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Author Topic:   Deism in the Dock
Modulous
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Posts: 7801
From: Manchester, UK
Joined: 05-01-2005


Message 197 of 270 (416363)
08-15-2007 11:51 AM
Reply to: Message 195 by RAZD
08-15-2007 10:49 AM


Re: The exclusive nature of "monotheism"
Thus a god is "2. A being of supernatural powers or attributes," -- or rather than any being of supernatural powers is a god, by definition.
That is a bit sloppy, you might as well have said 'All fast cars are red therefore all red cars are fast'. All gods are beings of supernatural powers/attributes, but not all beings of supernatural powers are gods.
This is the definition used for all the vast and numerous pantheons of gods, such as Greek, Roman, Norse, etcetera.
That clearly isn't true otherwise there wouldn't be half-gods, fantastical monsters, heroes, satyrs, spirits of the dead...or rather they'd exist but they'd also be under the umbrella of 'gods'. Which would make half-gods a bit confusing.
All in the definition, you see, and with the definition of god used in other pantheistic religions to unmask the pantheism in Christianity we now see belief in thousands of gods --- or are they all one?
And a quick correction of nomenclature: you mean something closer to pantheonic here - pantheistic means something else.

This message is a reply to:
 Message 195 by RAZD, posted 08-15-2007 10:49 AM RAZD has replied

Replies to this message:
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 Message 205 by RAZD, posted 08-15-2007 5:00 PM Modulous has replied

  
Modulous
Member
Posts: 7801
From: Manchester, UK
Joined: 05-01-2005


Message 208 of 270 (416414)
08-15-2007 5:14 PM
Reply to: Message 1 by Straggler
08-08-2007 8:13 PM


Is there really nothing out there.
There is almost definitely something out there, some things I'm more sure of than others. Is there a god? Who knows? Who cares? How many angels can dance on the head of a pin? What difference can it make if an entity exists that we can have no way of being sure about any conclusions about it?
“There is no evidence” I hear you cry. You smug self-righteous bastards.
I don't believe something until I see evidence for it. It's simple common sense. If you think that makes someone smug and self-righteous in your eyes - so be it. However, it serves as the best method I have encountered for not being fooled into believing untrue things. Sure, it also means I might not believe some true things - but everybody finds themselves in the same position - that's life.
Did everything really come from nothing?
Sounds impossible to me, but I cannot say anything for sure. I'd venture that everything did not come from anything, since anything that it came from would be part of 'everything'.
No space, no time, no other dimensions. No forces, no matter, no energy. No equation obeying abstract concepts. No laws. No rules. No . . consciousness? NOTHING. Really?
I think what you are essentially asking is 'Why is there something rather than nothing?'. I don't know the answer to that question any more than a theist or a deist, since 'something' includes a deity. Did a deity come from NOTHING? If a deity is able to exist in exemption from asking this question, why can't reality?
And doesn’t quantum theory and it’s ”role of the conscious observer’ implications pose some fairly awkward questions?
Yes - but not theological questions. The role of the conscious observer is a minority position as far as I am aware, anyway.
Come out from your faade of rationalism and admit it. The ultimate evidence is against you.
The 'ultimate evidence' which I assume to mean the existence of reality, is equally against all positions.

This message is a reply to:
 Message 1 by Straggler, posted 08-08-2007 8:13 PM Straggler has not replied

Replies to this message:
 Message 233 by Ben!, posted 08-16-2007 11:53 AM Modulous has replied

  
Modulous
Member
Posts: 7801
From: Manchester, UK
Joined: 05-01-2005


Message 211 of 270 (416421)
08-15-2007 5:39 PM
Reply to: Message 205 by RAZD
08-15-2007 5:00 PM


