How would you respond to this argument for ID?

[Natorgator]

I'm no philosopher and I saw this posted somewhere; never really seen anything of this sort...

you who don't understand Intelligent Design at all because you can't understand extremely high level probability mathematics (which is what it's based upon), you shouldn't regurgitate what you read at the popular levels of criticism. Have you searched for any articles on I.D. in the science journals? I doubt it. There are definitely reviews of the ideas out there.

I.D. is by definition scientific because it's simply a forensic probabability scheme, which is by definition scientific. It's how crimes are solved. When people get killed, we don't postulate natural means that they were killed, we have scientific means for determining whether an intelligence (i.e. a person, or animal, etc.) did it. I.D. just applies this to living mechanisms.

The only reason why one would *NOT* apply this to living mechanisms, is if you have a fundmental ontology which states that the very nature of Being and existence is non-intelligent. This is a worldview. This is not scientific. And this is the worldview that most of science starts with, which is what the "Christians" are arguing against.

It's incredibly annoying to read people who are ignorant of philosophy and their own fundmental worldview assumptions (which exist prior to ANY and ALL investigations into the nature of ANYTHING), who assert that their worldview has the most "evidence". Guess what people, you only have evidence for things that your worldview accepts as adequate. And guess what else? Your worldview is not justified, because it is the starting point of all thought, and there is nothing prior to it to point to to justify it.

Further, all you great proponents of evolution without a guiding Intelligence or Intelligent origin, if non-intelligent evolution is true, your very thought processes are the product of random survival type mutations, which have nothing to do with truth. Truth requires a belief in something transcendent. Therefore, your perceptions, your ideas of truth, your very thoughts, are neurons interacting for the purpose of survival, and you have no justified reason for assuming that they are "true" or that they correctly interpret reality whatsoever. You are an animal trying to survive. Why would I listen to a silly animal explain to me the ultimate nature of reality? Evolution may be true, but it rips out a base to stand upon to proclaim it as true.

And as an addendum:

5 x 5= 25 is not a fact. When you start to study foundations of mathematics, you realize no one really knows what numbers are, ontologically speaking, or how they work, or what their connection is to things in reality. That statement is not therefore a "fact", because such a statement is abstract, and while it has factual applications, there is no physical thing I can point to as the universal state of affairs "5 x 5 = 25", since this is not a contingent state of affairs, which is what "facts" deal with.

Joshua is right - all of this belief in evolution and science and the idea that we "possess" truth about reality come from people wanting to receive some sort of comfort in the idea that they can explain things - and this comes from wanting to make our own ego big and comfortable because we receive some sort of self-esteem from it. It's the same feeling you receieve when you make fun of someone, you feel somehow better and more justified about yourself. We get the same feeling when we say, "evolution is a fact! Other people are dumb for not believing!"

And that's why the whole debate continues, for your own petty self-esteem, not because you actually care about truth. Because if you did, you'd stop making fun of people, and start questioning all of your own assumptions, and start being more humble.

Isn't this simply philosophical sophistry?

[Keevan_Colton]

Yes. But didnt you get the memo from the post modernists? Everything is sophistry...though none of them seem able to argue their way out of gravity if you chuck them off something.

[Ryushikaze]

In a word: Yes.

"5 x 5= 25 is not a fact."

I have 5 sets of 5 apples. I have 25 apples. Now, 5, apple, and 25 are all technically arbitrarily chosen terms, but the fact of their presence is rather undeniable, unless you're in for grand deciever arguments. Those don't end well.

As for "your very thought processes are the product of random survival type mutations", well, So? Doesn't really squig me at all, to be honest.

And no. Truth does NOT require something transcendant, and insisting it does is a form of putting the cart before the horse, seeing as there's no real reason to believe in the existence of- for lack of a better term- transcendant reality.

[Edi]

I'm no philosopher and I saw this posted somewhere; never really seen anything of this sort...

<snip>

Isn't this simply philosophical sophistry?

Yes. It's also suspiciously like one of those "Refute this" or "Help me kick ass elsewhere" posts that are generally forbidden in SLAM unless the poster himself is adding and generating worthwhile content and discussion.

When posting things of this nature, try to at least find some refutation on your own first. The Creationism vs Science portion of the main site deals with all of this sophistic bullshit, for fuck's sake!

