UnseenWorld

I'm an agnostic atheist. An agnostic believes he doesn't know if God exists. An atheist believes he does not. So, while my mind is open, my current hypothesis is that no, God does not exist.

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Pathfinder

Hmmm...agnostic atheist. I have never heard it put that way before. It is usually one or the other, so you are unique.

Gutterboy

In my opinion the best (ie. convinces the most people) theistic argument is the Kalam Cosmological Argument, formulated as follows:

P1: Everything that begins to exist had a cause. P2: The universe exists. C: The Universe had a cause.

However it has several well defined faults that theists have yet to adequately rebutt.

a. P1, in stating that "everthing that begins to exist", assumes the existence of an object(s) that didn't begin to exist, which is the conclusion. An argument which assumes the truth of the conclusion in its premises is fallacious.

b. The equivocation fallacy. P1 equivocates a sort of causality we have observed, which is really just ever changing energy and matter assuming different forms, with something entirely different, the creation of energy and matter out of nothing. There is some reason to believe that such a thing might be able to happen uncaused.

c. Even if you grant the truth of the conclusion, the most parsimonious explanation for the prime mover is not god, but an insentient, self existent force of some sort. Stephen Hawking describes such a thing, a 4 dimensional hypersphere, in his latest book.

Some other stuff. The author rightly dispenses with the Ontological argument as failing this criticism:

However, he then goes on to make several serious errors in logic. The first is in his attempt at defending the Cosmological argument.

This is a false dichotomy, there are several more options. Granting the truth of the cosmological argument, a self existent god is not the only option. The universe could be the product of an uncontingent insentient force, multiple deities, the product of dependent origination in Buddhist cosmology, or the product of Mr. Hawkings 4D hypersphere.

The basic problem is that we don't *really* know the universe had a beginning. Empirically we only know (and probably only ever will know) what happened after planck time, 10 -43 seconds after the Big Bang event. Before that, all bets are off and virtually anything is logically possible, which is where the principle of parsimony comes into play. A god is simply not the most parsimonious explanation.

False dichotomizing and a piss poor understanding of the word chance are in evidence here. For example, if Buddhist cosmology is true the universe wasn't designed, but it didn't develop by chance either. Even given an insentient "prime mover" or a self contained Hawking-esque universe, it would only be blind chance if it could be demonstrated that all possible physical constants were equally probable given the beginning conditions of the unvierse. You would have to be omniscient yourself to know that was true.

Paleys "watchmaker" argument goes as follows: If you found a watch on the beach, would you conclude it was designed, or came into existence by "chance"? The author is a nitwit for relying on it because if its true it refutes his position. If I gave you a beach landscape picture with a watch painted in and I asked you to identify what was designed, you would say the watch. Why? Because the designed object can be contrasted against the rest of the picture, which wasn't.. uh... I think we've found the problem here.

It should also be noted that evolution does not just introduce a longer timeframe into the question of design, it provides an observable, testable mechanism (selection acting on mutation) for building complex biological organism that "intelligent design" superstition does not.

A rigorous analogy with the universe is impossible to contrive from this nonsense. I assume its a halfhearted attempt at arguing the Anthropic principle, which states that the universe seems to be designed to support life, and such a thing is vastly improbable. However that also assumes that all physical constants for the universe were equally probable given the (probably unknowable) beginning conditions. It also assumes that our form of life is the only form of life possible, and that the univese in indeed friendly to life when the opposite seems to be the case. 99% of it is unimaginably cold, dark space.

Next, the "moral" argument!

No "we" do not consciously point to a transcendent realm of moral absolutes. Theists do. Non-theists may appeal to secular theories of ethics that are none the less objective.

The rest is not worth commenting on because its not a coherent argument, but an emotional tirade against relativism and secular theories of ethics. Nothing better than "I don't like relativism, therefore its not true!" is given here.

And for good reason. If objective secular ethics are possible, as the author seems to tacitly concede here, the principle of parsimony demands we stop there rather than invoke unecessary postulates like invisible men.

Yet another "I don't like it, therefore its not true." Why do transcendentally objective ethics have to be grounded in a mind at all? Because the author says they must be? Not good enough.

The author should be taken out and flogged for this foolishness. Pascals wager only works if you assume that Pascals god, who punishes disbelief with eternal damnation, actually exists. Even within christianity, a plethora of other views exist.

Oh the irony! In the case of Spinoza, Voltaire, Paine, and countless skeptics, thinkers and philosophers from 2002 back to before the first century, it was the biblical so-called "revelation" that caused them to reject the biblical god.

Want to have some fun with a theist? Accept his "god is possible" arguments, then use them to postulate the existence of a malevolent deity You'll find that it provides a far more parsimonious explanation for the the condition of the earth than omnibenevolent sky daddies!

chodadog

What she said. I believe in a higher power. What form that higher power is in, i currently have no idea. Could be one big cheese, or various gods. I really don't know. But i think there's something there, somewhere.

Gutterboy

Its actually necessary. Agnosticism is an epistemological position, not a statement of belief. It is not the third option to atheism or theism that people imagine it to be. You can hold that the existence of god not knowable with empirical certainty, but you still have to decide whether to believe or disbelieve. The option most people tend to take is weak atheism, which is the position that there is not enough evidence to support the existence of god. This has the *enourmous* advantage of placing the entire burden of proof upon the believer in any argument. There is also strong atheism which asserts "There is no god", which is obviously a much harder proposition to defend.

It can go the other way though. Many christians, like the one in your article, are agnostic theists. They believe that their god is not knowable with certainty via empirical means, but insist there are still good 'beyond reasonable doubt' reasons to believe. The reasons given are usually prophecy, answered prayer, revelation, the Holy Spirit communicating with them, and so on...

Ok, I've used up all my alotted bullshitting time this morning. Time to go to work!

Pathfinder

I see that you put quiet alot of thought into your responses. I fell asleep around 5:00 AM and awoke about 8:45 AM so I have not yet finished my pot of wake up coffee.

I quickly read your response to the arguments that were proposed, but I will have to clear my mind and re-read in depth.

I need more convincing before I accept your proposition that agnosticism is not a belief.

Why isn't it as simple as saying; I believe "that any ultimate reality (as God) is unknown and is probably unknowable".

Is not that an expressed belief, just as being an atheist is an expressed belief?

You became more creative in your position and I can see the validity of it, but to say "it is actually necessary", I think is not true.

Educate me further, if you care too.

G Sharp

Interesting article on postmodernism and morality:

http://www.thenewrepublic.com/docpri...erkowitz062802

"the guiding theme of postmodernism is that objectivity, especially in morals, is a sham--in other words, precisely the definition Fish was disavowing in the Times. Postmodernists take their lead from Nietzsche's famous aphorism in Beyond Good and Evil, "There are no moral phenomena at all, but only a moral interpretation of phenomena." They draw inspiration and sustenance from the many books of the French theorist Michel Foucault, who held that the quest for truth in the study of history is wrongheaded--that, instead, one should seek to grasp "how effects of truth are produced within discourses which in themselves are neither true nor false." And they (the postmodernists) consider as one of their outstanding contemporaries Judith Butler, a professor at the University of California at Berkeley, who asserts that "power pervades the very conceptual apparatus that seeks to negotiate its terms, including the subject position of the critic"; that "there is no ontologically intact reflexivity to the subject which is then placed within a cultural context"; and that "agency is always and only a political prerogative" [italics in original].

If these representative statements about postmodernism mean anything, it is that morality is created by human beings with no ground or sanction in reason or nature or heaven."

RW316

i am an athiest and i am proud of it

Pathfinder

Interesting link.