Re: The exclusive nature of "monotheism"
... angels in particular are also believed in and worshiped by those of a literalist bent, and the belief is clearly that they can control nature .... etc etc ... so we still end up with the same result.
No we don't. Since the 'red car fallacy' still applies. All gods in this definition are supernatural and worshipped and generally control some part of reality. The definition does not say 'Any being of supernatural powers...', thus we cannot reverse and say that all supernatural beings that are worshipped and control nature are gods.
If I said a motor car is a motorized form of transport with four wheels, would you be justified in pointing to a van and saying it is a car by that definition? No - I was saying what a car is not what a van is. My definition isn't great because it isn't worded very well, but it is not technically wrong. A motor car is a motorized form of transport with four wheels. A human is an animal with hair, but that doesn't mean a dog is a human.
Clearly as well these categories do not represent the angels, demons and devils of literal christian belief, nor necessarily beings of supernatural ability.
Obviously they don't - you were talking about how the ancient Greeks defined gods in their mythology, and I pointed out that entities exist in Greek mythology that fall under the attributes of the definition and are not gods.
Color mine for empHASis. Could you explain how you can get a demi-god offspring of angels without them being gods?
Sure - the article says that demigods is a modern distinction. Thus, they were not written to be demigods by the authors it is a modern descriptive for Nephilim, but the point being made is that demigods is a way of describing a mythological thematic element - beings that are imbued with limited supernatural powers after a supernatural being mates with a natural one. In that sense the Nephilim are demigods, but that was not how I was referring to 'half gods'. I was talking of certain Heroes in Greek literature with overt supernatural properties who were born of (often) Zeus and a mortal woman.
Don't get me wrong - angels are often seen with roles similar to the lesser gods of many pantheons. Angel of Death, Horsemen of the Apocolypse spring to mind as being on a par with 'Gods of X', and Yahweh is on a par with (though generally considered more powerful than) many sky or sun gods who was often the head of such pantheons. However, the Christian mythology clearly states that angels are not gods - so when considering Christian mythology that's all that really counts as far as making sense is concerned.
Heck - if you're going to make the point that Angels are gods from the definition, you might even consider saints in the list too - they performed miracles and are revered - perhaps even worshipped.

This message is a reply to:
 Message 205 by RAZD, posted 08-15-2007 5:00 PM RAZD has replied

Replies to this message:
 Message 215 by RAZD, posted 08-15-2007 7:12 PM Modulous has replied
 Message 243 by Archer Opteryx, posted 08-16-2007 5:22 PM Modulous has replied

  
Modulous
Member
Posts: 7801
From: Manchester, UK
Joined: 05-01-2005


Message 230 of 270 (416500)
08-16-2007 2:26 AM
Reply to: Message 215 by RAZD
08-15-2007 7:12 PM


Re: The exclusive nature of "monotheism"
Sorry the way definitions work is WORD = DEFINITION, Not WORD < DEFINITION. Words and their definitions can be used interchangeably.
Not always RAZD. That is why definitions use 'a' and 'any' differently. If it had said a god is any supernatural being... you'd have a point, but it doesn't. It's an ambiguous definition that you have picked to suit your needs.
The same dictionary defines a car as 'a vehicle running on rails, as a streetcar or railroad car.' thus - a train is a car. If you look at other definitions it specifically uses 'any' in places where it means any and 'a' when it does not.
And this is also evidence that judaism evolved from a pantheonic faith.
Indeed - but that's not what I'm arguing against.
Revisionist coverup. Denial doesn't make the definition invalid. The question is NOT what the faith claims, as people can believe whatever they choose, but how it compares to other faiths and the definitions of gods. That is objective eh?
Not necessarily. You are just comparing things - that's not objective. Other faiths would probably regard the Angels as being as gods, but what does that demonstrate? It doesn't demonstrate that Christianity is pantheonic, since whether something is pantheonic or not is a question of what the believers believe and the believers believe there is only one entity called god; all other entities that other faiths called gods are either demons, angels or fictional (according to Christianity et al).
That said, this seems to be far drifted from the topic - if you'd like to spend more time on an OP to explain your position I'd be happier to spend more time discussing it.

