• nialv7@lemmy.world
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    3 days ago

    But you do have to believe though. If you are just a brain in a jar, then all your empirical evidences are just illusions. At the very least you have to have faith that that’s not the case.

    • Zink@programming.dev
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      2 days ago

      At the very least you have to have faith that that’s not the case.

      Nah, I don’t think I do.

      I openly admit that I am not 100% confident of not being a brain in a jar, or being part of a simulation, or being in the matrix, or being the only mind that exists (i.e. solipsism). But that uncertainty doesn’t really affect me day to day.

      Whether I am “really” a bit of code in a ridiculous alien computer, or an ethereal spirit waiting to return to heaven, or just an emergent biological process built out of energy packets in quantum fields, it’s not going to change any of my decisions or actions today. And honestly, the actual probability of each being true doesn’t matter either (and it would just be a guess).

      I try to take actions that improve my quality of life. My experience leads me to think/believe that other humans probably experience life like I do, so I like to help them out when I can.

      If I’m helping other pieces of code enjoy existence rather than helping fellow physical biological beings enjoy existence, I don’t see a reason to change anything I’m doing.

      Likewise, I assume that the physical processes around me will keep working consistently, that the sun will rise tomorrow, and that the changes I make in the world today will persist into the future. I have no way to prove to you or myself that those things are true. I don’t have 100% confidence in my own mind that they are true. But that doesn’t change my plans for today.

      • nialv7@lemmy.world
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        2 days ago

        I think you are making a good argument, and I think we are getting a little bit into an edge case of faith here. So here’s a scenario: say you met a priest that tells you “Oh I am not sure if God exists, not at all. I just assume God exists and behave accordingly because that benefits me. Since I will get into Heaven when I die if I do so.”

        Will you call this priest an atheist/agnostic? I don’t think either answer is right or wrong, just curious where people draw the line.

        • Zink@programming.dev
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          8 hours ago

          I would call that person an agnostic theist.

          Many people use the terms on two different axes. Theist/atheist refers to belief and gnostic/agnostic refers to knowledge. Or at least, belief that you know it is absolutely true.

          In many cases, people who call themselves atheists and agnostics are both just agnostic atheists that choose their label for whatever reasons they have (that could include disagreeing with my definitions here, lol).

    • chiliedogg@lemmy.world
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      2 days ago

      Not knowing the answer to something isn’t a belief problem, it’s an ignorance problem.

      For millenia we were ignorant regarding the relationship between the sun and the earth. That didn’t make cosmology a belief system. We were just wrong.

      Faith is not the source of science.

      • nialv7@lemmy.world
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        2 days ago

        You are not getting what I was saying, let me put it this way, how do you know this isn’t just all a dream you will one day wake up from, and find out that the real real world is run by wizards and dragons?