Practical Consequences (Humans)

by xeno6696 , Sonoran Desert, Thursday, October 29, 2009, 13:40 (5296 days ago) @ George Jelliss

All this theology and agnosticism has become rather abstract in the latest series of posts. To my way of thinking it all seems pretty pointless, angels on the point of a pin type of stuff. What are the practical consequences for everyday life of being an agnostic, a panentheist, a process theologian, etc?
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> Despite the fact that he can't make up his mind what he believes, dhw indicates that he is in practice actually a humanist, like me. 
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> Does any of this abstract philosophising lead you to have any actual definite views on practical issues? Or are your views on such issues entirely separate from all this ontology, and based on other ways of thinking, such as looking at the facts of the individual cases?-Though I think this was directed at dhw, I feel compelled to add my own thoughts. -This "abstract philosophizing" at least in my world allows me to get intensely new perspectives on problems that I couldn't get by just "following my nose." Such as "What if design were true? What would the implications be for the state of western thought?" This leads to finding further points for taking a design position without conclusive means. A proof for induction would then be quite a bit more necessary in order to support and accept using induction on untestable claims and phenomenon. -In my case, my own mindset is so closely attuned to logic that yes, all this abstract stuff leads to very practical consequences. For example, the Nietzsche question "Why base a system of thought on the unthinkable" had a series of drastic ramifications for my more "Dawkins/Harris" view that I had prior. I started thinking hard about what exactly logic does and doesn't allow us to say, and I came to the conclusion that declaring "God does not exist" was too strong a statement for us to be able to claim with any rigor--one cannot know that in the vastness of the cosmos there isn't a being like Star Trek's "Q." We act as if he doesn't, but "truth" is more important than the practical in most questions. In my mind, the induction that most all claims about God have been proven false, might also only be that every idea man has had about God is entirely wrong. If my "extreme deism" is true, than nearly every atheist and theist on this earth is wrong. -If it's one thing I've learned from mathematics, it is that the most abstract of ideas can eventually have profound impact on practical calculations; the same is true for abstract philosophy and logic, it's just that it takes some time for it to roll from the world of the abstract to the world of the "real."-I'm not a humanist: A TRUE embrace of man is one that also fully accepts his ugly half as part of the same whole. But from here we diverge into ethics...

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\"Why is it, Master, that ascetics fight with ascetics?\"

\"It is, brahmin, because of attachment to views, adherence to views, fixation on views, addiction to views, obsession with views, holding firmly to views that ascetics fight with ascetics.\"