[lbo-talk] Appeal to Ignorance

[Yoshie Furuhashi]

>[lbo-talk] Appeal to Ignorance
>Chris Doss lookoverhere1 at yahoo.com
>Fri Jun 17 00:28:12 PDT 2005
<snip>
>--- Yoshie Furuhashi <furuhashi.1 at osu.edu> wrote:
>Then, I'd ask: why put an argument for agnosticism and statements 
>such as "God exists" and "gods exist" above a statement that "I have 
>a herbal remedy that makes your penis  three inches longer and 
>thicker"?
>
>---
>The statement "God exists" is a statement about the nature of 
>existence as such, the claim that there is a ground of being 
>(construing "God" widely), the kind of thing it is impossible to 
>have evidence for or against. Statements about herbal remedies and 
>so forth are claims about particular things inside the world that 
>you can have evidence for. Kind of a difference.
>
>In fact, statements about God are not strictly speaking improbable 
>or not. God "exists" outside of the universe and therefore outside 
>the laws of probability that apply to that universe. It's a 
>noumenon. You can't make statements about noumena.

You are merely restating what I said in the sentence that follows the 
question above in 
<http://mailman.lbo-talk.org/pipermail/lbo-talk/Week-of-Mon-20050613/012754.html>. 
Besides, my question concerns respect and disrespect, reverence and 
irreverence.  Why should statements that are impossible to prove or 
disprove be held in higher regard than empirical statements, so much 
so that it is acceptable to be irreverent toward the latter but not 
toward the former?
-- 
Yoshie

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