No 'know', KNOW!

[xman]

I've just gotten through another pointless extended debate with a group of creationists and thinking about how difficult it is to get them to understand what I'm really saying. Anyhow, I thought about some of the weak points in the exchange and have an idea, was wondering what you all thought of it's usefulness and application in such debates.

Basically there are two definitions of the word 'know'.
The first is certainty, like how we know the sun will rise, real knowledge. Let's call it - KNOW
The second is how you know somebody and is a personal relationship with someone or something, like carnal knowledge. Let's call it kno

My point is that since there is no way to determine anything supernatural, theists cannot KNOW their god-spirit, they can only ever kno it. Their best argument would be that they can KNOW because they see others just like themselves who claim KNOWledge, not just knoledge. I'm sure it's a false argument, but I'm not sure how it's best disarmed.
KNOWledge is also something we all share. We collectively, as a species have KNOWledge of evolution, of geology etc. That's shared information, part of our cultural heritage. It's just not the same thing as how a theist considers that they kno their god.

The upshot of this is that they're equivocating when they claim to 'know' god is real as I know evolution is real, but it's not even the same argument. If this can be shown in any debate then they don't ever get to sit at the big kids' table and challenge rationalism because they're not playing by the same rules, and they must be relegated to arguing with each other (as they do) over which collective interpretation wins the definition of kno.

How far behind the curve am I?

 

[WolfAU]

about how difficult it is to get them to understand what I'm really saying.

Of course, Christianity (and other creationist faiths) have been around a while and learnt how to indoctrinate their followers pretty well, most notably making it seem like them even considering the possibility of an alternate viewpoint is weakness that their God will punish them for, and seeing how the church often condemns those who have broken away from the church (fearing that level of social rejection)... plus they try to make out that everything they know ties in to religion, without it they have nothing... it's a good scam.

Christians love to through the KNOW (and kno) bomb around to give off a veil of complete confidence (as this comforts and reassures themselves, each other, and can often be effective at converting others), but obviously their usage of the term is completely misleading and the fact that they do so is completely intellectually dishonest. No theist could ever have a discussion of concepts like "how confident are you that you are right?" or "what would it take to convince you you are wrong?" they will almost always utterly refuse to entertain such questions. Though they love to play that angle to evolution ("well you weren't there to witness evolution occur" or "scientists aren't CERTAIN"), which in some ways is taking a virtue of science (acknowledging uncertainty) and trying to twist it against it, and I resent that.

I generally agree with what you're saying. Call me jaded, as I went to a religious school, and have been debating theists pretty much all my life (my class mates, teachers, some of my family, people in college etc) but usually if they say they KNOW God is real, then they are so close minded they do not care about evidence and cannot entertain alternate possibilities, then you're wasting your time. Some people don't care about truth, some people are unable to come to any rational conclusion about truth, some people as so invested in the lie they cannot break from it (ie some Christians I know converted when one of their family members died, the promise of meeting them again is too comforting for them to break free from).

The trick is usually to plant the seeds of thought in the young (ie teach them to reason, value evidence, truth etc), and to test the waters with adults, I usually open any such debate with "what evidence would it take to convince you you're mistaken, and convert to atheism or another faith?", and you can respond, assuming you're a reasonable skeptic (ie with sufficient evidence you would convert), list some things that would convince you there was a God/God's or a specific faith (a good list here and here) if they're close minded and when you point that out to them they are completely immobile, odds are you're wasting your time. Apart from that I generally state that facts are important, not just about God's existance, but about dogma, and the issue of how much of an effect religion has on their thoughts and actions (ie some people are naturally nasty, some are naturally good, sometimes religion has an effect, sometimes it doesn't).

 

[ImprobableJoe]

You're on the right track, and I've come at it from a slightly different angle for a couple of years now.

We all have two main ways we approach the world. Say there's a bowl of green Jello in your refrigerator. One way you can go at that bowl of Jello is to describe its physical properties and location: "There's a bowl containing a half-cup of Jello, and it is on the top shelf of my fridge." Another way you can approach that bowl of Jello is to describe it from a subjective, personal standpoint: "I like green Jello, it reminds me of summers when I was a kid."

One of those approaches involves knowing things about the Jello, and the other involves feelings about Jello. They are two completely different things to a rational person. Religious people suffer a failure of rationality, and mistakenly believe that feeling is a way of knowing things objectively. Because feelings are an internal thing, they act as a filter to keep out any information from the external that would contradict the feelings they hold to be important. Their brains practically work in the reverse manner of someone who is a skeptic. A skeptic takes a claim, examines the evidence, compares it to the knowledge we have of the real world, and accepts or rejects the claim based on how well-supported the claim is. A theist takes a claim, compares it to what they feel should be true, and accepts or rejects well-supported evidence and knowledge of the real world based on how well the claim supports what they already feel in their heart.