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the line between agnostic and atheist
Its logical but is it practical?

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the line between agnostic and atheist

180 Proof
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1 of 1 people found this post helpful Posted 05/27/08 - 03:25 AM: Subject: "Oh, pilot of the storm who leaves no trace, like thoughts inside a dream ..."	#151
Makarismos wrote: ... Its all about complexity. Humans are complex, right? The universe is literally the most complex thing, right? We understand humans using a kind of anthropomorphism? ~Why not do the same with the universe? If we call the universe “god” and explain it like that, is that really irrational? (in the everyday, and not technical sense of course). "Personality" (i.e. intentional agency) presupposes the universe amid which it emerges and perdures, and therefore attributing "personality" to the universe itself (e.g. calling it "god") renders the concept of "universe" incoherent. Anyway, this anthropomorphism is clearly irrational insofar as you make use of it to deny, or domesticate, the ubiquitious evidence of the universe's total indifference, as Camus says, to Human desires. Why "worship" (in the everyday sense) that which completely ignores you? Spinoza points out that no matter how much you love It It cannot love you back because It is wholly impersonal. Awesome in scale and wonderous in dynamic complexity, the universe merely spits up your ephemeral awareness only to swallow it again like a strobe-flicker in the dark or wave crashing or note blurred in an improvised solo, processing you perfunctorily from oblivion to oblivion as it cycles through its own metamorphoses ... *Doesn't the universe seem just a little too damn big* to be (a) "god"?**
If faith is irrational, then it is rational to dismiss "faith-based claims" out of hand. If faith is rational, then "faith-based claims" must be testable and/or sound -- but they are neither. If faith is a-rational, then "faith-based claims" are inexplicable and thus cannot explain anything.

litkey
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Posted 05/27/08 - 04:46 AM:	#152
There isn't a line between Atheists and Agnostics, in the sense that neither knows "God" (or some other higher being). The quitessential difference however, that folk have mentioned here already, is on the faith front; and in some sense (at least) the Atheist is closer to the person who holds that there is a God (or Spaghetti Monster, floating tree, Ghost) as faith is ubiquitous in the arguments espoused (as there is a certain faith in reason): the Agnostic will often stand apart, and often make the claim that "we cannot know of anything spiritual." (and point to a lack of knowledge, or to the idea that it is impossible for humans to know or to have such knowledge). _>However, lump all 3 together, remove all language, remove all argument, and they are quite the same. Edited by litkey on 05/27/08 - 04:52 AM
Going to trial with a lawyer who considers your whole life-style a Crime in Progress is not a happy prospect. -Hunter S T The aim of life is to live, and to live means to be aware, joyously, drunkenly, serenely, divinely aware. -Henry Miller

Makarismos
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Posted 05/27/08 - 09:37 AM:	#153
180 Proof wrote: "Personality" (i.e. intentional agency) presupposes the universe amid which it emerges and perdures, and therefore attributing "personality" to the universe itself (e.g. calling it "god") renders the concept of "universe" incoherent. Anyway, this anthropomorphism is clearly irrational insofar as you make use of it to deny, or domesticate, the ubiquitious evidence of the universe's total indifference, as Camus says, to Human desires. Why "worship" (in the everyday sense) that which completely ignores you? Spinoza points out that no matter how much you love It It cannot love you back because It is wholly impersonal. Awesome in scale and wonderous in dynamic complexity, the universe merely spits up your ephemeral awareness only to swallow it again like a strobe-flicker in the dark or wave crashing or note blurred in an improvised solo, processing you perfunctorily from oblivion to oblivion as it cycles through its own metamorphoses ... 180 that is quite poetic, and I agree that we should not look for the universe to love us. You seem to suggest we should not love that which does not love in return, whereas I would say that we should not give in order to receive. Besides, giving is really a gift to ones self... ..Still, I respect your view. yet is not my own. *Doesn't the universe seem just a little too damn big* to be (a) "god"?** No, not really. God in many circles is meant to be infinite, surely? I personally can’t think of a better candidate for the term. Still, It might well only mean anything to me. It certainly created us; it is wondrous and majestic, and powerful and mysterious. We survive upon its whim - as it were. I see no conflict between worshiping this god and practicing scientific rigour. Of course, it is but a preference. Cheers for your input, liked your post.

