Agnostic Theism?

If God is just, he would not punish a non-believer, therefore disbelief is more reasonable. The only reason one would believe was if they felt there was something wrong with not believing, and that this God would feel it just to mete out punishment to anyone who dared doubt his existence. My concept of justice is different, as I see no harm in one believing there is no God. As for your reference to those monsters of infamy, I can only say that I also believe there is a clear distinction between cultural and ethnic morals and absolute ethics. I believe there is a difference between right and wrong and good and evil that can transcend culture, and that some things are considered evil or good virtually universally, with the possible rare exception. Your question who am I to tell them they are wrong is a fair one. It is not my place, though if I felt it necessary I would do so. We all judge others, you do too, whether it is your place to or not.

 

Hitler /pol pot/stalin were not violators of any moral code.
They created their own.
THEIR CODE, is NOT , YOUR CODE.

We humans that say OUR code is the RIGHT WAY.
Base this on WHAT?
Violation of personal rights.

BUT. Insects for example well ahead of us on the tree of evolution.
They have no personal rights. and a are spectacularly successfull
they outweight us from3 to 6/1 in biomass.
As are sharks.
THEY SURVIVE

Is that not the purpose of life.?
Is the ability to reason the purpose.. no , according to religion
we must have faith. which requires no reason. just faith

So what is our purpose?

What we wish it to be.

Occam

 

Huxley wrote, ""The justification of the Agnostic principle lies in the success which follows upon its application, whether in the field of natural, or in that of civil, history." He's saying that the justification of agnosticism, as a principle, lies in its application to natural history (science) and civil history (government). The latter is no real justification at all; all it proves is that agnostic principles are workable in government. The former has to do with natural science, which must hold to a naturalistic hypothesis. Neither have anything to do with philosophy, and Huxley is still vague by what he means by "justification."

Now, this redundancy thing is not that hard, and this is the last time I'm going over it. A belief does not, by default, show that the believer lacks knowledge. How could it, since "knowledge" is "true, justified belief?" So, "I believe but I don't know," is not redundant. Now take "I know and I believe." That is redundant, because knowledge entails belief. Now take "I know but I don't believe," that is contradictory for the same semantic reason, i.e. knowledge entails belief. It's just that simple.

I keep telling you but you don't listen: an argument is a form of evidence, of justification. I don't care how many genocides have been carried out in God's name, because God did not personally participate in those genocides. If God exists, then he must be just. It just follows from the concept of God. If it's not just, then it's not a god.

 

That is a very logical, calculating, sensible, practical, and common motivational pattern for many organisms behaviours. If base instinct, species survival, and quantity of population are the sole reasons for life, I agree.
But, to me, the wisdom of the traditional teachings, such as Aboriginal elders in Australia, and Native American elders teach, transcends that. It tells us all is sacred, respect all, nature is our mother, this earth is our home, and we are just one part of it, not its master, and not its creator. We must live sustainably, and be stewards of the world, making sure we don't wreck it. I like that view, which, in the end actually matches up well with the survival aspect. For 10 000 years, the valley I live in remained unchanged, its ecology undamaged by its human inhabitants. In just 200 years, its all gone. Which is more logical?

 

First, I'll deal with Occam. I find it a little disgusting that you're trying to pass off genocidal maniacs as Nietzschean supermen. That's about all I have to say about that.

This is, of course, the most immediate objection to the Wager: How could a just God punish the unfaithful? What could be a more arbitrary determinant of salvation or damnation? But, I think, we're looking at the problem wrong-headedly. The root of this problem is the tendency to view faith and reason as diametric opposites. Those who maintain this view, I think, have little imagination. The distinctive thing about the Wager is that it is a reasonable argument for faith. Faith of this sort can hardly be called "blind." Reason is what the Wager begins with; faith is what it ends with.

Now, we can ask ourselves, does it seem so arbitrary to determine damnation based on the ignorance and unreasonableness of a person? Well, of course not. What less arbitrary a criterion could there be, if rationality is, in fact, a virtue? And so we see that there is a non-arbitrary criterion for the immortality of the soul, and that this criterion is reason.

As for your ethics, I don't want to argue the point further. My objection was to your truth-relativism, not your moral philosophy.

 

Now I would like to see you give a defense on externalist grounds

 

BG

Yet it was but a hypothetical.
Occam believes it as much as he does the holy trinity.

occam

 

CS

Sorry that you did not percieve the underalying point of the post.
Occam believes no such thing.

We are in adult waters now... think well.
Is evolution driven by reason?
No. it is a mechanism

Yet reason IS human civilisation.

