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"Agnostic"

Gozaburo said:
First of all, I don't grant you that 'reality' is self-evident. You're going to need to define what reality is and how it's interpreted & known in your worldview.
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As I already said. there is no difference between our knowledge of god and any other fantasy creature. As I have no difficulty knowing that santa is a fiction just because it is improbable so I can say the same for a god. Reality in this case is simply the abillty to distinguish between a fact and a fiction.
It would ask the question of who is making the identification before humans showed up. The world would still exist even if every human did not.

Gozaburo said:
I've already given you my reason. I can put it into a syllogism if you'd like. I'm also waiting for you to give me your definition of what sufficient evidence looks like.
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In the argument of a god evidence would be something that is not easily pointed out to be nothing more than a self serving belief.
 
As with your murder analogy. It matters not what guess in percentage is made it is still just a guess that gets you no closer to finding the murderer than if you made no guess at all.
It is not the most common among atheists to ask for evidence. It is more common for theists to demand that evidence exists bit refuse to point out what that evidence is when asked. You assume that evidence is all an atheist looks for which is ridiculous because it is contradictory, as an atheist does not accept that there is a god in the first place then the atheist is not likely to be looking for evidence. What is more common is for an atheist is to ask about what reasons or motivations a theist has for believing in a mythical god.
 
Gozaburo said:
How would you know that the being performing these tricks isn't just an alien with advanced technology, or even an advanced human? Or a mutant superhero? Or a flying spaghetti monster?
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Gozaburo said:
OR we're demonstrating that the transcendental creator of the universe necessarily cannot be known through sense experience alone.
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What is a "sense experience?"

How can an experience not known in the manner be demonstrated? It's like saying you're going to draw a picture of the invisible being.
 
Michael Cole said:
What is a "sense experience?"

How can an experience not known in the manner be demonstrated? It's like saying you're going to draw a picture of the invisible being.
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I’d define sense experience pretty simply - an event interpreted through the senses.

Given God’s status, knowledge of his existence would need to be rationally deduced.
 
Gozaburo said:
I’d define sense experience pretty simply - an event interpreted through the senses.
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Are not all events interpreted through the senses?

Gozaburo said:
Given God’s status, knowledge of his existence would need to be rationally deduced.
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What is God's status? Is status not interpreted through the senses?

It seems you're using human logic to assert something exists that transcends this logic. Circular and contradictory, if that's what you're saying.
 
Michael Cole said:
Are not all events interpreted through the senses?
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No. Past and future events aren’t interpreted via sense data.

Michael Cole said:
What is God's status? Is status not interpreted through the senses?
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I’m saying God cannot be known via sense data.

Michael Cole said:
It seems you're using human logic to assert something exists that transcends this logic. Circular and contradictory, if that's what you're saying.
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I’m presenting God as the necessary precondition of logic. Logic isn’t self-sufficient or an epistemic starting point for me, so no it isn’t circular.
 
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Gozaburo said:
All worldviews presuppose a number of invariant, immaterial, universal - 'unchanging things' - like the laws of logic, meaning in words, numbers, uniformity in nature, etc.
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Using logic, words, numbers or a presumption of uniformity isn't the same thing as presupposing their invariant, immaterial and universal nature. Heck, the meaning in words for example definitely is not universal, invariant or arguably even immaterial. As far as I know there's no compelling reason to suppose that the 'laws of logic' are much different, merely representing the patterns within which our primate brains are constrained to think (though I suppose one might argue that they are constrained as such due to the nature of the reality they evolved in).

Being unable to 'justify' its own foundation would obviously be a crippling problem for any perspective which maintains that everything must be 'justified' (as NONENB atheists explicitly declare). It's worth noting that in this post or elsewhere I have never seen you justify the foundation for your approach either, no necessary or even discernible connection between "Suppose there is a God" and "Therefore logic, numbers, experience etc. produce valid knowledge."