loveofsophia
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Posted 05/27/08 - 09:57 AM:	#154
Reformed Nihilist wrote: Well, like I say, at this forum I am perhaps less worried about diplomacy than I am in most daily situations. I also tend to respond (to some extent) in kind to whom I am talking to, be that diplomatic, adversarial, or matter of fact. I have had experiences, two that come to mind. I am going along in life, looking over there, doing this, getting something done. I look at something, in one case a bird and in another, I am looking out a window. Suddenly, with the bird, I felt its presence completely unnecessary. Lets say necessity exists. One thing has something necessarily follow after it (cause and effect). Well, in this case all the causes that led up to this bird seemed so entirely inadequate as to explain how exactly it came to be in my eyes that I "sensed" an awesome "mystery" or nothingness or limitation holding an infinite amount of possibilities that I could never completely understand, ever, laying darkly and infinitely behind and around the bird. It was like a riveting, colorful, magical experience of wonder over this bird and, hence, all the existence I experience and will experience. Another time it was quite similar, but out a window and the whole world just emptied of any of the causal and explanatory models I project onto it. All the necessity I lay over everything, all the, this will happen, that will happen, presumptive work seemed so based upon ignorance and inadequate understanding of what exactly is making all this arrive here, me now, with others, in that moment. I felt a lack of necessity to all existence (from my ignorance, which is profound, I realized how little I understand about what is going on around me). It was an illusion falling away. We humans create a model and our tools help us get by, but what is this really all about anyway? I feel inexorably ignorant and adrift in a sea with such depths I couldn't begin to imagine what lies beneath. The question has always pertained to me from those moments, how did this all get here anyway, the answers have never made any sense and I doubt it is our privilege to attain them. I feel we just get the dumbstruck question, no answers. The poetic imaginings seem to connect up with all sorts of emotional and captivating possibilities, but that poetry gets made into concrete (by the religious) and sinks us down (drowning us). It does this instead of resolving the problem that I feel quite happy to dwell with, where I am, with the question and reveling in it. Okay, we have a few things going on here,. To start, we have looking at a bird or out a window. Everyday type activities that in themselves don't need much comment, right? We also have some thoughts that you had, and more than that I would suspect, a physiological and emotional reaction and shift in perception. Is this correct? Lastly, we have your post hoc formalizations of those thoughts and perceptions into some sort of theory (or maybe informal theory-like model). Physiological and emotional reactions are not really something that we control (not much anyways). They are things that happen to us. Our concsious thoughts however, the modeling and theorizing and explaining of these experiences are something that we choose. The way you speak about it makes it seem as though you think that you didn't choose to evaluate your experience in one way out of many alternate ways. You make it seem like there was only one possible explanation for your experience. That's the part that I am having trouble buying into. I can buy into the facts of the story, and, even if only for the sake of argument, I can buy into the explanations, but I can't buy into the implication that there is no other possible explanation that can be considered. For example, and this is just off the top of my head as an example of a type of alternate explanation; some strange and seemingly innocent combination of events triggered an unusual release of certain chemicals in your brain that heightened certain types of perceptions, feelings and evaluations. Given the little I know about the subject, this seems like a plausible and at least reasonable (although pretty vague) explanation of what you experienced. I will address the metaphysical part later in this response. Certainly, on a chemical level, that is largely what was physiologically occurring (emotionally). However, the response was based most of all upon a cognitive evaluation. I realized the primacy of a question. Meaning, I do explain the world as best as I am able but the world I evaluate (explain and/or attempt to make sense of) and how I biologically intuit and cognitively imagine the world, all this understanding amounts to almost nothing (my answers) in comparison to (an impossibility) understanding how all this existence is even here in the first place. I have said this a million times but I will reiterate: We write stories, fiction stories as well as realistic depictions (as realistic or as creatively as we can), but they are not real. We live in a real story, it actually occurs. Nothing could be more astonishing and inexplicable. I seem to receive a response of something like, so?, or, what is the big deal?, and I am at a loss as to how to explain myself or I simply don't understand what it is you are stating that excuses or refutes my evaluation of the situation. So yes, you could look at it a different way if you would like, but don't reinterpret my explanation or evaluation, take it head on and look at it. Is not existence being at all inexplicable? I don't know how else to see it...if there is another way, light the way. But cognitively it is like 2 + 2 = 4 (meaning entirely rational) for me to see it this way. I don't understand the above sentence, and can't fathom what relationship it has to your comments on "the big nothing". Weren't we talking about first causes and big bangs? Everything that I experience seems to lay upon a larger and more complete or ultimate explanation that I am not privy to, in the least. Simply because something is humanly inexplicable does not mean it is ultimately inexplicable...simply speaking (or not). "The big nothing" is the home of an explanation I can never investigate. You can say, well you are talking about nothing you know anything about, but that doesn't mean there isn't a something that consists within that nothing. The contents of that humanly conceived "nothing" are inherently absent from my understanding. In this way I understand Martin Buber when he poetically speaks of God (to possibly interpret him in an entirely self described way), to be addressing the space between him and the mystery of anything being at all (the space they meet is the present moments of encountering existence). For the explanation is present to us always, for it must be, in that it is must be the support (the ultimate cause) of all this existence lain around me. We (humans) may personify or imagine into something nothing like what we imagine, but to posit the question is correct, to arrogantly claim knowledge of the answer, to forget our speaking mainly of an awesome absence meeting us through existence being at all, is to have gone where the religious tread. Terribly arrogant, to my mind, and mistaken. By being aware of this conundrum, the question, its inherent darkness clouding all aspects of even speaking about it clearly (in the light), is to be tolerant of hasty and simplified beliefs that maintain answers to the ultimate question. But many of the conclusions you have been throwing out don't even come near to following from that, so I suspect what you are telling me it is not quite so simple. It's not all that interesting in itself to not that there are, without much doubt, things we don't know as either individuals or as a knowledge collecting species. It isn't even all that earth shattering to consider that of all potential knowledge we could posit or imagine, we will likely never get close to attaining most of it. The problem is (and this is doing a little bit of interpreting here, as well as recalling former conversations) that you seem to also want to posit potential unposited knowledge. If you are doing that, do you see a problem? I see a problem of sorts. It is only problematic if one claims knowledge inherently absent from themselves (they actually believe they hold any of the knowledge that is inherently absent). For we are only capable of, in reality, realizing through the effect of existence that there must contain a cause (we know the effect, not the cause). If one understands the question, I don't believe one should or could posit anything other than metaphorical and poetic answers. That's what I got so far...and the work of clarity, simplification, is not my forte (though with much more work than I am liable to put in at present, I could possibly say it in a simpler way). Let me give a try: the effect, existence, indicates a cause. One could try and pacify or dismiss the question but i believe this is only possible because of the nature of the cause, it is absent (the explanation). Well, there is plenty that we can suspect. I suspect that the big bang theory is correct. That is because someone came up with the theory, and I heard it and it became a part of my cognition. I could imagine "what if it were true", and do the same with all kinds of alternate explanations, and find the one that satisfied me the most. The big point here is that my suspicions involve me having some subject of cognition. So when you suspect that there are things you don't know anything about, by definition, you actually know at least one thing about them, which is that you don't know anything (else) about them. If you really knew nothing about them, you wouldn't even be aware of their lacking. The fact is that we are necessarily limited by our limitations (cognative abilities, sensory apparatus, etc.), and although we may extend those limitations (by using devices that measure IR and UV light, for example), we are still, at that moment, limited by our new set of extended limitations. You say, if I didn't know anything about them, I wouldn't even be aware of "its" lacking. This is a confusing line of thought if you honestly intend to address it to my question. I know existence is, the effect, and so I know there is a cause (an explanation) with which I know nothing about (other than it causes the effect). One can play word games with the inexplicable and say, what nonsense, but I believe nonsense is being brought to bear to avoid the question. I know there is a cause; I know not the cause. It as simple as, I know the sky is blue; I don't know the cause (but there is one). Or, I know my room just shook; I don't know the cause (but there is one). And, finally, I know existence is; I don't know the cause. Underlying all our attempts at explanation is this ultimate one addressing all the existents we often attempt to causally explain. Of course there would be a physiological effect from this cognition, concept, whathaveyou. However, I maintain that the concept was worthy of the physiological effect I felt. I became aware of the lack of necessity (to my knowledge) to existence. It seemed unnecessary in that I had no inclining what necessitated it. Something must...how not? I'm glad. It's good for me too (did that sound homoerotic ... ). I find that the more I do these things, the easier it gets to get clear on things, although will admit that I still come accross times where it is difficult to get things straight enough in my head to say them clearly. Humans are capable of such complexity, given our self directed construction of our understandings and unique personality and character, so we then obviously have many a difference in our view on things. I can't believe we get by as well as we do. But what is the question? What else could "being" do but be? Not be? Then it wouldn't be "being", would it? I believe you are getting muddled, and I think it is with exactly this. A language trick. I believe the trick is being played by you, not me, and so the onus is on you to explain the inadequacy of my conception. I do not understand your criticism of the question. Well, I assume by "big" and "little" you mean significant and insignificant, right? The judgement of what is significant requires a judge. If you are defining the category of stuff as "all things that do and always will lay entierly outside of my perception and knowledge", how does it make sense to attach any judgement related properties to it? Big and little are all relative. A big mouse is smaller than a small house. An idea or piece of knowledge is significant relevant to the effects it has on the knowledge holder or on people. The category of things that we will never know cannot have any possible effects (or at least known effects) to judge for their significance. The simple thing is, the cause of the effect, existence, is worth noting in its absence. One of its effects upon humanity at large may be this: any answer to this question is inherently ridiculous for one to claim possession of, for our knowledge of the cause is solely through its effect. The cause seems perpetually suspended away from us. This vain I believe you already somewhat travel in, no? You dislike the claim of knowledge with regards there being a cause, I don't know what other conclusion one can draw from the effect called existence other than there is a cause, but we both would maintain we have no access to the answer. The only choice available for you, if you choose to argue my conclusion, to my mind, is to deny existence as an effect and this seems irrational to me. I think part of the problem comes from literalizing the notion of a perfectly objective point of view (which can be a very expedient and efficient way to think about, communicate about and learn things), and that the truth of a matter (the capital T truth) is a description of the world from this point of view. This does two things. It leaves us longing to have the curtain pulled back so that we can share in this perfectly objective point of view, and it leads us to wonder "If there is such a point of veiw, then there must be a veiwer, right?". If, on the other hand, there is no metaphysical primacy in points of referrence for truth, just like there is no physical primacy in points of view in General Relativity, then we are left speaking about things in relation to a specific point of referrencethat makes sense in a specific context. Again, this seems to be a criticism best aimed at those proposing answers to the question. I have no problem with the question, just the answers. Yes, I agree. Along those lines, I think it is doing a person a favour to challenge those boundries and "push the envelope", don't you? Certainly pushing too hard in certain situations is unadvisable, but in general, anything from a slight nudge to an outright shove can be good thing for the one being nudged or shoved. If it works, it has the added positive effect of altering their behaviour (via a change in their beliefs) in a positive way. I understand. Again, i will reiterate, the potential for argument to alienate instead of engage is one of my sole concerns in dialogue. Perhaps I aim overmuch toward avoiding pushing, but it is due to my being aware that you can't think for others and whatever line of reasoning I express is either a line of reasoning they, in a significant way, claim as their own or reject. We are voices in the wind (all arguments); another actually enjoying the meat of our arguments (the aroma, to stay with the wind metaphor), is entirely up to them. This sense of each person's dominion over their kingdom (one mind meeting another mind with its own self, process, background, wisdoms) informs me of the potential for mutual benefit. By allowing our interdependence to shine, for each can develop the conceptions of the other and the self in tandem, I find far greater reward than by a more simple form of argument that is less sensitive to the potential for interdependent growth of ones conceptions. Maybe a push is necessary on occasion to rock loose presumptive or uncritically examined conceptions, but the moments of interdependence are far superior to when one is left attempting to lead. I guess I am speaking about how the reward for both parties is significant. There are more impersonal methods of arguing that may have their appropriate time and place, I just have a preference for attempting to inspire emotionally/cognitively healthy arguments that are beneficial for both parties. I understand the subtlety to what I am saying; I understand the influences on my life that have shaped this preference for the mode of argument I affirm above others; I am rather certain personality plays a part as well as learning style. I don't know how clear this is, question away if necessary. I think I do now, but (putting aside dimplomatic concerns for the moment) what's difficult about saying "it isn't literally true, even if there is some truth or wisdom in the metaphor"? The problem is this is an inherently complicated and sophisticated distinction I am not sure the religious conceive as readily as you do. The figurative melts into the literal in their reasoning, by my reckoning. The problem is the background that leads you to even propose that evaluation of their conceptions (the simple interwoven process of your experiences and conclusions that afford you the opportunity of your particular conceptions of the world). It is complex, for those that