I'm just going to say I believe in God and I don't want a whole discussion about why I'm wrong or why you disagree with me. I'm not changing my mind. Now back to the topic and don't mind me!!
Aw; I wanted to argue.
I'm just going to say I believe in God and I don't want a whole discussion about why I'm wrong or why you disagree with me. I'm not changing my mind. Now back to the topic and don't mind me!!
Why, because people are rational?Nobody can be a 1 or a 7 (completely sure either way)
Why, because people are rational?
Epistemologically speaking, we cannot know anything with absolute certainty. However, that does not mean that people do not believe to know things with absolute certainty. Knowledge, after all, is nothing but justified belief; and what counts as justification is up to the individual. So one can also be a 1 or a 7.It's been a while since I've read the book, a couple of years at least, but the way Dawkins explained it was, we, as humans, do not know everything, and further, cannot know everything. For anyone to claim either a 1 or a 7 requires them to claim absolute knowledge. As absolute knowledge, by anything short of a god, is impossible, the claim is either exaggerated or just flat-out false.
I don't recall him arguing from the point of what the individual thinks is true, because yes, anyone who holds a position, especially a "strong" position, will believe themselves to be correct. Why otherwise would they hold it?Epistemologically speaking, we cannot know anything with absolute certainty. However, that does not mean that people do not believe to know things with absolute certainty. Knowledge, after all, is nothing but justified belief; and what counts as justification is up to the individual. So one can also be a 1 or a 7.
If he is not arguing from that point of view, the whole scale makes no sense, because if it not about degrees of belief in what is true, it is about degrees of truth, of which there are but two: 0 and 100. You said it yourself:I don't recall him arguing from the point of what the individual thinks is true, because yes, anyone who holds a position, especially a "strong" position, will believe themselves to be correct.
Anyone who's read "The God Delusion" will have seen the 7-point scale of belief.
Fair enough, but it's not my scale, it's the scale Richard Dawkins put forward.If he is not arguing from that point of view, the whole scale makes no sense, because if it not about degrees of belief in what is true, it is about degrees of truth, of which there are but two: 0 and 100. You said it yourself:
It's been a while since I've read the book, a couple of years at least, but the way Dawkins explained it was, we, as humans, do not know everything, and further, cannot know everything. For anyone to claim either a 1 or a 7 requires them to claim absolute knowledge. As absolute knowledge, by anything short of a god, is impossible, the claim is either exaggerated or just flat-out false.
2 is a strong theist, 6 is a strong atheist. Everyone is an agnostic something, on the Dawkins scale. You have to be an agnostic atheist or an agnostic theist, because you must admit, if not to others, at least to yourself, that you could very well be wrong about your ideas, values, and beliefs.
In terms of the question of god, someone has to be right, of course, but no one can ever know that. You can say god speaks to you, but so will others in other religions. You can say god speaks to no one, and everyone who thinks god does is a mental case. Everyone is entitled to these ideas, but there is no assurance that they are right, just a personal supposition one way or the other.
As an agnostic atheist, I would say that Dawkins is deluded or fails at making meaningful numerical scales
If no one can be totally sure, why even have 1-7
Why not just make it a scale of 2-6?
But that is stupid, because you can absolutely be sure of yourself
Why can't a perfectly average human being believe something with great certainty? Certainty great enough to make doubt an unnecessary expenditure of our valuable time in this beautiful world