Feeling Reality (General)

by dhw, Friday, February 18, 2011, 11:24 (5026 days ago) @ xeno6696

MATT: (to David): I've always considered your position that atheism necessarily believes in chance a false dichotomy. The default position is no explanation at all. Theism has proven invalid in its attempts to describe the world around us, and it is also their job to provide evidence to support their claims.
An atheist doesn't have to believe in chance, just because he doesn't accept a designer.-This has always been a cause of misunderstandings and disagreements between George and myself, as remains all too evident from his latest posts. Your remark (and its reverse) applies to agnostics but not to atheists. An atheist says categorically there is no designer, but if the mechanisms of life on Earth were not designed, what alternative to chance can the atheist offer us? (Maybe George will tell us.) Dawkins specifically talks of the "spontaneous arising by chance of the first hereditary molecule" (The God Delusion, p. 137).-DAVID: I understand that you and dhw follow a 'third way'. The problem is my training in medicine. Every illness in a patient has a cause, and I am still a cause and effect person. I don't accept a third way, 'no answer at all'. -I think we all believe in cause and effect! Our position is that we don't know the cause, and none of the theories convince us. You are, I think, stuck on the concept of "first cause" being God, but in our case, not knowing the cause doesn't mean rejecting the concept itself.-MATT (to David): Let me clarify, just to make sure you're not confusing my willingness to accept no answer with what I said...In any investigation, we start in a state of complete ignorance (no explanation.) This is what I mean by "default position." If the evidence posited by both sides is weak or inconclusive for some reason; we maintain the default position. To choose at this point is a form of mental attachment that is going to really be driven more by emotion than by reason.-I hadn't thought of calling it a default position, but it's an excellent term. The agnostic's situation, of course, is that on the one hand there is no evidence of chance being capable of producing the mechanisms for replication, adaptation and innovation, and so we cannot believe that theory. (Note to David: I have never been able to believe in the chance theory ... see "The Atheist Delusion", Section 1 of the Brief Guide ... but yes, your work has had a great influence on me, as you have provided the scientific background to my own largely non-scientific arguments.) On the other hand, however, there is no evidence of a UI, designer, God, and so again we agnostics cannot launch ourselves into belief. Agnosticism is the default position. Thank you, Matt.