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SykkBoy 07-05-2002 07:57 PM
Quote:
Originally posted by Enchantress
He was really cool. God might live in his eyebrows.
you dare mock the almighty Bruce Campbell? there's quite the warm spotting awaiting you in hell, that's for sure....... ;))))))

I've met Bruce Campbell a few times...in the early 90's I used to hit all of the Fangoria Weekend Of Horror conventions and he was always a constant panelist/speaker...he and Sam Raimi autographed my Darkman t-shirt and a couple issues of Fangoria Magazine...they were always very approachable, but now with Mr. Raimi going Hollywood in a big way, he'll probably be a constant no-show at the convetnions now........

cherrylula 07-05-2002 08:04 PM
Bruce Campbell is doing a book signing on August 19th in Burbank (CA).

"If Chins Could Kill: Confessions of a B Movie Actor"

ADIDAS 07-05-2002 08:07 PM
I worship the sun and pray to Joe Pesci!

jimmyf 07-05-2002 08:15 PM
Buddhist, thats what I tell those people that come to my front door, spamming me about there church... It works.

I don't believe in a fucking thing but me.

Pathfinder 07-05-2002 08:37 PM
Quote:
Topics: God, Arguments for the Existence of



Text: The arguments for the existence of God constitute one of the finest attempts of the human mind to break out of the world and go beyond the sensible or phenomenal realm of experience.



Certainly the question of God's existence is the most important question of human philosophy. It affects the whole tenor of human life, whether man is regarded as the supreme being in the universe or whether it is believed that man has a superior being that he must love and obey, or perhaps defy.



There are three ways one can argue for the existence of God. First, the a priori approach argues from a conception of God as a being so perfect that his nonexistence is inconceivable. Second, the a posteriori approach gives evidence from the world, from the observable, empirical universe, insisting that God is necessary to explain certain features of the cosmos. Third, the existential approach asserts direct experience of God by way of personal revelation. This approach is not really an argument in the usual sense, because one does not usually argue for something that can be directly experienced.



The A Priori Approach. This approach is the heart of the famous ontological argument, devised by Anselm of Canterbury though adumbrated earlier in the system of Augustine. This argument begins with a special definition of God as infinite, perfect, and necessary.



Anselm said that God cannot be conceived in any way other than "a being than which nothing greater can be conceived." Even the fool knows what he means by "God" when he asserts, "There is no God" (Ps. 14:1). But if the most perfect being existed only in thought and not in reality, then it would not really be the most perfect being, for the one that existed in reality would be more perfect. Therefore, concludes Anselm, "no one who understands what God is, can conceive that God does not exist." In short, it would be self-contradictory to say, "I can think of a perfect being that doesn't exist," because existence would have to be a part of perfection. One would be saying, "I can conceive of something greater than that which nothing greater can be conceived", which is absurd.



The ontological argument has had a long and stormy history. It has appealed to some of the finest minds in Western history, usually mathematicians like Descartes, Spinoza, and Leibniz. However, it fails to persuade most people, who seem to harbor the same suspicion as Kant that "the unconditioned necessity of a judgment does not form the absolute necessity of a thing." That is, perfection may not be a true predicate and thus a proposition can be logically necessary without being true in fact.



The A Posteriori Approach. Popular mentality seems to appreciate the a posteriori approach better. The ontological argument can be made without ever appealing to sensation, but the cosmological and teleological arguments require a careful look at the world. The former focuses on the cause, while the latter stresses the design of the universe.



The Cosmological Argument. This has more than one form. The earliest occurs in Plato (Laws, Book X) and Aristotle (Metaphysics, Book VIII) and stresses the need to explain the cause of motion. Assuming that rest is natural and motion is unnatural, these thinkers arrived at God as the necessary Prime Mover of all things. Thomas Aquinas used motion as his first proof in the Summa Theologica (Q.2, Art.3). Everything that moves has to be moved by another thing. But this chain of movers cannot go on to infinity, a key assumption, because there would then be no first mover and thus no other mover. We must arrive, therefore, at a first mover, Aquinas concludes, "and this everyone understands to be God."



This argument from motion is not nearly as cogent for our scientific generation because we take motion to be natural and rest to be unnatural, as the principle of inertia states. Many philosophers insist that the notion of an infinite series of movers is not at all impossible or contradictory.