This message is a reply to:
 Message 215 by RAZD, posted 08-15-2007 7:12 PM RAZD has replied

Replies to this message:
 Message 235 by RAZD, posted 08-16-2007 1:56 PM Modulous has replied

  
Modulous
Member
Posts: 7801
From: Manchester, UK
Joined: 05-01-2005


Message 234 of 270 (416530)
08-16-2007 12:40 PM
Reply to: Message 233 by Ben!
08-16-2007 11:53 AM


common sense
Since when was knowledge necessary for anything?
I don't follow - I'm just asking what difference it makes about postulating over an entity we can never make any sure conclusions about. I am not saying we can know anything about anything - just the degree of surety at stake, we can be no more sure about the properties or even the existence of a god as we can about angels on a pinhead.
With all due respect, this is hoity-toity bull. We all act in ways contrary to evidence. Not always, but we all do it.
Well of course we do, I'm not making the claim that we are always paragons of common sense or perfect interpreters of evidence on the fly under pressure.
Individually observable evidence has it's place and time, but it's not the only thing. We make decisions off of other things all the time, such as social convention, the word of an "authority", and straight-up belief. And you know what? Each of those types of decision-making processes are important parts of all of our lives.
Of course - but if an authority says something is true, and it is in principle possible for me to examine the evidence of it myself, or trust in many others to do critically examine the evidence - I can be more sure of the conclusions than if someone says they know it is true because it feels right or the voices in their head tell them it is right (revelation).
Often we make decisions without examining all the evidence, but making inductions and generalisations based on a subset of the evidence isn't what I am talking about though, I'm talking about a solid belief, a considered belief about what is true in the world. If someone tells me they are selling a bridge for $10 - I'm going to need some good evidence that he owns that bridge before I believe him. That is to what I am referring to when I say it is simple common sense. Skepticism is a defence against getting conned, and in a world of people that want to con you - skepticism leads to common sense decisions.
Empirical decision-making has a role as well, but to say it's the only thing we do, and that it's "common sense" to think otherwise, is flat-out wrong from my perspective.
Let me assure you - I do not hold the position that empirical decision making is everything. As humans we necessarily make decisions based on rules of thumb, which are generated as much by subjective experience as they are on reflection and experimentation.
However, making decisions and believing something to be true are different things. The only decisions I am talking are about whether to believe something when time is not pressured and we can question some rules of thumb and explore the consequences of various beliefs and so on and so forth.

This message is a reply to:
 Message 233 by Ben!, posted 08-16-2007 11:53 AM Ben! has replied

Replies to this message:
 Message 239 by petrophysics1, posted 08-16-2007 3:27 PM Modulous has replied
 Message 261 by Ben!, posted 08-18-2007 1:03 PM Modulous has replied

  
Modulous
Member
Posts: 7801
From: Manchester, UK
Joined: 05-01-2005


Message 244 of 270 (416563)
08-16-2007 5:35 PM
Reply to: Message 239 by petrophysics1
08-16-2007 3:27 PM


Re: Viewpoint bias, and a problen to figure out.
this is just the most recent statement, found all through these 16 pages that we can’t know anything about God, or only through revelation and dusty old books.
There is another way.
I trust the rest of your post is expounding on this?
Well I do, but what everyone here appears to be doing is only looking at this from their viewpoint, culture and particular belief system which they hold to be correct or true.
I don't hold my belief system, viewpoint or culture to be inherently true or correct. I do hold that we shouldn't regard a belief as true without evidence to help us confirm that belief.
Try assuming all other belief systems, including mine, are true. Do that and then consider what kind of information should be available here to prove it. What evidence should be available to “prove” Hinduism, Buddhism, Islam, Christianity . . etc?
Where any religion provides us with a testable claim 'if this religion is true then...' we can test it. For instance, are Christians immune from poisonous snakes?
For instance, if some religion says that God is doing things in this universe right now (or in the past, like say a worldwide flood) we should be able to spot evidence of that, right?
Depends what and where the god is doing exactly. However, if it is a god that doesn't attempt to hide its work, and its work effects things that we can access...then yes - this would generally hold to be true.
BTW I would consider all the types of evidence that would be acceptable in a court of law, and perhaps others as well. DO NOT leave out forms or types of evidence you do not believe at present. That would just show your bias (a thing very much in evidence on this board).
Indeed - one thing that could be true if a god exists is that it communicates with certain people, and thus we'd see people claiming that god has communicated with them.
What I'd like to know, after claiming there is another way to know anything about God beyond revelation, is what is this other way?

