I could replace you, Coggins, with a Scientology drone, and that person could say things like "I would leave Scientology if it were conclusively, and unequivocally shown that Emperor Xenu did not exist. I would leave Scientology if it were conclusively shown that thetans do not exist. I would leave Scientology if it were conclusively shown that LRH made up the OTIII Wall of Fire materials." It would be exactly the same thing.
Sethbag’s argument is essentially a variant of Russell’s teapot:
If I were to suggest that between the Earth and Mars there is a china teapot revolving about the sun in an elliptical orbit, nobody would be able to disprove my assertion provided I were careful to add that the teapot is too small to be revealed even by our most powerful telescopes. But if I were to go on to say that, since my assertion cannot be disproved, it is an intolerable presumption on the part of human reason to doubt it, I should rightly be thought to be talking nonsense. If, however, the existence of such a teapot were affirmed in ancient books, taught as the sacred truth every Sunday, and instilled into the minds of children at school, hesitation to believe in its existence would become a mark of eccentricity and entitle the doubter to the attentions of the psychiatrist in an enlightened age or of the Inquisitor in an earlier time.
I think that the principle exemplified here is the essential point in any response to Coggins’ post. (Though goodness knows why anyone would want to reply to him … I suppose it is because innocent children may be reading this board, and one would not like them to think that the lack of a response shows that all the rest of us are struck dumb by his cogency.)
Coggins triumphant response to this kind of objection is:
But I do not accept empirical knowledge as the sole form of valid knowledge or empirical means as the sole means to attain it.
I need not justify my religious beliefs empirically, for a number of reasons, the least of which is there is no possibility of empirically ascertaining whether or not Stephen really saw Christ standing on the right hand of God as he died, or whether Joseph Smith actually translated an authentic ancient record. There are other means of ascertaining these things, but you have, of your own free will, separated yourself from those means. Others of us here have not. We can, and have, access to those means. You do not.
So ultimately it all comes down to what are in effect voices in the head … voices that affirm that the earth is only 6,000 years old, that there was a universal flood, that the first ancestors of humanity lived in Missouri, that people once sailed to America in wooden submarines with holes in them (with livestock, including bees, if I recall rightly), that Joseph Smith could translate hieroglyphics … and so on: propositions believed in by a tiny proportion of humanity, mostly living in Utah and brought up by their parents so to believe.
Adopting this new path to knowledge is a really attractive proposition, isn’t it?