Just want to point out human memory is notoriously inaccurate, and its completely possible to decieve yourself. Kinda puts a hole in the subjective experience bedrock from my perspective. (Also that definition of knowledge is rather suspect)

Faith appears to me as a tautology. Somthing you need inorder to maintain.

Faith is being presented with a thing and then deciding what it is based on no evidence. It's literally nothing but speculation.

Sounds like some thinly veiled crypto-fascism couched in a bunch of preening bafflegab, jerkoff.

Well that isn’t making me want to put down Kant (not that I’m actually reading Kant atm), but Fear and Trembling has definitely risen on my reading list.

I have the impression he’s a bit “wimpy” - mainly because of his commentary on Hegel.

Faith is practically the opposite of speculative reason, are you aware of what speculative reason actually means? It’s not what you might colloquially infer, if that’s what your argument. Either way I would probably consider his argument before casting judgement.

The problem is that you only know what you feel, you don't know what causes that feeling in actuality or if those feelings are accurate analogues to reality. There are many things we feel that are complete fabrications or distortions of reality. Knowledge may be primarily based on the writings of others, but the power of those writings is that they meticulously document their process and ergo you can analyze that process for accuracy. For things like science experiments, you can see when those experiments have been reliably duplicated and you can duplicate them on your own id you put in the effort. That is the foundation of our science classes in school.

Faith is just feeling a thing and then arbitrarily deciding whatever you want it to be is what it is.

Eh... we'll oppose.

We don't see faith as a matter of speculation; we consider faith a matter of trusting what is felt rather than granting the premise of what one fears.

More precisely, faith must be based on subjective experience; knowledge is based on what other people experienced... and since people practice lying when they feel afraid, what they communicate has to be verified to be trusted.

Faith is understood internally, not verified (edit: decided) externally.To a process that can only occur through one path, the other may look like madness.

So someone has called upon all people to be aim for above average.

Better than appealing to the lowest common denominator, we suppose - obedient to peer pressure.

Since Epstein raped kids on an island where proofs were for the most of us impossible to attain, this is bullshit.

I think you’re on to something.

Christianity is, if I had to summarize, associated with Divine Spiritual Awareness. True spiritual awareness of self, will lead you to the ability to be able to judge yourself through the Eyes of God. Although, it seems as if so many self-proclaimed “Christians” skipped the book of Ecclesiastes

People don’t know how to seperate the Spiritual from the Superficial. If we are judging America from that facet, our country may just house some of the most superficial elements/people/leaders in the history of mankind.

Anytime you use the Bible/Religious text to control others or establish your Will for others as the Will of God (Abortion is a PERFECT example), you are doing the same thing that Jesus criticized the Jews for doing! It was so bad that God sent his Son down to essentially spread the Gospel of He/God being the ultimate judge, so you can avoid the Hypocrisy of the Self-Rightous man and woman. You can only interpret what God’s Will is for you, not what it is for the entire state, country, or mankind!

>I don’t know that there are that many things that the majority of people consider a conspiracy in terms that absolute.

Consider the lab origin theory of covid... the simultaneous claims across supposedly independent media (that it "is" [only] a conspiracy theory) and then the reaction to that by people on social media. I believe that a cause and effect relationship seems obvious.

>Unless you mean why the majority of people discredit some ideas as only being “conspiracy theories” when it’s impossible to know with absolute certainty that there is no actual conspiracy.

I am interested in why journalists are incapable of exercising basic epistemology. It is regularly claimed that they are some of the most competent people on the planet in this regard, and that we should trust their judgment because of it. This is clearly false.

>I would say that the majority of people wouldn’t agree that these ideas are necessarily and only conspiracy theories with zero statistical possibility of truth...

Engaged in highly accurate discussion like this and you will be accused of engaging in pedantry, or various other popular memes.

>I would also suggest that since the overwhelming majority of popular conspiracy theories never actually reveal a conspiracy...

What data source are you using, in fact?

> ...we just label any unlikely claim of conspiracy as such.

But what is the actual(!) reason(s) that people do this the same way? Is mass belief among humans purely organic, without exception?

I don’t know that there are that many things that the majority of people consider a conspiracy in terms that absolute. Unless you mean why the majority of people discredit some ideas as only being “conspiracy theories” when it’s impossible to know with absolute certainty that there is no actual conspiracy.

I would say that the majority of people wouldn’t agree that these ideas are necessarily and only conspiracy theories with zero statistical possibility of truth, only that it is extremely unlikely that most of these theories are true and that doggedly pursuing every statistically possible conspiracy is a waste of time. I would also suggest that since the overwhelming majority of popular conspiracy theories never actually reveal a conspiracy we just label any unlikely claim of conspiracy as such.

Barth and Ellul - two unashamed Kierkegaardians - are also my favourites. Natural theology is weak in comparison to revelation. Whether you believe or not, there's something very different about those who talk about revelation first and those who talk about logical* proofs for God. Who's ever been converted by Plantinga's modal ontological argument?

Summary: When is it unreasonable to be skeptical? When available evidence shows that a conclusion is intuitively certain and any doubt is only resolvable with evidence that is impossible to obtain.

Since all available evidence shows that other humans have minds like our own, we can be reasonably certain of other minds. Doubting other minds is, therefore, unreasonable if it requires impossible evidence to alleviate. The same principle of reasonable certainly also creates moral concern for future people as well, who we can be reasonably certain to exist in our future. Not being able to see into the future isn’t a valid basis for denying the moral standing of these future people. And reasonable certainty can also let us reject other ideas, like the existence of god and aliens.

