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Topic: Is agnosticism more "defendable" than atheism (epistemology) (Read 5706 times) |
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Blunderov
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Re:Is agnosticism more "defendable" than atheism (epistemology)
« Reply #45 on: 2007-07-16 03:51:06 » |
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Quote from: Bass on 2007-07-16 00:35:54 | ... but just that we had faith in something worthwhile. Without it our lives would seem to be bland, drab, and meaningless. I don't understand athiests for that reason here. How can you go about your life without believing in something? ... |
[Blunderov] A common misperception. Atheists have an enhanced sense of the wonder and amazement of being alive and conscious in this magnificent universe because we are so aware of how fleeting that moment in the sun really is. What more meaning is required? You live, you die. What you do with the bit in between is largely up to you.
The idea that 'meaning' has some aspect to it that implies 'permanence', or something like it, is unfounded IMV. Meaning resides in the interactions you have with the people and things around you and vice versa. When that stops, 'meaning' stops.
The philosophical tradition of Existentialism is very much concerned with the issue of personal meaning. In the end, is it not more meaningful to assign one's own meaning to one's own life rather than to have it decreed at birth? Meaning is not something 'out there'. Meaning is something inside.
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Hermit
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Re:Is agnosticism more "defendable" than atheism (epistemology)
« Reply #46 on: 2007-07-16 08:41:44 » |
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Bass, if somebody has to give your life meaning, consider the fact that "we are shit machines." is as meaningful as any other meaning you will be given by anyone else. Nothing more than a turd's way of ensuring that there will be another turd. No additional meaning is required.
Therefore, to live a truly meaningful life, I suggest you strive for the perfect turd. Worship it. After all, the perfect turd is much more "real" and thus more "meaningful" than any god concept of which I am aware, and thus probably more deserving of your belief than any theistic concept. Which, you may have forgotten, is not at the core of "a" (without), "theism" (vesting belief in gods). Which is what atheists are without. "Meaning" is not a part of this definition. Just as "sense" is not a part of belief.
If you still vest belief in gods, I am not amazed that you make no sense. If you don't vest belief in gods, then you are an atheist. Atheism doesn't speak to your hair color, mental capacity or ability to spell. Nor does it address meaning. Then again, while you might have been told differently, religion does not speak to meaning either. Think about it a bit, you might grasp this dangerous idea. If it is beyond you (which it may well be), there is always the quest to meet your biological imperative - a life dedicated to the search for the perfect turd.
Blunderov, I take one small, but perhaps fundamental, issue with your admirable articulation. I suspect that meaning is emergent, not latent. In other words, we not only define it, we also engage in a process of instantiating it for ourselves, as we seek it. When we do not seek meaning, it is not there (and is clearly not necessary to life, given that most people seem prepared to accept whatever crap they are told defines meaning)*.
Personally I think that being as useful as possible (proportional to genetic nearness) is probably the closest to living meaningfully that a social animal like ourselves can hope for. Beyond that, see my reply to Bass.
Kindest Regards
Hermit
*I think we seek meaning primarily because we want to force things to make sense to us within the cognitive frameworks we attempt to fit to reality, even when we engage in applying size 1 frames to a size 42 Universe.
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With or without religion, you would have good people doing good things and evil people doing evil things. But for good people to do evil things, that takes religion. - Steven Weinberg, 1999
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Blunderov
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Re:Is agnosticism more "defendable" than atheism (epistemology)
« Reply #47 on: 2007-07-16 10:06:03 » |
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Quote from: Hermit on 2007-07-16 08:41:44
<snip>
Blunderov, I take one small, but perhaps fundamental, issue with your admirable articulation. I suspect that meaning is emergent, not latent. In other words, we not only define it, we also engage in a process of instantiating it for ourselves, as we seek it. When we do not seek meaning, it is not there (and is clearly not necessary to life, given that most people seem prepared to accept whatever crap they are told defines meaning)*.
Personally I think that being as useful as possible (proportional to genetic nearness) is probably the closest to living meaningful that a social animal like ourselves can hope for. Beyond that, see my reply to Bass</snip> |
Dear Hermit, My apologies. I'm afraid you are correct to take issue with the way I phrased myself back there. I rather dashed that post off and at the time I had a misgiving about "meaning is something inside". Sounds like something one might hear on Oprah, that is to say, like some ill-considered item of pop lore that gets repeated a lot because it sounds clever or profound. I much prefer you 'emergent' description.
Here is Austin Cline in a similar vein.
http://atheism.about.com/b/a/256277.htm
Meaning of Life: Is there a Question to be Answered? (Book Notes: Losing Faith in Faith)
Religious theists like to ask about 'the meaning' of life, especially when they can insist that atheists are unable to provide any answer to this burning question. Then again, perhaps the question isn't really so burning after all. Maybe it's not a question that can be answered in the first place.