have not conceived things in such an analytic and complicated way, the distinction between figurative and literal may simply be fuzzed in their line of reasoning on their religious conceptions and the inclination to visit the conceptions critically may simply have become instinctually, compulsively, avoided due to experiences in their own life. I know someone that hates to talk about religion and politics because their experiences inform them that such a line of dialogue is disastrous and hurtful. Such unfortunate experiences, inherently disenfranchising them (by way of their own evaluation) from gaining experiences of argument that could persuade them that healthy arguments on those subjects can exist, are a reality in the formation of peoples mental maps (conceptions, evaluations, modes of interacting with others). I grow warry, with such an evaluation, of accidentally pushing when a more gentle touch may allow them to push themselves down different paths of mind. This is all rather theoretical and real world examples may prove (as I would suspect) that some balance between pushing and mutaully engaging a question is valuable in dialogue with others. Sorry, I thought you were talking about something else. I was referring to accepting mythopoetic teachings and traditions, developing emotional attachments to communities of worship and adopting rituals and litanies without having even considered if the teackings involved are literal or symbolic/metaphorical/allegorical. I think that occurs to some degree or other with many people. You have basically said more simply some of what I was trying to say above. Yes, this acceptance of religion is difficult to engage when another has adopted it uncritically. A hard push may be all one can afford when another seems unwilling to look at things differently. This is all getting very vague, I am sure. But the layers of personal evaluation and process that underlie the places we all uniquely arrive at are so complex that I grow hesitant in my addressing others (most notably in public or semi-public (impersonal) contexts). I can readily accept this place as unique in expectations. I suppose one best adopt what one considers the most appropriate mode of engaging others with your questions and conclusions. My questions and criticisms of tone are inspired by a fear that ones tone of voice may simply push another out of healthy argument and into an instinctively defensive position; get one set to fight (leading to a misconception of how argument is best engaged) instead of engaging in a way that affords the experience of the mutually beneficial mode of argument that hatches out together their conceptions and so imparts a critical understanding of the problems/questions/answers they are addressing together. The above is the middle way between believing in things like the bible literally or acknowledging them as literary. Oh, gotchya. Why? When they speak of the metaphorical aspect, they are ding literary criticism, more or less. They are talking about the aesthetic of a metaphor. When they speak of stories of magic as if they literally occured, if one were so inclided, one could simply say "The suggestion that X literally occured is ridiculous" (or something more diplomatic). I don't know if you are expressing a difficulty at the social element of responding to them or the rational element of responding to them. Could you clarify which you feel is problematic and why? I attempted above. Don't you think saying that there was good reasons to believe it is different than saying it has aspects of truth? I don't see any true aspects to the statement "the heart is the seat of emotions". The statement is pretty atomic, so I really don't see many aspects to it at all. The statement is a conclusion that is derived from some true evidence, but the statement itself strikes me as entirely false when interpreted literally. The problem is the nature of words and symbols themselves. We naturally think in metaphorical ways about literal things...there is an inherent fuzziness to language, to my mind. Many a metaphor expresses something that when said as literally as possible isn't as expedient or as holistic seeming as when said metaphorically. The literal truth is said more expediently through metaphor on many an occasion, so in some sense {b]we say literally what is said metaphorically[/b]. Well, on a historical and social level, the transmission of these ideas usually is tied to "goodies" that might include a preacher, medicine man or other leader who genuinely cares, listens and offers good advice, or the delivery of education or charity to those in need of it, ritual absolution of guilt, or simply a community that only requires (on paper) your desire to belong. I think those are some of the draws, not any "shadowy truth" that is somehow percieved to be inherent in the myth. The truths (good advice, aphorisms, etc.) I would suggest are more often than not interpreted into the stories post hoc by well meaning vicars, monks or imams (just like the horrific advice like "kill infedels" is). The thing is, people can give, hear and find good advice, clever aphorisms (as well as horrific political manipulations) without religion, but without the "off limits" sacredness of religion, they can question advice and determine for themselves what is good advice and what is horrific political manipulation. I understand this criticism of the sacred. Again, the question I affirm, not the answers. Given this, how does one best affect the thinking of those that have made sacred certain topics? People, in general, can hand over the authority of their own conceptions to another and be unaware that their own thinking and beliefs are best left within the domain of the self). How does one cause another to reevaluate that way of thinking? It seems inherently built against critical dialogue. From my quick glance at the term "ignostic", it seems to describe what I would call "splitting hairs", and actually describes an (what I find to be) annoying philosophical tactic that is often used to "wiggle" in and out of any position without saying anything or representing any beliefs (in the Peirce sense of belief being something that one would act upon). No one approaches real life (non-debate) situations by saying "before we figure out what is true, we have to define every word that we use in the proposition". In most cases, we have a pretty good rough idea of what people mean when they say God exists. We understand that they mean, at the very least, an intentional, highly or all powerful and all knowing being that has some effect on our lives, to who we should worship and revere. I don't think that such a being exists, so I am an atheist. I can't see how the fact that a holy man might have said something smart or true or made a beautiful and compelliing metaphor, or that a church did something nice or humanitarian or encouraged people to do nice and good things, somehow makes the proposition that such a beling exists any more or less tenable. The content of their conjecture, imagining, is inherently making present that which is absent. So to say, I can't even evaluate your answer to the question because I don't believe we can even get past the question, well this seems entirely appropriate. To my mind, I am observing a complexity and not splitting hairs. An example of what I mean: my room shakes and my brother says, it was a bomb down the block and another friend says it was an earthquake, well, I would need to go and investigate the matter; but the nature of the question over existence precludes me investigating the truth of their claims (answers). There are plenty of atheists that go to church. Some like the ritual, some the singing, some the community, and some the advice. You don't have to believe, teach or prosteletyze stories (aleged to be literally ture) about magic to have those things. I am lucky enough to have ritual, singing, community and advice without anyone appealing to religion or literal magic. This seems fine to me. Yes, and we can even become involved in those organizations that fill all the niches of religion without espusing anything mystical. On top of that, we can publically extoll the advantages of both political and cultural secularism, and "push some envelopes" for some people in discussion by challenging them. In a way, it's kind of like telling someone they have body odour. It is pretty much guaranteed to hurt their feelings and make them feel uncomfortable, maybe even angry, but if they take your information to heart, you have done them a favour (and they can revisit their hygene habits). It may be more divisive than pointing out body odour. Okay, but if you consider the girl thing, would you agree that when you are swept up in the good feelings of a romance, you are more likely to believe false things that support or justify the romance? So althoough life would be empty and pointless without our emotions driving us, and things like romance and laughter and excess and peaceful connection all feel so wonderful, would you not agree that being able to, to the best of one's ability, step outside of the effects of those emotional states when considering certain matters is important in order to get those matters right? That's why I keep challenging you to offer me something more than just the feeling that the question is meaningful and important, or the observation that many people have felt the same way throughout history. I have attempted to explain my feelings. I'm not beating around the bush, and I don't think it is emotionally unreasonable at all. I think it is somewhat cognatively normal. The same way as rejecting some of the claims of Quantum physics as patently impossible is cognatively normal. Our brains have evolved a certain way because they deal with a certain sort of event very well the way they are, but there are events (sub atomic) that they don't deal with well. Our language and language use is the same. So the intuition that Einstein felt when he said "God doesn't play dice with the universe" isn't a reflection of him being emotionally unreasonable, but of (literally) him being human and having a human brain. I believe this is an apt observation of the completely natural cognitive dissidence we can experience when observing the nature of the way the world behaves. But this doesn't answer the question of how the effect, existence, is caused. Are you caliming that this way of seeing existence, the one I am exponding, this conception of it is simply the wrong way to view it and that it occurs simply because the way our brain behaves makes it unlikely for one to view the matter the way it is really? This is all fine and good on the surface, but how am I looking at the matter improperly. This has not been explained; how I am wrong, rationally? You seem to be some sort of imaginary argument with regards my argument, an indirect criticism and only potential criticism, as of the moment. I know you are. You are drawing a picture of a box called labeled "things I don't know" and pointing at it. I am saying "That isn't the things you don't know, it is a box with a label. You can't point at the things you don't know, because you don't know where to point". I am saying I can point in all directions at once and say, "something" is somewhere that I am not able to go, think, understand. I can do this because I am on a path that stretches out of my sight behind me, ahead of me, and in all directions; "something" lies beyond my sight (something I don't know about). You use the word "experience" again, but saying to yourself "Things are, how did that happen" doesn't seem like experiencing anything but thought, and the fact that you thought something isn't evidence that of what you thought is meaningfull in the way that normally experiencing something would be evidence that it is true (like seeing a Yeti might be evidence that Yetis exist). Is this a heirarchy statement, one type of experience is superior to another? I had an experience that changed my perception of all past experiences. This is a profound moment in time (for me) and I would prefer to call it an experience because it highlights all past experiences, from that moment, in a different light and even the present and future moments. The way I see a blade of grace is different, so the present and the future have perceptably changed. It was an experience that changed the way I relate to the world around me. I am saying that what we experience, using the word experience as something obtaining a perceptual affect on our body, is altered in the way it is perceived; if one keeps in mind the shocking realization that what I experience, what exists, is the effect of a cause I do not know, then this seems like an experience worth noting as such; not as only a thought, but something changing the way your mind conceives moments of sensory experience. You can be however you want, but I think it is still important to understand and not underestimate both the cognative and social effects of buying into certain ways of speaking about things. That's all. I think that the fact that you don't believe in a literal God, yet feel uncomfortable calling yourself an atheist should be very compelling evidence that there are social and cognative effects simply growing up and living in our culture. I have thought about this one quite a bit. The fact is, I don't like confrontation, sustained and unresolved confrontation. Too much of us is the same and capable of interdependence, why risk alienating the a segment of people relate to you. They would feel like I decieved them this whole time; it would be a genuine betrayal of their expectations. How do I say this properly? When another is incapable of being comfortable with knowing how you really think, view the world, what use is it to harm their ability to relate to you when you know the difference is not so profound as all that (as they seem inclined to believe). They fail to seem interested in really thinking things through and understanding how lacking in simplicity is my explanation for not thinking as they do. So, publicly pronouncing myself as an atheist seems like a quote. A quote is something completely inadequate in accurately relaying a holistic explanation of what someone is really thinking; for understanding a quote tends to depend upon a familiarity with the paragraphs and paragraphs necessary to explain the quote. The dividing of myself away from those I feel interdependent and socially connected with seems unnecessary because, to my imagination, it seems like a harm more than a benefit to me and to them. Calling myself an atheist, publicly, would alienate me, make me dissimilar to those around me that have always considered me a theist. But "athiest" isn't a group it's just a descriptor. Just like "orange" or "slightly bent to the left" or "red haired". Surely you don't have a problem identifying yourself as a teacher? Why would you? You're a teacher. So identifying yourself as an atheist is actually saying "I am a person who doesn't believe in any literal God" (or more expediently "I don't believe in God") which is just a description of you. I'm an atheist. I'm also bald, tall and moustached. I don't feel that my tallness seperates me from short people (by more than a foot or two anyways), nor does my baldness seperate me from blonds, brunettes and redheads in any significant social way. I would suggest that the cultural indoctrination that we all recieve imbeds a fear of letting go of theism and the hope that there might, just might be literal magic, heaven and eternal perfect happiness and peace. It's a kind of emotional Pascal's wager. We figure that the cost of holding onto supernaturality and magic is small (some cognative dissonance when we don't think about it really carefully) in exchange for a wonderfully reassuring hope. The problem as I see it, is that in the microcosm of our day to day lives, we miss the bigger picture of the harm. My sole concern is not in the logic of not believing in a literal God that I consider an inadequate understanding of the cause of existence. My sole concern is considering what people are willing to consider and relate to and what they are not. How does one affect their thinking if they are unwilling to reconsider their thinking? I am being far more local than global/national in my thinking. What I can do is run my life, out of those other peoples sight, in a way honest to myself. Maybe I need to have a little more hope for them to reconsider their perspectives, but from my experience people seem fairly capable of a completely unreasonable demenor toward certain lines of inquiry. I have a problem with inflicting the altering of their perceptions of me upon them without a sense that it may better myself and them. Maybe I am too tolerant and I should risk the alienation in hope that they may grow a little. I don't know. Given I have parents that are still raising young ones, and the parents expect the young ones to develop conceptually in a particular way, I don't feel inclined to impose a different role model than they would prefer upon the younger kids. If I can't be honest with my own family, feel it is an inappropriate time, than how could I be honest with a community of people I feel far less close to?
It is amazing how susceptible to lies we are when young. I believe people are still far more susceptible to lies as adults than they would like. Balancing what could be, our imaginings, with what we know, this is a delicate act of mind.

