Things you believe in with no evidence

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jay said:
This idea completely falls apart when you look at the world as a whole. There is so much undeserved suffering. If you only consider middle class and wealthier first world people, then maybe it isn't always entirely wrong.
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Yeah, I know some shitty people that live pretty well.

Auctopus said:
This is a good one.

There's no actual evidence but it's inevitable.
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I would argue that there is evidence. It's not anywhere close to conclusive though.

I would say that we are evidence. I would also say that every similarity we find to earth in other planets is also evidence.
 
I've spent enough time surrounded by pedantic scientists that I've tried to phase out the word "believe" from my vocabulary. There's nothing I hold near and dear to me that requires me to take a leap of faith to continue "believing".

I'm sure there are some mundane things that I do without ever questioning why I do them, but for the most part I try to live my life in evidence based fashion.
 
That Sony will go under in the future, the debt that Sony has will eventually reach critical mass, they will be forced to sell everything including the Playstation brand.

Sony is most likely to go bankrupt first, after selling off some of there divisions while still eating losses from others.

They would likely sell there IPs like Uncharted, Killzone ect to various giants. Either Nintendo or Microsoft.
 
Alright. In the spirit of trying to keep this thread interesting, since I see a lot of people (including me) saying the same thing ("nothing, I'm too rational!") I'll add something. I wouldn't say this is something I strongly believe or something that I would really be able to defend very well, but it's been on my mind a lot, and it's maybe worth talking about.

I'm not sure I really believe in time.

At least, like, maybe not in the traditional sense. I mean, there's certainly some phenomenon we're all aware of that we call time, but I'm not sure I buy in to this notion of a linear sequences of events that are being experienced, one by one, by conscious human minds that are moving through a time dimension like some It's A Small World ride.

It's certainly true that we're experiencing a present right now. Like there's some snapshot state of the universe that we currently perceive. And it's certainly true that there's all kinds of facets and structures in this snapshot that sort of...imply what we call past states. Like, photographs tell us of a past state. Memories do too. But those things are still fundamentally objects that exist in our present and they're just sort of pointing at a lower entropy universe state that I'm not really sure we can demonstrate actually exists. I think it's more that there's one, static, (nearly) infinite dimensional space where each point is just some state of the universe, and there's no sense that we're "moving" from state to state. There's no curve through this Possible Universes space that denotes our timeline. Just an illusion of such, caused by the fact that each state can necessarily only have evidence of lower entropy states, which represent that past.

But, again. I'm not sure this is a meaningful or cohesive collection of beliefs. I'm not sure they would even be testable. But I just thought I'd add something more interesting than my first answer.
 
Squirting. Not the porn version though.

Well, the evidence is there (experienced it a couple of times).... But science (some insecure fake scientists) doesn't support my claim (and her fabulous orgasm).
 
Information >>> Energy
Math has more power numbers even grater power numbers for us to discover and we still don't use it properly, but we are getting there.
Soul over physics
Squirting is real

For some in here check the user tag.
 
Depends on where the information is coming from. If Joe Sixpack tells me he has a pet dragon in his backyard, I'll call him out every time. If NASA tells me they sent a probe to Pluto and took some awesome images of it, I'm on board.

it's a matter of credibility.
 
entremet said:
I'm more getting on you with the "reasonable expectations" part. Humans are anything but reasonable or rational.
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I agree completely.

But I disagree that it isn't a reliable means of determining knowledge. But as faith - which is defined as a belief in something without proof - is a subset of knowledge, is not something I can rationally have. The only other method of determining what I do and do not know is through critical analysis.

I said before that I have no faith, and I don't. We can apply this to the popular concept of a god, but I do not believe in one, so I lack the belief and am described as an atheist. I do not claim to possess knowledge that no god exists, so I am also described as agnostic.

We can apply my lack of faith to other, less supernatural aspects of my existence. I don't have faith the sun will come up every morning. I have a reasonable expectation that it will, because not only has it done so for all my life and evidently done so throughout recorded history, but I also have an understanding of the process by which it crests the horizon and traverses across the sky.

We can apply it to my fiance's fidelity, but that's partially faulty in that I am in an open relationship. She could violate the terms of that relationship, but I do not have faith that she won't. I can only understand that she is an acting agent of her own person, and that she may, for whatever reason, determine that the agreement is null and break the previously agreed upon rules of the relationship. I have no means of determining that she could not.

We could apply it to the odds of dying in a car crash vs a plane crash. Statistically, I know that the chances are significantly higher in a car, yet I get in one every day and drive various distances with seemingly no fear that I will actually be in an accident. Except that I don't know that I won't and can only take active measures to the best of my ability to prevent that from happening. This, of course, is not without the probability that I could be in one despite my own measures, or even that my measures would be sufficient to avoid the accident. Thus, I drive fully aware and understand that it is a statistical probability, as I have done during my 25 years on the road, several times actually being in accidents of varying seriousness. My experience and knowledge of the statistical odds combined with my frequent use of the road, the poor driving of everyone else on the road, the variables in vehicle operation and road condition, and faults in my own ability give me no faith that I will avoid one. But I also must assume that I may arrive at my destination without incident, otherwise I'd have reason to never get in the car to begin with - barring I'm a masochist that loves losing money, time, convenience, and/or my life. Luckily, I'm not.

We can use the popular topic of extraterrestrial life. Given the size of the universe, the conditions that we know can lead to the right environment for life to sustain, and the time frame involved in life on this planet appearing and evolving, I can say I think the chances are overwhelmingly in favor of life elsewhere, but as I do not have confirmation of life existing elsewhere, my answer on the topic is "I don't know", and that's the most intellectually honest thing I can say. And you know what? I don't know.

