Absence of Evidence (The limitations of science)

by John Clinch , London, Thursday, March 06, 2008, 17:58 (5889 days ago) @ dhw

A good reason for being an agnostic is to admit that nothing can be known about the nature of God, if God exists in the way that the term is normally understood. - That is the reason that, in that formal sense, I am an agnostic (to answer your question from another thread). However, to all intents and purposes, I am an a-theist since I do not believe in the God of the three monotheisms - i.e. traditional theism. The idea of God as a self-willed, autonomous conscious being I find ludicrous. The idea of God as Nature (Spinozistic pantheism), I am willing to explore. Panentheism is also a possibility. Are you a theist if you are a pantheist? I guess you are, though poor old Spinoza was persecuted as an atheist for his efforts. - So, theism's largely out but I cannot fully accept the rather poetic atheistic idea of a universe bursting into being, ex nihilo, like a flower from a quantum fluctuation for no reason, becoming conscious through its complex life-forms, and then dying for no reason. Why is matter potentially conscious? Why is it embedded in the very fabric of the universe that it has conscious expression? Why is dust vital? If it is ultimately meaningless (and it might be), I am appalled at the pointless plenitude of it. - I change my mind on this subject but I tend to come back to the idea that there has to be a context for the universe, a metaphysical reality of an unknowable kind beyond (or within) the material world. - So, I guess that makes me agnostic, a-theistic but admitting of a greater metaphysical context. Of all the religions texts, I think the Tao te Ching stands head and shoulders above the others in terms of expanding our understanding of ineffable ultimate reality. Even then it says nothing, quite literally. - A bad reason for being an agnostic, in my view, is to rely upon our failure (as yet) to understand a particular aspect of reality. Wittgenstein's remark is worth repeating here: it is not the things in the world that are mystical BUT THAT IT IS (I paraphrase). I agree. - And I completely disagree with your point about intelligences being required for the creation of something. The knock-out thing about evolution is that it answers a very difficult question (how complexity arises from simplicity) in a very simple, beautiful, economical and elegant way. Humans can't create lots of things: that don't mean nuthin.