Your portrayal here doesn’t seem intellectually honest. Suppose he claims that the Flying Spaghetti Monster probably doesn’t exist. Remarking that “‘probably’ i

Your portrayal here doesn’t seem intellectually honest. Suppose he claims that the Flying Spaghetti Monster probably doesn’t exist. Remarking that “‘probably’ is doing some immense heavy lifting here” would certainly give the impression that it does exist, which is your intent. However, no substantiation has been provided, and the FSM might very well not exist. In other words, all you did was employ sophistry to write off the views of those you disagree with without offering any rebuttal of substance, while appearing that you actually did. That doesn’t strike me as engaging in good faith. Still, it doesn’t make the crux of the author’s argument any less sound; if you want to invest a huge pile of money into solving a problem, you’d probably want to be sure that the problem is well-defined and actually exist.