This message is a reply to:
 Message 239 by petrophysics1, posted 08-16-2007 3:27 PM petrophysics1 has replied

Replies to this message:
 Message 254 by petrophysics1, posted 08-17-2007 6:37 AM Modulous has replied

  
Modulous
Member
Posts: 7801
From: Manchester, UK
Joined: 05-01-2005


Message 245 of 270 (416566)
08-16-2007 5:47 PM
Reply to: Message 235 by RAZD
08-16-2007 1:56 PM


Re: The exclusive nature of "monotheism"
Color for emphasis. There's your "any" qualifier. But this is getting off the track of the argument.
Now you are using a different dictionary! Indeed, not even a dictionary - a lexical database. Had you put this definition forward to begin with you wouldn't be falling into the red car fallacy you'd be entering a whole different realm, you'd be cherry-picking loose definitions to demonstrate your point that Christianity considers other gods. If you made a point about Hebrew plurals of god and references to other gods, or early religions which Hebrew evolved from, you'd have a point. Arguing by definition is massively fraught with error - two of the common ones have come to light already.
If you want to convince me otherwise, I'm happy to participate in a thread about it.

This message is a reply to:
 Message 235 by RAZD, posted 08-16-2007 1:56 PM RAZD has not replied

  
Modulous
Member
Posts: 7801
From: Manchester, UK
Joined: 05-01-2005


Message 246 of 270 (416567)
08-16-2007 5:48 PM
Reply to: Message 243 by Archer Opteryx
08-16-2007 5:22 PM


Re: The exclusive nature of "monotheism"
I'm not actually arguing against the position you are putting forward, only pointing out that some of the reasoning/evidence RAZD put forward to support the point is erroneous.

This message is a reply to:
 Message 243 by Archer Opteryx, posted 08-16-2007 5:22 PM Archer Opteryx has replied

Replies to this message:
 Message 248 by Archer Opteryx, posted 08-16-2007 6:50 PM Modulous has not replied

  
Modulous
Member
Posts: 7801
From: Manchester, UK
Joined: 05-01-2005


Message 255 of 270 (416653)
08-17-2007 8:06 AM
Reply to: Message 254 by petrophysics1
08-17-2007 6:37 AM


Re: One other way
Suppose I asked you to prove to yourself that you were born
I can't even prove my body exists - why go as far as proving it was born? I can only make conclusions with varying levels of confidence.
As far as I know there is only one thing left that you can do to prove to yourself that you were born.
I would like to know what that is...
Took me 15 years to remember/relive being born, and remembering it
That certainly wouldn't prove to myself that I was born. I know that false memories are more likely than faked documentation and that all my loved ones are conning me. So if I reject that evidence, I should also reject subjective and possibly flawed memories.
Let me pause for a second. Everything I have discovered to this point is nothing new and can be found in the peer reviewed Psych literature or a general psychology textbook. Memories which occurred with people who I could check on them about, I did. Mostly my mom, dad, older brother and my uncle Dan who used to baby sit when I was small.
Except of course, part of the thought experiment involves rejecting anything anyone tells you as evidence.
God is not in this universe.
Neither is this universe. And we reach a similar conclusion that you do only without positing an entity for which no evidence exists or (to the point I was making) any of this entity's properties.
Don’t believe what I have said here. I find just believing, like in a religion you know about by reading, doesn’t change much in the world. Go LOOK yourself and see what you find out.
I've been Christian, Gnostic, Muslim, Buddhist, a neo-Sannyasin, a slavic Pagan, a Taoist, a spiritualist, a panentheist, a pantheist, a deist and an atheist. I've looked, and concluded that I can postulate anything about the supernatural and it makes no difference since there is no way to check if my postulations have merit.
So far you have just told me that the other way to know anything about god is through conclusions reached through self inspection. This can easily be rejected as a valid way since all you can learn is what you think of yourself and what 'feels right'. The only difference this has with revelation is in the reporting. One person says his conclusions feel right after he thought about it, the other says his conclusion feel right because they came from a deity or angel or what have you. Since we cannot know whether it came from a deity, it may well have come from the self...revelation and self-revelation are essentially synonymous when it comes to having confidence in them.
We cannot have any confidence in self-inspection because we are very capable of self-delusion. We can delude ourselves that we are receiving messages from on high or we can delude ourselves that our memories and feelings are reliable indicators of the nature and properties of a god. If I self-inspected and discovered that reincarnation was false (I too have had memories of past lives incidentally, rather similar to your own though it was a bullet shot) and was just subconscious trickery - does that mean I'm right or you are right?
We can't know with any confidence which one of us is right and as such - we can not know with any confidence anything about a deity.
Not unless you are so egotistical as to think you are the exception to the possibility of self-delusion. As someone who has wandered through so many faiths, I have the luxury of knowing I can delude myself. I have had false memories, that have been independently confirmed as being false so why trust memories that seem massively implausible based on the evidence that I have the memory?

