James Le Fanu: Why Us? (The limitations of science)

by dhw, Tuesday, July 07, 2009, 11:16 (5617 days ago) @ John Clinch

John writes: dhw asks me why I am a materialist and a monist. - Well, no, not exactly. What intrigues me is the fact that you insisted you were an agnostic, not an atheist, but later described yourself as a materialist and a monist. I wrote: "This suggests an unusual form of agnosticism. Please tell us more." I have no problem understanding that materialists "do not think there exists anything other than material", or that monists believe "there is only one 'substance' in Nature", or that monist materialists find the idea of a supernatural being "frankly preposterous". It's the link to agnosticism that has me foxed. - You go on: "I genuinely believe that nothing can be known about the nature of God, if God can be said to exist in any meaningful sense ... the classic definition of agnosticism." Aside from the vagueness of "in any meaningful sense", a monist materialist would have to say that if there is a God he can only be material. How do you know, if as an agnostic you know nothing about the nature of God? - Pantheism (which you can't let go of) equates God and Nature, but if nothing can be known about the nature of God, an agnostic can hardly say God is Nature. In fact, the classic definition of agnosticism is the impossibility of knowing whether God exists or not, and I doubt if any of us would deny that Nature exists. - You wrote: "Can I try to put you right about one thing: however you may want to characterise them as such, atheists are not, and cannot be, dogmatists." Thank you for trying to put me right. Here are some further extracts from your last post: "Not only is there no evidence for the existence of miracles, supernatural intervention or, in fact, anything outside "Nature" at all ... there is no need for any such evidence. We have indeed found that all phenomena of Nature are natural. Nature is all ... all we have, all we are and all we ever will be....our souls inhere within our brains. And it seems that the weight of evidence and 300 years of science is behind me...The idea that a supernatural being like a "sky god" one day "decided" to kick-start life on Earth through a timely miracle is, frankly, preposterous to me." - I hesitate to try to put you right about anything, but here is a dictionary definition of 'dogmatic': "forcibly asserted as if authoritative and unchallengeable". Agnostics are people who, because they do not know whether God exists, let alone what might be his nature if he does, keep an open mind on all matters relating to his existence and nature. When I read the above, I can't detect a single trace of agnosticism. I don't think I need to spell out what I do detect.