The most interesting, and persuasive, form of the cosmological argument is Aquinas's "third way," the argument from contingency. Its strength derives from the way it employs both permanence and change. Epicurus stated the metaphysical problem centuries ago: "Something obviously exists now, and something never sprang from nothing." Being, therefore, must have been without beginning. An Eternal Something must be admitted by all, theist, atheist, and agonostic.



But the physical universe could not be this Eternal Something because it is obviously contingent, mutable, subject to decay. How could a decomposing entity explain itself to all eternity? If every present contingent thing/event depends on a previous contingent thing/event and so on ad infinitum, then this does not provide an adequate explanation of anything.



Hence, for there to be anything at all contingent in the universe, there must be at least one thing that is not contingent, something that is necessary throughout all change and self-established. In this case "necessary" does not apply to a proposition but to a thing, and it means infinite, eternal, everlasting, self-caused, self-existent.



It is not enough to say that infinite time will solve the problem of contingent being. No matter how much time you have, dependent being is still dependent on something. Everything contingent within the span of infinity will, at some particular moment, not exist. But if there was a moment when nothing existed, then nothing would exist now.



The choice is simple: one chooses either a self-existent God or a self-existent universe, and the universe is not behaving as if it is self-existent. In fact, according to the second law of thermodynamics, the universe is running down like a clock or, better, cooling off like a giant stove. Energy is constantly being diffused or dissipated, that is, progressively distributed throughout the universe. If this process goes on for a few billion more years, and scientists have never observed a restoration of dissipated energy, then the result will be a state of thermal equilibrium, a "heat death," a random degradation of energy throughout the entire cosmos and hence the stagnation of all physical activity.



Naturalists from Lucretius to Sagan have felt that we need not postulate God as long as nature can be considered a self-explanatory entity for all eternity. But it is difficult to hold this doctrine if the second law is true and entropy is irreversible. If the cosmos is running down or cooling off, then it could not have been running and cooling forever. It must have had a beginning.



A popular retort to the cosmological argument is to ask, "If God made the universe, then who made God?" If one insists that the world had a cause, must one not also insist that God had a cause? No, because if God is a necessary being, this is established if one accepts the proof, then it is unnecessary to inquire into his origins. It would be like asking, "Who made the unmakable being?" or "Who caused the uncausable being?"



More serious is the objection that the proof is based on an uncritical acceptance of the "principle of sufficient reason," the notion that every event/effect has a cause. If this principle is denied, even if it is denied in metaphysics, the cosmological argument is defanged. Hume argued that causation is a psychological, not a metaphysical, principle, one whose origins lay in the human propensity to assume necessary connections between events when all we really see is contiguity and succession. Kant seconded Hume by arguing that causation is a category built into our minds as one of the many ways in which we order our experience. Sartre felt that the universe was "gratuitous." Bertrand Russell claimed that the question of origins was tangled in meaningless verbiage and that we must be content to declare that the universe is "just there and that's all."





One does not prove the principle of causality easily. It is one of those foundational assumptions that is made in building a world view. It can be pointed out, however, that if we jettison the idea of sufficient reason, we will destroy not only metaphysics but science as well. When one attacks causality, one attacks much of knowledge per se, for without this principle the rational connection in most of our learning falls to pieces. Surely it is not irrational to inquire into the cause of the entire universe.



The Teleological or Design Argument. This is one of the oldest and most popular and intelligible of the theistic proofs. It suggests that there is a definite analogy between the order and regularity of the cosmos and a product of human ingenuity. Voltaire put it in rather simplistic terms: "If a watch proves the existence of a watchmaker but the universe does not prove the existence of a great Architect, then I consent to be called a fool."
Continued:

Pathfinder 07-05-2002 08:39 PM
Quote:
Once again we are faced with a choice. Either the universe was designed or it developed all these features by chance. The cosmos is either a plan or an accident!



Most people have an innate repugnance to the notion of chance because it contradicts the way we ordinarily explain things. Chance is not an explanation but an abandonment of explanation. When a scientist explains an immediate event, he operates on the assumption that this is a regular universe where everything occurs as a result of the orderly procession of cause and effect. Yet when the naturalist comes to metaphysics, to the origin of the entire cosmos, he abandons the principle of sufficient reason and assumes that the cause of everything is an unthinkable causelessness, chance, or fate.



