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What do you believe that you can't prove? More

What do you believe that you can't prove?

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  • But I've never been able to find a way to PROVE it.

    That's the problem with proof, in the end result, all evidence has to be filtered through human senses, and is therefore subjective.
    • That's the problem with proof, in the end result, all evidence has to be filtered through human senses, and is therefore subjective.

      Which is the problem with TFA: While the author deals correctly with the impracticality of living your life being constantly aware that you're actually uncertain about everything in the whole world excepting only your own existence (in whatever unprovable form), he pretends that there is no insurmountable problem with his alternative mindset: "it's a matter of accumulating evid
  • I believe that if the distance/reality of 1 is real and finite, and that another distance/reality of 1 is real ... that the right angle placement of these two and the distance between their distant end points produces a just as real and measurable number ( the square root of two ). Here is a drawing to explain better. [geocities.com] I know I'm wrong, and mathematics hates me [wikipedia.org] but I don't care. I believe that the Square Root of two, is just as rational as 1.
  • I don't believe in the number 0.

  • I will exist beyond the death of my body.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by nizo ( 81281 ) *
      I am guessing this is a pretty common one :-)


      So do you think this will ever be "proven" (at least as proven as anything else ever is)?

      • "Proof" as anyone can define it is pretty simplistic; the brain has a tendency to see what it wants to see, and belief tends to reinforce that tendency.

        That said, if someone came to me and said they came back from the dead and could "prove" it, it would be most interesting to see just what evidence they would present and how it could be verified. If it was someone I knew, it would be easier I suppose, but my memory is capricious and there's every possibility they could convince me the information they wer

  • I believe that I am predestined to believe in free will.
  • I don't believe anything is random - though I think the burden of proof ought to rest on those who believe that things happen randomly. So I guess what I'm actually asserting is that people who do believe that random things happen, are the ones who believe in something they can't prove.
     
    I do believe that while nothing is random, free will exists. Can't prove that one.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by Tet ( 2721 )
      I do believe that while nothing is random, free will exists. Can't prove that one.

      Errr.... no. Because the two are mutually exclusive. You can believe in one or the other, but not both, so you'd really struggle to prove it.

      • accepting that their is a spiritual component to the universe makes it possible for both to be true at the same time. nothing is random but i am a free agent because i am more than merely a collection of matter.

        • Re: (Score:2)

          by Tet ( 2721 )
          accepting that their is a spiritual component to the universe makes it possible for both to be true at the same time.

          No it doesn't. If that spiritual compenent is able to effect change, then by definition, that in itself is an element of randomness, and predestination is false. If it's not able to effect change, then it's existence is irrelevant, and we'll all continue along our predestined paths.

          • Not by my definition of random. I just grabbed a quick one from a google search that I'm ok with. lacking any definite plan or order or purpose; governed by or depending on chance

            Free will is not random. If a purposeful deity creates creatures that can exercise their free will with purpose, than that is not random. If your definition means that an observer can't predict the outcome, then free will couldn't exist without randomness - but I'm not looking at it from that direction. So maybe it would be m
      • Actually, no, the two are not mutually exclusive if you accept the idea of meta levels of reality. What appears to be free will on one level is predetermined behavior on a higher level- and what appears to be forced on one level might be just acceptance at a higher level, a concious decision to preserve free will.
  • They act like it, but do I have any real proof?

    No.

    But my gut tells me it's true.
  • Actually, the same thing could be true for any statement about what other people believe or don't believe. You can never truly know what's going on inside someone else's head.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by nizo ( 81281 ) *
      You can never truly know what's going on inside someone else's head.


      That's where a chainsaw comes in handy! Re-assembly into a working head later may be problematic however.


      Yeah you don't want to know what's going on in my head most of the time.

  • that anyone asking this question hasn't spent much time meditating on the implications of Gödel's incompleteness theorems.
  • So what do you believe that you can't prove?

    1) That God exists.
    2) That Australia exists.

    I can't prove them, but gazillions of people say they exist, say there's evidence to support them, some claiming that they even saw them for themself (!), and I tend to believe them. I think I've seen some evidence of them, but I guess I can't really be sure. So these I take on faith. Others'MMV.
  • I don't know that I believe this so much as I find it intriguing.

    The concept that there was, is, and will only ever be one "God," and that every religion since Thag started dancing around the fire has been worshipping this exact same God. Just as the Bible has been translated into hundreds of languages so it can be understood, so too does this God communicate with each religion through their own language. Whether it be the polytheistic Romans, the monotheistic Jews and their lineage, or the Aztec sacrif

    • I believe that- but what's worse is what happens when you realize all the evidence for God is subjective- EVERY CULTURE CREATES GOD IN THEIR OWN IMAGE. In other words, every scripture ever written is hopelessly contaminated with the memes of the language and culture in which it was written.
  • I believe a burden of proof can be set high enough that nothing could be completely proven, including the foregoing. Given these, everything I believe fails at some point on the burden of proof scale, but I am not so addicted to empirical thought and rational logic that I would willingly forego my beliefs simply because of those failures.

  • So what do you believe that you can't prove?

    String Theory.

    And do you think it will ever be proven?

    Not in my lifetime, but at some point beyond that, I think 'proof' of some sort will eventually be offered.

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What is wanted is not the will to believe, but the will to find out, which is the exact opposite. -- Bertrand Russell, "Skeptical Essays", 1928

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