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What do you believe? (pg. 7)
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| SYSTEM-J |
| quote: | Originally posted by pkcRAISTLIN
The problem with traditional agnosticism is that it gives equal weighting to both sides of the argument, which imo doesn't make any sense. The negative stance is the natural and standard position, just as it is with any outlandish assertion lacking evidentiary support. Ive posted this before but perhaps system-J hasn’t seen it. |
Perhaps to some people, but I live my life based on what I know, and since the existence or nature of any deity is unknown/unknowable I live as though there isn't one. |
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| pkcRAISTLIN |
| quote: | Originally posted by SYSTEM-J
Perhaps to some people, but I live my life based on what I know, and since the existence or nature of any deity is unknown/unknowable I live as though there isn't one. |
Exactly, "based upon what you know". And you don’t lend equal weight to things you don’t know, if one side of the argument posits rather incredible notions. I mean, if I said there was a teapot orbiting Jupiter, would you take the “agnostic” position on that assertion? I wouldn’t have thought so. |
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| Arbiter |
My primary gripe with agnostics is their highly oversimplified epistemology. The way agnostics often describe the world you either know something is true with absolute certainty, know it is false with absolute certainty, or you don't know.
But even if this simplistic approach had some theoretical appeal--and I don't see how it does--it's totally contrary to how actual human beings think, explore, and interact with the world. The human brain is quite simply too imperfect an instrument for anyone to rationally claim absolute certainty of anything. Thus, to say that a claim to "know" something entails a claim of absolute certainty is to essentially define knowledge out of existence. The most salient effect is to obscure the distinction between those things genuinely in doubt and those where the possibility of error is extant but negligible.
Unsurprisingly, this foolish agnostic definition of the word "know" seems to be confined to the religious context:
Never have I asked an agnostic "do you know where your car is?" and received the answer "no; although I have a clear memory of where I parked it, it's possible that I incurred some brain trauma that I cannot recall in the interim, which is causing me to misremember the location of my automobile, and, moreover, it's possible that it was stolen, towed, or otherwise moved by someone in my absence."
That's because ordinary people describing ordinary "knowledge" do not, in fact, mean to suggest a sort of absolute infallible certainty. This behavior is particularly vexing because the distinction blurred by agnostics' religious epistemology is far more relevant in the very context they apply it--religion--than it is in most other contexts. It's almost enough to make one suspect that they are intentionally sabotaging any hope of a meaningful discussion.
I am an atheist not because I possess some sort of super-human absolute knowledge about the universe, but rather because I know there are no "gods"--or, at least, none of what I would consider to be rightly called a "god"--in an entirely ordinary, mundane, non-absolute, and potentially fallible way. |
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| Sushipunk |
| quote: | Originally posted by Arbiter
My primary gripe with agnostics is their highly oversimplified epistemology. The way agnostics often describe the world you either know something is true with absolute certainty, know it is false with absolute certainty, or you don't know.
But even if this simplistic approach had some theoretical appeal--and I don't see how it does--it's totally contrary to how actual human beings think, explore, and interact with the world. The human brain is quite simply too imperfect an instrument for anyone to rationally claim absolute certainty of anything. Thus, to say that a claim to "know" something entails a claim of absolute certainty is to essentially define knowledge out of existence. The most salient effect is to obscure the distinction between those things genuinely in doubt and those where the possibility of error is extant but negligible.
Unsurprisingly, this foolish agnostic definition of the word "know" seems to be confined to the religious context:
Never have I asked an agnostic "do you know where your car is?" and received the answer "no; although I have a clear memory of where I parked it, it's possible that I incurred some brain trauma that I cannot recall in the interim, which is causing me to misremember the location of my automobile, and, moreover, it's possible that it was stolen, towed, or otherwise moved by someone in my absence."
That's because ordinary people describing ordinary "knowledge" do not, in fact, mean to suggest a sort of absolute infallible certainty. This behavior is particularly vexing because the distinction blurred by agnostics' religious epistemology is far more relevant in the very context they apply it--religion--than it is in most other contexts. It's almost enough to make one suspect that they are intentionally sabotaging any hope of a meaningful discussion.
I am an atheist not because I possess some sort of super-human absolute knowledge about the universe, but rather because I know there are no "gods"--or, at least, none of what I would consider to be rightly called a "god"--in an entirely ordinary, mundane, non-absolute, and potentially fallible way. |
Yeah, that's what I was gonna say too. |
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| SYSTEM-J |
| quote: | Originally posted by pkcRAISTLIN
Exactly, "based upon what you know". And you don’t lend equal weight to things you don’t know, if one side of the argument posits rather incredible notions. I mean, if I said there was a teapot orbiting Jupiter, would you take the “agnostic” position on that assertion? I wouldn’t have thought so. |
I don't take the agnostic position on any "assertion". As soon as you start making assertions about something that is a complete blank spot of knowledge then obviously I'll call bull. It's a false analogy.