In Losing Faith in Faith: From Preacher to Atheist, Dan Barker writes:
Who said life must have meaning? Why can’t life just be life? My family has three cats, We enjoy watching them play, eat, sleep, lie in the sun and chase bugs. Do they ask themselves what is the meaning of life? Is their life any less livable because they possess no coherent purpose for existence? Since we humans have larger brains with a greater rational capacity and self consciousness than other animals we somehow assume we must be worthy of a higher purpose. Isn’t that arrogance?
To ask the question about the meaning in life one must first assume the presence of someone to bestow bestow that meaning. This usually amounts to granting the existence of a transcendent reality, a supernatural realm to which we can somehow relate in a “meaningful manner.” If you can live without the need for meaning in life, then you will likewise not need the invented frame of reference, the plan and purpose of a divine will. To many people life is its own meaning, and the word “meaning” becomes meaningless. There are a lot of assumptions lurking behind questions like “what is the meaning of life” or “what meaning can life have for an atheist.” These questions always assume the truth of a number of basic theistic and religious attitudes not normally shared by atheists, something which can make it difficult for atheists to address these questions if not prepared.
The first thing an atheist should probably ask is: why must there be a “the” meaning to life? Why can’t there be multiple meanings to life — meanings and different and varied as the people living life? The second thing an atheist should do is point out the flaw in assuming that we need some outside force or entity to impose meaning upon us. Meaning, if it is to “mean” anything, must be the product of how we live and what we value. No other person can give meaning to what I do and, for the same reason, no gods — if any exist — can automatically give meaning to my life.
[Blunderov] The existentialists would go further and warn against living in an "inauthentic" manner; that is to say (very roughly) by thoughtlessly adopting cliched notions of what is and what is not important to the project of one's own identity.
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Bass
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Re:Is agnosticism more "defendable" than atheism (epistemology)
« Reply #48 on: 2007-07-17 01:31:00 » |
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[Hermit] Bass, if somebody has to give your life meaning, consider the fact that "we are shit machines." is as meaningful as any other meaning you will be given by anyone else.
[Bass] How did you come to that conclusion? It sound to me that you're saying shit gives us just as much meaning as something like love or friendship does. That the fact we can shit is just as meaningful as the fact someone can love/respect/admire us. Other than that, I don't grasp your point.
[Hermit] Nothing more than a turd's way of ensuring that there will be another turd. No additional meaning is required.
[Bass] Do you have any turd free examples by chance?
[Hermit] After all, the perfect turd is much more "real" and thus more "meaningful" than any god concept of which I am aware, and thus probably more deserving of your belief than any theistic concept.
[Bass] I don't disagree. But my point was not directed towards religious concepts or creeds. My point was that belief and faith can be used and applied outside and apart from religion. I really don't see the harm in saying "I believe the grass is green", or "I believe in tolerance or fairness", or "I believe I'll get my hair cut today".
[Bass] Or if you believe or have faith in yourself, whats harmful in that? They can be taken to personal levels that rationality doesn't seem required for. I like the term weyken, and I'm not attacking it but from what I can see it can't be realistically applied to every case. For instance:
"Hey john, where did you get to last night?"
"Oh I got lucky with some random girl I met and we went back to her place."
"Oh cool. But I can't believe you, so prove it."
My point here is that you can't apply a truth value or obtain evidence in every single situation, so you'll always have belief on some level. Searching for a truth value or looking for evidence in every common situation doesn't sound at all feasible or nescesarry. i.e.
"What did you have for dinner last night?"
"I just had a chinese."
"Nice, but can you back up your assertion?"
So I don't really see the point of disregarding belief altogeather, but rather only shunning the dogmatic type. Having faith in your own abilities may grant you the will power, psychologically, to act out and fulfill those abilities, thus giving you meaning through faith without all the religious clap trap. But even if we do try and apply religious faith to meaning, what about all those people who go to church on sundays? They go because of their faith, but in going gives them meaning to their lives. Or what about all those muslims who make the pilgrimage to mecca? Doesn't this give them and their lives some degree of meaning because of their beliefs? The meaning here for people like this is in the "spiritual journey", which is belief driven. Yes it may be delusional, granted, but the fact is that it gives (to some degree) their lives meaning.
At the moment at lest, this makes sense to me.
Regards
Bass
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Hermit
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Re:Is agnosticism more "defendable" than atheism (epistemology)
« Reply #49 on: 2007-07-17 10:25:13 » |
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Confabulating issues and missing the point, Bass preferred to avoid the turds, but they followed him anyway. Let me attempt to explain (and I should note that Blunderov's second post on meaning addressed this issue too).
