The Big Big Thread of Religious Discussion

[Darth SS]

No, not a statistically significant probability; any chance would do. In a purely deductive, logical system, "very likely" isn't good enough.

Yes it is. What do you think the entire premise of Statistics is? It's not a bunch of Austrians sitting around a table saying "Well...shit man. We got nine hundred ninety nine people out of a thousand that said they think that Kennedy was killed by Lee Harvey Oswald. That must mean it's true." It's much more a group of people (predominantly Austrian) saying "If we asked another million people, I bet you this 999:1 ratio would hold true. In fact, if we ask one more people, I will be very surprised if they disagree. No matter what we do, within these parameters conspiracy theorists will be the minority."


Also my views on information gathering:

Our senses probably aren't wrong. If they were wrong as much as ZAK seems to imply they are, predators would have killed us all before we became intelligent enough to debate this very point.

Through evolution, we are far from perfect. Humans are clunky, fragile, and inefficient beings.

Our senses aren't wrong, they are just woefully incomplete. A magician does a card trick, our senses show us that he's somehow extracted four aces in a row. They don't show us how he did it, which is something that exists. If I smell lemon, then there are the chemicals in the air that make up the lemon smell. Just because I can't find the lemon doesn't mean that my senses are wrong, (hence every single cleaning product ever claims "You can smell lemons" not "lemons appear to make the room smell nice") just that my senses do not hand me the information that is the lemon location.


Or, you're brain damaged. That's really the trump card here.