

Statements of total disbelief - gizi

The problem with a statement such as &#x27;I do not believe anything&#x27; is that it is contradictory. If you really do not believe anything, you also do not believe the statement in which you just said exactly that. There is danger in adopting contradictions. The principle of explosion allows every possible other statement to become true. In other words, a naive statement of total disbelief is in fact, exactly the opposite of what it looks like. Valid statements of disbelief must allow for at least one exception. You could, for example, say: &#x27;I do not believe anything except for this very statement&#x27;. That would almost work, if this statement did not suffer from infinite recursion.<p>Since a statement of complete disbelief must contain at least one correctly-chosen exception, it is paradoxically also a strong statement of belief, exactly in that one exception. Example: &#x27;I do not believe in any gods except for the one true god&#x27;. Then, what about &#x27;I do not believe in any unicorns except for the one true unicorn?&#x27; Here, it depends on the definition of unicorn. In terms of the lambda calculus, both statements will most likely turn out to be alpha-equivalent. Only the form of what you say, really matters.<p>Atheists also disbelieve in any gods, but they would probably want to use another exception to keep their total disbelief consistent. What alternative exception do atheists propose?
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fossil59
The opposite of belief is doubt, not disbelief. In the absence of evidence, a
premise is nothing but speculation.

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manidoraisamy
> The opposite of belief is doubt, not disbelief

Wow! Such a simple response to a complicated zero-sum game question. Put it
another way, burden of proof lies not on the atheist to disprove the existence
of God, but on the theist to provide a rationale for theism. Till then,
atheists will be skeptical. That's not disbelief.

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tomlock
I'm confused because there doesn't seem to be any connection between the
paradoxical statement, "I do not believe in anything" and the statement "I do
not believe in any gods." Since the statement is not a god, there is no
paradox here. It does not require an exception to allow itself to exist.

"I do not believe in any gods" is not a statement of "complete disbelief".
Gods are not equivalent to all beliefs.

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ibstudios
I think there are more dangers in adopting superstitions.

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gizi
The danger in adopting a superstition is that it would lead to a
contradiction. Total but naive disbelief leads to a contradiction, unless you
allow for an exception. In other words, critical thinking is not that simple.
That is why we have methods such as science and math to help us with that.
Naive forms of disbelief probably are superstitions.

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ibstudios
The people that allow for an exception are called agnostic.

There is such a thing as informed total disbelief.

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gizi
Yes, but their total disbelief needs to be phrased in the correct form.
Furthermore, not every exception will be valid. Altogether, it is a logical
problem. They have to solve it correctly. I want to see their proposal in
which they phrase their disbelief, because if phrased correctly, it will also
be a statement of staunch belief in the exception that they propose.

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cactusface
I believe that all beliefs (in non-falsifiable existence) stem from imagined
experiences.

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gizi
Yes, but "I believe that all beliefs" is a belief statement. It is not a
statement of disbelief. You are not really taking a risk. You need to say
something like "I do not believe that any belief ..." Actually, to some extent
you did. If we rephrase your statement in a form that takes at least some
risk: "I do not believe that there exists a belief that does not stem from
imagined experiences." So, from there, all we would need to discover is one
such belief. The problem here is the definition for "imagined". When is an
experience imagined and when not? Now, you need to take a risk by defining
precisely the term "imagined".

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cactusface
Is a statement of disbelief a belief? I believe that all beliefs are false,
except this one? I disbelieve all beliefs, except this disbelief? I disbelieve
everything except I believe in the goodness of science? I disbelieve all
hypotheses except for falsifiable ones with empirical evidence? I'm not clever
enough for this.