Edi

[Natorgator]

When posting things of this nature, try to at least find some refutation on your own first. The Creationism vs Science portion of the main site deals with all of this sophistic bullshit, for fuck's sake!

Edi

Sorry, I posted this while I was still at work and wanted to get a little input before I got home. Mainly, I've never heard of the forensic probability part.

To me, the argument about not knowing how numbers work doesn't mean anything - when we don't know how something works, do we automatically use God to fill in the blanks? Isn't this mode of thinking straight out of the middle ages?

[Lord Zentei]

Truth requires a belief in something transcendent.

Bullshit.

[General Zod]

When posting things of this nature, try to at least find some refutation on your own first. The Creationism vs Science portion of the main site deals with all of this sophistic bullshit, for fuck's sake!

Edi

Sorry, I posted this while I was still at work and wanted to get a little input before I got home. Mainly, I've never heard of the forensic probability part.

To me, the argument about not knowing how numbers work doesn't mean anything - when we don't know how something works, do we automatically use God to fill in the blanks? Isn't this mode of thinking straight out of the middle ages?

The fact that the dipshit in this article only spends about two sentences mentioning the forensic probability nonsense then goes on the rest of the page to blather about philosophy and how facts aren't true is enough of a reason to dismiss this dimwit offhand. Especially since he's not actually explaining anything, just blowing a lot of hot air.

[Steel]

Its quite strange, that they should mention forensics, where you are placed in a situation, and do not know how it has come to be and you try to determine what has happened in the past.

The way ID would deal with this is "God made it exactly this way"

If investigsting something you analyse ALL the information available, propose a mechanism for how it happened and check if this fits the inforamtion.

If you want to make actual scientific progress, ID is fuck all use.


Take 2 farmers, they both want bigger horses

Farmer A says that god creates the horses whatever size he wants, just sits around doing nothing, and amazingly his horses dont get any bigger.

Farmer B has noticed that the larger horses tend to have larger offspring, and so selectively breeds the larger ones together, and ends up with with bogger horses.

In the above situation, farmer B observed a pattern in nature, and then used it to his advantage. Farmer A however just sat around and missed out.

This same reasoning can be applied to modern day biological industries that rely on data and ideas in evolution to make useful products and shedloads of money. If the businesses instead used ID as their mechanism, and prayed instead of working in labs, they would be unable to design anything and would go bust fairly quickly (if not supported by legions of similarly minded morons like a certain institute, which is yet to make any discoveries...)

[Adrian Laguna]

Actually Steel, you are (I never thought I'd say this!) misrepresenting ID. You seem to be thinking of creationism. Intelligent Design basically says that God (technically an "Intelligent Creator" but we all know they mean God) guided evolution.

From an ID viewpoint, Farmer B is emulating God on a smaller scale. Indeed, some IDers use the case of selective breeding of certain animals by humans as "proof" of their bullshit. In reality, Farmer B is, in a sense, applying carefully controlled evolutionary pressure. He allows only the horses that show the desired traits to breed. Farmer A is acting like a creationist, praying that he gets bigger horses.

[drachefly]

Wow, RavingAtheist, sound familiar?

His argument against seeking a naturalistic explanation is that we're ditching the explanation that it was created.

But that's not it. ID is ditching the explanation that it was NOT created.

[Rye]

you who don't understand Intelligent Design at all because you can't understand extremely high level probability mathematics (which is what it's based upon), you shouldn't regurgitate what you read at the popular levels of criticism. Have you searched for any articles on I.D. in the science journals? I doubt it. There are definitely reviews of the ideas out there.

ID has predicted exactly what, in it's entire history? What method do IDeists propose the entity that we all know is a euphamism for God uses? If you don't have an idea how such a designer implements it's design, what the fuck are you looking for? IDeists look for shit that is unexplained and if possible, difficult to understand, that's it.

This is not the best means of investigating the world, surprisingly.

If the IDeists would go one step further, and start looking for things that were designed the way WE would genetically design something, look for specific advantageous genetic therapy that could not have come about via normal, unintelligent processes, like true chimeras, or endogenous retroviruses that were purely advantageous to the host and the ancient technology used to synthesise them, we'd have a compelling argument for some intelligent entities interfering with life on this planet.

I.D. is by definition scientific because it's simply a forensic probabability scheme, which is by definition scientific.

It's "simply" an argument from incredulity. Can you show me how to distinguish a real crime scene from one that has been intelligently designed by whatever designer interfered with the dna of life on this planet?