Occam

 

Why does occam have to explain something so obvious.
In years of posting. Has occam ever said anything but
RATIONAL MORALITY IS WHY WE DO ANYTHING.
[or it's poor cousin, religious moraity]
Reason. is how we do it.

Yet you all comment without thought that occam believes
'kill or be killed"
is the way..

This is why occam rarely agues SERIOUSLY ON THIS FORUM.
Only with a select few. They know what we are and what occam is trying to say about us.

Occam

 

"it is wrong for a man to say that he is certain of the objective truth of any proposition unless he can produce evidence which logically justifies that certainty"

"The justification of the Agnostic principle lies in the success which follows upon its application, whether in the field of natural, or in that of civil, history; and in the fact that, so far as these topics are concerned, no sane man thinks of denying its validity."

"Still speaking for myself, I add, that though Agnosticism is not, and cannot be, a creed, except in so far as its general principle is concerned; yet that the application of that principle results in the denial of, or the suspension of judgment concerning, a number of propositions respecting which our contemporary ecclesiastical "gnostics" profess entire certainty."

Huxley did not consider the Agnostic position to be compatible with Theism, or Atheism.

"Materialism and Idealism; Theism and Atheism; the doctrine of the soul and its mortality or immortality–appear in the history of philosophy like the shades of Scandinavian heroes, eternally slaying one another and eternally coming to life again in a metaphysical "Nifelheim." It is getting on for twenty-five centuries, at least, since mankind began seriously to give their minds to these topics. Generation after generation, philosophy has been doomed to roll the stone uphill; and, just as all the world swore it was at the top, down it has rolled to the bottom again. All this is written in innumerable books; and he who will toil through them will discover that the stone is just where it was when the work began."

"When I reached intellectual maturity and began to ask myself whether I was an atheist, a theist, or a pantheist; a materialist or an idealist; Christian or a freethinker; I found that the more I learned and reflected, the less ready was the answer; until, at last, I came to the conclusion that I had neither art nor part with any of these denominations, except the last."

"That which Agnostics deny and repudiate, as immoral, is the contrary doctrine, that there are propositions which men ought to believe, without logically satisfactory evidence; and that reprobation ought to attach to the profession of disbelief in such inadequately supported propositions."

Why do you have to add the qualifiers "true, justified", in front of the word "belief"? Why can't you just say "knowledge" is "belief"? Because, the default position of the word "belief", indicates a lack of absolute knowledge. Plain and simple. You're not giving the proper weight to the words "true" and "justified".

"I believe but I don't know" is redundant. Because, the "i don't know" part, isn't necessary. It is "Exceeding what is natural or necessary" and "Using more words or images than are necessary or useful". Plain and simple. You'd have to show that the word "belief" indicates full "knowledge", for the "i don't know" part to be necessary. But, it doesn't.

In fact, there's a word, for those who claim to have some secret evidence of God's existence.....Gnostics. Not, the "gnostics", who Huxley identifies as simply believers, who believe in that which they have no "logically satisfactory evidence" of.

LOL. God, personally, eradicated Earth's entire living population, except for those who could fit on a boat. You must be using a different definition of genocide, than I am.

Trolls might possibly exist...so it's reasonable to lather myself with anti-troll lotion, daily. Ugh, IMO, that just sounds nuts. It doesn't sound like "evidence" of any kind.


Peace

 

I can't answer for CS, but I can give you a very general run down of knowledge:

Knowledge is at least belief, but belief is not sufficient for knowledge. Just because I believe X doesn't mean that I know X. Suppose, for example, that you and I are sitting in a sound proof, windowless room. And let's suppose that we had been in this room for 3 months now. Now, suppose you asked me "Jatom, is it raining outside?" and that in response, I picked up one of those "magic 8-ball" toys, gave it shake, flipped it over and saw the word "Yes" appear in its little window. So I respond, "Yes 3DJay, it's raining outside," and I actual do believe that it's raining outside.

Now, let's suppose that it just so happens to actually be raining outside at that moment. In this case, you wouldn't say that I knew it was raining would you? You would say that it was more like a lucky guess right? That that 8-ball is just a toy, and that me believing on the basis of that toy is insufficient. In this case, I believe that p, and p happens to be true, but this is not sufficient for me knowing that p. In other words, I would believe that it's raining outside, and it really would be raining outside, however this would not be enough for me to say that I knew it was raining outside. There is something missing here. Something that we could add to this true belief in order to make it knowledge.

What this missing element is, and what it consist of, is somewhat of a controversy particularly after what someone named Gettier wrote about justified true belief. At anyrate, what CS appears to be pointing out here, is that this missing element is justification, and that this justification amounts to having evidence for a particular proposition (such as the proposition, "it is raining outside").

