Hitchens was wrong

It doesn’t require any leaps of faith. We have overwhelming evidence of gravity based on its effects, and our ability to accurately rely on this force of nature to land probes on comets in motion from thousands of miles away using math based on our understanding.

We’re not landing these things with faith.

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Exactly. We know the “what.” Not the why or the how. Sometimes not even the where, but that is a different metaphysical conversation.

Honestly we could call Gravity “Flibbldee-tits” and it wouldn’t make any difference on its effects. We’re simply perceiving it, measuring it, and subjecting our understanding to a process of rigorous testing to ensure we know all we can about it.

Short of innately existing as this force, yet somehow with sentience, that’s as good as it can get.

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Flibbldee-tits is a measurable phenomenon. That doesn’t mean we understand it, only its effects (mostly). That is all I’m saying, here. We don’t “know.” We just know. It’s a leap of faith.

You need to better define your definition of what it means to “know” something. It seems to be wildly different than conventional epistemology, but firmly planted in mysticism.

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For example: if someone jumps off the roof of a 20 story building, everyone “knows” they will die based on an overwhelming amount of evidence showing that this is the outcome of such things.

One doesn’t need to personally experience it to “know”, because of the evidence. That’s not a leap of faith, that’s a simple conclusion.

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Your explanation is that “it’s a fundamental force of nature.” That seems like mysticism, to me. You have no idea of the why or how, other than Newton and Einstein conjecturing.

That’s just a physics term man. It’s not trying to be grandiose or mystical, it’s just describing the fact that it is one of four important forces by which things in nature interact in the physical world.

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So, it’s a made-up word to describe a phenomenon which we can observe and measure, and reasonably predict, but not explain? How is that not faith?

In the same way that any other model represents the form and shape of the thing it is modeling. It explains it just fine. The imperfections are in our perception, not in the thing itself.

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Those imperfections are addressed through external validations, peer-review, and science in general.

The alternative is just belief, without any attempts to correct for human failing.

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I have a book on my shelf called “Physics for Game Developers.” It contains many models. But, at the end of the day, they are just simulations, reasonable approximations based on observed behavior. These things do not belie the existence of a “higher order,” or creator or some such.

Now, truth be told, I don’t believe in such nonsense, but the limits of our collective knowledge do not deny those things. In fact, believing there is no God is itself a belief system, which is not based in empiricism. There are millions of people around the world that will tell you you’re wrong, God exists and is in their lives daily. How do you disprove that?

The burden of proof is on the people asserting that god exists. Extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence.

You can’t disprove that there isn’t a teapot floating somewhere in space. You have to prove that there is, even if a billion people believe there is.

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It’s not extraordinary when 3/4 or more of the planet buys into it. That would be just regular ordinary.

It is absolutely extraordinary in the fact that it is a grandiose claim—perhaps the most grandiose claim—with essentially no evidence to support it whatsoever.

Facts are not a matter of democracy or popular opinion. The vast majority of people on Earth believe in all sorts of ridiculous bullshit, because they simply do not know better. If all but one lone person on the planet thought the Earth was flat, it still would not be.

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Wait, the Earth isn’t flat? FUUUUUUU.

My grandiose point, here (thanks for playing the home version), is that it is incumbent upon us to disprove bullshit. We can’t (yet) disprove God or a higher order or shit that we don’t understand, at all. In the face of such discrepancies, we will lose people.

That’s the thing though, “disproving” things is only really done by observing that there is no proof for those things in the first place.

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Not at all. 1+1 does not equal 3. That’s easy disproof. Get 2 coins, put them together, and see if you have 3 coins at the end.

What you are doing is proving that 1+1 = 2.

The person who makes the claim that 1+1 = 3 has the burden of proving that.

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There’s a thing called a Bible and over two millennia full of followers. 1+1 = 3.

In other words, we’re always going to be on the losing side.