Suppose you were standing facing a target and you saw an arrow fired from behind you hit the bull's eye. Then you saw nine more arrows fired in rapid succession all hitting the same bull's eye. The aim is so accurate that each arrow splits the previous arrow as it hits. Now an arrow shot into the air is subject to many contrary and discordant processes, gravity, air pressure, and wind. When ten arrows reach the bull's eye, does this not rule out the possibility of mere chance? Would you not say that this was the result of an expert archer? Is this parable not analogous to our universe?



It is objected that the design argument, even if valid, does not prove a creator but only an architect, and even then only an architect intelligent enough to produce the known universe, not necessarily an omniscient being. This objection is correct. We must not try to prove more than the evidence will allow. We will not get the 100 percent Yahweh of the Bible from any evidence of natural theology. However, this universe of ours is so vast and wonderful we can safely conclude that its designer would be worthy of our worship and devotion.



Many object that the theory of evolution takes most of the wind out of the design argument. Evolution shows that the marvelous design in living organisms came about by slow adaptation to the environment, not by intelligent creation. This is a false claim. Even if admitted, evolution only introduces a longer time-frame into the question of design. Proving that watches came from a completely automated factory with no human intervention would not make us give up interest in a designer, for if we thougt a watch was wonderful, what must we think of a factory that produces watches? Would it not suggest a designer just as forcefully? Religious people have been overly frightened by the theory of evolution.



Even the great critics of natural theology, Hume and Kant, betrayed an admiration for the teleological argument. Hume granted it a certain limited validity. Kant went even further: "This proof will always deserve to be treated with respect. It is the oldest, the clearest and most in conformity with human reason...We have nothing to say against the reasonableness and utility of this line of argument, but wish, on the contrary, to commend and encourage it."



The Moral Argument. This is the most recent of the theistic proofs. The first major philospher to use it was Kant, who felt that the traditional proofs were defective. Kant held that the existence of God and the immortality of the soul were matters of faith, not ordinary speculative reason, which, he claimed, is limited to sensation.



Kant reasoned that the moral law commands us to seek the summum bonum (highest good), with perfect happiness as a logical result. But a problem arises when we contemplate the unpleasant fact that "there is not the slightest ground in the moral law for a necessary connexion between morality and proportionate happiness in a being that belongs to the world as a part of it." The only postulate, therefore, that will make sense of man's moral experience is "the existence of a cause of all nature, distinct from nature itself," i.e., a God who will properly reward moral endeavor in another world. In a godless universe man's deepest experience would be a cruel enigma.



In his Rumor of Angels, Peter Berger gives an interesting negative version of the moral argument, which he calls "the argument from damnation." Our apodictic moral condemnation of such immoral men as Adolf Eichmann seems to transcend tastes and mores; it seems to demand a condemnation of supernatural dimensions

. Some deeds are not only evil but monstrously evil; they appear immune to any kind of moral relativizing. In making such high-voltage moral judgments, as when we condemn slavery and genocide, we point to a transcendent realm of moral absolutes. Otherwise, all our moralizing is pointless and groundless. A "preaching relativist" is one of the most comical of self-contradictions.



Most modern thinkers who use the moral argument continue Kant's thesis that God is a necessary postulate to explain moral experience. Kant thought the moral law could be established by reason, but he called in God to guarantee the reward for virtue. Modern thinkers do not use God so much for the reward as for providing a ground for the moral law in the first place.



The moral argument starts with the simple fact of ethical experience. The pressure to do one's duty can be felt as strongly as the pressure of an empirical object. Who or what is causing this pressure? It is not enough to say that we are conditioned by society to feel those pressures. Some of the greatest moralists in history have acquired their fame precisely because they criticized the moral failings of their group, tribe, class, race, or nation. If social subjectivism is the explanation of moral motivation, then we have no right to criticize slavery or genocide or anything!



Evolutionists attack the moral argument by insisting that all morality is merely a long development from animal instincts. Men gradually work out their ethical systems by living together in social communities. But this objection is a two-edged sword: if it kills morality, it also kills reason and the scientific method. The evolutionist believes that the human intellect developed from the physical brain of the primates, yet he assumes that the intellect is trustworthy. If the mind is entitled to trust, though evolved from the lower forms, why not the moral nature also?





