Can you reasonably claim that something is a "fact" if you cannot provide sound reasons for believing it (where "sound reasons" are reasons you'd accept generally for believing something)? Can you reasonably claim to "know" something when there's nothing that can possibly confirm, disconfirm, verify, or disprove the claim in question? Keith Ward thinks so and is serious in trying to defend this position because it's integral to the defense that religion has something serious, respectable, or reasonable to say about the empirical world we live in.
Thus his abject failure to make a compelling case for his position also helps solidify the failure of religion to have anything serious, respectable, or reasonable to tell us about the empirical world.
Tracie writes:
If we have no knowledge of an event, no way to confirm, verify, validate a claim. No method to gather data or evidence about it...then that would be the definition of a meaningless dialog. He goes on to say that there can still be "both rational and silly ways of answering them." But really, there wouldn't be.
With zero capacity to confirm anything at all about a claim of a god creating a universe, the only difference between "god spoke it into existence" and "god farted it into existence" is that you were taught one and not the other. In reality, there is no basis to consider one silly and one serious--without any confirmed data about the event.
In "Conquest of Gaul" there are many records of many battles in great detail regarding locations and strategies. These descriptions include Siege Cities, breaking those cities, crossing rivers, numbers slaughtered, where the hottest parts of the battled occurred, etc. If we went looking for evidence to support these claims, and found no evidence of cities, no evidence of battles, no evidence of long-term sieges, and came up empty, we'd know very well that something is very, very wrong. When a story lends itself to confirmation, and the evidence that should be there, isn't--you should doubt the story. And if the story doesn't lend itself to confirmation, then it is meaningless.
Certainly I'd be a fool to put stock in a story with nothing to evidence it's truth value.
[original post]
There are things about the world which are presumably true, but which we cannot confirm or disconfirm. This would mean that there are indeed facts which we cannot confirm or disconfirm. But because we cannot confirm or disconfirm them, we also cannot tell which alleged "facts" really are facts and which are not. Anyone can claim that something is a "fact" and, through one contrivance or another, place it beyond possible confirmation -- but on what basis can they expect anyone to believe them?
If you want others to believe something you're saying, you're usually going to have to offer more than just your say-so -- especially if the matter is serious or somehow important. If the best you can do is "well, some things are facts but unconfirmable," then you're basically abandoning any pretense at trying to engage in a serious, substantive conversation.
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