Eisenhower told the photographers to take a lot of pictures so the world could see what happened there, and maybe that would keep it from happening again. There was no way to fake pictures in 1945.Originally Posted by detltu
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Eisenhower told the photographers to take a lot of pictures so the world could see what happened there, and maybe that would keep it from happening again. There was no way to fake pictures in 1945.
Can you? Have you? I have verified enough of it that I can believe that the rest of it can be verified. I have never found a widely accepted scientific fact that I chose to verify and found it to be false so i act on the assumption that it must be true for all scientific fact. I do that because i cannot personally verify everything. And no one can.
Did you hear Eisenhower say those words? How do you know he said them? Have you spoken to the photographers? Are you sure the photographs weren't taken at a hollywood studio? There have always been ways to fake a photograph. Are you sure they were not staged?
That's good that you're such a skeptic. We don't have to be concerned about you believing or being influenced by books written 2000 years ago. We could all live in peace if everybody believed like you. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RwUGSYDKUxU
I would say the same for you. I can pretty much guarantee you didn't prove the existence of evolution in biochemistry. While you may understand the proposed mechanisms behind adaptation, mutation, evolution, genetics, you still can't prove that evolution is certain. How many new species have you created with evolution?
Faith is not belief where evidence is lacking. Faith is believing in something that by its very nature cannot be disproved. There are mountains of evidence for different religions. The quality of that evidence is debatable.
I'm not a skeptic. I absolutely believe the holocaust happened. I have no reason not to. No one has ever presented any credible evidence that the pictures were faked or that the accounts of survivors were inaccurate. To my knowledge even the Germans don't deny that it happened.
I'm just pointing out that we are all basing our beliefs and acceptance of facts on some level of faith.
Funny how religionists have to attack the credibility of all knowledge to make their faith seem like less of an act of irrationality.
What you are experiencing while equivocating faith with knowledge is known as cognitive dissonance. It is your brain's attempt to reconcile conflicting concepts - one way of doing that is diminishing the weight you give to the more reliable and proven concept.
Funny how "intellectuals" have to attack the credibilty of any argument that does not agree with their worldview.
I'm not attacking the credibility of anything. I am engaging in a thought exercise about how we make the determination of if something is true.
What I am trying to show you is you are the one making a false equivalence of faith and knowledge. There is a very limited amount that you actually know. There is much more that you accept on faith. Granted it is not faith in a higher power. It is faith in your experiences, faith in the scientific community, faith in your own intelligence. We have to accept things on faith or we would constantly be forced to prove every minute detail. We wouldn't be able to accept the work of others without our own exhaustive research. We would have to abandon the shoulders of giants and start at the ground floor.
What you are experiencing when you place your own beliefs as superior to those of others is cognitive dissonance- the state of having inconsistent thoughts, beliefs, or attitudes, especially as relating to behavioral decisions and attitude change.
Who wants to bet on whether this is true, or not: my brother's car is a silver Honda Civic
Is it possible for my brother to have such a car? Well:
Here's a pic of one. So I suppose such cars exist.
Okay, step up to the counter, who wants to bet (make it easy) $10,000 on this "fact": my brother has a silver Honda Civic. I say he does. You have to know it's certainly possible. So....
You've really confused me now. Faith is irrelevant to the holocaust. Those pictures were taken by real cameras used by real people. I'm sure we could find the names of the people that took the pictures. The holocaust was recorded in history and the only person I've heard of that doesn't believe it is the ayatollah of Iran and he has an agenda against Jews. Faith is believing something that you know is not true. We know the holocaust happened.
Did we really walk on the moon? I think we did. I watched it on TV, or I watched what appeared to be men on the moon. Some say it was a hoax.
Well now you have confused me. Believing something you know is not true is something, but I don't think it's faith. I think Guisslapp would say that believing in something you can't prove is faith. I am arguing that believing in something you haven't proven is faith. Otherwise how do you know if you can prove it or not.
What I am asking is how do you know the pictures were real and taken by real people. If you found the names of the people who took the pictures how does that prove that they are real. King Kong was filmed in 1933. I can find the names of the characters in the movie but that doesn't make them or it real.
We know the holocaust is real because everything we do to confirm or deny the holocaust ends up supporting that it is real (except for maybe interviewing the ayatollah). We can only prove that it happened in the sense that we can show people enough evidence that the only the craziest % would deny it. I can't show it to you though. I can't let you experience it. History is written by the victors. If Germany had won the war, you might be in the minority if you believe it happened. I assume they wouldn't keep a bunch of evidence of it around. It still wouldn't change the reality of whether it happened or not though. Just whether or not we believe it.
Epistemology is the branch of philosophy that deals with knowledge. Many thinkers have said many different things over time regarding how we sort out what we know, so if you have interest in the subject that is a good jumping off point into that abyss. You could get lost and found a hundred different times and ways in there.
You can follow the path of relativism, skepticism, nihilism, subjectivism, objectivism and everything in between - all of which can be consistent within their own view.
For me knowledge has value if it is useful. Epistemological relatavism and nihilism - even if they are logically defensible are not very useful. The fact that they are concerned with being logically defensible is also their inherent weakness, they still want to be judged on some objective criteria. Actually - it is not the ideas themselves but that is a reflection upon how our consciousness is well adapted to gain knowledge through reason.
The branch of philosophy that is concerned with the nature of reality is metaphysics. So you can see that epistemology and metaphysics are related because presumably epistemology should provide a basis for understanding metaphysics.
So you could take a nihilist or relativist approach and say that reality is not truly knowable and that might be all well and good, academically, but that is a horribly useless philosophy. Sure you can geek out on message boards about it, but it will not aid you in life as far as I can tell.
Similarly you can throw into question every sensory observation you have ever made as being a possible hallucination or unreliable indicator of the metaphysical world and that leads down the same nihilistic paths.
If the only way you can attack an idea is by pursuing one of these strategies of nihilism or subjectivism, you are simply shifting the debate to the forum of where nothing is knowable.
When we are talking about a concept like evolution or gravity - neither of these concepts are things that you see (they are not precepts). We observe their effect. Same thing with addition. It is a concept. Does that make these less valid or reliable than percepts (which one could also argue are also nothing more than our brains conceptualization of the more digital signals that our sense organs send the brain)?
So evolution is just a concept that is based on other concepts. In that way it is no different than other things that we know - if I can validate a concept because of other concepts I know to be valid from my experience - objectively, it is rational to accept that concept in the context for which it is known.
I think we did too. It has met my burden of proof. I have no real way of verifying it though. Unless they send me to the moon and I get to see all the stuff they left behind.
Yep, we have to accept ON FAITH that what we THINK is true is indeed TRUE.
But...but...but, D80, such matters as going to the moon is science and engineering, it has to be true because it's science (and engineering). Well, such matters as faking it all is a matter of science and engineering too. It involves constructing a movie set and using cameras (engineered equipment) and basic science, i.e. what we think we know about the moon's surface, and creating an elaborate hoax. So, while I think we did walk on the moon, being a REAL scientist, I have to hold out the possibility that we didn't. The only way to KNOW is to go to the moon myself.
I apply that same standard to everything passing itself off as "science." Anyone who believes something is an "undeniable truth" without independently verifying said "facts" him/herself is practicing FAITH.
GW is the easiest to debunk. So-called "man-made global warming" is a joke of a "science."
Evolution, because of its nature, is as hard to debunk as it is to prove. Neither side of the question has the capacity to "prove" its position. But, as for evolutionists I have a few words of caution: Lamarck and the Piltdown Man.
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