The unpopular opinions thread.

My claim wasn't extraordinary, don't abuse the verbosity; technical imperfections aside for my claim (which are based on your injunctions by the way, not mine), you're intentionally instituting a false dilemma based on the Heisenburg Principle (which is meant to apply to physical effects and natural phenomena, not pseudoscience). This tiny amount of wiggle-room (definitely not the huge difference between skepticism and certainty) makes any statement incorrect at 100, but it does not necessarily make the premise invalid. Another way of putting it is that you're trying to propose the idea behind Russell's Teapot on me, not based on any flaw of reasoning or argument against the existence of the supernatural, but based on dislike towards me/my tone.

To be frank, it's an absurd claim, and me stating as such with such little functional difference as to be insignificant in the degree of certainty is meaningless to the validity/invalidity of it. Let's look at how certainty works in the scheme of Bertrand Russell: When presented with the full narrative, the stage where Russell declares that the teapot (or where you state that I'm not giving enough of an account for the supernatural) is actually too small to be seen (after it has been searched for by all the telescopes in the world) can be considered an example of moving the goalposts. You argue/err on the argument of physical evidence in toto. This is fine, but you're not accounting for reasoning (or choosing not to since you really want to shut me down it seems.) To add onto Mr. Russell's reasoning, the point where the teapot/claim becomes "undetectable" is analogous to numerous ideas used in the construction of scientific theories regarding how the universe works. Namely, if something is entirely undetectable and as such has no effect that can be measured or observed, directly or indirectly, then its existence or otherwise essentially makes no difference to the world. Thus, it can happily be discarded if convenient to a better theory. This was the case with the aether, for example, which was a theorized "substance" that light would propagate through. As experiments failed to detect it or its effect (the Michelson–Morley experiment being the most prominent and famous example) the idea was discarded to allow the development of space-time as used in relativity. The notions of absolute position, rest and motion - associated with the existence of the aether - were also discarded, as they really can't be detected, in favor of more relativistic physics which turned out to predict the nature of the universe much better anyway.

The persuasive aspects of Russell's teapot argument lie in reducing non-falsifiable beliefs to something that is more clearly absurd. Some may object to this methodology, citing that religions are somehow "different", but in general the claims made by Russell regarding the celestial teapot are similar to those proposed by all religions, major and minor alike. Indeed, given a broad enough definition, the existence of the teapot is just as much a religious matter as any other deity. A small but growing number of people believes in the Olympian gods of the Greco-Roman religions, a few people believe in Asatru, Neopagans believe at least parts of the Celtic religion but very many people buy into Judeo-Christian and Islamic traditions. Yet there is no consistent reason to take these currently popular ideologies any more seriously than other Bronze Age, Iron Age, or older, mythologies. Indeed, in another 2000 years, Christianity may have been displaced by Scientology, atheism or something else as a major religion/belief system — so special privilege should not be given to a conjecture, even an openly religious one, just due to the number of adherents. This is the key behind highlighting the argument with the assertion as a teapot in orbit. We only think that the teapot is an obviously bullshit example because no one seriously believes it. If people did believe in it, we might think otherwise, but that's the point. This fact alone would not change the underlying logic, and evidence provided, to back up the assertion.

As a truth seeking-skeptic, I can happily state with 99.99 (infinitely repeating) certainty that ghosts don't exist. If you got proof for the ghost, now is the time for it. The burden of proof isn't mine, nor was it ever mine. Maybe you're right that I have an attitude issue. I certainly (100%) have a big ego, I admit. But to be fair, so do you bud. I'm not taking the claim out of context for what it is, and I've already posted my apologies to other users based on getting into a cockfight for this. I'm not going to drag it out any more. I would hope that if you have as much regard for other users feelings as you claim you do, you'll drop this useless argument with me.