It's how crimes are solved. When people get killed, we don't postulate natural means that they were killed, we have scientific means for determining whether an intelligence (i.e. a person, or animal, etc.) did it. I.D. just applies this to living mechanisms.

They are solved by comparing the current evidence against what we already know how to accomplish, we know humans attack like this, we know wolves attack like this, and as such, we can draw upon past experience.

Think about it, if some totally alien designed craft impacted on the planet, but was nothing like what we had seen before, no recognisable circuitry, controls, biology, anything, how would we determine it was intelligently designed and not a natural phenomena? We wouldn't.

The only reason why one would *NOT* apply this to living mechanisms, is if you have a fundmental ontology which states that the very nature of Being and existence is non-intelligent. This is a worldview. This is not scientific. And this is the worldview that most of science starts with, which is what the "Christians" are arguing against.

That's not unscientific, intelligence is limited to animals with brains, as far as we know. Scientifically, if you suspect otherwise, give the evidential basis, oh that's right, you don't have one. Kiss my arse, then.

It's incredibly annoying to read people who are ignorant of philosophy and their own fundmental worldview assumptions (which exist prior to ANY and ALL investigations into the nature of ANYTHING), who assert that their worldview has the most "evidence". Guess what people, you only have evidence for things that your worldview accepts as adequate. And guess what else? Your worldview is not justified, because it is the starting point of all thought, and there is nothing prior to it to point to to justify it.

This is rather meaningless and tautological. Justifiability doesn't apply to itself, this doesn't make concepts subsequent to it that are unjustifiable the same as justifiable ones.

Further, all you great proponents of evolution without a guiding Intelligence or Intelligent origin, if non-intelligent evolution is true, your very thought processes are the product of random survival type mutations, which have nothing to do with truth.

Excuse me?

Truth requires a belief in something transcendent.

Says who?

Therefore, your perceptions, your ideas of truth, your very thoughts, are neurons interacting for the purpose of survival, and you have no justified reason for assuming that they are "true" or that they correctly interpret reality whatsoever. You are an animal trying to survive. Why would I listen to a silly animal explain to me the ultimate nature of reality? Evolution may be true, but it rips out a base to stand upon to proclaim it as true.

Actually, since you would be such an animal, you would get your concept of truth from "innacurate perceptions and judgments" and thus would have to undermine your own argument to put it forth. Ergo, you are stealing the concept, and alluding to solipsism and all that bullshit that is the bane of anyone that wants to seriously examine the universe.

5 x 5= 25 is not a fact.

Yes it is, it is true by definition, so it is factual."God exists" is not a fact. The preceding statements are facts.

When you start to study foundations of mathematics, you realize no one really knows what numbers are, ontologically speaking, or how they work, or what their connection is to things in reality. That statement is not therefore a "fact", because such a statement is abstract, and while it has factual applications, there is no physical thing I can point to as the universal state of affairs "5 x 5 = 25",

You're equivocating between the definitions of fact, since maths are conceptual, and are defined in absolute terms in equations like 5*5=25, they are inherently true as per their definitions. They are facts. They are not facts in the evidential sense.

since this is not a contingent state of affairs, which is what "facts" deal with.

Joshua is right - all of this belief in evolution and science and the idea that we "possess" truth about reality come from people wanting to receive some sort of comfort in the idea that they can explain things - and this comes from wanting to make our own ego big and comfortable because we receive some sort of self-esteem from it. It's the same feeling you receieve when you make fun of someone, you feel somehow better and more justified about yourself. We get the same feeling when we say, "evolution is a fact! Other people are dumb for not believing!"

Uh, good old hypocrisy at work, you're going to explain to someone why explaining things with put downs is vacuous and shallow. So you're explaining something with putdowns. Well, congratulations, you poser sophist thundercunt.

And frankly, motive is irrelevent anyway. Not believing in the established history of life on earth makes you ignorant, irrational , insane or a combination.

And that's why the whole debate continues, for your own petty self-esteem, not because you actually care about truth. Because if you did, you'd stop making fun of people, and start questioning all of your own assumptions, and start being more humble.

Fuck humility, and fuck you, you pretentious cockwart, who are you to tell people to be more humble? Frankly, "truth" as is absolutely discernable is an EXTREMELY limited arena. After that, there is what is reasonably discernable; that requires the senses, memory, and the faculty of uniting the data from the senses and memory in a meaningful, useful framework (reason).

