Ernest Sparks

Suppose you believe there is a rational reason for a human being to believe in God and act accordingly? Maybe you think it's an acquired adaptive trait in the human brain that achieves better survival chances. Suppose you also aren't sure that such a being is actually out there? Are you nevertheless an atheist?

a little story:

The great Danish physicist, Niels Bohr, moved into a new country house. A colleague came out to visit him. He noticed a horseshoe mounted over the door. He asked Bohr about it and Bohr told him that it was given to him by a friendly neighbor to bring the Bohr family and their friends good luck. The visitor asked Bohr if he really believed that. Bohr replied that he didn't, but the neighbor had assured him he didn't need to believe in it for the charm to work.

MrLoverLover

Apikorus:

(1) You contradict yourself. You said it was a fact you might be deluded, but now you're holding it's not a fact that you might be deluded. However, you seem to simply want to give up your previous statement, which is fine of course, so...

(2) How do you know with certainty you're not deluded?

Apikorus

A different day, MrLoverLover!

Perhaps for me "certainty" is a variable of limited precision. Possibilities which have absurdly low probabilities register as certainly not the case.

Cheers!

MrLoverLover

"Perhaps for me "certainty" is a variable of limited precision. Possibilities which have absurdly low probabilities register as certainly not the case."

-Then you simply don't know what it means for something to be "certain", and by the way you worded it, as others have pointed out, you said you were "100% certain" that you didn't eat rabbit yesterday, which implies there is no way that you did, but as I have pointed out there is no way for you to know that. A different day indeed. Perhaps the day you can answer will be the day.

Orpheous99

Response expected.

Orpheous99

The last one to know is the one deluded. If one can seriously question one's sanity at some point than most likely that one is sane. (Unless one is just a brain in a box.)

NialScorva

Gurdur, I'm on vacation, but I'll be back later this week. I'll reply then.

NialScorva

I wrote a long essay a couple days ago, then reread it. I realized that it took far to long to say something pretty simple:

We conclude on undecidable propositions all the time. If asked if there's a can of coke orbitting Jupiter, most of us will say that the proposition is false for all practical purposes. However, agnostics priveledge the existence of god as a proposition. Any other similarly formed statement would be assumedly false, and the provisional conclusion of falsity would stand until shown otherwise. I have seen nothing to show that the statement should be priveledge, and by doing so, one commits the same flaw that many theists do: a double standard on truth value of propositions based upon want rather than reason or evidence. I'm not saying that one cannot be an agnostic anymore than I'm saying that one cannot be an atheist, but I will assert that I dislike the two for similar reasons.

To forestall any objections, I'm not claiming that agnostics are theists, I'm merely saying that they both commit one particular error (IMO).

CX

I've covered this before here I'm pretty sure, but your definition of agnostic seems to be the very common, but incorrect, one. When Huxley coined the the term in the 19th century he meant that certain questions are insoluable, not that one should reserve judgement. Huxley would say that the entire question of god's existence or non-existence is in principle unanswerable. Whereas, by the correct defintion, agnosticism is a defensible logical position, by the incorrect definition in common usage agnosticism is not only not logically defensible, but is not even a position which requires defending to begin with but rather is simply refusing to answer the question of god's existence for personal reasons.

Pseudo Agnostic: I do not know if god exists.
Agnostic: I cannot know if god exists.
Atheist: I have no particular belief with regard to god.
Theist: God exists and boy is he going to smite your ass!

[ January 02, 2002: Message edited by: CowboyX ]</p>

NialScorva

The eternal question: what determines the definition, usage or a book? You correctly point out that Huxley coined the term to refer to something different, a small aspect of which people have latched onto. That is an entirely different argument. Huxley's definition of agnosticism did make it a consistent position, because he applied it equally to all propositions. However, <a href="http://www.infidels.org/news/atheism/sn-huxley.html" target="_blank">Huxley also stated</a>:
Huxley talks about the objective truth of a proposition. I think it's been fairly well demonstrated over the past 100 years that "objective truth" is an ideal, maybe an asymptotically approchable measure of our correctness, but not a strictly attainable thing. I don't really agree with Huxley either, not because his position is strictly wrong, but because he presumed that there existed things that made his position more than it was. He presumes that we can know what is objectively true. He presumes that we can have certainty. I reject both of these things. If someone has a problem with those positions, we can argue them in a more appropriate thread.

[ January 02, 2002: Message edited by: NialScorva ]</p>