On the other hand, a rather more pragmatic view is to simply use the information and constraints and tools available wherever we find ourselves. And that's exactly what humans have done for hundreds of thousands of years. It's not even possible to reach the point where a primate can ask "on what non-circular basis can my epistemic approach or presuppositions be rationally justified?" without having previously had thousands of years of societal and civilizational development with a hell of a lot of practical proof for at least the general efficacy of many of those 'presuppositions.' It takes dozens of folk with their feet on the ground to support one guy with his head in the clouds Pragmatic justification obviously is not circular and while it's also obviously not rational justification there's a case to be made that, even on a somewhat ad hoc basis, real-world application and accomplishment is actually better than merely thinking it through.

Contrary to some of the atheists here I do agree we should ask those kinds of questions... but simply as a form of refinement to challenge and adapt our approach. Asking them as if they're going to radically overhaul everything we thought we knew or (even more vainly) impart some kind of new knowledge or certitude does seem like ivory tower sort of stuff.
 
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soylentgreen said:
As with your murder analogy. It matters not what guess in percentage is made it is still just a guess that gets you no closer to finding the murderer than if you made no guess at all.
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Does "I don't currently believe this man is the murderer" get you any closer than if you'd made no statement at all? 20-30% does get you closer than that, because it provisionally narrows the range down and (in this scenario) would permit more efficient allocation of resources for the most part investigating all four rather than arbitrarily focusing on just one or two or wildly chasing every imaginable goose.

More to the point, how would you feel if your daughter tells you that the guy she's dating was one of the prime suspects in a never-resolved murder case? That can be extremely important and useful information, even when it's not a means to an end and even when it will forever fall far short of certitude or even balance of probability. There's a pretty big difference between dating someone you "don't believe" is a murderer because they're just an ordinary person and dating someone you "don't believe" is a murderer because it's somewhere below the balance of probability. Virtually everything we do and know consists of guesses with varying degrees of confidence; whether it will rain today, whether consumers will be interested in your inflatable dartboard idea, whether your partner used to be a different gender, whether the news story you just watched was reported accurately and comprehensively, whether your teacher is lying to you...

We're obviously not used to putting percentages on our confidence estimates for those things, but we do often use more qualitative assessments like "certain," very likely, likely, unsure, unlikely, very unlikely and impossible which function exactly the same. Once again, the primary point here is just that this kind of approach is far more intuitive, far more rational and considerably less susceptible to bias than the Christianity-inspired belief/nonbelief dichotomy which the OP and so many other atheists promote. I "don't believe" in any god, but I'm an agnostic because I quantify my speculation on the subject near the middle of the range of uncertainty: It's a more useful description of my views, obviously, but I spend so much time discussing why that is so in part because it's so darn amusing that all these high-and-mighty atheist criticisms of agnostics are demonstrating their own intellectual limitations and biases more than anything else
 
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I'll summarize this. It's really just the old "god of the gaps" argument.

There are things currently beyond our understanding, therefor there must be a god(s).

Nope.
 
Shrink726 said:
Are you an agnostic about the existence of teams of invisible unicorns circling the moons of Jupiter?
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Yes, but when it comes to those teams of unicorns, they aren't being used to try to control my life.

But I've also heard atheists say that if someone could prove to them that god exists, that would be "enough" evidence. To me, I can't think of any way someone could provide evidence of the existence of any god as described in any religion I know about. The closest could be some of the Greek gods, as they weren't nearly the same level of "pedestal" many monotheistic gods have been placed at. They had very human like tendencies built in just with powers. I believe it is logically impossible that the Abrahamic god can be anything close to as that described in the Bible and "benevolent", "good", as that just can't be. But a form of that god, a higher power that sees themself as what those within those religions are worshiping could exist. But existing and deserving worship are also different things.

"I don't know because I believe we can't know" is my view. I also though will tell people that even if you could provide evidence that some particularly powerful being does exist that has some form of control over me, "my soul", I still wouldn't have any reason to worship that being. I certainly could be called agnostic atheist, but prefer Agnostic. Not sure why so many Atheists (even if just a relative few) have any sort of problem with that.
 
Gozaburo said:
No. Past and future events aren’t interpreted via sense data.
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Events. When they occur. Do you have an example of an event that isn't interpreted with sensory data?

Gozaburo said:
I’m saying God cannot be known via sense data.
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You mentioned God's status. Status is something that's known. It's something that's interpreted with sensory data. You can't on one hand say God can't be known with sensory data, and then assert status, which is known with sensory data.

