Originally posted by Original Smurph
I don't see where I stated anything concerning religion.You claimed you could present your opinions as facts because nothing was necessarily fact.
You then essentially asserted that someone was wrong based on what we know (the facts) about Russel and Hume.
Oh God this is so annoying ... re read my post.
The God bashing in my last response, isn't point of the post. Its an example of when higher levels of evidence are required to produce what we regard as knowledge, mainly because the stakes of the claim are higher.
Ok if you don't want a humorous example i'll provide a more mundane one.
I claim that my Uni locker is locked. There is nothing in the locker, so the stakes are very low in this case.
However If you where going to hide 20,000 pounds of cocaine in my locker, and we found that it had been burgled, you would now be a lot more skeptical about my the claim; i had locked my locker ?
When the stakes are higher, the evidence required to prove your justified true belief increase proportionally.
Thats what the God bashing was trying to highlight. ... God !
When it comes to asserting that Bertrand Russel is clever, we require very little evidence, as its quite a verifiable trivial claim.
When it comes to proving the claim that there is an all powerful psychopathic God who is simultaneously all loving and all knowing, the stakes have have increased substantially. In this case we have to turn to logic, rational and science as sources of Authority. The claims of a few nutcases who lived nearly 2,000 years ago while spouting irrational contradictions, are not going to hold any weight when the stakes are this high.
As i mentioned previously the claim that I know that Bertrand Russel is clever, requires far less intensive scrutiny as the stakes are low.
Therefore I "KNOW" that Bertarnd Russel is clever, but I don't "know" that I didn't dream him or that the world is flat etc.