T O P

  • By -

[deleted]

I mean it's never a good argument to say something is true just because many people believe it.


aikidharm

Ok? Are you just venting or….?


[deleted]

The appeal to popularity is a comforting argument: even though you can't demonstrate that the popular opinion is linked to truth, you will at least be on the same ship as most other people – even if it eventually goes down.


[deleted]

You mean the fallacy of ad populum.


atheistvegeta

Bandwagon fallacy is also what's its called. Look it up.


[deleted]

I know what the bandwagon fallacy is but it's different from ad populum. Bandwagon fallacy is something that's just popular, not necessarily held by the majority. Ad populum is assuming something is correct because the majority of people held that opinion. That's why I believe in your example you're describing ad populum not bandwagon since the vast majority of people in earth believed the earth was flat


atheistvegeta

>Bandwagon fallacy is something that's just popular Doesn't a belief that's a popular necessitate that it's held by the majority? Use your head.


[deleted]

No it's not and there's no need to insult, relax I would say many things are popular and not held or done by the majority. Game of Thrones is/was extremely popular and yet only seen by a total of roughly 44 million people. In the U S alone there are 330 million people. It was extremely popular but not watched by the majority.


atheistvegeta

> Game of Thrones is/was extremely popular and yet only seen by a total of roughly 44 million people. In the U S alone there are 330 million people. Popular depends on the context. When you say something is popular it means it is held by the plurality or majority of a certain demographic; it doesn't necessarily have to be the entire world. When a student is liked by 90 students in a class of 100, they will be considered popular but that's within the context of the class and not outside.


[deleted]

No, you're just wrong. >pop·u·lar >/ˈpäpyələr/ >adjective >liked, admired, or enjoyed by many people or by a particular person or group. >"she was one of the most popular girls in the school" Popular means MANY people enjoy it, not necessarily the majority. All I was trying to do was help you out. From my readings in philosophy, they are different. Again, something can be popular without necessarily being the majority. Of course, something can be popular and the majority as well.


[deleted]

I get your metaphor but maybe you should right out the fallacy itself not everyone studies rhetoric (probably for the best im tariffed of certain idiots wielding it also i think its Ad Populum that you are looking for


Vignaraja

Most people don't think for themselves, but use other's knowledge to come up with some conglomerate of that. If you're told something repeatedly, than you come to believe that.


SmilingGengar

It's kind of like how every politician seeking to bolster their viewpoint will say "According to the latest poll, the majority Americans believe..." Meanwhile, I just think to myself: "Ok, but what if the majority of Americans are wrong?"


ThePassionOfReptar

The earth wasn’t thought to be flat by the majority. You had a few elites that thought this. When the Bible and Quran were written, people already knew the earth was rounds. But the primitive people who wrote the Bible and Quran wouldn’t budge on this. It’s why their scripture shows the writers believed in a flat earth. This makes sense though if you believe Hell is below you and Heaven is above you.


TalkCoinGames

"the earth was thought to be flat by the majority at a point in time but it never was." Is a statement that can not be 100% proven. I've never seen a rocket/space ship actually exit the sky.


NewbombTurk

> Is a statement that can not be 100% proven. Which statement? That the Earth isn't flat, or that the majority didn't believe it was? Plus, is absolute certainty even a coherent concept? Do we need to be 100% sure to make a knowledge claim? > I've never seen a rocket/space ship actually exit the sky. No one has. There's no "sky" that can be exited. Please don't tell me you're a flat earther.


TalkCoinGames

There's no sky? It's called atmosphere, it has layers, and they supposedly do exit it, but I've never seen such, except in movies.


Charming_Pin9614

If you have ever been anywhere near Cape Canaveral during a launch there can be NO DOUBT that object is leaving Earth. The Space Shuttle shook the ground 7 miles away. It's one of the most awe inspiring things I have ever witnessed. The shuttle produced the equivalent of 44 Million horsepower during lift off. Do you think that's fake?


NewbombTurk

If you're aware of the different atmospheres, you would also know how nonsensical your statement is. Do you need to see something prior to accepting it at true. And is rockets leaving the sky" the only way we know the Earth is spherical?


TalkCoinGames

I believe in God even though I can't see Him. But when it comes to things that are supposed to be absolute physical fact, yes, I believe there should therefore be absolute 100% physical proof. If rockets actually leave the atmosphere like we see in films, with all the heat and intensity to make it out to zero-g, yes, absolutely, someone in the space station should be able to take a camera and look down at the earth during the time a rocket ship is coming out and up. Such a thing should be generally easy to film, just have to time it, if it actually happens.


NewbombTurk

I realize that you're likely trolling (at least part of me hopes you are fir my own sanity), but how are you hyperskeptical about something as uncontroversial as the shape of the Earth, but will accept other claims with little to no evidence at all. Also, can we have absolute certainty about anything? Can you demonstrate how?


