Do you believe in the loch lomond monster

[jack]

The quiz http://www.philosophersnet.com/games/god.php which several people have linked to a while ago, and recently, attempts to measure how consistent is your belief in the existence or non-existence of God and some other philosophical questions. Which is a very interesting idea, although obviously most people find the quiz making incorrect assumptions about them at some point during it.

People pointed out its contrast between questions:

If, despite years of trying, no strong evidence or argument has been presented to show that there is a Loch Ness monster, it is rational to believe that such a monster does not exist.

and

As long as there are no compelling arguments or evidence that show that God does not exist, atheism is a matter of faith, not rationality.

I think the intention is to trip up people who think that in the absence of overt evidence, atheism is a bad assumption but a-loch-ness-monster-ism is a reasonable one, despite their similarities. Or to trip up people who find themselves unable to believe there (or aren't) compelling arguments against (or for) God (or Nessie), even if the question instructs them to do so. Although it undermines it somewhat by describing the absence of evidence in different ways, and by not making it clear if "no evidence after much trying" is supposed to be a hypothetical assumption, or truth, which invites people to have some hidden evidence they forgot to discount (depending if they're supposed to disagree with the assumption, or imagine it.)

However, it occurs to me that possibly a question they COULD have asked after the loch ness one, was, with similar wording, do you think it's rational to believe a loch LOMOND monster doesn't exist? They'd probably have the same answer, but I think people would be more certain about the loch lomond monster.

That is, even if you're instructed to discount the evidence for the loch ness monster, you instinctively put some weight onto the argument that "lots of people believe it might be true", even if you know most of them do so for spurious reasons.

Comments

[jack]

I think that's definitely so: the distinction between various degrees of belief, and of positive and negative belief (if any) is philosophically interesting, but mainly important to what word you use to describe atheism, not to the actual concept.

Or in other words, regardless of what I say, I _act_ and _think_ as if there is no god, so whatever my mouth says, I am functionally atheist.

I still like the parallel that I don't believe in God the same way I don't believe in the loch ness monster, whatever label you prefer to apply to that state. I prefer atheism because (a) I am biased by having an emotional investment in identifying as an atheist (b) it seems correct historically and in common usage and (c) most people know what you mean. But I know that some people prefer to reserve atheist for an even greater level of certainty, and use "agnostic" for anyone who admits they might EVER change their mind, and those labels work equally well, even if they're not the ones I'd have chosen.

[vyvyan.livejournal.com]

This reminds me indirectly of what I thought was a fairly bizarre claim about belief in this article; specifically that the writer says that no evidence could persuade him to change his mind on the existence of alien craft visiting Earth. Now, I don't believe any specific claims of UFO sightings to date, nor do I find it particularly likely that there are enough alien civilisations currently in existence near our system to actually come and visit. But it's not physically impossible for such aliens to exist, or even visit us, if they were prepared to travel for hundreds or thousands of years. Does he really think that a visit by alien craft, witnessed by millions across the planet, verified by any scientific tests one might want, and containing aliens who would happily provide us with e.g. mathematical proofs or technologies no human has yet come up with, would not convince him of their existence?

[simont]

In cases like that I tend to suspect that what the person actually means is along the lines of "no evidence you could show me right now": it's not that an obvious flying saucer actually landing in front of him in broad daylight in a busy urban area followed by lots of confirming stories in the national news etc would still leave him sceptical, it's more that as long as life superficially appears to be going on as normal you won't be able to convince him of ongoing but mysteriously secret UFO visits by any of the usual kinds of 'evidence' such as disputable and blurry photographs and garbled accounts from dubiously reliable eyewitnesses.

Perhaps there's an element in it of wanting to avoid salesmanship, too. If someone asks you "what evidence would convince you" and you describe a type of evidence, that kind of invites them to carry on talking to you and explaining that they do have that evidence or something close enough or perhaps try to get you to admit that slightly less evidence than that would do; admitting the theoretical possibility of being convinced opens a crack in an otherwise inaccessible mind and they will then try to work that crack wider by any means they can think of. So saying "none" to that question doesn't necessarily mean that "none" is the true answer: it means "go away and stop bothering me" and is an attempt to avoid them getting their dialectical foot in the door.

[jack]

It's like he's using evidence to to mean only BITS of evidence, things that need to mount up, and excluding anything that's clearly and plainly true from the category of evidence.

(Which accords with what sorts of evidence people talk about in this sort of debate, even though it's not literally true.)