheses are "beliefs" until they are tested, beliefs based on previous scientific data and physical prompts. Once that hypothesis is repeatedly tested by experiment, that prior belief is elevated to the status of theorem or denounced as error. The prior belief is qualified by the experiment, but regardless of its practical value, such a belief may still retain an historical value (in contrast to its truth value.)
The term "belief" does not imply an "anti-empirical" bias, nor does it condone blind faith.
Guesses, expectations, and
estimates all seem to fall under the rubric of
belief, variations of its most fragile, mutable, and testable forms.
Belief introduces doubt. It may seem unfortunate that the priority is not reversed; but if it were, doubt would have nothing to take apart, and doubt is incapable of putting anything together.
)