This message is a reply to:
 Message 254 by petrophysics1, posted 08-17-2007 6:37 AM petrophysics1 has not replied

  
Modulous
Member
Posts: 7801
From: Manchester, UK
Joined: 05-01-2005


Message 262 of 270 (416923)
08-18-2007 3:29 PM
Reply to: Message 261 by Ben!
08-18-2007 1:03 PM


Re: common sense
Point is, knowledge has nothing to do with it. To ask "who knows" is to miss the point. Not everything is about knowledge. Who cares? You do. You do, because you asked and answered the question for yourself. I do, because I asked and answered the question. Only those who do not ask can not-care. And even most of those people care (because they believe).
You are being over literal, Ben. What I was trying to communicate was the futility of asking the question - there is no answer which we can have confidence in. If the answer is yes or no - it makes no difference to our lives.
Of course - but if an authority says something is true, and it is in principle possible for me to examine the evidence of it myself, or trust in many others to do critically examine the evidence - I can be more sure of the conclusions than if someone says they know it is true because it feels right or the voices in their head tell them it is right (revelation).
I disagree.
You're disagreeing with the statement that I can be more sure of the conclusions if I can in principle examine all the reasoning and evidence behind the conclusion, than if I can't?
The degree to which we believe an authority has little to do with their skill set and more to do with our comfort level. And it's like this from the start: our parents are our first authority.
The degree to which some people believe an authority has little to do with their skill set. I am not a child, and I don't believe anymore anything that my parents say (I frequently disbelieve them in fact) just because they say it. There is good reason to believe what my parents said when I was a child - for better or worse they managed to survive in the world long enough to have kids. There is evidence of the success of their wisdom in the fact that I exist.
We're social creatures much more than we are intellectual creatures, and we do more by feel than we do by pure intellect. I guess at some point I'll have to actually substantiate that.. but I hope that's not soon.
No need to - I am not going to contest it. It is nothing to with my point though. I am talking about confidence in knowledge and we cannot have confidence in our feelings, since they frequently lead is to erroneous conclusions. It is because we are social animals are flawed intellectually that we should not rely on our feelings to reach final conclusions regarding the world.
The issue in questioning is not just time; we all fail to question many social practices that we simply don't even notice, no matter how much free time there is.
Agreed. This is not a good thing, though. To try and combat it, we should endeavour to question as much as we can whilst also acknowledging our limitations.
Some of us have a natural impetus to ask; something inside of us asks "why". For you to say that it's common sense to be an empiricist about God
Actually I said we should be empiricists about any statements about reality.
you're saying that
Almost everybody has an impetus to question God.
No I am not. I am saying that it is common sense to not believe people's claims just because people make them. The point I was making was that people only selectively apply common sense notions such as this and when they fail to do so - they are opening themselves up to believing false things (such as that guy really does own a bridge and is stupid enough to sell it for a small amount to a random stranger).
Let me state that more specifically: if there's no social context, we're unlikely to use our natural empiricism to address an issue. And for this, I can actually provide references. It has been experimentally shown that two logically identical problems will be approached (and answered) differently by people simply by adding or removing a social context. Buying a bridge from another has a strong social context, that would get us thinking more emprically (e.g. "yeah right buddy")
You are agreeing with me here. We are flawed when we try and make decisions based not on empirical reasoning. I was pointing out that this applies in all things, including whether or not a god exists.
It's not "common sense" to apply empiricism to God.
Entirely right - and yet it is common sense to do it for other things. I hope that it is becoming common sense to apply empiricism to God, but that might be false hope.
I think the more interesting question is, why do you do it? What makes you different from other people such that you think it's the right way to address things.
The reason is is that I do not want to believe things which are untrue. If I do - I open myself up to being manipulated or conned. I open myself up to believing in Santa and fairies and djinn and domovoi, I open myself to wasting my life worried about things that aren't real.
I'd rather not just let social or parental pressures tell me how the world is. Those kind of things are events dictated by the chance circumstance of birth - since the way reality is does not depend on where you were born and to who, this does not seem a good way to decide what reality is like.