Makarismos
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Posted 05/27/08 - 01:56 PM:	#155
Reformed Nihilist wrote: I guess it depends on if you mean that people pick and choose what they interpret literally, or interpret the entire conglomeration of religions as figurative (as loveofsophia seems to). I interpret religious claims figuratively, and I'm an athiest. The big question is are we talking about people who think that the bible, or whichever holy book, is a piece of fiction with some historical referrence, or a historical book with some fiction in it. So, you do not object to religious texts themselves, just their interpretation as literally true: the less a person’s believes the bible to be literally true the more you are in agreement with their beliefs? Is meant to be? Meant by whom? It's a fairy tale. If you choose to interpret it as a peice of literature, then we agree. I mean only that I perceive much of the bible as an analogy, as a metaphor. Is meant by me, that’s all . I do chose to interpret it as a piece of literature; one which has been interpreted in many different ways by different people, with many translations, and a whole history of scholarship attached to it. So perhaps we agree on this? It is fiction (which may, as fiction often does, include metaphorical or even some historical truth). The problem isn't in saying that most believers aren't dyed in the wool literalists, it is that most believers have been systematically manipulated to accept ludicrous stories as truth. Can you be a christian without believing that Jesus literally rose from the dead? Manipulated by the leaders of the church? And were they manipulated by religion, or not? Does the religion do the manipulating, or do people? More importantly, I am not criticizing all people who ascribe to a religion, but the lunatic claims of religion themselves, regardless of whether people silently cluck their tounges and think that the lunatic claims are just "charming tradition". Clearly in this world, there are many who believe that many religious claims are literally true. I have spoken to many in churches, many on this forum, and all the events that occur that I always catch crap for associating with religion (9/11 for example) show that the purpotrators clearly believed in literal claims of the Koran. The fact that you personally have met few who believe in the their religious stories literally (as far as you know, I am sure there are many whom the subject has never come up) doesn't really move me. Maybe you're just lucky. Perhaps I am. It’s an empirical premise, and so I do not see the point in discussing it - unless you have some study to refer to? Some bit of research? Everytime someone gives lip service to a religious bedtime story, and treats it is if it really happened, they are lending credence to the idea that it's perfectly fine to give religion a pass on making sense. That's how people get talked into doing crazy things in the name of religion... because no one seems to complain that religion is ridiculous. So as long as it is couched in the justification of religion, there is no claim or request that is too crazy: Give us all your money and you'll become an operating thetan, die killing my political enemies and you'll get sixty vigins in paradise, God hates fags, etc.. So as much as I recognize that most people I meet in the streets that call themselves believers, and most people I would meet if I went to the church down the block, are normal, non-murderous, generally sensible and rational people, that doesn't mitigate the larger social picture. I don't personally fault them for it, but I do criticize their beliefs, or if they don't actually believe, their support for instituations that promote not only crazy beliefs, but also the notion that such beliefs are not open to rational criticism. Doesn’t it worry you that Religion, for you, is the source of so much hatred, violence, anger, mistrust - and yet not in all cases, not all the time? The fact that most religious folk do not strap bombs to themselves, leads you not to the conclusion that those that do are exceptions, but rather to the conclusion that they all will eventually. They will perhaps encourage someone else to do it, or their belief will legitimise a friend’s rather different belief. Are you really telling me that you think that the notion that people have feelings and experience the world more or less as we do is comparable to beliving that someone rose from the dead, and that there is a magic man in the sky that grants our wishes if we whisper them to him in our heads? Or believing that matter is just energy, that time doesn’t exist, that the world we see is largely illusion because of other dimensions which are rolled up:- if the claims you refer to are analogies for something then they do not have to be ludicrous, Looney, or barmy. Open your mind, just a crack . Stop saying things are impossible, because one thing that can be learnt from history is that such claims are proved false as time goes by. We simply do not know what could be possible, and perhaps there exist some interpretations that could be. First of all, apart from the fact that we have all sorts of scientific evidence about people having feelings and experiencing the world in more or less the same way, we also have daily observations of people. We have no scientific evidence of the way people feel whatsoever - other than what they say they feel, which is no evidence at all. For all I know I am the only one who experiences the world as I do, who knows the feelings I experience when the sun shines on my skin, or when I'm caught out in a summer storm. Science does not take feelings in to account, only facts - and so the world of feelings is inherently unscientific: science operates from the 3rd person "objective", and that is both why it is so useful, and why it cannot explain such things. I have never seen anyone rise from the dead, nor have I met anyone who has. That, among other things, leads me to believe that people don't do such a thing. Perhaps you do not know anyone who has risen from the dead - so what. There have been documented cases of people being buried alive, and re-immerging. You will find lots of examples of so called "zombies" who have died and then later "come back". Nothing supernatural about it, nothing needs to be. The fact is that it is possible, even if we take a strictly factual approach and assume that the account in the bible is accurate: a thing which is terribly unlikely given the time from events to writing. The story might be a metaphor, or some analogy, or simply a fable passed down. You only disagree with the literal translation - and so you’re fighting a straw man as far as most people’s faith is concerned. You only disagree with those who believe the bible word for word - perhaps there are more of them where you’re from, but there are very few here (again, an empirical premise - a philosophical question might be, does the number of people who believe in a literal translation matter?) I find it really frusatrating that you would assume that I am somehow appealing to a need for some scientific level of justification. I am not. I am just saying that religion shouldn't get a free buy on it's crazy claims. Very well, but that’s not really to the point of the discussion is it. You are asking something along the lines of "should society be ordered in such a way as to allow religion to take preference over reason/science/democracy?". My moral feeling is that religion should not be given priority over democracy, and that reason has no bearing on what you might call "moderate theists" who take the bible in a metaphorical or analogous way. I do not feel that religion has any need to be addressing the same kind of questions as science does, and I actually find they must occupy separate realms completely: one "objective" the other entirely "subjective"/"interpersonal" (even anthropomorphic ). Well, although I agree with you entirely that this is much of the reason that God myths are prevalent, that doesn't make the God claims less ridiculous. The "Ghost in the machine" phenomena (inferring intent where there is none) is something everybody has experience at one time or another and felt anger when it seemed like their computer was screwing with them. So understanding the origins and even the expedience of this psychological predelection we have makes my point even more poigniant. We will all feel like the computer is screwing with us, but it is not rational to destroy the computer: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Vvx3P17rCXY And neither is it rational to destroy the human. The analogy is false - It is rational to try reasoning with the computer according to its kind - defragment it, clean up its desktop, keep it happy . So as natural as it might feel to ascribe intentionality to things in the universe, it doesn't make it a good thing to do. If you are lucky, you can't identify your mistakes and learn from them, because obviously "somebody likes me up there", and if you have a bad streak of luck, say goodbye to your self-esteem, because that's just proof that God is mad at you. A friend of mine's brother died recently, and he told me that in the last days he prayed, even though he hadn't prayed since he was a child. Then he told me "Why would he listen to me when I ignored him". He actually feels that cosmically, his failure to pray had a causal effect on the outcome of his brother's disease, and the guilt is horrible on him. Ok, that’s a sad piece of reasoning on his part. I feel for your friend; he should remember that "god" isn’t that fussed about anyone really. I doubt if the universe cares if he prays, but it might help him to pray; that’s probably all he should expect from it. The criticisms I was leveling at religion in general are those things that make the word "cult" have a negative connotation.... Can't we use words with negative implications when we are making arguments about negative implications? You don’t see a difference between religion and a cult apart from the degree of coercion. I think they are different things, mainly because if I didn’t I would see Microsoft as a cult, Fox media as a cult, Disney as a cult. If it makes your world view simple, then go ahead – but how do you differentiate between them? Do you? Oh for crying out loud. Murdering babies? Cults are identified by their coercive and manipulative recruiting and on their strong influence on their members (to the point where they believe the most ludacrous things), not by "killing babies". Just to be pedantic – I never said murdering babies. And if you’re using quote marks, perhaps you should make sure it’s something I actually said. To be honest, it is the same thrust as what I was saying, but you wouldn’t like it if I started misquoting you would you? So “cults are social groups which are:- Coercive and manipulative recruiting and excessive, manipulative influence over people, taking advantage of their fears, hopes and insecurities, not to mention their natural tendency to infer intent where there is none, is wrong, isn't it? That's what cults do. That's what religions do. Both the same. Such institutions using such techniques allowed special social and political privilege sounds awfully dangerous to me. So given that, the original question stands: "Surely though, the indoctrination of children with lunatic beliefs, the formation of cults that gain political power and influence, shaping the laws and foriegn policies of entire nations is dangerous, don't you think?" And I still think that this question is so vastly complex and biased, that to answer it I must be drawn in to some linguistic game of rhetoric. It’s like asking “Do you still beat your wife?”, or “Should the dangerous shit that Morrissey calls music be played to five year olds?”. Lets break it up so that this becomes obvious:_ The indoctrination of children is dangerous? No, We always indoctrinate children with whatever beliefs our society holds – this is why children of one society believe things that that society believes, and why culture exists. If this belief is “lunatic” then does this change the level of “danger”? Still no, because 1) One person’s “lunatic” is another person’s “sane”. 2) It depends on the belief as to what sort of danger might follow 3) “danger” is ill defined, and seems to simply equate with a lack of reason (sheep lack reason and are not dangerous) If these “lunatic” beliefs shape laws, is that dangerous? Not necessarily. You aren’t talking about the laws themselves, but the way they are formed – and so we don’t know. Does all religious war lead to genocide? No, it certainly doesn’t. Does some religious law lead to genocide? Maybe yes. Does some non-religious law lead to genocide? Yes, actually it does. Should we outlaw law? ... I quite like the idea . I don’t think we can blame religion for the worlds ills any more than we can blame Communism, Capitalism, or even Postmodernism – the truth is far more complicated than that. You seem to think that religion is some kind of non-human force, manipulating people toward its own ends: ends which are separate from those of humanity. This is obviously incorrect: Humans created religion, humans act in the world, religions are a set of ideas which can be used for good or evil. http://www.cameraplanet.com/divphps/feature_displ... You're kidding me, right? Those people died for the media? You really think that is comparable to people joining a holy war or becoming suicide bombers? I'd like to have a real discussion here, but that is just such a ludicrous, and frankly probably offersive comparison, that I can only imagine that you are getting so caught up in finding ways to say "you're wrong RN" that you aren't really paying attention to what I'm saying. Please, don’t get a complex – You occasionally have a point . These people did, however, die for ideas – like truth, democracy, freedom. These ideas have caused as many wars as the idea of “god”, killed as many people. The article said it in the first few lines. It was quite in favour of their martyrdom... What? What do we agree on, where do we disagree? It seems that everything I say you have disagreed with, including that many people believe in a literal God, that the media is more irrational and more politically powerfull than religion. Want to try for the colour of the sky? I suspect that if I said it was blue, you wou.ld try to spin the notion that colours are all in the mind of the perceiver or something. Well that rather depends if you wanted to say it was objectively blue wouldn’t it. But seriously, I think your ideas are wrong, not you. I couldn’t care less if you win the argument – but I don’t agree with your ideas: I thought that’s what philosophy was about? That’s what it’s about to me anyhow – If you were looking to win, then perhaps you should give up: no one ever wins at philosophy, they are always other ideas to come along. So I'll tell you what. If you are instistant on disagreeing with every thing I say, regardless of how crazy you have to spin it, then let's just stop the discussion. Or we could actually find some agreement on some things? What is "technical irrationalism" and "everyday irrationalism"? It is ludicrous to believe that a magic man, or even the universe itself personified, listens to your secret wishes that you whisper in your head and makes them happen. No need for appeals to different standards of rationality. I don't have to have a perfect an explicit standard of pornography to identify "Debbie Does Dallas" as pornography, and in the same way, I don't need an explicit standard to identify the ludicrousness of religious belief. That’s because you have decided that it’s ludicrous, and stopped trying to find an interpretation which is not ludicrous. In short, I doubt you will ever think differently about religion than you do now. Its like ghosts: Some people believe in ghosts, some people say that belief in ghost is irrational. I say that a phenomena exists which some people explain by resorting to tales of ghosts, but that another explanation may be possible. You are very much in the camp of sceptics, fingers in their ears, saying “that’s irrational”, and not listening any further. If you want to fetishize the word "rational" I'm not buying in. So let me put it in simpler terms even (with apologise to those that are offended): religious belief is fucking retarded. The belief that humans are people or that murder is wrong isn't fucking retarded. Please stop treating a very reasonable belief like one that is lunatic. We're talking about craziness here, and you seem to want to pretend that it normal to think that people can rise from the dead or that if we just ask the right way, the universe will bend to our desires. Only in the realm of religion and superstition is it normal. You see, its completely hat-stand to believe in, so therefore anyone who does is mistaken. There is no deeper explanation, no alternative than these folk are all mad. The end. Are you serious about that too? The earth was created in seven days? Changing your mind to hide in the shrinking gaps isn't the same as not making claims that are easily disproven. The problem occurs with 1) the failure to actually change their minds (there are still a firghtening number of churches that teach young earth creationsim, not to mention home schooling their kids about it, which strikes me as almost a mild form of child abuse) Creationism well exposes the arrogance of science. Yeah it’s a load of tripe, but I think it’s good to have such tripe out there. Freedom of speech is awesome, don’t you agree? and 2) the fact that religion didn't say "Oh, I see we were incorrect here, sorry. Maybe we ought to be more carefull what we teach people is the Gospel truth" (isn't that a revealing phrase about societies attitude about religious claims?). Instead, religion fought against the evidence, until it became so obvious and unignorable (excepting some luddite religions that will refuse medical treatments, because it was "God's time" to take the person away) that they couldn't do anything but finally agree to it and relegate their claims to more and more of the unknown. so they modified their beliefs in the face of evidence then. It took some time. Nope, I have no interest in getting into that sort of nonsense debate unless you have a specific reason for wanting to clear it up. Surely you know what the word "harm" means? There are degrees of “harm” and some are necessary. Do you think it is ever justified to be cruel to be kind? I certainly do. Do you really believe that Osama Bin Laden isn't acutally a muslim, but an atheits who simply uses religion without believing it? Do you believe that George Bush isn't a christian? Seriously? Do you believe that George Bush is a Christian? He’s a puppet, who uses religion to make the believers in your country dance his tune. Someone, maybe his dad, probably told him it would work, it’s a dead cert. Osama may or may not be a Muslim – he’s not really a leader though is he. He doesn’t have a state, a government etc. He is at best a bogeyman, propagated by the media, by Bush, by Blair to increase the fear we feel until we all agree that civil liberties were a bad idea after all. You seem to think that these people don’t act to stay in power, but act because they are good religious folk who are merely doing god’s work (in their own minds at least) – and that belief I find incredibly naive. I am less familiar with Buddhism than Christianity, but I have read books by Buddhist holy men, including the Dalia Lama, and they clearly extoll a belief in magic. I don't care to debate the finer points of various flavours of Buddhism. Even if I had mispoke (which I don't believe I did), it has no bearing on my point. Sure, whatever. I once heard that Buddhism is a crock so therefore it is, the end. It says “magic” somewhere in their writings so it must be a bunch of baloney. There all barmy if you ask me, Job done, end of analysis. How is it close? How does claiming that the notion of aliens having abducted people and given them anal probes, only to return them to bed in time to get up for work is a lunatic idea "come close to banning" that notion? You're free to believe whatever crazy thing you want, and I'm free to say that they're crazy beliefs. They are entirely free, yes. If you want a tax break to preach your craziness, I get a little grumpy, and when people kill strangers over crazy beliefs, I get scared and start shouting "the house is on fire!". That's what I'm doing here, and sure I get frustrated when people look at the flames and say "Is that really fire? Are you sure it isn't cotton candy?". You think the fire was caused by matches, I realise it was caused by an electrical fault. It’s still fire. Killing is killing, war is war, we’re arguing about the cause, and you are certain its religion, and religion alone. Don't know what? Claim to be sure of what? Of there being no God? I am sure. I know there is no God, just as I know there is no Gandolf the wizard. Or are you talking about something else? Nope, just old Gandalf.. I mean god. Believe what you will RN , as will all the rest of them.

