Agnostichero

Reasonable Doubt,

I appreciate your input here. As you may have sensed, I agree that there is no "perfection," seeming or otherwise, to the universe. (If you haven't checked it out yet, Stephen Jay Gould has a very insightful essay on male nipples in _Bully for Brontosaurus._) Like many of you, I do not feel that the "order" or "complexity" of the universe requires that we posit the existence of some benevolent anthropormorphic creator.

In fact, I was once interested in Deism. I always found the God of Thomas Paine and Thomas Jefferson to be much more credible than the God portayed in the Bible. Nonetheless, I ultimately found the arguments for the existence of God proffered by the Deists (prime mover, watchmaker, etc.) to be unpersuasive. Tellingly, no theist has attempted to argue that the order, complexity, and perfection of God "proves" that God had a creator.

With respect to "debating strategies," my point was this: We've all read a plethora of arguments that purportedly "prove" the existence of a supernatural creator. Nonetheless, the overwhelming majority of people who rely on such arguments do not simply believe in the vague "creator" concept that their arguments would seem to support. Instead, they believe in an incredibly specific, arbitrarily conceived deity who performed all the "miracles" described in the Bible and whose will can be precisely determined.

As I mentioned before, I believe that the arguments in support of a vague supernatural concept, such as the Deist God or the pantheist God, ultimately fail. Nonetheless, some of these arguments are at least somewhat cogent. In contrast, I have not encountered a single cogent argument regarding why we should adopt one highly specific "God" concept (such as the Christian God) instead of another (such as the Muslim God).

I'm merely saying that any fundie who seriously wants to proselytize should be prepared to offer such an argument. I for one am unwilling to relieve them of this burden by limiting our debate to two mutually exclusive alternatives.

[ February 22, 2002: Message edited by: Agnostichero ]</p>

Jayhawker Soule

Agnostichero,

Thanks. I am, however, curious. While I'll gladly grant you hero status, why "Agnostic"? More specifically, what is the scope of your agnosticism, e.g., are you agnostic when it come to ...

• Jesus,
• the "God of Abraham",
• Hinduism,
• Pantheism,
• Deism

and any number of other belief systems?

I personally don't care much for the term. To me, it suggests much more than being "open minded". I lack the scholarship to engage in deep discussions on epistemology, but it seems clear that the relatively brief history of our species is one in which the domain available for supernaturalism continues to shrink almost exponentially. I see absolutely no evidence to suggest that this process will not continue. In other words, when faced with some question like the "cause of the Big Bang", rather than suggesting:"We don't know -- maybe god did it.", I'm quite comfortably asserting: "We don't know yet."

BTW: I enjoy Gould ...

[ February 23, 2002: Message edited by: ReasonableDoubt ]</p>