This message is a reply to:
 Message 261 by Ben!, posted 08-18-2007 1:03 PM Ben! has replied

Replies to this message:
 Message 265 by Ben!, posted 08-21-2007 7:58 PM Modulous has replied

  
Modulous
Member
Posts: 7801
From: Manchester, UK
Joined: 05-01-2005


Message 266 of 270 (417616)
08-23-2007 1:17 PM
Reply to: Message 265 by Ben!
08-21-2007 7:58 PM


Re: The value of Truth
Assuming I remember the question (does God exist?), then I still disagree. You say there's no answer which we can have confidence in, but ... I feel you're conflating "empirical confidence" with the actual feeling of confidence. Lots of people HAVE confidence, regardless of the state of empiricism with regards to God. People DO answer the question, regardless of their ability to back it up with syllogistic reasoning or empirical facts.
I think it is you who are equivocating the meanings of the words. Sure - people have confidence with regards to god - the point is that they have no way of basing that confidence. Feelings are obviously not something we can trust for telling us truths about the world, since they give us contradictory messages (sometimes in the same person, sometimes across various people (person's A's feelings say X and B's feelings say 'Not X').
How do we discriminate which feelings are 'true' and which are not? Do we apply our own feelings? How can we be sure our feelings are the right ones and not somebody else's feelings?
Once again - we choose between revelation (or feelings) and evidence. Without evidence we might as well postulate the number of angels that can dance on the head of a pin - nothing about god (from its existence to what its favourite colour is) can be said with any greater or lesser confidence (I could say god exists, he hates Christians, likes pasta and the colour blue and rewards people who hop 45 times a week and have as much confidence in it as I can about saying anything else about god.) There is no way to test who is making stuff up, and who isn't - or indeed if anybody isn't just making stuff up - based on their 'feelings' about how the universe 'should' be.
Point is, in our social structure, the answer yes or no DOES make a difference to each of our lives. There is scientific futility in asking the question, but not social, philosophical, or personal.
How? I'd be keen on hearing how any answer given does make a difference.
If you believe this is evidence in favor of people being fit to either live or find truth, then what of the fact that a purported 85% of the living population believes in things unsubstantiated by empiricism? In that case, they all have evidence of the success of their wisdom as well.
I've never said otherwise - indeed I implied it quite strongly. Likewise those 15% of the living population that don't believe in unsubstantiated stuff are doing well too. I didn't grow up with one of those though but I imagine I would have not questioned my parents rationalism as a child.
And what I am saying is that your conclusion is stated too broadly. It's important in immediate social contexts, ones in which we live our lives. But it's not important for us to be right with regards to high-level philosophical questions such as whether God exists, if there are 22 dimensions or 4, and whether time began from a singularity or from the first mover.
I have never been in a situation where I needed to know whether god exists. I have never been in a situation where it was important to have this kind of information and I assert that nobody has ever been in this situation.
What makes you think that being right in these contexts has any positive or negative impact in any single being's ability to survive, proliferate, and be happy?
It has slight to severe negative impact the ability to be happy. Worrying about how the unknowable is going to react to any given moral dilemma or physical act or whatever...is not going to increase happiness.
It can have a similar positive effect on the ability to be happy too - in the same way that some people would rather live in the Matrix than out of it.
What has it to do with ME? What is the effect on me if I am wrong about these high-level philosophical things? So what if I am duped about it?
If you want to open yourself to being duped about these high-level philosophical things, you open yourself to being duped about lower things. God exists, he is a jealous god, he will torture you if you do something bad, giving me money will help cheer god up.