Many people will go part way and accept moral objectivism, but they want to stop with a transcendent realm of impersonal moral absolutes. They deny that one must believe in a Person, Mind, or Lawgiver. This seems reductive. It is difficult to imagine an "impersonal mind." How could a thing make us feel duty bound to be kind, helpful, truthful, and loving? We should press on, all the way to a Person, God, the Lawgiver. Only then is the moral experience adequately explained.



The Question of Validity. How valid are all these theistic proofs? This question raises issues in a number of fields: logic, metaphysics, physics, and theory of knowledge. Some thinkers like Aquinas feel that the proofs reach the level of demonstration. Others like Hume say that we should just suspend judgment and remain skeptics. Still others like Pascal and Kant reject the traditional proofs but offer instead practical grounds or reasons for accepting God's existence. Pascal's famous wager is an appeal to pragmatism; it makes sense, in view of the eternal consequences, to bet on the existence of God.



Paul seems to demand a high view of the theistic proofs when he says that the unbelievers are "without excuse." "What can be known about God is plain to them, because God has shown it to them. Ever since the creation of the world his invisible nature, namely his eternal power and deity, has been clearly perceived in the things that have been made" (Rom. 1:19-20).



Paul was not necessarily affirming that the arguments are deductive, analytical, or demonstrative. If someone rejected a proposition of high probability, we could still say that he was "without excuse." The arguments, in their cumulative effect, make a very strong case for the existence of God, but they are not logically inexorable or rationally inevitable. If we define proof as probable occurrence based on empirically produced experiences and subject to the test of reasonable judgment, then we can say the arguments prove the existence of God.



If God truly exists, then we are dealing with a factual proposition, and what we really want when we ask for proof of a factual proposition is not a demonstration of its logical impossibility but a degree of evidence that will exclude reasonable doubt. Something can be so probable that it excludes reasonable doubt without being deductive or analytical or demonstrative or logically inevitable. We feel that the theistic proofs, excluding the ontological argument, fall into this category.



Natural theology, however, can never establish the existence of the biblical God. These proofs may make one a deist, but only revelation will make one a Christian. Reason operating without revelation always turns up with a deity different from Yahweh, the Father of Our Lord Jesus Christ. One can confirm this easily by comparing Yahweh with the deities of Aristotle, Spinoza, Voltaire, and Thomas Paine. A. J. HOOVER
Which argument, if any, do you think is the best argument?

titmowse 07-05-2002 08:49 PM
I am a Subgenius.

Praise Bob.

Ace-Ace 07-05-2002 09:46 PM
Quote:
Originally posted by jreaka
I pray to the football gods every sunday!
Me tool...it's not working so far (Woohoo Bengals...)

G Sharp 07-05-2002 10:13 PM
Quote:
Originally posted by Pathfinder

Kant reasoned that the moral law commands us to seek the summum bonum (highest good), with perfect happiness as a logical result. But a problem arises when we contemplate the unpleasant fact that "there is not the slightest ground in the moral law for a necessary connexion between morality and proportionate happiness in a being that belongs to the world as a part of it." The only postulate, therefore, that will make sense of man's moral experience is "the existence of a cause of all nature, distinct from nature itself," i.e., a God who will properly reward moral endeavor in another world. In a godless universe man's deepest experience would be a cruel enigma.



. . . . .


Most modern thinkers who use the moral argument continue Kant's thesis that God is a necessary postulate to explain moral experience. Kant thought the moral law could be established by reason, but he called in God to guarantee the reward for virtue. Modern thinkers do not use God so much for the reward as for providing a ground for the moral law in the first place.

This seems to hit closest to home. People make judgments every day--hot/cold, left/right, etc. Most of these decisions are based on empirical decision making processes [on experience]. However, there are some decisions that require moral/ethical guidelines. The elaborations of moral cause differ from culture to culture but it is always phrased in the form of the supernatural--the spiritual. The source[s] of moral guidance is summarized as God.