We can say I have faith in anything, but I can demonstrate how I do not, and how any position I take on something is not the result of faith, but of a reasonable expectation.

I don't have faith my car is where I parked it. It could have been towed, had a meteor fall on it, or been stolen. But as I don't know those things didn't happen, I can't say with 100% certainty that it is there. However, I know the chances of it being towed are extraordinarily slim, being as I parked it in an appropriate spot in front of my residence in the same manner I've parked it for the last 5 years. I don't think it got crushed because I would hear the commotion of something like that happening on the other side of the wall. I don't think it's been stolen, as the amount of lights and foot traffic here typically discourages thieves from just walking up and breaking into it.

Given that these things are unlikely, it is reasonable to assume they didn't happen. Therefore, my expectation is that it will still be there when I return. That expectation is informed by all the factors I listed and my experience with it not happening due to those factors.


Abstruse Moose said:
Depends on where the information is coming from. If Joe Sixpack tells me he has a pet dragon in his backyard, I'll call him out every time. If NASA tells me they sent a probe to Pluto and took some awesome images of it, I'm on board.

it's a matter of credibility.
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This is an excellent point. The stranger and more outlandish the claim, the more skepticism should be placed on it. I think it was a Carl Sagan quote "What can be asserted without evidence, can be dismissed without evidence." And "Extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence."

So a universe creating genie that had to kill himself so that he could allow some people to live in bliss while the rest are tortured forever is kind of silly. Someone you know meeting a celebrity during a vacation might be plausible. Grandma tells you she went to her favorite deli for lunch last weekend is more than likely true.
 
Ghost_Protocol said:
Karma. I genuinely believe that what goes around comes around. Good or bad.
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This line of thinking really pisses me off. People who do good things suffer all the time, and the reverse is true as well. When something horrible happens to a good person, did they somehow deserve it based on something they did in the past? Because that's what a belief in karma implies.
 
I guess the whole intelligent life on other planets thing you cant really say there is absolutely no evidence for *cough* VG 1991 *cough*.

As for any kind of life, didnt they find evidence of microbial life existing on Mars in the distant past? Plus we know there is water on other celestial bodies in our own solar system. I think solid evidence for life outside Earth is lacking but its not non-existant.
 
I believe there are only two people on the entire internet and I'm one of them. You've got too much time on your hands, other person on the internet.
 
The "Many Worlds" theory.

Truly believe there are alternate universes/timelines of our lives, and it seriously fascinates me to what they could be. Maybe ive been watching too much Sci-fi.

*shrugs*
 
BFIB said:
Ghosts. I have a personal encounter, but didn't have any evidence to prove it.
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Which is more likely? That you had an encounter with some supernatural being, or that your senses just failed you completely? I mean, we know human senses are pretty easily manipulatable. Also memory. We know our senses and memory mess with us.

Still though, I don't mean to brush off your experience completely. It's entirely possible you actually witnessed something very unusual. It's just infinitely more likely that it's not actually a ghost - at least in the sense most people think of ghosts. It might as well be some alternate universe briefly clashing with our universe, or it could be an alien projection, or it could be even government fucking with you.

Not saying any of those is likely either, but people always defaulting to ghosts at least in the supernatural sense doesn't really make sense either. Of course it could be that you don't think it was necessarily supernatural.

Goodstyle said:
This line of thinking really pisses me off. People who do good things suffer all the time, and the reverse is true as well. When something horrible happens to a good person, did they somehow deserve it based on something they did in the past? Because that's what a belief in karma implies.
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Yeah it really is pretty unfortunate way to look at things when you look at it deeper like that.
 
Goodstyle said:
This line of thinking really pisses me off. People who do good things suffer all the time, and the reverse is true as well. When something horrible happens to a good person, did they somehow deserve it based on something they did in the past? Because that's what a belief in karma implies.
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Yeah, that line if thinking is fucked up, dont assume that good things will happen (always) to good people, and bad things will happen (always) to bad people.
Of course hurting someone else will have consecuences, mental or otherwise, but the world is not here to punish good or evil. If you want to do something nice for a good person do it yourself lazy !
 
1. Peace - there's no evidence that I'm aware of that will decisively tell me that peace is something we can actually achieve
2. Hope - no evidence that it helps people solve problems but I still believe it's valuable to maintain
3. God - there isn't any objective evidence for the existence of God (particularly the God(s) of various religious myths), but I believe that God is real. I also believe that humanity will become "Gods" of their own simulated universes which will stack the odds in favor of the idea that there is a God of our universe.
4. Future/Progress - there's no evidence that the future will be any better than the present, but I believe in it because of my belief in hope and the pursuit of finding God.
5. Love - I believe in love not because of evidence, but because I want it to be true. The cynical side of me thinks that it's more motivated by selfishness than selflessness.
 
I thought Karma meant that the things you do in this life will affect you in your next life. So believing in Karma would mean you also believe in reincarnation.
 
Always-honest said:
Haha. No they're probably not all virgins anymore. Just baffled and bittered.
Hell, it's not something you can easily achieve in a test setting anyway. Pretty much impossible.
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I'm with you, breh. I've seen my partners squirt (Same, not the massive porn kind). And no, it was NOT pee.

stuminus3 said:
I believe there are only two people on the entire internet and I'm one of them. You've got too much time on your hands, other person on the internet.
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Or maybe you are the only person in the Internet. The rest of us are just figments of your imagination or separate identities you built in order to deal with the solitude and loneliness of an empty network. You are typing ALL these posts. YOU have too much time in your hands.
 
I believe the Yellowstone super-volcano will one day erupt, forever changing America as we know it today.
 
Aliens.

That's it.

And that's only because the universe is so massive that I find it more crazy to believe that there ISNT anything else out there.
 
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