My main reason to classify myself as agnostic and not atheist has to do with the ultimate nature of the universe. I'm not even talking about meta-physics or the wanky epistomological logic Arbiter has just taken a swing at. The universe is built on scales of reality our mind can't even comprehend, and all precedent in science indicates we're nowhere near finding the smallest particles or the largest structures of the physical universe. Given that reality is basically a fractal pattern of spheres of matter orbiting each other on larger and larger scales, it's far from implausible and without precedent to suggest there could be planes of reality simply beyond the scope of either our comprehension or the power of our instruments. What they contain is equally unknown, and it could involve a creator of entirely natural origin. |
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| pkcRAISTLIN |
| quote: | Originally posted by SYSTEM-J
I don't take the agnostic position on any "assertion". As soon as you start making assertions about something that is a complete blank spot of knowledge then obviously I'll call bull. It's a false analogy.
My main reason to classify myself as agnostic and not atheist has to do with the ultimate nature of the universe. I'm not even talking about meta-physics or the wanky epistomological logic Arbiter has just taken a swing at. The universe is built on scales of reality our mind can't even comprehend, and all precedent in science indicates we're nowhere near finding the smallest particles or the largest structures of the physical universe. Given that reality is basically a fractal pattern of spheres of matter orbiting each other on larger and larger scales, it's far from implausible and without precedent to suggest there could be planes of reality simply beyond the scope of either our comprehension or the power of our instruments. What they contain is equally unknown, and it could involve a creator of entirely natural origin. |
lol, and you're calling arbiter wanky? |
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| SYSTEM-J |
No. I'm saying almost exactly the opposite. He is taking a swing at (dismissing, basically) that wanky "how do we know anything is real when it's just feedback from our flawed organic brain?" postmodernist philosophy that can make everyone agnostic about anything.
Besides, I don't see what's so wanky when what I'm saying basically amounts to the ending of Men In Black. |
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| pkcRAISTLIN |
| quote: | Originally posted by SYSTEM-J
No. I'm saying almost exactly the opposite. He is taking a swing at (dismissing, basically) that wanky "how do we know anything is real when it's just feedback from our flawed organic brain?" postmodernist philosophy that can make everyone agnostic about anything.
Besides, I don't see what's so wanky when what I'm saying basically amounts to the ending of Men In Black. |
I think you’ve both put forward reasonable rationalisations for why you believe what you do. I however didn’t find your passage any less wanky than his, and that has nothing to do with the fact that I want to have his babies. |
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| SYSTEM-J |
| Again, I don't think he's being wanky at all. You've just misunderstood what I meant by "taking a swing at". |
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| Sonic_c |
sometimes i think really? Your gonna blow yourself up because you think your god has promised you 40 virgins?
You have to be pretty dumb to believe that!
Not to mention the fact the sex, age, looks of the virgins are not specified. You may get there and 40 80 year old fat guys could be waiting there!
It just escapes me how people truly believe in stories and views formed before we knew the world was round.
That said when a family member got sick i prayed, i never knew why as i totally don't believe =s |
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| pkcRAISTLIN |
| quote: | Originally posted by SYSTEM-J
Again, I don't think he's being wanky at all. You've just misunderstood what I meant by "taking a swing at". |
oh, so
you're talking about the specifically referenced arguments as "wanky", rather than his post. postmodernism is especially wanky i spose. |
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| Moral Hazard |
| quote: | Originally posted by floyd741
That may be so but I don't think it makes any sense to believe in a god when there is no evidence for it. It does make sense to me to believe in the scientific explanation as there is an amount of evidence for it. |
My opposition to what you said wasn't that you didn't think it made sense to believe in the divine; rather, that you based this position on science, which as we've established has no opinion on divinity. I don't care whether or not one has any belief in any theology; however, invoking the present state of science as an argument against matters theologic is a false argument and an abuse of science. Moreover, anyone clinging to scientific understanding in an effort to either support or deminish either side in a theological argument is really just watering down the conversation by introducing misinformation (i.e. claiming that the big bang theory for the creation of the universe is evidence against the existance of a divine being is a false argument as the theory has no position on divinity). Do you understand my point... when people invoke science in theological matters they lose credibility because they're trying to make science go beyond it's scope... they're claiming that what they say is truth because it's supported by science; however, they're not making a scientific argument; rather, they're making a rhetorical argument.
| quote: | | Just because science can't disprove the existence of a god doesn't mean it makes any sense to believe in it. That's what I was trying to say at first when I said it makes no sense to believe due to the amount of scientific evidence. It's not that it disproves anything, it just makes more sense imo. |
Indeed, just because something cannot be disproven does not mean that one should conclude it is true; however, one should also avoid making conclusions based on the extrapolation of any body of knowledge to a question that is beyond it's scope. |
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