Do you want God to take away your ability to make your own decisions? Whenever you consider doing something unethical, immoral, harmful, or such, do you want God to interfere in your life and to tell you what you can and can't do?
Do you want God to become the tyrant that you advocate, an omnipotent being who bullies less powerful beings into doing what he feels is right, regardless of what those beings want?
But I would not deny myself the knowledge of any sensation, not even the ones I don't like.
A willful desire for ignorance of my own self strikes me as remarkably self-defeating... not to mention, dare I say it, illogical.
To wish to be permitted to do something immoral is itself immoral.
Yes, if those beings are trying to bully me - especially if they are more powerful than I am.
Really? Would you set yourself on fire just to learn what it feels like? Presumably not - so where do you draw the line? Why not draw it at zero pain?
But if there was no such thing as pain in the first place, there would be no such thing to be ignorant about.
Is this to suggest that to wish to have no freedom to choose is moral?
I see... so what you want then is someone to take care of you, because you're obviously incapable of taking care of yourself. I am beginning to understand now why you don't want be allowed to make your own decisions. Would you like daddy to tie your shoelaces also?
And in what manner precisely do you wish you were created so that you could not feel pain? Pain is an extension of the sensation of touch, do you wish to not be able to feel touch also? Personally I rather enjoy the sensation of touch, most of the time anyway, but I can't even begin to imagine how I could experience it if I could not feel pain. Perhaps though you have some advice for God on how he should have created us to feel touch but never know pain?
Yes, God forbid that we actually know anything either. So far your idea of paradise is turning us into unthinking, unfeeling, unable to do anything for ourselves vegetables. But I suppose I shouldn't criticize; we all have our own idea of what a perfect world be like.
No. To wish to have freedom to choose from a range of moral (virtuous) or neutral options is moral; to wish to be free to choose an immoral option is immoral. How could it be otherwise?
Why should freedom be absolute? (Actually it can't be - see below.)
How can someone 'make their own decisions' if they are being coerced by another person or persons? Your argument is self-defeating. And how can a child who is being raped, or a Jew in the gas chambers, or the victim of an earthquake, 'take care of themselves'?
What do you think police forces are for? What are criminal courts for? Why is it OK to be forcibly restrained by human agency, but not by God? Either way, one's freedom is restricted.
But God is omnipotent! Therefore, as long as touch doesn't require pain as a logical necessity (which it doesn't), God must be capable of creating touch without pain. It's just a matter of designing the nerves so as to limit the maximum intensity of sensation. Not all that difficult, I would have thought. But, as I say, God is omnipotent, so he doesn't need my advice.
This implies that if we don't have total freedom and knowledge, then we don't have any freedom or knowledge. That is plainly false. How much freedom do you want? Freedom to commit murder or genocide? And how much knowledge do you want? Knowledge of what it feels like to be shot, or what it feels like to shoot someone else?
We have no legal right to harm one another, so why should we have a moral right to do so?
1. I understand 'atheist' to mean someone who believes that God does not exist. You are using the term to mean someone who does not believe that God exists. OK, in the latter sense a wavering agnostic is an atheist. But lack of belief in God's existence does not logically entail belief in his non-existence. I want a term that refers to people who cannot form a positive belief either way. If I do not believe that it rained in London on 1st July 1329 (because I have no evidence either way), it does not follow that I believe it did not rain in London on that date. I can perfectly well have neither the belief that it did nor the belief that it didn't. Similarly with belief in God; I can be agnostic in my sense of the word. 'If X is not the case, then not-X is the case' is valid; but 'If I do not believe X, then I believe not-X' is invalid.
2. You say agnosticism is an epistemological claim. Well, not necessarily. If someone says 'We cannot know whether God exists', that is epistemological and (I admit) weakly atheistic. But 'God may or may not exist' is a statement about God, not about knowledge per se; hence it is metaphysical, not epistemological.
Okay, I misunderstood fideism. I think I took it out of context in an earlier use from somewhere in this thread to mean to suggest that it had something to do with political motives.
