TheLastMohican
New member
- Joined
- Mar 12, 2008
- Messages
- 328
- MBTI Type
- ENTJ
Again, absence of evidence is not evidence against. You can't make an argument from silence here.
At best, the truth remains ambiguous and has to be left "open," not closed.
Things are never really "closed," but absence of evidence is a valid reason for a hypothesis to be ignored. There are many unfalsifiable ideas, but disbelief can be assumed in the absence of any reason to believe.
As far as your specific question about the Cyclic Model, no, of course I wouldn't reject it based solely on an emotional appeal. But neither could I accept it on one either, without evidence. I mentally "tag" theories and beliefs with a "probability" percentage, rather than just accepting one or denying one wholesale. As I learn more, the percentage changes. I probably will never tag anything as 0% or 100% in my life.
Same here. I wasn't saying that you must accept the Cyclic model if you do not reject it. My point was that the scientific evidence and mathematical predictions are the proper methods of finding the answer, and it is absurd to ignore those methods and reach a hasty conclusion on emotion, which is wholly irrelevant to the reality of the universe. It is or it is not. Many things are hopelessly subjective and lack central definition, but hypotheses like the existence of God are either true or false, and emotional appeal of the idea cannot be counted on to have any effect on the reality.