180 Proof
cult deprogrammer

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Posted 05/27/08 - 05:08 PM:	#156
Makarismos wrote: Still, I respect your view. yet is not my own. ... Cheers for your input, liked your post.
If faith is irrational, then it is rational to dismiss "faith-based claims" out of hand. If faith is rational, then "faith-based claims" must be testable and/or sound -- but they are neither. If faith is a-rational, then "faith-based claims" are inexplicable and thus cannot explain anything.

jdrw
definitely ~d1

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1 of 1 people found this post helpful Posted 05/27/08 - 06:12 PM:	#157
180 Proof wrote: Awesome in scale and wondrous in dynamic complexity, the universe merely spits up your ephemeral awareness only to swallow it again like a strobe-flicker in the dark or wave crashing or note blurred in an improvised solo, processing you perfunctorily from oblivion to oblivion as it cycles through its own metamorphoses ... You should submit this for publication in Hallmark's new "It Really Doesn't Matter Whether You Get Well or Not" card series. But without the sentimental smiley face. jd
OTOH I might be exhaustively wrong about everything I've ever thought--with the possible exception of this sentence.

ManiacJack
Dictator

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Posted 05/29/08 - 09:43 PM:	#158
Atheism is so often poorly defined as many of us are in a Christian country. Atheism is not the belief in no god, but more accurately the disbelief in all gods. Edited by Postmodern Beatnik on 05/30/08 - 05:29 AM. Reason: capitalization
Why make Sense When You Can Make Dollars? "Although I am a typical loner in daily life, my consciousness of belonging to the invisible community of those who strive for truth, beauty, and justice has preserved me from feeling isolated." -Spacetime Bustin' Albert Muther F*cking Einstein

Makarismos
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Posted 05/30/08 - 03:57 AM:	#159
ManiacJack wrote: Atheism is so often poorly defined as many of us are in a Christian country. Atheism is not the belief in no god, but more accurately the disbelief in all gods. ManicJack It can mean both:- wordnet wrote: 1) the doctrine or belief that there is no God 2) a lack of belief in the existence of God or gods wordnet.princeton.edu/perl/webwn I think much of this discussion is primarily concerned with people placing themselves in a particular group, or arguing for others to be placed in their own group. The trouble with being placed strictly in the atheist group for myself, is that the term "atheist" covers personalities such as Richard Dawkins - who professes a position which to my mind goes to far. I simply don't share his position, and so do not want to be lumped together with him, and the seemingly numerous folk who would say that religion and spirituality is all bad, a cancer on humanity, or other such dramatic claims. Agnostic used to capture my ideals, now generally I think Ignostic captures them better - but I don’t think calling me an atheist is terribly informative on the type of position or beliefs I personally hold. Edited by Postmodern Beatnik on 05/30/08 - 05:48 AM. Reason: congruence.

keda
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Posted 05/30/08 - 05:24 AM:	#160
Dranu wrote: First off, sorry it has taken so long to respond. I. KEDA I am sorry, I'll try to reorganize my meaning with this: Doing what is your duty, is only taken up as your duty if you place your love in ‘the Good’. Thus reason is held in the highest esteem before unqualified desire or emotion. That act of love cannot be justified or known to be right, and ontological proofs of God would only help clarify what reason dictates, since the love of reason (which follows from the love of ‘the Good’) is prior to its fruits. Therefore, if you do something according to duty and because it is your duty, then you must know what it is the duty of. In Kant's case duty seems to be the duty of reason, since the duty of unqualified desire (resulting from love of pleasure) or emotion (perhaps a type of pride?) would be different as reason would be their slave since reason can only be in perfect alignment with the love of ‘the Good’. According to Kant, duty is the necessity to act out of respect for the moral law. If you replace the world "love" with "choice" then it would make sense. I guess you meant something of that kind (emotions cannot be acts). Then you would choose to do good, and also respect reason. "Duty" of unqualified desire would not be called a duty in Kant's sense, perhaps a hypothetical imperative or as he writes in religion within the limits of reason, the evil principle or the radical evil which is the reversal in priority of the principle self love and princple of duty and thus one would only act according to duty if it is deemed beneficial by the principle of selv love. In the duty of desire, when reason may conflict (like in the categorical imperative), reason is discarded for the desire or emotion. The 'duty of desire' seems to be your proof of why knowledge of the ontological argument leads to amorality. However, (like I wished to demonstrate) 'duty of desire' does not love reason anyway. It could ignore the ontological proof. The problem you were addressing, though, was that it may compel a person who loves desire above all else to act in accordance for duty but for desire's sake. The problem is that the ontological argument would overthrow the desires as the ruler if one followed it to its conclusions. So one must love reason above desire, already, to follow the ontological argument to duty (ever notice the way many try to wiggle their way out of the argument?). That is, because desire and reason become one, reason must be primary to any desire, and thus such knowledge puts people in the same place as Kant is with duty it seems. The question really is whether one is able to "love reason above desire" if it would be undesirable to love desire. -Doing duty for duty's sake implies that you already love duty for some reason, for who could love duty in itself without reason to connect it? How could one distinguish types (of desire/of reason) of duty? The reason for love of (reason's) duty seems to be a prior love of reason/wisdom (philosophy if you will ). Thus, the ontological proof (just like duty) cannot be called a hindrance. Sorry, but I have no idea what you tried to say here. -Doing something for other than the sake of God/'The Good' in His or Itself is wrong. Some things are done for other reasons without being wrong e.g. you can choose whether to eat apples or bananas and neither choice is wrong.
All about making money Free Europe Now How to fix your country The man who trades freedom for security does not deserve nor will he ever receive either. -Benjamin Franklin If my sons did not want wars, there would be none - Gutle Rothschild It's not the people who vote that count, it's the people who count the votes - Josef Stalin

litkey
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Posted 05/30/08 - 05:54 AM:	#161
I would argue that time is being wasted on this post. Agnostic, Atheist, - it's like both camps are in church praying and the clock is going "tick tick tock tock..." If there is no God, and it is nothing but childs play- why the continued argument? Ok, that's 30 seconds gone from my life... =)
Going to trial with a lawyer who considers your whole life-style a Crime in Progress is not a happy prospect. -Hunter S T The aim of life is to live, and to live means to be aware, joyously, drunkenly, serenely, divinely aware. -Henry Miller

Topher
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1 of 1 people found this post helpful Posted 05/30/08 - 08:04 AM:	#162
Agnosticism and atheism are not mutually exclusive. They're not even in the same category! Theism/Atheism pertains to 'belief in god" and "no belief in god" respectively. The degree to which you don't believe in god is irrelevant. If you merely lack belief, or deny the existence of god, you're still an atheist. Agnosticism is not a third alternative between atheism and theism. Agnosticism isn't even a belief position, it is an epistemological position: we can't have knowledge of god. the position of knowledge and belief in the existence of a god are distinct. You can be an agnostic theist or and agnostic atheist. The former concedes that they do not know whether a god exists but nevertheless believes one does, while the latter states they do not know whether a god exists, and for that reason does not believe in one.