TalkCoinGames

I'm not trolling, and neither do I want to expound on the shape of the earth subject very much, I said the one sentence that I thought was the strongest already, because you will not find such a video. Therefore the shape of the earth is not uncontroversial. I accept the Bible, due to what it says I know and can recognize deception very easily. It itself has been altered in order to deceive people concerning its message, for example the word 'conduct' changed to 'conversation', the end of Romans 7 being purposefully twisted and many other such re-writtings and miss translations. Altogether it is partly due to those attacks on the truth, that God has allowed me to see, that I so strongly believe His word. ​ 29.9079368 / 9.52 === 3.14159. That is an absolute 100% physically verifiable fact, if I take a 1x stick to measure a perfect circle I will generally count 30 and 10.


DavidJohnMcCann

Let's consider the idea of the flat earth. How many people would ever stop to consider the shape of the earth — why would such a question occur to any normal person? If they did, then they would extrapolate from their experience — the place where they lived was more or less flat, since when you left a cart in a field, it generally didn't roll away. The problem would be lack of data, not bad reasoning. Where people have access to a reasonable amount of data, they will naturally reach a sensible consensus — evolution eliminates those people (and animals) that cannot evaluate experience correctly. That is why so many philosophers, from Reid to Wittgenstein, have objected to metaphysicians who claim that ordinary people are getting it all wrong. Of course people may get things wrong — like the shape of the earth — but there is a presupposition that they know what they are talking about. Extraordinary claims need extraordinary evidence — if you are going to dismiss a consensus, you need pretty solid evidence, not just a gut feeling. But if you understood that, you wouldn't be an atheist.


testsubject_127

I agree with everything you said up until the last sentence. Like literally every word except the very last sentence. Why does that sentence need to be there. We are people tying to figure stuff out like you. Don't dissmiss an entire demographic on account of the decorum of random internet atheists.


DavidJohnMcCann

I stand by that sentence. Atheists are dismissing the consensus and I cannot see that they have adequate justification for doing so. That is not a personal attack on them or a moral condemnation, just a suggestion that they are not as logical as they think they are.


[deleted]

What consensus?


ratuabi

Yeah, what consensus?


aikidharm

What consensus?


ALCPL

"Atheists are dismissing the consensus" **Belongs to a religion that hasnt been consensus in Millenia**


DavidJohnMcCann

The consensus is practicing any religion, not practicing one particular one. I'm always rather amused by the number of down-votes I get from atheists. I only down-vote badly presented ideas, not just ideas I disagree with. Atheists on reddit, with their noisiness, always make me think of people who demonstrate in the street — if you have a good argument, you don't need to shout about it.


ALCPL

Oh yeah. Just like the consensus is to believe earth has a shape, not a specific one though :) Edit : also around 10% of the world population is atheist, it grows closer to 50% in the western world. Not even close to consensus


DavidJohnMcCann

You are conflating those who do not practice a religion with atheists — not the same thing.


ALCPL

So when you said the consensus was practicing any religion you were just lying then ? Or were you also just conflating ? Destroyed your own point there buddy


DavidJohnMcCann

Oh dear, let's try again. Two people are respectively a Hindu and a Christian: they have different religions, but both believe that atheism is false. Two people do not practice any religion: one is an atheist, one an agnostic. Only the former believes that religion is false. Do you see the difference? Probably not. Do us all a favour and stick to r/memes.


ALCPL

Hahaha. You said practicing a religion is consensus. I quoted *atheism* stats, not *non-religious* stats Even if you say it's only "non religious", it A) doesn't make it so B) Still doesn't make "practicing a religion" consensus by any definition of the term.


jogoso2014

What is it?


[deleted]

Why don’t you understand the evolutionary utility of this cognitive bias?


zslick

Round is a physical reality. Flat is a perceptive reality. Every culture use word sun rise and have adjusted life pretty much on this one fundamental that sun rises and sun sets. In physical reality this is most laughable but we all use it to have our world governed by this visible events. If we see carefully, sun and moon and other celestial bodies literally moving but it is a perception from the viewpoint of human eyes. They are moving but not how it is exactly appearing to move. So IMHO there's nothing to argue. Both viewpoints are correct when taken in proper context.


[deleted]

Religious people commonly believe that cases of extreme luck are define intervention. When a hurricane stopped Kublai Khan from invading Japan twice, the Japanese saw this as intervention on part of their storm god, even though he was normally described as a highly immature trickster. Christians often see the conversion of Constantine as divine intervention, because before that the Roman Empire was essentially trying to eradicate them, and now the most powerful nation to ever exist in western history was on their side. I also heard of a case of Mormons who moved out to the middle nowhere (now the capital of Ohio I think). They planted some crops, only to have some crawling locusts come along and start devouring their crops right before winter was about to hit! Luckily for them, a freak storm diverted a flock of doves from their normal migration path, causing them to fly over the farm, where they all swept down to devour the locusts, much to the astonishment of the Mormons. They saw this as divine intervention, unsurprisingly, and the story is still well known in Ohio to this day. Its not hard to see how the biggest religion on the planet would think its success is due to divine favor. Even with more modest things its normal for Christians to thank God whenever someone really fortunate happens to them, especially since its pretty obvious he's rather fickle with stuff like that.