The important point which Bass missed, was that when you look for meaning you will find it - in anything - and having found it - it can be justified by the queriant - again, in anything, even turds. "Seek and ye shall find" is true. True about anything. And the better your algorithm is at finding things (i.e., the less discriminating) the more easily you shall find what you seek. Whether you use astrology, splanchnomancy, scatomancy or any of the other 160 odd forms of recognized divination, poor statistical techniques (cf Moby Dick Codes) through attempting to scry meaning from babble or even just accepting what other people tell you what meaning you should accept as valid (as most of the religious do).
However you "find meaning," you will find that your hands are filled with slippery items, defying analysis and smelling funny. Mind turds suffices to describe this class of shit. No matter what you think you have found, when you apply a filter to noise, the result is merely noise which describes the filter to a greater or lesser extent. In other words, it depends only on what you are looking for as to what you find. The fact that your brain is so unsophisticated a tool that it accepts this as meaningful might be completely sufficient to describe the source of all religions and irrational beliefs.
A significant corollary of this is that "meaning" is completely unnecessary to live a good and fulfilled life or a bad and unfulfilled life. Because the examination of any life using whatever criteria you please will establish meaning too - however you define meaning.
Now, sidetracking for a moment to follow Bass' goatpath, on belief, rational, irrational and weyken.
Belief is a portmanteau word. It covers all vesting of acceptance in something on insufficient evidence or in the face of evidence from irrational nonsense to the kind of example of taking somebody's words at face value. While it has been discussed, we haven't defined a new word to deal with shades of this irrational process, if only because of the conviction that those who use such a process in place of thought will not use whatever new words are established to describe this nonsense.
Agnosticism was an attempt by Huxley to deal with the kinds of things for which the absence of knowledge should prevent the assignment of truth values. Agnosticism does not speak to truth values, because it acknowledges that valid determination of truth values requires data. Agnosticism speaks to the invalidity of the assignment of truth values in the absence of evidence. Weyken approaches the same problem, but focusing on the other end of the process, when it is valid to assign provisional, falsifiable truth values; preferably based on a particular process, the scientific method; and precluding the requirement to accept anything without or in the face of evidence.
When you assert "weyken" you open yourself to interrogation and challenge and the requirement to elucidate the observations, data, processing and validation to any challenger. When you have not followed the method, and cannot sustain your assertion, then assignment of weyken to describe what you assert is faulty and "I think", "I suspect", "I accept", "I stipulate" or even "I believe" may be more appropriate.
Hermit
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With or without religion, you would have good people doing good things and evil people doing evil things. But for good people to do evil things, that takes religion. - Steven Weinberg, 1999
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Hermit
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Re:Is agnosticism more "defendable" than atheism (epistemology)
« Reply #50 on: 2007-08-19 10:22:01 » |
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I have been looking for good examples of the use of belief and faith, exposing the current public perception of their meaning. I think I have found it in this "slowest car crash in history*."
Notice in particular messages: 282 (rational), 287 (rational), 296 (believer), 297 (rational).
Kindest Regards
Hermit
*The "slowest car crash in history" ends at 1083 posts. Very little of it was worth noticing.
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With or without religion, you would have good people doing good things and evil people doing evil things. But for good people to do evil things, that takes religion. - Steven Weinberg, 1999
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MoEnzyme
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Re:Is agnosticism more "defendable" than atheism (epistemology)
« Reply #51 on: 2007-08-20 16:17:30 » |
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I post this mostly as a friendly ribbing to Hermit. All the stuff he say's about "weyken", I reckon is what I'm aiming at. It all sounds great, and yet it sounds like Elmer Fudd botching up the pronouciation of "reckon". Reckoning seems like a sufficient concept, in that it seems to describe even the roughest of mental weighing. Perhaps with a few changes in tense and naming the referents more appropriately, non-irrational cases of "belief" can be appropriately translated into cases of reckoning. I "believe" in X can be said "I reckon on X because Y (somebody I trust) told me so". So in dealing with X we can criticize the wisdom of relying on Y and so forth.
Anyway, if he succeeds in his shiney new word, I suppose it has some great phonetic possibilities, like the "Great Aweykening", Aweykening people to the true references of their mere belief . . . and so forth. If you know (ken) something through belief, there is a "way" one came to that belief in the first place. Fun stuff, but I'm suspecting not fun enough to overcome sufficient already existing words like "reckon". No more than a short argumentative play on the phonetics of "faith" can effectively change the language beyond the confines of that particular argument.
Of course I could be proven wrong the day that people begin to more comfortably refer to the great Aweykening of their Phaith. 
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Mo Enzyme
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Hermit
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Re:Is agnosticism more "defendable" than atheism (epistemology)
« Reply #52 on: 2007-08-20 20:00:57 » |
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The potential for word play was of course deliberate.
Reckon is a better mapping than think, but it still misses the provisional aspects of valid truth assignments and emergent process deliberately and explicitly embodied in weyken.
Have fun,
Hermit :-)
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With or without religion, you would have good people doing good things and evil people doing evil things. But for good people to do evil things, that takes religion. - Steven Weinberg, 1999
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