Anyway, yes, hue-man, you were right to call it fideist faith; my apologies for misunderstanding you. I have no particular qualm with being labeled as fideist, no more a qualm than I do with any other label that might apply anyway. I do, though, disagree that I am religious. Religious is more a state of doing than being, I think. I do nothing that is religious and I think that most religious folk would agree that would make me decidedly not religious. But if you want to call me religious, so be it, I won't argue any further.
Yes, my belief is based in scripture, which is also the source of certain religions' beliefs and, at least partly, their dogma. I won't disagree with that. I just happen to disagree with what they say concerning this scripture. My own views on this scripture and my subsequent views on God don't conform to any religion that I have yet encountered. If I am religious, then, it must be a religion of one and will remain so until I find those that believe what I believe.
You asked,
All knowledge. I don't believe that any of us know anything without God determining that we will know it.
Fair enough. My belief may not be logical then. But I'm not someone who minds that. If logic demands that I must abandon faith, then I will give up on logic. I value faith more than I value logic. That's just what works for me.
I need to prove what I believe? Why? It's only a belief. I'm not proselytizing or trying to pass it off as fact. If I were doing either then naturally I'd need to prove it. But I don't care for facts about God, because facts make belief irrelevant. And I'm not telling you or anyone else that you should believe what I believe. I firmly believe that you should believe precisely what you do believe.
No, I'm not criticizing people for making assumptions concerning God; I'm criticizing the assumption itself, not that somebody made it. You, me, anybody has every right to make an assumption of God or anything else. But whether or not the assumption makes sense to me is another matter, and I see no more hypocrisy in me saying so than in Richard Carrier writing an essay that criticizes an assumption of God.
Funny but I don't feel the least bit embarrassed for my faith. Logic may not be subjective, but embarrassment certainly is. If you find faith or idealism embarrassing then I certainly encourage you not to adopt either. I have no desire for you to be embarrassed.
I should hope so. Shouldn't we have more personal investment in each other's well being than God does? What does he owe us precisely? But we owe each other an awful lot. People need to stop relying on God's benevolence and start giving it to each other.
This same issue was raised in another thread a couple days ago. I'll ask you the same question that I asked there. Remaining in the hypothetical mode, what would you have God do exactly? Do you want God to take away your ability to make your own decisions? Whenever you consider doing something unethical, immoral, harmful, or such, do you want God to interfere in your life and to tell you what you can and can't do? Do you want God to become the tyrant that you advocate, an omnipotent being who bullies less powerful beings into doing what he feels is right, regardless of what those beings want? Because it seems to me that this is the only alternative to the way things are now.
Uumm... ya, isn't that what all of this talk about God is, assumptions? In your own words to another poster,
No, I haven't "met the guy", so for me it isn't a physical reality either. So whenever I talk about God, obviously, it is an assumption. It just happens to be my assumption; what makes sense to me.
I don't worship God, nor would I, so I don't consider such an act to be good. But despite that, where did I say that good people don't suffer? I have suffered, and I will doubtless suffer many more times before I die. But I would not deny myself the knowledge of any sensation, not even the ones I don't like. A willful desire for ignorance of my own self strikes me as remarkably self-defeating... not to mention, dare I say it, illogical. So if God exists, why would I want him to never let me suffer?
And finally, the Bible is a book. It is not a religious book. One cannot do nothing and be religious. And a book doesn't do anything. It just sits there, being read on occasion. If the reader decides to take what he reads in this book and base a religion on it then his use of the book has become religious, but the book remains the same. Well, I am not basing a religion upon what I read. Heck, I can't even honestly say that I base my belief on it, because as I'm sure you've seen, some of the assumptions I make about God aren't exactly biblical. But belief and religion are not the same thing. If you don't want to accept that it's up to you, but most people in the world do see a difference between belief and religion, even most atheists. So I'll stick to the commonly held perceptions of belief and religion and I'll leave you alone to keep yours as you want it.
Every negative entails a positive. When you say that you do not believe in God you are saying that you are paradoxically saying that you believe (meaning you accept statement as true) that God does not exist.