Gozaburo said:
I’m presenting God as the necessary precondition of logic.
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This assumes logic is preconditioned. It's an assumption not grounded in facts.

Gozaburo said:
Logic isn’t self-sufficient or an epistemic starting point for me, so no it isn’t circular.
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Assuming logic is preconditioned and then using logic to arrive at this "conclusion," is the definition of circular.
 
Shrink726 said:
I'll summarize this. It's really just the old "god of the gaps" argument.

There are things currently beyond our understanding, therefor there must be a god(s).

Nope.
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Indeed. Viewed in this manner, "God" is a metaphor for "that which we do not know." Ironically perhaps, as an atheist, I'll be the first to admit humans don't know everything. Theists are very sure in the truth of their beliefs.

The very idea that creation is an extension of logic is a reflection of ourselves, not some cosmic truth.

The first religious belief was life after death. Humans, of three species, deliberately buried their dead going back at least 100,000 years. The first "great unknown" was death. We solved this conflict with belief. Early humans lived in an animistic world of spirits, and the belief in spirit ancestors followed seamlessly.

Fear of the unknown is a driving force. It's precisely because of humans' cognitive ability to predict others' behavior that this fear has evolved. It's because we are self-aware that we perceive an afterlife. And it's because we are a social species bonded at the family/clan level, as are other great apes, that we grieve for dead ancestors.

We are a product of evolutionary forces, and religion, like other social behaviors, is an adaptation.
 
Michael Cole said:
Events. When they occur. Do you have an example of an event that isn't interpreted with sensory data?
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Even interpreting sense data in the immediate moment (if such a thing even exists) assumes a heap of universals not derived via the senses like time, space, causality, and so on. These are not tangible objects.

Michael Cole said:
You mentioned God's status. Status is something that's known. It's something that's interpreted with sensory data. You can't on one hand say God can't be known with sensory data, and then assert status, which is known with sensory data.
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Well this is just wrong. I can think of dozens of objects whose ontological status is not deducible via the senses. Can you tell me what senses interpret the number 7?

Michael Cole said:
This assumes logic is preconditioned. It's an assumption not grounded in facts
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I presented earlier in the thread why I believe contingent universals like the laws of logic cannot be epistemically grounded in themselves. You might disagree with my argument, but you’ll need to provide a counter argument. I wouldn’t grant you that the laws of logic are a brute fact or a human construct. You’d have to make that argument.

Michael Cole said:
Assuming logic is preconditioned and then using logic to arrive at this "conclusion," is the definition of circular.
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I’m not asserting logic is preconditioned. I’m saying logic is one such condition/universal which is necessary for intelligibility - without it, knowledge collapses. Knowledge is possible: we reason, make arguments, count coconuts, etc. therefore something must make knowledge possible. It isn’t coherent or internally consistent to ground a contingent universal in another contingent universal (like existence or reality) so my conclusion is we go one order higher to a transcendent ground, God.
 

I understand the theoretical distinction you’re pointing out here, but I might ask you to expand on it.

For example, consider the law of identity. You use A=A, but don’t assume it’s universal or invariant. In your worldview then would you concede that it might fail tomorrow?


We agree and I totally accept that some people reject epistemology all together. Happy to have that discussion. As for my argument in the positive - in my defense, I’m usually unable to even get to that point. I guess it’s a dense subject, so fair. I enjoy our exchanges because you’re honest and engaging. I’d be happy to present my argument in the positive if you’re interested.


I suppose my problem with the pragmatic approach is that you’re essentially dealing with a pile of ‘what’s’.

I would question why you stop there? You presumably assume/have faith that something like the law of identity will hold, but arbitrarily decide to stop there. There doesn’t seem to be an explanation for why you stop outside of inconvenience or disinterest. You might say that epistemic justification doesn’t add additional utility to its pragmatic effect, but I’d argue the pragmatic use assumes its epistemic grounding in something reliable.
 