Reformed Nihilist
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Posted 05/30/08 - 08:52 AM:	#163
loveofsophia wrote: So yes, you could look at it a different way if you would like, but don't reinterpret my explanation or evaluation, take it head on and look at it. Is not existence being at all inexplicable? Head on, the answer is no, it is the opposite of inexplicable, it is a logical necessity. If you insist that this is the way we must look at it, then the answer is painfully simple and, I suspect, painfully unsatisfying to you. It doesn't change the fact that it is the answer. Why is a bachelor unmarried? Why does being exist? Why are circles round? These questions all have the same form, and they don't ask anything empirical (even though they might seem to on their face), they ask something about the meaning of the words. They don't say anything about the world, they say something about language. So I offer that as an (I think another) explanation of why the questions that you are posing are tricks of language, and even though you are emotionally and psychologically attached to the questions, I really would prefer more than an insistence that the questions must be important because it seems important and feels important. Everything that I experience seems to lay upon a larger and more complete or ultimate explanation that I am not privy to, in the least. Simply because something is humanly inexplicable does not mean it is ultimately inexplicable...simply speaking (or not). So who is it explicable to? What does "ultimately inexplicable" mean? What would an "ultimate explanation" be? This line of reasoning actually seems to presuppose a "God's eye view" of the universe, but if there is no God, then there is no God's eye view. "The big nothing" is the home of an explanation I can never investigate. You can say, well you are talking about nothing you know anything about, but that doesn't mean there isn't a something that consists within that nothing. The contents of that humanly conceived "nothing" are inherently absent from my understanding. This is what comes from the fact that humans conceive of certain bounded spaces of emptiness as things: holes, for exaample. Language treats holes pretty much the same way it treats other objects, and it is what makes it interesting when Wyle Coyote picks up a portable hole and moves it around. The problem is that we are not talking about any physical space that is bounded by physical material, as in a hole, which we can actually deal with disambiguating fairly easily, because we have all dealt with holes. We are talking abouit something that becomes more and more ambiguous the harder it gets pushed on. So look at what you say above: "You can say, well you are talking about nothing you know anything about, but that doesn't mean there isn't a something that consists within that nothing." and "The contents of that humanly conceived "nothing" are inherently absent from my understanding". The reason I bolded those words is to try to highlight the problem. You insist that this "nothing" consists of "something", yet the nothing is inherently empty. Keep in mind that we areen't talking about physical space here, and the locative senses of words are anaolgous. So what are we talking about, if not physical space? I have a suspicion, but maybe it would be best if you clarified. In this way I understand Martin Buber when he poetically speaks of God (to possibly interpret him in an entirely self described way), to be addressing the space between him and the mystery of anything being at all (the space they meet is the present moments of encountering existence). For the explanation is present to us always, for it must be, in that it is must be the support (the ultimate cause) of all this existence lain around me. Ultimate cause? Ulitimate explanation? What is up with all this "ultimate" stuff? What do you mean by adding that word? The word usually means "final" or "farthest", implying that we can follow a causal chain in a direction and come to the end as if it were a chain of paper clips. Well, when it comes to the physical universe, at least right now, the big bang is the ultimate cause. Of course the "ultimate explanation" I don't suppose exists, as I think that explanations will just keep coming, will be judged by various standards, and will have varying efficacy as we all loopk at our world from different angles, and look at it closer or more macroscopically. We (humans) may personify or imagine into something nothing like what we imagine, but to posit the question is correct, to arrogantly claim knowledge of the answer, to forget our speaking mainly of an awesome absence meeting us through existence being at all, is to have gone where the religious tread. Terribly arrogant, to my mind, and mistaken. What exactly does it mean to ask a question that shouldn't be answered? I would consider that a question. Isn't a question a request for an answer? By being aware of this conundrum, the question, its inherent darkness clouding all aspects of even speaking about it clearly (in the light), is to be tolerant of hasty and simplified beliefs that maintain answers to the ultimate question. The ultimate question? The big one? The ultimate question of life, the universe and everything? We all know that the [url=http://www.google.ca/search?q=What+is+the+answer+to+life+the+universe+and+everything%3F&ie=utf-8&oe=utf-8&aq=t&rls=org.mozilla:en-GB:official&client=firefox-a]answer]. We have yet to figure out what exactly the question is. I see a problem of sorts. It is only problematic if one claims knowledge inherently absent from themselves (they actually believe they hold any of the knowledge that is inherently absent). For we are only capable of, in reality, realizing through the effect of existence that there must contain a cause (we know the effect, not the cause). If one understands the question, I don't believe one should or could posit anything other than metaphorical and poetic answers. That's what I got so far...and the work of clarity, simplification, is not my forte (though with much more work than I am liable to put in at present, I could possibly say it in a simpler way). Let me give a try: the effect, existence, indicates a cause. One could try and pacify or dismiss the question but i believe this is only possible because of the nature of the cause, it is absent (the explanation). Saying that existence is an effect is begging the question of it being caused. Why would we assume that "existence" is an effect? It isn't a physical event, it is a psychological abstraction that helps us organize the world. You say, if I didn't know anything about them, I wouldn't even be aware of "its" lacking. This is a confusing line of thought if you honestly intend to address it to my question. I do. I know existence is, the effect, and so I know there is a cause (an explanation) with which I know nothing about (other than it causes the effect). You once again assume that "existence" is an effect. What leads you to this assumption? One can play word games with the inexplicable and say, what nonsense, but I believe nonsense is being brought to bear to avoid the question. I know there is a cause; I know not the cause. It as simple as, I know the sky is blue; I don't know the cause (but there is one). That sounds pretty dogmatic to me. Why do you know there is a cause? Or, I know my room just shook; I don't know the cause (but there is one). And, finally, I know existence is; I don't know the cause. Underlying all our attempts at explanation is this ultimate one addressing all the existents we often attempt to causally explain. "My room shook" is an event that takes place in time and space. "Existence is" isn't. It is a tautology, not a physical event. Of course there would be a physiological effect from this cognition, concept, whathaveyou. However, I maintain that the concept was worthy of the physiological effect I felt. I became aware of the lack of necessity (to my knowledge) to existence. It seemed unnecessary in that I had no inclining what necessitated it. Something must...how not? But logically, existence is, necessarily. If it wasn't, it wouldn't exist. That's the simple logical breakdown of it. The notion that it could be otherwise is a mirage. I suspect that the problem comes in two peices. The first has to do with our identification of objects with the words we use to label them. We experience a set of sensations and call that set "a car". We need to abstract (take out the important parts) in our mind what a car is (something that can contain people, is used to move them from one place to another, has windows, a front and back, seats, is a mechanical device), and we identify cars by idenitfying the elements of the form and purpose of the object. So a car is both a physical object that occupies space and time, and a set of abstractions. "Existence" isn't an object or event that occupies space and time, it is only an abstraction. The second problem is with language, and how it deals with abstract, non-physical (occupying space and time) concepts. We "concreteize" abstract notions as humans. We feel the "weight" of a bad descision, we say that justice is "blind". Existence is just such an abstract notion, and you are treating it as if it were concrete. I believe the trick is being played by you, not me, and so the onus is on you to explain the inadequacy of my conception. I do not understand your criticism of the question. Then answer my questions (But what is the question? What else could "being" do but be? Not be? Then it wouldn't be "being", would it?). They weren't rhetorical if you have an answer, and if you don't then they should reveal a set of assumptions that you hold but haven't examined. The simple thing is, the cause of the effect, existence, is worth noting in its absence. Existence can't be absent, and you once again beg the question of cause and effect. One of its effects upon humanity at large may be this: any answer to this question is inherently ridiculous for one to claim possession of, for our knowledge of the cause is solely through its effect. The cause seems perpetually suspended away from us. Or perhaps there is no cause, because "existence" isn't an eventy that occurs in time and space, but a conceptual abstraction. This vain I believe you already somewhat travel in, no? You dislike the claim of knowledge with regards there being a cause, I don't know what other conclusion one can draw from the effect called existence other than there is a cause, but we both would maintain we have no access to the answer. The only choice available for you, if you choose to argue my conclusion, to my mind, is to deny existence as an effect and this seems irrational to me. Why does it seem irrational to you? Because of an intuition or a feeling, or is there a more compelling reason? Again, this seems to be a criticism best aimed at those proposing answers to the question. I have no problem with the question, just the answers. What question specifically? I have been criticizing the questions (and they have been plural), as they contain presuppositions that I don't see supported, or are tautologies. I understand. Again, i will reiterate, the potential for argument to alienate instead of engage is one of my sole concerns in dialogue. Perhaps I aim overmuch toward avoiding pushing, but it is due to my being aware that you can't think for others and whatever line of reasoning I express is either a line of reasoning they, in a significant way, claim as their own or reject. We are voices in the wind (all arguments); another actually enjoying the meat of our arguments (the aroma, to stay with the wind metaphor), is entirely up to them. This sense of each person's dominion over their kingdom (one mind meeting another mind with its own self, process, background, wisdoms) informs me of the potential for mutual benefit. By allowing our interdependence