We need less people like this hypocritical piece of shit, and more people dedicated to accuracy and stomping out fraudulent smokescreens, that ultimately do nothing but sidetrack issues because they do not like accurate, reasoned conclusions. In otherwords, scientists.

[Shortie]

In a word: Yes.

"5 x 5= 25 is not a fact."

I have 5 sets of 5 apples. I have 25 apples. Now, 5, apple, and 25 are all technically arbitrarily chosen terms, but the fact of their presence is rather undeniable, unless you're in for grand deciever arguments. Those don't end well.

AIUI you've got to make some basic unprovable assumptions at the base of maths to do anything else (e.g. that '5' actually means something, and can be used repeatedly in various operations with other arbitrary, intangible concepts). They can't be proven as such, but the key thing about them is that they allow us to do lots of stuff that really works. And that's good enough for me.

[mr friendly guy]

you who don't understand Intelligent Design at all because you can't understand extremely high level probability mathematics (which is what it's based upon), you shouldn't regurgitate what you read at the popular levels of criticism. Have you searched for any articles on I.D. in the science journals? I doubt it. There are definitely reviews of the ideas out there. ?

Then perhaps you might want to show us where these articles are in science journals. There are none, and we know this because people have used computer searches for this.

I.D. is by definition scientific because it's simply a forensic probabability scheme, which is by definition scientific. ?

Define what a science is and then show how ID is scientific.

It's how crimes are solved. When people get killed, we don't postulate natural means that they were killed, we have scientific means for determining whether an intelligence (i.e. a person, or animal, etc.) did it. I.D. just applies this to living mechanisms. ?

Circular reasoning shithead. We know what natural and "unnatural" (caused by humans) causes look like which is how we distinguish them. To recognise an Intelligent Designer you have to start off with the assumption that such a designer exists. In other words you are assuming the very thing you are trying to prove. But I see basic logic isn't your strong point.

The only reason why one would *NOT* apply this to living mechanisms, is if you have a fundmental ontology which states that the very nature of Being and existence is non-intelligent. This is a worldview. This is not scientific. And this is the worldview that most of science starts with, which is what the "Christians" are arguing against. ?

What are you talking about. Humans exist and we are clearly intelligent (although with your case it will be very limited intelligence).

It's incredibly annoying to read people who are ignorant of philosophy and their own fundmental worldview assumptions (which exist prior to ANY and ALL investigations into the nature of ANYTHING), who assert that their worldview has the most "evidence". ?

Yet you can strangely say that we can derive conclusion in criminal investigations (and also about an Intelligent Designer) despite the crime happening before ALL investigations into the nature of the crime. Are you this moronic?

I will give you another tip. The job of science is to extrapolate back based on the evidence. Now present your evidence for an intelligent designer and how you can extrapolate back with fundamental worldview assumptions.

Guess what people, you only have evidence for things that your worldview accepts as adequate. And guess what else? Your worldview is not justified, because it is the starting point of all thought, and there is nothing prior to it to point to to justify it.

And you accuse scientist of using the pseudoscientific approach of assuming the theory is correct and accepting only evidence which suits it.

Further, all you great proponents of evolution without a guiding Intelligence or Intelligent origin, if non-intelligent evolution is true, your very thought processes are the product of random survival type mutations, which have nothing to do with truth.

Learn what an appeal to consequence fallacy is.

Truth requires a belief in something transcendent.

Back up that premise, or else you are just using circular reasoning again.

Therefore, your perceptions, your ideas of truth, your very thoughts, are neurons interacting for the purpose of survival, and you have no justified reason for assuming that they are "true" or that they correctly interpret reality whatsoever. .

This is like asking "how do you know you exist". The very fact that you can consider the question shows you exist. The very fact that you can think "your very thoughts" show that they are real. This is just a stolen concept fallacy.

You are an animal trying to survive. Why would I listen to a silly animal explain to me the ultimate nature of reality? Evolution may be true, but it rips out a base to stand upon to proclaim it as true.

1. You assume reality has an "ultimate" nature, which you define as something (God) which is beyond observation, and hence has zero evidence supporting it.

2. The silly animal seems smarter than a dumbass like you

3. We proclaim evolution as true because it has been fucking observed to happen both in the laboratory and in nature. We proclaim neo-Darwinism as the best likely explanation as its predictions best match the observations. But that type of thing doesn't matter to the solipist morons with their strange concepts of "absolute truth".