The secondary reason I use the dichotomy that "either reality is fundamentally conscious or it is not" is just because it works, it's one of the very few (if not only) cases in which there seems to be an equivalent dichotomy of A and not-A. For comparison in the alternative dichotomy "either reality is fundamentally pink or it is not" we'd know that not-A includes colours like blue, red, green and so on as alternatives to pink, so not-A covers an obviously wider range of possibilities than A and therefore the two are not going to be a 50/50 pairing; same if our dichotomy was "either reality is fundamentally cheese or it is not" and so on (and of course there's also the little fact that we know cheese or pinkness are not general or fundamental attributes of reality even if they were equivalent dichotomies). I think the reason they're non-equivalent is that things like cheese and colour are reducible to molecular or wavelength components which means those reduced components can also be configured differently. Offhand I would think that most if not everything in the 'subjective' or our internal realm is reducible to consciousness at least, whereas consciousness/subjective awareness is not itself further reducible, and in the 'objective'/external realm the few potential (but not known-to-be) irreducible candidates might be elementary particles, dark energy and spacetime itself...?

The primary reason is that it's where I get to when trying (in however a speculative manner as per my comments on pragmatism in post #132) to develop a sort of 'knowledge from first principles': I know that consciousness is real, my own internal experience is literally the most certain thing I know and possibly the only thing I can know with 100.00% certainty. It is necessary to infer the existence of things outside my own consciousness or mind, everything is a complete dead end without doing that even if the justification for that inference is imperfect, and we also more or less necessarily infer the existence of other minds for our family, other humans and so on. But when it comes to the question of "Is there something besides consciousness?" it's a bit of a dead end: We don't need the inference of any kind of non-conscious stuff like we need the inferences of an external reality and other minds - metaphysical idealism is a perfectly coherent way of thinking about reality which crops up occasionally in Western thought and more commonly in Eastern traditions - and the justification for inferring some kind of non-conscious stuff would be far shakier than either of those also.

Obviously if our "no onus, no evidence, no belief" atheist friends applied their rationale consistently - to not accept any proposition which lacks evidentiary support - they would all be idealists and treat the notion of non-conscious stuff with the same ridicule as Santa and gods and invisible unicorns, and consequently be quite partial to theism since a universal mind is arguably the most parsimonious approach to idealism. But since I don't share that rationale, I think a more reasonable start to addressing the question of whether non-conscious stuff might exist is this principle of indifference approach that (pending more justification one way or the other) both A and not-A seem equivalently plausible on face value... with then just a slight edge then provided to the "reality is fundamentally conscious" side based on that reasoning from first principles and lack of evidence for nonconscious stuff (and a bit more of an edge for other reasons).
 

This is just philosophical jibber-jabber, and that has never ever proven anything. While “uniformity in nature” supposedly “cannot be observed”, science has indeed shown it to be uniform enough to be able to use induction in an extremely reliable and basically fool-proof manner as long as standard scientific methodology if used. The problem that you claim is simply not there in terms of reality and actuality.




We determine reality through our experience. That is quite clear. One can always divert deep into philosophy and make such claims as you do above, but 99.999999999 % or more of people simply live their reality without exploring such claims. There is no problem with that. Logic, reason, evidence, etc, is a result of humans using their biological brains in concert with one another to develop those activities. And no, “presupposition” is not needed. All of these activities were developed and honed over time by the method that I list above.
In addition, the world and universe was quite a scary place to primitive humans, so they also developed superstitions and associated “gods” to “explain” that which they could not do so by using the aforementioned activities. Sadly, those same characteristics are maintained by a very large percentage of humans to this day so that they use “faith” and “belief” in order to construct figments of imagination that they then define as “God” or gods. You know, like you are doing.
 
Gozaburo said:
1) what are the necessary preconditions of intelligibility, science, logic, experience, and morality that must be presupposed to ground and justify the use of reason, logic, evidence, arguments, etc., and
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No “preconditions” are needed other than the human biological brain. Nothing needs to be “presupposed”.

Gozaburo said:
2) can human reason, when isolated solely within its own space of reason, ever determine whether its processes are legitimate such that we can know anything at all without falling into vicious circular reasoning?
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No, it’s not circular reasoning. It’s humans communicating with one another to develop logic and reason, and humans communicating with one another in order to determine their legitimacy. Nothing else outside the human biological brain and human communication are needed.


See above.



