Unbreakable Debates

[Timekeeper]

How do you function? Do you cringe in fear at every step because there might be a gaping pit you can't be sure isn't there? Or do you not fear because you can't be sure that all of reality isn't just a figment of your imagination?

What you're saying isn't some profound conclusion; it's a cop-out to excuse a lack of thought.

EDIT: From a purely logical standpoint, there is no way to be 100% certain of anything. However, using the tools that we have (i.e., our senses and logical deduction), we can develop degrees of certainty about assertions that make certain conclusions more likely than others. A simple example: I see a computer in front of me. I can be as sure as possible that it really exists because all of the evidence possibly available to me (all of my senses agree, I have no reason to believe I'm hallucinating, etc.) agrees on that same conclusion. The same sort of logic (weighing the evidence) can be extrapolated to more complex problems, including the existence of a god.

Yea, I was basically trying to say that there is no way to be 100% certain of anything. I agree with you that you oviously have to use what you can to try and understand the known and the unknown, but there's no way that we can know and understand everything around us. I would not be able to prove that there is a teacup in space 800 million miles from earth, but I can't disprove that either. Yes it is extremely unlikely, but there's still that possibility.

[Tama2]

I would not be able to prove that there is a teacup in space 800 million miles from earth, but I can't disprove that either. Yes it is extremely unlikely, but there's still that possibility.

Mathematically speaking there is one out there. (Of course, if the universe is infinite.)

[Raistlin]

I would not be able to prove that there is a teacup in space 800 million miles from earth, but I can't disprove that either. Yes it is extremely unlikely, but there's still that possibility.

The point I was making is that just because something is possible (and taken literally everything is possible on some level), that doesn't make it equally likely as an alternative. Just because it's possible there's a giant teacup floating around out there doesn't mean it's as equally likely as there not to be. And so for these sorts of questions it's a perversion of logic (pseudo-logic, if you will) to just throw up our hands and say "well if it's possible, I can't say either way," because if you did that then you couldn't decide anything, ever, including what is right in front of your own eyes.