Knowledge, belief & agnosticism (Agnosticism)

by dhw, Friday, March 07, 2008, 10:19 (6105 days ago)

John Clinch writes: 1) "I do not believe in the God of the three monotheisms."
2) "I cannot fully accept the rather poetic atheist idea of a universe bursting into being, ex nihilo, like a flower..."
3) "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." - Astonishingly, once you stop trying to paraphrase my beliefs (and you've gone wrong once again here, of which more in a moment) and you get on with expressing your own, I find myself largely in agreement with you, with just a few minor reservations. These, briefly, relate to 1) in that I would not call the idea "ludicrous", unless you mean the old man with a white beard. "Least likely option", maybe. I see 2) and 3) as alternatives, with 3) as a slight favourite simply because it is so vague that one can't even define what one is supposed to believe in! I can thus cling to your "good reason for being an agnostic", which is that we can't know anything about its nature, but precisely for that reason, I am not prepared entirely to rule out 1). Don't misread that. The fact that I am not ruling it out does NOT mean that I am a would-be theist (though I must admit that it is by far the richest source of speculation and criticism). - Now to two points where we disagree, though not fundamentally. Your "good reason for being an agnostic" is the impossibility of knowing the nature of God (or substitute any supreme being, force or metaphysical reality you like) if God exists. This seems to be putting the cart before the horse. A good reason, I suggest, is being unable to decide whether God exists or not (which is just one step away from the original definition, which is the impossibility of knowing whether God exists or not). - And this brings us to your one and only misreading of the day: you disagree with my "point about intelligences being required for the creation of something..." No, that's not what I said. My point comes very close to your second quote. That I cannot fully accept the poetic atheist idea of a lump of matter ... whether suddenly or through George Jelliss's step by step procedure ... unconsciously collecting all the necessary ingredients to bring itself to life, enable itself to reproduce, and provide itself with the potential for an almost infinite range of hereditary adaptations and variations. No matter how people try to gloss it over with words like 'simple' and 'natural', I can't "accept" it, let alone "fully accept" it. Nothing to do with other forms of creation. This is unique. And it simply doesn't matter two hoots whether you think this is or is not a good reason for agnosticism, and it doesn't matter two hoots whether you believe science will crack the code (I'll leave you and David Turell to fight over that), because what needs to be believed is not whether we'll be able to understand it, but whether mindless chance can be that creative. If I really thought it could, I might as well go for your choice No. 2), and I see very little difference in principle (though obviously not in scale) between the two problems. (There are, admittedly, other factors which I've mentioned and which you dismiss ... psychic phenomena etc. ... but let's leave them in the "near-to-death" thread.) Your choice Number 3) may hold the key, but no doors have opened yet, and therefore I go on speculating. And so, it is now very clear, do you. Yes indeed, I would say you are an agnostic. Not as open-minded (indecisive, if you like) as me, but still with space for manoeuvre!