ghostguy123 said:
So at the risk of being stramanned again (even though I am sure it will again anyway), I will just ask this question:
Is it really irrational to say that something doesn't exist when it has never been proven to exist?
I think its irrational to say with certainty that it doesn't exist. But its fine to believe it doesn't as your default assumption.
For example, I don't believe that there is an invisible pink unicorn living in my ceiling tiles at work... but I can't definitive say that it doesn't exist because I've never stuck my head up there to not see it (its invisible imo) and sometimes I hear some weird noises coming from there.
I think it would be silly to assert its existence with no evidence other than the say so of people who worked in this office 2 millennium ago and had very little understanding about how the world and universe worked. I mean, these folks used to believe that the office stapler was a demon bent on binding all of the papyrus into one giant mass. They didn't understand gravity, celestial movements, etc etc. They made up stories to fill in the gaps in their knowledge, just like every society throughout history has done... my office was no different back then. So, whenever I come across a faded memo from 2000 years ago asserting that a water demon eats the feces we deposit in the office toilet, or that an invisible pink unicorn lives in the ceiling and is responsible for the occasional noise up there, I dismiss it. Relying on the people who wrote those memos for information about how the world around them worked would be like asking my 6 year old daughter to solve a calculus problem and then taking her answer as correct and serious.
So no, I can't definitively say that there is no invisible pink unicorn in my office's ceiling. I do not believe it is there, and I question the judgment of any who assert its existence.