This is not bulletproof reasoning though. Skeptical scientists may argue, in line with Chomsky's theory of linguistic genesis, that the human trait of "morality" is a byproduct of evolutionary adaptations that focused on self-preservation. There is recent research that suggests that behaviors we humans normally label "altruistic" or "self-sacrifice" or "compassion" are just differing ways organisms employ to ensure the survival of their genetic lines. Along the same lines it can be argued that the "hard wired morality" people may be born with is a psychological by product of psychological adaptations needed to insure survival. Indeed, if people did not have this hard wired moral compass, the strongest will kill all others and genetic diversity [a key component to species' evolutionary viability] suffers. At the most basic, morality can be summed up in self-serving terms--"Do unto others what you want them to do unto you" can easily be interpreted as a clever insurance policy; I forego harming you to incentivize you from harming me.

There's definitely 2 sides to every coin but it all boils down to belief.

Pathfinder 07-05-2002 11:53 PM
Well we have one for the moral argument.

Does anyone else have an opinion on the best argument?

UnseenWorld 07-06-2002 12:08 AM
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.

Pathfinder 07-06-2002 03:27 AM
Quote:
Originally posted by 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.
Hmmm...agnostic atheist. I have never heard it put that way before. It is usually one or the other, so you are unique.

Gutterboy 07-06-2002 08:35 AM
Quote:
Originally posted by Pathfinder
Well we have one for the moral argument.

Does anyone else have an opinion on the best argument?
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:

Quote:
However, it fails to persuade most people, who seem to harbor the same suspicion as Kant that "the unconditioned necessity of a judgment does not form the absolute necessity of a thing." That is, perfection may not be a true predicate and thus a proposition can be logically necessary without being true in fact.
However, he then goes on to make several serious errors in logic. The first is in his attempt at defending the Cosmological argument.

Quote:
The choice is simple: one chooses either a self-existent God or a self-existent universe, and the universe is not behaving as if it is self-existent.
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.

Quote:
Either the universe was designed or it developed all these features by chance. The cosmos is either a plan or an accident!
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.

Quote:
Evolution shows that the marvelous design in living organisms came about by slow adaptation to the environment, not by intelligent creation. This is a false claim. Even if admitted, evolution only introduces a longer time-frame into the question of design. Proving that watches came from a completely automated factory with no human intervention would not make us give up interest in a designer, for if we thougt a watch was wonderful, what must we think of a factory that produces watches?
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.

Quote:
When ten arrows reach the bull's eye, does this not rule out the possibility of mere chance? Would you not say that this was the result of an expert archer? Is this parable not analogous to our universe?
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!

Quote:
In making such high-voltage moral judgments, as when we condemn slavery and genocide, we point to a transcendent realm of moral absolutes. Otherwise, all our moralizing is pointless and groundless. A "preaching relativist" is one of the most comical of self-contradictions.
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.

Quote:
Many people will go part way and accept moral objectivism, but they want to stop with a transcendent realm of impersonal moral absolutes. , but they want to stop with a transcendent realm of impersonal moral absolutes.
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.

Quote:
They deny that one must believe in a Person, Mind, or Lawgiver. This seems reductive. It is difficult to imagine an "impersonal mind."
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.

Quote:
Pascal's famous wager is an appeal to pragmatism; it makes sense, in view of the eternal consequences, to bet on the existence of God.
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.

Quote:
These proofs may make one a deist, but only revelation will make one a Christian. Reason operating without revelation always turns up with a deity different from Yahweh, the Father of Our Lord Jesus Christ. One can confirm this easily by comparing Yahweh with the deities of Aristotle, Spinoza, Voltaire, and Thomas Paine.
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 :feels-hot You'll find that it provides a far more parsimonious explanation for the the condition of the earth than omnibenevolent sky daddies!

chodadog 07-06-2002 08:38 AM
Quote:
Originally posted by Midnyte


Nah, cause an agnostic believes that there might be a god, but there is no way of knowing for sure. I am sure there is a god or gods, I'm just not sure what the nature of them is.
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 07-06-2002 09:00 AM
Quote:
Originally posted by Pathfinder


Hmmm...agnostic atheist. I have never heard it put that way before. It is usually one or the other, so you are unique.
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 07-06-2002 10:04 AM
Quote:
Originally posted by 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!
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 07-06-2002 06:12 PM
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 07-06-2002 06:25 PM
i am an athiest and i am proud of it

Pathfinder 07-07-2002 08:02 AM
Quote:
Originally posted by 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."
Interesting link.


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