Re: Do Agnostics and Athiests simply reject faith?
val wrote:The ThinkFactory
Assuming there is a God, He must be perfect.
A perfect being is perfect in all he does.
So, if God created the world, he created a perfect world.
That means, all events of the world are related in order to produce the perfection of the ALL. Even if an isolated event may seem to us wrong or unfair.
ah, Pangloss arises!
What is, is Right'?
Leibniz's (and Voltaire's character Pangloss in "Candide"Â….."This is the best of all possible worlds") argument is a prime example of an argument from first principles, an argument based on an untested and untestable hypothesis (the ?'Principle of Sufficient Reason').and it goes like this:
The Principle of Sufficient Reason holds that there must be some logical reason why anything is as it is. Accordingly even God must have, or have had, a sufficient reason for His actions, and since He is by definition perfect, it must always be, or have been, the right reason. Since God is perfection, and since God was creating something separate from Himself [when he created the material universe], it follows that what He created had necessarily to be imperfect. At the moment of Creation He had to decide between an infinite number of possible (i.e. imperfect) worlds. Following the Principle of Sufficient Reason He necessarily chose the
best of all possible worlds[/b] (i.e. the least imperfect).
It is thus an example of deduction - a process of reasoning in which a conclusion is drawn from a set of premises.
As my sig line shows, I go the other way, and think it more rational to convey an openness to experience and a readiness to base one's judgments upon empirical evidence, meaning to reason inductively rather than deductively.
From Voltaire's "An Enquiry into the Maxim, "Whatever is, is Right."
?'Tis pride, you cry, seditious pride that still
Asserts mankind should be exempt from ill.
All's right, you answer, the eternal cause
Rules not by partial, but by general laws.
Yet in this direful chaos you'd compose
A general bliss from individuals' woes?
Oh worthless bliss! in injured reason's sight,
With faltering voice you cry, ?'What is, is Right'?
Mysteries like these can no man penetrate,
Hid from his view remains the book of fate.
Man his own nature never yet could sound,
He knows not whence he is, nor whither bound.
All may be well; that hope can man sustain,
All now is well; ?'tis an illusion vain."
As to faith? What good is it when dealing with the corporeal world based upon the logic of mathematics?
Leibniz, Kant and Hegel never read Lobatchevski, Cantor, or Frege.
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