to shine, for each can develop the conceptions of the other and the self in tandem, I find far greater reward than by a more simple form of argument that is less sensitive to the potential for interdependent growth of ones conceptions. Maybe a push is necessary on occasion to rock loose presumptive or uncritically examined conceptions, but the moments of interdependence are far superior to when one is left attempting to lead. I guess I am speaking about how the reward for both parties is significant. There are more impersonal methods of arguing that may have their appropriate time and place, I just have a preference for attempting to inspire emotionally/cognitively healthy arguments that are beneficial for both parties. I understand the subtlety to what I am saying; I understand the influences on my life that have shaped this preference for the mode of argument I affirm above others; I am rather certain personality plays a part as well as learning style. I don't know how clear this is, question away if necessary. It's reasonably clear, and when it boils down to it, it is a good thing that there are different people with different approaches and different personalities. Obviously, in different situations, we all react differently as well. The problem is this is an inherently complicated and sophisticated distinction I am not sure the religious conceive as readily as you do. The figurative melts into the literal in their reasoning, by my reckoning. The problem is the background that leads you to even propose that evaluation of their conceptions (the simple interwoven process of your experiences and conclusions that afford you the opportunity of your particular conceptions of the world). It is complex, for those that have not conceived things in such an analytic and complicated way, the distinction between figurative and literal may simply be fuzzed in their line of reasoning on their religious conceptions and the inclination to visit the conceptions critically may simply have become instinctually, compulsively, avoided due to experiences in their own life. I know someone that hates to talk about religion and politics because their experiences inform them that such a line of dialogue is disastrous and hurtful. Such unfortunate experiences, inherently disenfranchising them (by way of their own evaluation) from gaining experiences of argument that could persuade them that healthy arguments on those subjects can exist, are a reality in the formation of peoples mental maps (conceptions, evaluations, modes of interacting with others). I grow warry, with such an evaluation, of accidentally pushing when a more gentle touch may allow them to push themselves down different paths of mind. This is all rather theoretical and real world examples may prove (as I would suspect) that some balance between pushing and mutaully engaging a question is valuable in dialogue with others. Sure. I would add one last thing though, and this is just something that I find to be true of or for myself. When I speak clearly honestly and openly, being as transparent as possible, it has two positive effects. The first is that psychologically, it is a way of saying to myself "You're okay and your ideas aren't something to be ashamed of or hidden", very similar psychologically to the ritual act of confession. The act of publically announcing your beliefs somehow makes them psychologically more okay. The other is that it lets people really know what you're about on a given subject, which gives them the comfort of not having to second guess or interpret from very little. I guess that means that as a very general rule (with tons of specific exceptions), I fit into the "say what you mean and mean what you say" camp. But like I said before, different approaches are good. My questions and criticisms of tone are inspired by a fear that ones tone of voice may simply push another out of healthy argument and into an instinctively defensive position; get one set to fight (leading to a misconception of how argument is best engaged) instead of engaging in a way that affords the experience of the mutually beneficial mode of argument that hatches out together their conceptions and so imparts a critical understanding of the problems/questions/answers they are addressing together. Perhaps, but there is a bigger picture too, and most times, discussions of these sorts won't cause an immediate effect. When I have been pushed on things in the past, I expanded the way in which I thought about and approached a question, and sometimes did so to the detriment of previously held ideas. Making the bigger conceptual shifts isn't likely to occur during the conversation itself, but the conversations (oor arguments) were neccessary for the shift to happen. All I can do is offer my arguments and hope that either myself or my interlocutor (or both) will experience such a shift. An example of what I mean: my room shakes and my brother says, it was a bomb down the block and another friend says it was an earthquake, well, I would need to go and investigate the matter; but the nature of the question over existence precludes me investigating the truth of their claims (answers). Because there is no event in space and time to investigate. It may be more divisive than pointing out body odour. Divisive? Yes, maybe, but I know that I would want to know. I believe this is an apt observation of the completely natural cognitive dissidence we can experience when observing the nature of the way the world behaves. But this doesn't answer the question of how the effect, existence, is caused. Are you caliming that this way of seeing existence, the one I am exponding, this conception of it is simply the wrong way to view it and that it occurs simply because the way our brain behaves makes it unlikely for one to view the matter the way it is really? This is all fine and good on the surface, but how am I looking at the matter improperly. This has not been explained; how I am wrong, rationally? You seem to be some sort of imaginary argument with regards my argument, an indirect criticism and only potential criticism, as of the moment. I hope I have explained it now. I am saying I can point in all directions at once and say, "something" is somewhere that I am not able to go, think, understand. I can do this because I am on a path that stretches out of my sight behind me, ahead of me, and in all directions; "something" lies beyond my sight (something I don't know about). Okay, even using the metaphor that sounds wrong. Pointing in all direcdtions at once? Who can do that? When we talk about "something" we are pointing at another box, this time indicating the contents in a vague way. It doesn't address my criticism either. As a human, in all our explaining, we are entirely incapable of indicating or even identifying some sort of absolute nothing or lack. Nothings are only known by their boundries. That's what defines holes, empinesses and nothings. Is this a heirarchy statement, one type of experience is superior to another? Nope, it is a statement of connotation. The word experience implies an event that occured to you. Normally, we don't call thinking about something in a particular way something that happens to you, so normally we don't call it an experience. This is whatI am trying to disambiguate/ I had an experience that changed my perception of all past experiences. This is a profound moment in time (for me) and I would prefer to call it an experience because it highlights all past experiences, from that moment, in a different light and even the present and future moments. The way I see a blade of grace is different, so the present and the future have perceptably changed. It was an experience that changed the way I relate to the world around me. I am saying that what we experience, using the word experience as something obtaining a perceptual affect on our body, is altered in the way it is perceived; if one keeps in mind the shocking realization that what I experience, what exists, is the effect of a cause I do not know, then this seems like an experience worth noting as such; not as only a thought, but something changing the way your mind conceives moments of sensory experience. Did you mind get changed, or did you change your mind? Like I say, calling it an experience makes it sound like you had no choice but to think about it in one way, and that seems like the sort of myth that leads to dogma. I have thought about this one quite a bit. The fact is, I don't like confrontation, sustained and unresolved confrontation. Too much of us is the same and capable of interdependence, why risk alienating the a segment of people relate to you. They would feel like I decieved them this whole time; it would be a genuine betrayal of their expectations. How do I say this properly? When another is incapable of being comfortable with knowing how you really think, view the world, what use is it to harm their ability to relate to you when you know the difference is not so profound as all that (as they seem inclined to believe). They fail to seem interested in really thinking things through and understanding how lacking in simplicity is my explanation for not thinking as they do. So, publicly pronouncing myself as an atheist seems like a quote. A quote is something completely inadequate in accurately relaying a holistic explanation of what someone is really thinking; for understanding a quote tends to depend upon a familiarity with the paragraphs and paragraphs necessary to explain the quote. The dividing of myself away from those I feel interdependent and socially connected with seems unnecessary because, to my imagination, it seems like a harm more than a benefit to me and to them. Calling myself an atheist, publicly, would alienate me, make me dissimilar to those around me that have always considered me a theist. Doesn't it make you in he least bit annoyed that you have been intimidated into not saying something true about yourself? My sole concern is not in the logic of not believing in a literal God that I consider an inadequate understanding of the cause of existence. My sole concern is considering what people are willing to consider and relate to and what they are not. How does one affect their thinking if they are unwilling to reconsider their thinking? I am being far more local than global/national in my thinking. What I can do is run my life, out of those other peoples sight, in a way honest to myself. Maybe I need to have a little more hope for them to reconsider their perspectives, but from my experience people seem fairly capable of a completely unreasonable demenor toward certain lines of inquiry. I have a problem with inflicting the altering of their perceptions of me upon them without a sense that it may better myself and them. Maybe I am too tolerant and I should risk the alienation in hope that they may grow a little. I don't know. Given I have parents that are still raising young ones, and the parents expect the young ones to develop conceptually in a particular way, I don't feel inclined to impose a different role model than they would prefer upon the younger kids. If I can't be honest with my own family, feel it is an inappropriate time, than how could I be honest with a community of people I feel far less close to? Well, it is certainly easier to be honest with a stranger, because you have no emotional investments with stangers. Concerning the kids, wouldn't you? Wouldnt you want the kids to grow up considering the alternatives? Wouldn't a role model who has the courage of his convictions mixed with the gentleness to be as diplomatic as possible? You don't have to answer those questions, I don't know or care what the answers are, but it's probably good for you to think about.
Vivian Jaffe: Have you ever transcended space and time? Albert Markovski: Yes... No... Uh, time, not space... No, I don't know what you're talking about. I Heart Huckabees (2004)