And as an addendum:

5 x 5= 25 is not a fact. When you start to study foundations of mathematics, you realize no one really knows what numbers are, ontologically speaking, or how they work, or what their connection is to things in reality. That statement is not therefore a "fact", because such a statement is abstract, and while it has factual applications, there is no physical thing I can point to as the universal state of affairs "5 x 5 = 25", since this is not a contingent state of affairs, which is what "facts" deal with.

You seem to be confused about facts which are grounded in physical reality (ie evolution and a great deal of science) and facts which are conceptual in nature - say The Doctor is a Time Lord from Gallifrey or Superman is from the planet Krypton are facts in the conceptual sense.

Joshua is right - all of this belief in evolution and science and the idea that we "possess" truth about reality come from people wanting to receive some sort of comfort in the idea that they can explain things - and this comes from wanting to make our own ego big and comfortable because we receive some sort of self-esteem from it. It's the same feeling you receieve when you make fun of someone, you feel somehow better and more justified about yourself. We get the same feeling when we say, "evolution is a fact! Other people are dumb for not believing!"

Appeal to motive fallacy. Try again.

And that's why the whole debate continues, for your own petty self-esteem, not because you actually care about truth. Because if you did, you'd stop making fun of people, and start questioning all of your own assumptions, and start being more humble.

Oh wait, he tries another appeal to motive. How about you start questioning your assumptions and your logical fallacies and start growing a brain instead.

[Sriad]

I'd be very interested to see an technically sophisticated argument in favor of ID written a PHD level Mathemetician/Biochemist from a reputable university... if such a thing existed.

All the "life is too complex to have evolved by chance!!1" claptrap would be much more interesting if it came from an expert in 1: chance and 2: the complexity of life.

[Darth Wong]

you who don't understand Intelligent Design at all because you can't understand extremely high level probability mathematics (which is what it's based upon), you shouldn't regurgitate what you read at the popular levels of criticism. Have you searched for any articles on I.D. in the science journals? I doubt it. There are definitely reviews of the ideas out there.

Interestingly, he doesn't name one.

I.D. is by definition scientific because it's simply a forensic probabability scheme, which is by definition scientific. It's how crimes are solved. When people get killed, we don't postulate natural means that they were killed, we have scientific means for determining whether an intelligence (i.e. a person, or animal, etc.) did it. I.D. just applies this to living mechanisms.

What a pitiful lie. A real forensics analysis, upon discovering that they cannot determine cause of death, would not conclude that it must have been murder. Yet that is precisely what ID does; any ambiguity or uncertainty means "must have been intelligent intervention" to them.

The only reason why one would *NOT* apply this to living mechanisms, is if you have a fundmental ontology which states that the very nature of Being and existence is non-intelligent. This is a worldview. This is not scientific. And this is the worldview that most of science starts with, which is what the "Christians" are arguing against.

The "very nature of Being and existence" is designed to sound philosophical without really meaning anything. We are talking about specific mechanisms and events here. You can't argue that an event was caused by intelligent intervention by babbling about the "very nature of Being and existence".

It's incredibly annoying to read people who are ignorant of philosophy and their own fundmental worldview assumptions (which exist prior to ANY and ALL investigations into the nature of ANYTHING), who assert that their worldview has the most "evidence". Guess what people, you only have evidence for things that your worldview accepts as adequate. And guess what else? Your worldview is not justified, because it is the starting point of all thought, and there is nothing prior to it to point to to justify it.

Interesting that he does not recognize the physical world as a legitimate starting point of investigation outside one's own mind and worldview.

Further, all you great proponents of evolution without a guiding Intelligence or Intelligent origin, if non-intelligent evolution is true, your very thought processes are the product of random survival type mutations, which have nothing to do with truth.

This statement requires that all thoughts produced by a naturally evolved brain must be false, and fails to explain why this should be the case.

Truth requires a belief in something transcendent.

It's so convenient to argue by simply stating your belief as a fact.

Therefore, your perceptions, your ideas of truth, your very thoughts, are neurons interacting for the purpose of survival, and you have no justified reason for assuming that they are "true" or that they correctly interpret reality whatsoever. You are an animal trying to survive. Why would I listen to a silly animal explain to me the ultimate nature of reality? Evolution may be true, but it rips out a base to stand upon to proclaim it as true.