I don't want to respond to this whole post, because I believe that's unnecessary, but I have to respond to one thing. How can you say that the bible is not a religious book?!! Do you fully understand what is or is not religious? The bible is considered to be religious literature, conceived of and written by religious people. I guess that being theistic really does entail religious belief. You are a bit obscure in your conception of God, but you are certainly not a deist if you think that book is divine.
It was good debating with you, Solace. Have a good weekend.
Hue-man: Can you please clarify one point.
Do you believe that 6,232,794,087 is a prime number, without looking it up? Presumably not, since you will have no idea either way. You have no evidence that it is prime, hence no basis for belief. (You are 'agnostic' about the matter.) According to your argument above, this means that you believe that it is not prime, i.e. you believe it has factors other than itself and 1. But surely you do not believe any such thing. Have I misunderstood your argument?
if you say that you don't believe in God, you are in a way saying that you believe that God doesn't exist.
Atheism is a statement of disbelief
You can understand what I'm saying and disagree with me at the same time.
No, I completely disagree with that. I think this is faulty logic; you are putting the negative in the wrong place in the sentence.
(a) Affirmative form: It is the case that I do not believe God exists.
(b) Correct negative equivalent: It is not the case that I believe God exists.
(c) Incorrect negative equivalent: It is the case that I believe God does not exist.
Statement (a) logically implies (b), but it does not imply (c). Logically, I could fail to adopt any belief at all about God's existence.
I have done my best to explain my reasoning, but if you still insist that (a) does imply (c), I do not think there is anything else I can say to convince you. We will have to agree to differ.
Since I maintain that 'not believing X' is different fom 'believing not-X', I would say your use of the word 'disbelief' is ambiguous here.
Yes, I do understand, and disagree. Although I personally lean towards atheism, I do not share your tenacious desire to describe non-leaning agnostics (in defiance of common usage and, I think, logic) as atheists (even 'weak' ones). But there we are - I think we'll have to leave it at that. Thanks for the discussion anyway.
I personally believe that if a statement is unverifiable then it is meaningless, and should be held to be false until it is proven otherwise...
hue-man, help me understand what you are getting at here. Excuse me if you fully explained this earlier in the thread. If so, just refer me to the place...
Haven't you had the experience of finding someone's statements unverifiable at the time they are made, but readily verifiable at some future time? Are you really saying that you always consider a statement false until you verify it to your satisfaction?
Yes, I am saying that I consider a claim that has not been verified to be false until it is proven otherwise. The claim of the existence of a supernatural agency is unverifiable, and therefore, I hold the claim to be false until proven otherwise. The problem with supernatural claims is that they are unverifiable by their very nature, and that's why the believer believes based on faith, or fideism. The believer will openly admit that their claims are unverifiable.
This position is called scientific positivism and the principle of parsimony. It is the exact opposite of dogmatism, but believers know that their claims for the existence of supernatural agency are unverifiable, and the chance of supernatural agency being verified is little to none. Parsimony demands that supernatural agency be held not to exist until proven otherwise.
What about statements concerning highly likely but unrecorded past events? For example:
"On the day exactly 1 million years ago, some rain fell somewhere on Earth."
This is unverifiable; does that mean it is false?
Okay, it just stikes me as an untenable position, because, say for example your "significant other" says, "I love you." You have to consider that a false statement for as long as you live, in that it cannot ever be proven to be true. Now, if your significant other asks you, "Do you know that I love you?" you would have to either lie in order to not offend that person, or say, "No, your claim to love me is a false statement." Or maybe you have other ways of coping with this situation and the hundreds of similar ones?
It's not really that I always consider a claim to be false until is verified.
Christian Theism in its most basic sense entails observations that would necessarily be made by everyone everywhere and at all times, and thus it is as easily disproven as the alien in the bathtub.
For instance, God is theoretically omnipresent, and granted us the ability to know him (to feel his loving presence, etc.), yet I have absolutely no sensation of any God or anything that would be entailed by a God, even though by definition he is within me and around me wherever I go.