180 Proof
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Posted 05/30/08 - 12:08 PM:	#164
Topher wrote: Agnosticism and atheism are not mutually exclusive. They're not even in the same category! Theism/Atheism pertains to 'belief in god" and "no belief in god" respectively. The degree to which you don't believe in god is irrelevant. If you merely lack belief, or deny the existence of god, you're still an atheist. Agnosticism is not a third alternative between atheism and theism. Agnosticism isn't even a belief position, it is an epistemological position: we can't have knowledge of god. the position of knowledge and belief in the existence of a god are distinct. You can be an agnostic theist or and agnostic atheist. The former concedes that they do not know whether a god exists but nevertheless believes one does, while the latter states they do not know whether a god exists, *and for that reason* does not believe in one. Edited by 180 Proof on 05/30/08 - 12:14 PM. Reason: uh huh ...
If faith is irrational, then it is rational to dismiss "faith-based claims" out of hand. If faith is rational, then "faith-based claims" must be testable and/or sound -- but they are neither. If faith is a-rational, then "faith-based claims" are inexplicable and thus cannot explain anything.

Topher
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Posted 05/30/08 - 12:38 PM:	#165
180 Proof wrote: Topher wrote: Agnosticism and atheism are not mutually exclusive. They're not even in the same category! Theism/Atheism pertains to 'belief in god" and "no belief in god" respectively. The degree to which you don't believe in god is irrelevant. If you merely lack belief, or deny the existence of god, you're still an atheist. Agnosticism is not a third alternative between atheism and theism. Agnosticism isn't even a belief position, it is an epistemological position: we can't have knowledge of god. the position of knowledge and belief in the existence of a god are distinct. You can be an agnostic theist or and agnostic atheist. The former concedes that they do not know whether a god exists but nevertheless believes one does, while the latter states they do not know whether a god exists, *and for that reason* does not believe in one. Am I to assume you're agreeing?