It's interesting that he tries to defeat ideas by attacking the credibility of the author rather than the logic of the ideas. This is a textbook ad-hominem fallacy: attacking the idea by attacking the author. As has been said elsewhere, if an insane man says something which happens to be true, it is still true regardless of his insanity.

This argument actually refutes itself. He argues that if your brain evolved, then you must be too stupid to understand science (a conclusion which assumes the truth of his assertion that evolution can't create anything complicated), therefore evolution is not a good theory (since he judges theories by the credibility of their authors rather than the intrinsic merits of the theories themselves). But if your brain evolved, then surely evolution must be a good theory since you demonstrated it by evolving!

Another point here is that he seems to think that if your brain obeys natural laws rather than some sort of higher power, then it cannot be capable of logical thought. This in turn means that he must believe the human brain does not obey natural laws.

And as an addendum:

5 x 5= 25 is not a fact. When you start to study foundations of mathematics, you realize no one really knows what numbers are, ontologically speaking, or how they work, or what their connection is to things in reality. That statement is not therefore a "fact", because such a statement is abstract, and while it has factual applications, there is no physical thing I can point to as the universal state of affairs "5 x 5 = 25", since this is not a contingent state of affairs, which is what "facts" deal with.

Now this part is an outright lie. Mathematics is a self-contained system which defines its own concepts, hence it is possible for a mathematical statement to be an indisputable fact.

Joshua is right - all of this belief in evolution and science and the idea that we "possess" truth about reality come from people wanting to receive some sort of comfort in the idea that they can explain things - and this comes from wanting to make our own ego big and comfortable because we receive some sort of self-esteem from it. It's the same feeling you receieve when you make fun of someone, you feel somehow better and more justified about yourself. We get the same feeling when we say, "evolution is a fact! Other people are dumb for not believing!"

Yet again, he tries to attack the author of an idea rather than finding actual logical fault with the idea itself.

And that's why the whole debate continues, for your own petty self-esteem, not because you actually care about truth. Because if you did, you'd stop making fun of people, and start questioning all of your own assumptions, and start being more humble.

See above. He seems to be fond of making statements which begin with "if you actually studied <insert subject here>" and then go on to make ridiculously ignorant statements about that subject. His bluffing is painfully obvious.

[B5B7]

you who don't understand Intelligent Design at all because you can't understand extremely high level probability mathematics (which is what it's based upon), you shouldn't regurgitate what you read at the popular levels of criticism. Have you searched for any articles on I.D. in the science journals? I doubt it. There are definitely reviews of the ideas out there.

The "you" is an attack. Not believing something isn't the same as not understanding it. "extremeley high level probability maths" is bullshit. Simple probability is involved (the creationists don't understand simple probability).
As for searching for articles on ID in science journals - they're Science journals & don't have ID papers (they may have a mention of ID in them). ID journals are not, by definition, science journals.

There are definitely reviews of the ideas out there.

.
Now this is an illogical statement for this author to use, as based on its actual wording reviews could range from refutations to pro-ID. The assumption is pro-ID, so again he is referring to pseudo-science journals.

As to 5 x 5 = 25. This is true when using standard base 10.
If using non-standard base eg base 8, 5 x 5 = 31. However, there is consistency, and within any base system the result of 5 x 5 will always be the same. For one reason, because this multiplication is shorthand for an addition process: 5 + 5 + 5 + 5 + 5 = 25, and if I grab 5 bags each containing 5 apples I will have 25 apples unless some mysteriously appear or disappear. [And when dealing with actual objects like this, it is certainly not "abstract'; numbers represent real physical objects often].
And if

no one really knows what numbers are

then its amazing that our computers are working.

[(8 x 3) + 1 = 24 + 1 = (10 x 2) + 5 : 31 = 25].
It is funny how the author is bragging of his knowledge of esoteric probability when he doesn't even understand basic arithmetic axioms.

If police find a dead person they do not automatically assume a cause of death - it can be natural eg a heart attack, etc.

[Zero]

His notion that truth can only exist as a concept if you believe in something transcendant is stupid. There are many definitions of truth, but the most accepted version of the word is a quality attached to someone who believes what he's saying.

You don't need to believe that there's some being that knows absolutely everything to believe that reality is a stable thing, and doesn't vary based on what people believe of it.