Oh good answer.
Now, does the not asking the question mean you are atheist, theist or agnostic?
It fits none, really. Both atheism and theism suggests an answer to some degree, pertaining, at the very least, the probability of God. Agnosticism, on the other hand, implies a refusal to
answer the question of God (based on lack of conclusive data), but
not an
disinterest in formulating it, as the example would require.
Nonetheless, both theism and agnosticism admit the
viability of the concept. Atheism, be it “strong” or “weak”, on the other hand, states a dismissal of God (the first negating God directly, the second arguing that there is no reason for a rational mind to presume the existence of such an extraordinary entity, admitting it’s possibility in the distant realm of philosophical possibilities).
As so, I’d say that someone who were never once concerned about God, and an atheist, who concerned himself and concluded for its (most likely) inexistence, are closer together than an agnostic who goes around pondering, from time to time, if there is really someone/something “up there”.
Now you are dodging bullets of the opposition my friend.
Matrix mode?
No, seriously, you are ahead of yourself. I said plainly that
in that day I was not in the mood for such digressions. Earth has revolved around the sun a few times since then.
I think non-being might exactly the thing you need to convince yourself that it's leap of faith to say "there's no God" in the first place.
I don’t agree to it. I think that
strictly in strong atheism that is a fact. As to “weak atheism” (a term I detest for it suggests a lack of conviction, which just isn’t true), I’d say it’s an extrapolation, not a leap of faith. The “there is no God” idea, while certainly an
incomplete theses, is a conclusion of reason, not a “gospel of the non-being” (if there is such thing), to keep with your chosen terms. But I’ll go into these thoughts more deeply in the next reply:
How you position as atheist applies more pragmatical edge?
Yes, well, this is the Gordian knot, isn’t it? The eye of the storm, the issue at hand, the center of the universe, if the universe this thread were?
My take on the issue is, very simply put, that unlike the question is presented, and the answer demanded, in the heated arguments it generates, the question of God, in it’s very nature, is plain and ordinary. It bears no specialty whatsoever, as thesis goes, and once realizing this, the pragmatism in atheism becomes self-evident.
See, it’s very, very true that no
utterly conclusive demonstration can be made about God. Thing is, that is also true about
most anything. You can’t prove, beyond philosophical doubt, that
anything exists, or,
au contraire, that anything does not exists. You can’t prove there isn’t an invisible wall in front of you right now, which becomes immaterial if you try to touch, or that the there is actually a chair below your hindquarters, carrying your weight. Our senses are incomplete and untrustworthy and the induction they provide is meaningless. This philosophy, called
pyrronic skepticism, quite simply makes any man an isle within himself, lost in endless darkness, incapable of taking a step, for not being sure if the ground is there, if it will support it’s weight, if doing anything won’t lead to disaster.
Pyrronic skepticism has never been disproved
as an epistemology. Probably, because it is correct. It’s practical value, however has been utterly shattered by more pragmatic approaches, which allows for a more functional worldview, which won’t paralyze the person: the acceptance of our senses, aprioristically, as
basically correct, even if rather sketchy of the entirety of the experiences. As so, we form postulates, constitutions of knowledge and experience, and this is what tells you that it’s rather unlikely that there are invisible walls around you, or trust that sun will rise tomorrow, or that a next step into a different (but alike) section of the ground won’t mean falling into an abyss; extrapolation of what your senses tells you makes you functional,
viable, as an entity.
This functionality, practicality, this…
pragmatism applies to your daily life and to your mundane questions. But then, comes the question of God… and people expect you to treat it as… “non-mundane”; people say plainly that one can’t apply to God the same standards of choice-making and opinion-gathering that serves you beautifully to anything else. And why? Because God is supposed to be some epitome of truth, something more essential, and out of such grasp.
But
Why? Because of God’s nature, of God’s role? That can only be true if you assume,
aprioristically that there is some specialty to the idea of God, if you accept upon presentation the correction of part of the idea, what turns the entire argument an very crude form of
petitio principii; Hence, by refusing to formulate an answer to the question “there is a God”, even in the light of the complete
lack of evidence, applying the same practical rigor with which you treat your ordinary problems, you are, quite simply, creating an undue inequalty, and arbitrarily deciding to treat a claim without proof differently than other claims without proof just because of it’s popularity – politics getting in the way of clear thinking.
This is, though more elaborated, the point I made in my brought-up reply, when I said that “in my perception, agnostics place an arbitrary line and say ‘from now on, I begin to feel in doubt’”;
This is also the reason why “pink invisible unicorns” and “flying spaghetti monsters” are so funny; because, in their absurdity, they show that people are unwilling to indulge such suspension of disbelieve for characters other than their God, even though the arguments excuses and fits them
perfectly.