I would agree we shouldn't stake our highest passions on speculative reasons, but Kierkegaard is delusional if he doesn't acknowledge faith is the most speculative reason there is.

If you don't like introducing the concept of person-hood to the discussion, then you should take it up with u/thenousman instead of me - for I see no way of interpreting his phrase 'people have the right to life' without invoking the notion of personhood. What else could it mean if it wasn't about assigning the right of life to entities belonging to the extension of the predicate that maps said entities to a group known as 'people'?

Although it is understandable that some may have no exposure to symbolic logic, it should be noted that my formalization of arguments is no mere exercise in theoretical mathematics - it uses first order logic to bring clarity to what I think the underlying logical structure of u/thenousman's argument looks like. OP should be able to look at it and give us a statement about whether that is what he meant or not - and propose a different formalization to describe the true form of his argument if he does not agree with it (I believe that OP should be able to comprehend it as it is quite clear that he is a student of philosophy in a university). Stating things in formal terms is also a tremendously useful technique in evaluating the validity of an argument - as I did with a proof by natural deduction.

It is difficult for me to understand how speculating on the likely beliefs of people who support capital punishment is somehow degrading to their status. I have never heard of calling someone a 'proponent of x' being understood as an insult before (assuming that whoever is stating this does not use other obviously offensive epithets in conjunction with it), but I shall use your preferred terminology for the sake of convenience if nothing else.

My issue here is that I don't think it is methodologically sound to discuss how various substantive issues (such as the issue of whether the right to life is absolute, as you've raised elsewhere) affect the implications of u/thenousman's argument without first getting a clear understanding of it - which we still haven't managed to do despite me expending quite a bit of effort to rectify the malformed nature of (1) . I will however acknowledge that if my interpretation of his argument is correct, and the formalization basically accurate, then your criticisms of it undoubtedly have merit.

I will note one more potential issue with (1) here (without saying that it actually is an issue due to the aforementioned problem of clear understanding): the use of "iff" means that aside from personhood being sufficient for having the right to life, personhood is now also a necessity of it - which would seem to be tremendously disagreeable to anyone in favor non-human animal rights who do not simultaneously believe that non-human animals are persons.

At this juncture, if OP would please tell us what he actually intended to express, it would be much appreciated.

You know, it really seems like the whole "authentic individual" idea isn't all that good for you. For some reason it alwaya seems to lead to things like Nietzsche and Kirkegaard all coming up with this really like anti-social language to describe normies and how normal people are bots and you shouldn't respect in any manner or whatever. But of course seemingly no one questions this, since everyone wants to be a special, singular, authentic individual, because it pleases their ego.

Well, he's pretty much directly responsible for the concept that we choose our own path and are responsible for our own growth. Additionally, his discourse on faith in Fear and Trembling is, firstly beautiful, but also incredibly well structured. For a theistic philosopher, it's a staple of how such an argument should be constructed.

Also, Kierkegaard was a master of understanding other viewpoints. If you really want your skin to crawl, I recommend The Seducer's Diary.

Interesting, I've heard his name before, but I'm sleep deprived at the moment and can't accurately place it. Now I'm going to dig deeper lol

I take it from your username you’re an anarchist… okay, sell me on why I should to commit to reading Kierkegaard?

If you consider how (comprehensively) it came to be that you believe this, what do you come up with?

> Those ideas are often under "conspiracy theories".

The mechanism by which certain ideas "fall under" the conspiracy theory category is interesting, because "fall under" is a cognitive function that occurs within the minds of individual humans. How do tens to hundreds of millions of minds come to believe the same things despite no proof existing? Is it purely coincidental?

I'm kind of referring to how it comes about that the majority can come to believe that something is necessarily and only a conspiracy, when epistemically the true state of affairs is not only known.

I believe it is due to this:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Illusory_truth_effect

....combined with the power of mass media, and the possibility that the mass media is not completely independent (it is not difficult to identify instances of coordinated distribution of not-necessarily-factual claims of conspiracy theories across multiple supposedly independent channels).

> “Everyone believes in at least one or a few conspiracy theories.” > > > > I am getting pretty tired of this bullshit. Do I hold some beliefs in some conspiracy? Sure, I'll cop to that.

Did you just acknowledge something is true, and then call it bullshit?

> But it requires some dishonest equivocation to make that stick.

Your acknowledgement of its truth didn't contain any dishonest equivocation that I can notice.

> In other words, I treat my beliefs as provisional...

One example is not sufficient to prove a claim of comprehensiveness (which seems like what you are implying).

> ...as most of us do

This is necessarily extremely speculative, so stating it as if it is factual kind of casts doubt on the claim you just finished making to some degree.

> In contrast, an Evangelical Christian does not treat his belief in his salvation as provisional....

You have no way of knowing this without invoking the supernatural.

> So, sure, I believe in some conspiracy theories, but my belief in them is subject to change as I learn more, or as my beliefs in other supporting ideas to that theory change.

Your ability to execute this without flaw in an absolute sense or in comparison to all conspiracy theorists is unknown and unknowable.

> The discussion is confusing enough without muddying the waters with sloppy language and easy equivocations.

Or telling persuasive stories based on one's subconscious heuristic perception of reality, but here we are. Us humans sure have our work cut out for ourselves!!