these debates remind me of...

[willie24]

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now, take my mom. since we know that her logic is flawed, we know that she is never right for the right reason. because we know that the lawyer is better than 50% to be right, and because we know that my mom has the opposite answer, we know that she must be worse than 50%...but if we didn't know her answer relative to the highest level answer, we would have to assume she was 50%.

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Would we? Even if we know there are dozens of such questions that are mutually exclusive? And an infinite number, at the theoretical level?

If your mother can be assumed (even in this context) to be 50% right, then so can the followers of all the other mutually exclusive faiths (at your mother's level of functioning). But of course this is absurd - the total probability can't exceed 100%. You want to give your mother 50%? If you do that, you are necessarily suggesting that Catholicism is the belief system most likely to be true. So you can't do that.

This is relevant for two reasons. The first is the point that a yes/no question can have implications that go beyond the yes/no context of the specific debate. Just because a question is yes/no and has a "back-and-forth" doesn't mean it's sensible to give it a weight of 50%. It would be more appropriate to say that we can't weigh it at all.

More importantly, the argument regarding Catholicism can be easily applied to show that the probably of any specific belief system judged according to a general approach is 0. This doesn't necessarily mean much - probability 0 isn't the same as impossibility, and it frequently indicates that the question can't be answered probabilistically. However, this little point shows that any specific belief must be either inherently superior to the alternatives in some way or extremely arbitrary.

If we abandon the idea of inherent superiority (which is almost impossible to logically support - though legitimate "faith" experiences could qualify) that leaves us with belief systems that are wholly arbitrary. And while proving that Catholicism is arbitrary isn't the same as proving Catholicism false, it is pretty damning (no pun intended).

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heh, i'm getting frustrated here at my inability to effectively communicate. I am NOT saying that the answer "yes" is 50% to be right. i am saying this and only this: (please read carefully)

if we know someone has used an illogical method to arrive at an answer to a yes/no question, and that is ALL that we know, then, given the information we have, they are 50% to be correct. (assume we do not know the question, we do not know the answer, and we do not know who the person shares/doesn't share a viewpoint with etc)

despite the fact that this statement is simple and obvious and will get no argument from anyone (once you understand what is and isn't being said), the implications, to me, are profound.