And this is also why atheists have, IMHO, the pragmatical edge in this debate. We treat the thesis “God” just like
any other thesis, and dismiss it on the grounds of insufficiency, just like we do with chupa-cabras, vampires, Santa Claus and the wicked witch of the west. We don’t embrace ideas without good cause, just because they are reassuring (like theists), nor refuse to form opinion (like agnostics), excusing ourselves of concluding by means of investigating difficulties, which don’t differ from those of
any other claim.
See, this is why the believers places such a high value in faith, and Christians tell with such candor the tale of Saint Thomas; for deep down, they know that there is no reason to give them credit, and something else had to be crafted for that purpose. The logical after this is to admit that when looking at it from the standpoint of pure reason, a dismissal is hardly absurd.
So, as far as I see, an agnostic has two positions he can take. He can be pragmatical and, theoretically, dismiss other absurd claims, but refuse to form an opinion regarding God – an opinion I consider unsustainable for it’s arbitrarity in the terms above described – or can have a pyrronic approach for all ideas, and be as much an agnostic for the spaghetti monster as he is to God (Christian or otherwise), which is, intellectually, a very coherent position, but, unless he says prayers to all zillions entities humanity’s imagination ever created (or at least from time to time concerns himself with the possibility of their existence), suffers from an incoherence between discourse (everything could be) and practice (like there is nothing).
A position of doubt can be the wisest in several questions, but, IMHO, not in this one. The doubt raised by the “God” thesis lacks merit to justify the denial of an answer after thinking it through. As so, I end this part with my favorite punch line for this debate – “to place myself in a position of doubt, I require a doubt of greater virtue than this”.
Being agnostic would basically mean the same thing and same goes to theists if you would had evidence that would satisfy you regarding this question.
Even though I'm here dirtying my own nest since I kind of similar view and since I haven't encountered such evidence of this imaginary being the question has quite significantly rendered itself useless (only used to ponder other points of view about the subject and show the error of their ways when they try to say what is logical and what isn't)
My point is that as soon as we ask the question about God's existence we have already done leap of faith towards such possibility. And this is followed by continuos stream of leaps of faiths as soon as we start to try to prove him true or non true with our own premise of what could be considered evidence of God.
An object disagreement we have in here. As I have already said, I’m not concerned with the existence of God because the question touched me, or evoked some sensible lucubration regarding the true nature of existence. It’s a question I personally dismiss with easy due it’s insufficiency (even here people couldn’t even define God, for FSM’s sake, so we could know what we are talking about), but that I confront due to pragmatism. Many people around me are religious, including most of my family. I talk to these people, and when I disagree from them, I gotta know what I’m talking about. But, as I said, in Fredland, God would be a non-issue.
Even if we don't ask this particular question there's still the good old "human experience" and when we try to explain it to ourselves we might have to consider the possibility of (eternal) being such as universum with or without the God. You see...the universum without God is entity in itself which is the Non-God I'm talking about. Some call it example simply "nature". You already give it certain characteristics that you assume it to have based into the conclusions of the evidence you got this far about it's nature. You consider it can move on it's own while others claim based to the same evidence the contrary.
What you are speaking of here is called
Pantheism, and was first elaborated by
Baruch Spinoza, with the idea that “All is God, God is all”. I disagree in the sense that I, again, grant no reverence or specialty to the mere peristaltic interactions of facts. As far as I’m concerned, there is no watchmaker, not even a blind one, and I attrib the marvelous complexity of the universe as the fraction that didn’t go to waste of a larger body of things, well within the realm of probabilities.
Not that I wouldn’t accept proof otherwise, or even consider an alternative model that made sense. Only that those were never provided.
More problems rise whenl you claim that God is being something beyond of this universum which requires leap of faith in itself as it applies something exists outside this universum. At that point you have already given certain premise towards the evidence for God's possible existence and therefore you judge the case based into it. Same goes to giving God certain characteristics and judging the evidence based into those characteristics.
Well, this here is a question that don’t concern me, as I already faced the argument that merely by acknowledging the question “Is there a God” I am, “
a priori”, making a leap of faith.
So as said my pov is that there's no such thing as question of "Is there God?" for me. But as soon as I make such question it requires answer and leap of faith towards something which we don't know anything about. And I can honestly say based to the things I know I conclude God doesn't exist (and same probably goes to you) however I'm not being denial that making such comment isn't leap of faith.
As soon as you start to ponder the issue you have done leap of faith.
Interesting consideration, but (specially after my previous comments), of an altogether different order.
I guess the debate here is to what, exactly, is a leap of faith. Can we truly place any extrapolation…
(as the ones I made here, that the things we don’t know follow the dynamics of the things we know, until evidence otherswise)
…in such class?
I say again, I see no specialty to the question of “God” that demands I don’t answer it with the same pragmatism I answer any other esoterically-oriented question. Just like the difference between a language and a dialect is the size of the army speaking it, this one is a thesis that deserves dismissal, for there is nothing wrong with setting the wheat apart from the tare, even when it comes to thoughts.
Regards
.