Sorry, but we do not have to accept your God of Philosophy claims any more than we have to accept the God of Creation claims or the God of Christianity claims. If you are satisfied with the particular dogma of your God of Personal Ego, then that is fine for you, but at this point your particular religion has a congregation of exactly one.
 

If you want to accept an extremely unlikely story of a man “regrowing” a leg from a few hundred years ago, then that is up to you, but I still plan to stick with mainstream science.


Mithrae said:
Regrowing a limb requires no necessary violation of any 'laws' of nature, and in fact there are a number of animals that can regrow lost limbs in the normal course of things.
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You do know that humans are not lizards, right? Maybe you need to review some biology books regarding the possibility of humans regrowing legs.


Mithrae said:
Of course you won't, because it doesn't fit with your binary thinking. I
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Actually, it is your “percentage” claims that seem quite goofy. Here’s the deal: there either i# a God or there’s not. That is a simple fact. When you or anyone else can show me some valid evidence of same, then I will take that into consideration. Sorry, but fables, myths, and stories that defy science are not included.


Mithrae said:
It is quite literally a conspiracy theory to explain away the significant even if not conclusive evidence for a miracle, and your only real contrary 'evidence' is a quasi-religious notion of what "science says."
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Who says that it is a “significant event”. At this point, we have no conclusive evidence that it was an event at all. The Catholic Church has a catalog of thousands upon thousands of “miracle” events that are the foundation of declaring someone to be a “saint”. Believe as many of them as you wish. I believe zero
 
What we share is skepticism, meaning that no, we just don’t take someone’s “word” for it. You are very good at beating around a big huge bush, but neither you nor anyone else has ever presented any evidence for a God that can be independently verified.
 
Mithrae said:
Ultimately the point is - as I've been saying all along - that a binary belief/nonbelief approach is not only inadequate, but actively detrimental in that it introduces limitations and unnecessary biases into our thinking.
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You do know that you have been introducing your obvious bias for obfuscation, right?
 
Gozaburo said:
I’m saying God cannot be known via sense data.
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Yes, tat is a convenient excuse that we have seen many agnostics, theists, and religionists use in this forum so that they don’t have to provide actual evidence. You indeed are all welcome to your figments of imagination.

Gozaburo said:
I’m presenting God as the necessary precondition of logic. Logic isn’t self-sufficient or an epistemic starting point for me
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Except that it’s not, as I have explained. The operative words in the sentence above is “for me”.
 
Gozaburo said:
Even interpreting sense data in the immediate moment (if such a thing even exists) assumes a heap of universals not derived via the senses like time, space, causality, and so on. These are not tangible objects.
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While humans may not derive time, space, causality, etc directly, they have established systems that can be used to derive such items. All that it takes is humans in communication with one another to do so.


Gozaburo said:
Can you tell me what senses interpret the number 7?
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Again, humans have established the system of mathematics in order to establish the meaning of the number 7. Basically every educated and semi-educated person in the world knows what it means, and that includes even very small children.
 
Gozaburo said:
For example, consider the law of identity. You use A=A, but don’t assume it’s universal or invariant. In your worldview then would you concede that it might fail tomorrow?
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Who says thst A=A is not universal? Sounds like another strawman from you.
 

Human logic and reason justifies human logic and reason is about as circular as it gets lol.

watsup said:
While humans may not derive time, space, causality, etc directly, they have established systems that can be used to derive such items. All that it takes is humans in communication with one another to do so.
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watsup said:
Again, humans have established the system of mathematics in order to establish the meaning of the number 7. Basically every educated and semi-educated person in the world knows what it means, and that includes even very small children.
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Sounds like you're saying sense data is insufficient for grounding knowledge. Not good for the empiricist tradition!
 
Gozaburo said:
Human logic and reason justifies human logic and reason is about as circular as it gets lol.
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Doesn’t make any difference if it is the truth. Certainly better than just constructing a figment of imagination based on philosophical claims like you are doing.



Gozaburo said:
Sounds like you're saying sense data is insufficient for grounding knowledge. Not good for the empiricist tradition!
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Not familiar with your philosophy terms. What exactly do you mean by “grounding”. I explained that humans construct systems in order to develop items like time and space. How do you think these items are developed?
 
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