I'm sure you haven't been completely duped by the transparency of the last step there, but I am happy to admit I have been duped by variants along the same lines (eg buy my books and you'll learn stuff about nonsense that you've never read before).
If you want to open yourself up to being intellectually conned, then be my guest. I answered the question about atheism and explained that I do not wish to waste my life in such a fashion (I have more engaging things to waste my life on!).
And again, I believe you're speaking too generally. Only in situations with social context is it common sense to apply this type of reasoning. And the consequence of failing to apply this reasoning in non-social contexts is lacking. In fact, I'm trying to suggest that social custom and social bonding are much more important than "being right" about these non-immediate, philosophical, quesitons-without-social-context.
Being right is not as important as you think. There are situations where YOU being right matters, and many situations where you're better off not even bothering to find out.
The point is: I don't care about being right (unlike those that believe in mumbo jumbo who do care) - indeed I am trying to say it doesn't matter one jot to me, since I cannot know. If I stated that YHWH exists and I was right, it would only be by startling coincidence that of all the possibilities that one turned out to be true. As it turns out I am doggedly not saying I need to be right - what I am saying is that I'd rather not be wrong. I'll quite happily live my life, not believing some things which turn out to be true - but the opposite? Believing things which turn out to have been nonsense? What a waste of effort all that believing was!
All the information I have leads me to this: As far as I know there is only one life. Why waste it wondering about the nature of god, and whether it exists in the first place? Why not ask questions that can be answered rather than beard stroking about unanswerables?
I disagree. Vehemently. Social practices play critical roles in our lives. If everybody questioned them, we'd lose coordination within our society.
You are assuming that questioning social practices automatically results in disagreement about social practices. I question my social practices, and come to the conclusion they are pretty good though I'd like to change some things. Many other people do likewise - it is an inherent part of our social practices! Otherwise people wouldn't protest or complain or become pundits.
Your philosophy may tell you this is a "bad" thing, but the fact that it IS needs to be understood. Social practices play important roles in bonding human societies.
I wouldn't dream of denying evidence, or of denying research into explaining the evidence. I'm not sure why you think that about me. It is not a good thing that we are easily manipulated by social pressures because that can lead us into potentially destructive behaviour (the crowd effect, riots, etc etc) or beliefs (slavery is an inherent part of society so its ok to treat certain humans as if they were inanimate objects).
Mod, I completely understand the feeling. Completely. I am suggesting--no, I am telling you, this is nothing more than a feeling.
It's not a feeling Ben - it is a defence mechanism against manipulation. One that everybody uses from time to time, but the less they use it the more nonsense they wind up with in their heads.
Meaning we define for ourselves.
Of course.
What is the cost of a search for Truth? What things do you miss out on by trying so hard to discover the things which have empirical evidence to be real?
I don't do this - my search for scientific answers is one of a curious observer. When it comes to any claim anybody makes I ask: Where's the beef?
I just live a normal life, and if someone makes a claim I have a choice to either believe it or not believe it (God exists, I own a bridge, ford cars are better than all the rest). I may also dismiss the claim as unimportant and neither believe nor disbelieve it. The only thing is, that should I choose to believe or disbelieve it, I will do so on the basis of any evidence I might have at my disposal, and I will assign a tentativity to any conclusions based on the perceived quality of the evidence.

This message is a reply to:
 Message 265 by Ben!, posted 08-21-2007 7:58 PM Ben! has not replied

  
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