 

Jatom

Occam would , for he knows that you know he can look it up on
meteorolical sites to see if it was actually raining where you are.

If a site with thousands in DB say its raining...
It most likely is. [or are they co-conspirators to a deception?]

Knowing/fact..is a product of diverse input from multiple sources not connected.
Holmes knows this. Simple deductive logic. [are you watson?]

Point refuted.

Occam

 

Well in that instance I suppose the belief that "it is raining outside" would be supported--justified--by the evidence. In either case, justification (whatever it amounts to) is needed in other for you to say that you know "Such-and-such."

Let us just say for the sake of argument that the only things in this windowless sound-proof room are you, me, a light, and that magic 8-ball toy. The scenario plays out the same, ending with me believing that it is raining outside on the basis of the response I recieved from the 8-ball. Would you still say that I knew it was raining outside? Or would you think it's purely a coincidence that my belief just so happens to coincide with the way thing really are?

Ok, but knowing, I would say, amounts to more than just receiving 'sense data'. For one thing, this data is organized and categorize in such a way that it is meaningful and intelligible to the 'receiver'. For another thing one would need to individuate between the true and false, justified (or warranted) and unjustified, beliefs that are formed by this data. Our minds don't just take in everything in one big glob which we refer to as "knowledge."

 

Knowledge is experience at bottom. Belief at the very least (and most) , is desire.

It would follow that our evolution, since we are now conscious of it, can be driven
in some measure by our reason.

Is reason really civilisation?

 

Exactly. Belief, by itself, indicates a lack of full knowledge.


Peace

 

I think I know what you may be getting at, that knowledge must always be empirically grounded, or somehow confirmable by our experience, whereas mere belief--such as belief in God, spirits, etc--is that which is not grounded by experience. In the history of philosophy you'll find a group that has walked that same path and failed miserably.

 

I would say that knowledge is a special class of belief. But it isn't that mere belief indicates a lack of full knowledge, but that S's merely believing that p is insufficient for S knowing that p. That is to say, merely believing X, is not the same as knowing X. For one thing X may very well be false. For example, I cannot know that the Earth is bigger than the Sun, though I can believe it is.

 

To poke my nose in. Yes 'belief is desire'..as is faith.

Dejavu

Yes. We now alter our enviroment. 'Enviromental adaption' no longer applies
in the small scale.
Earthquakes, hurricanes and ELE asteriods are still beyond us.
But in the large view we can weather all but ELE's
And we are now in the process of changing man.
Our physicallity is being slowly remodled by our desire. To live longer, to be more powerfull. Cybernetics/bioengineering are huge fields of expansion, only growing.
We WILL remake ourselves to our own plan.

Is reason civilisation?

Lets just say that reason allows greed, self interest and personal power
to be elevated.
Reason/science allows huge cities and complex infrastructure.
Something that cant be done with 10th century technology.
Itself a product of reason.

Reason came into play the day we first cornered a mammoth with a human 'strike team'

Occam

 

To poke my nose in. Yes 'belief is desire'..as is faith.

Dejavu

Yes. We now alter our enviroment. 'Enviromental adaption' no longer applies
in the small scale.
Earthquakes, hurricanes and ELE asteriods are still beyond us.
But in the large view we can weather all but ELE's
And we are now in the process of changing man.
Our physicallity is being slowly remodled by our desire. To live longer, to be more powerfull. Cybernetics/bioengineering are huge fields of expansion, only growing.
We WILL remake ourselves to our own plan.

Is reason civilisation?

Lets just say that reason allows greed, self interest and personal power
to be elevated.
Reason/science allows huge cities and complex infrastructure.
Something that cant be done with 10th century technology.
Itself a product of reason.

Reason came into play the day we first cornered a mammoth with a human 'strike team'

Occam

 

I know that this is the Agnostism and Atheism Forum, and that many are zealous to prove religious folk such as myself wrong, but still, let's try not to let every topic degrade to the faith vs reason "dichotomy." It muddies the waters, and makes things much harder to understand.

No, I do not think that all belief is mere desire. Think about your own beliefs for second. There should be a large class of beliefs for which you have no choice but to believe. That is to say, there are those beliefs which you do not voluntarily believe. For example, the poor mother who has lost her son at war, does not desire to believe that she's lost her son, nevertheless she believes it anyway. Her belief has nothing to do with desire.

For another thing, if all belief is mere desire, then what's to become of knowledge? All knowledge, being a special case of belief, would ultimately be based in desire as well. Thus one arriving at true beliefs would seem to be purely accidental, and ultimately unimportant in the pursuit of our own ends, namely, to form beliefs in line with our desires.