What do you believe?

[hyperD]

Surely you mean a riposte?

EEEERRRRRRRRRRNNNNNKKKKK! Thank you for playing.

retort
n. A quick incisive reply, especially one that turns the first speaker's words to his or her own disadvantage.

The act or an instance of retorting.

[The Lone Gunman]

To me atheists can be just as bad as bible bashers.
Both are a belief system,
One beleives there is a god, with no undisputable proof
Other beleives there is no god, with no undisputable proof

Both generally beleive they are 100% right and try to discredit the other

So as there is no proof that Superman doesnt exist you wont actualy say he is a work of fiction then, what about Sherlock Holmes, the Man in the Moon or the Tooth Fairy? Should we adopt an agnostic attitude to these? Or would you accept an athistic denial? If the later then why not the same with God?

[Chico]

The people have spoken

[hyperD]

The people have spoken

I think you might find that's the little voices in your head that have spoken.

[Lucifer Box]

Chico = David Contractor Jr who foolishly let the Jehovah's Witnesses in one day while his mum was out being banged by Sasguru. I therefore claim my crisp fiver.

[SupremeSpod]

Chico = David Contractor Jr who foolishly let the Jehovah's Witnesses in one day while his mum was out being banged by Sasguru. I therefore claim my crisp fiver.

Oi Luci, you'll only end up giving it to DCj's Mum.... again!

[Lucifer Box]

Oi Luci, you'll only end up giving it to DCj's Mum.... again!

I can't help myself. Her cherry and coconut cake is delicious.

[IR35 Avoider]

If a tree fell in the woods and no one was around would it make a noise? Essentially you are saying it would not

To a degree, yes I am saying this.

If a human and some sort of alien physicist with measuring equipment were present, they could describe what had happened to someone else who spoke the same language as themselves.

The human might choose some combination of words and mimicry to convey his best description to another human. The other human's comprehension of the description would be greatly assisted by his previous experience of hearing. In particular it would be very helpful if he had heard a tree fall in the woods on a previous occasion, though that is a bit much to ask for.

Let's say the the physicist was an Alien whose species did not have any sense of hearing. He might convey the experience to his fellow alien physicist largely in terms of raw data describing the pressure waves in the air his equipment had measured.

The physicist and the human would be describing the same event, but the physicist would not be describing a "sound" because "sound" is a concept that only really has meaning for a species with a sense of hearing.

The alien physicist might be able to describe the act of me headbutting a wall with a huge computer model showing exactly how all the atoms in me and the wall had participated in the event, and in terms of your concept of "absolute reality" his description would be much more accurate than my English language description of the same event. However I would say that for most human purposes his description would be less useful than mine.

Rather than say some "facts"" are more or less "true" than others, we should say some descriptions/concepts/models are more or less useful.

There is an "absolute reality", something does happen when the "tree falls in the woods", but everything we might try to say about it can only be a description of "human reality", which is all we can ever know. Since there is absolutely nothing we can know or say about "absolute reality", and since we evolve concepts and models according to usefulness in predicting and explaining "human reality", the concept of "absolute reality" doesn't really serve any purpose beyond allowing us to acknowlege there is a hidden structure helping to shape our "human reality."

Edited to note: to the more erudite here, who might look down on my effort above, please don't judge me to harshly. I think it's not bad for someone who's never formally studied philosophy and hasn't thought much about these things since his high-school days more than 20 years ago.

Edited again to add: of course what I should have done instead of composing my original outpouring above is use google to track down one of the many better versions of what I'm trying to say I'm sure are out there, and pasted that in.

[Dundeegeorge]

Well would a better example not be

If someone twatted Chicken with a large stick which had a nail in the end and we didn't see it, would we still laugh about it?

[SupremeSpod]

If someone twatted Chicken with a large stick which had a nail in the end and we didn't see it, would we still laugh about it?

Oh Yes!



Spod - In "Churchill" mode!