On Thursday, February 2, 2017 at 12:19:46 PM UTC+1, Bruno Marchal wrote: > > > On 01 Feb 2017, at 21:20, Brent Meeker wrote: > > > > > > > > Brent > > "Atheism is a belief system the way "Off" is a TV channel." > > --- George Carlin > > That is agnosticism (in the usual mundane sense). It is agnostic > atheism, and it is the antipode of the gnostic atheism, with its > double strong belief: no god but matter. > > In (theological) science, no invocation of any god can be valid. There > is no ontological commitments *at all*, not even on the intended model/ > meaning of the terms used in the theory. Existential statement are not > metaphysical ontological commitment. Of course, when we apply the > science, like when saying "yes" to a doctor, or when just going out of > the bed in the morning, we must resort to some faith, and some > personal non communicable experience.
That's why the premise of this entire discussion over the years is biased towards the usual navel-gazing around these parts. If silly arrogant dogmatic monkeys are enough to offend us enough to- holy shit, hell just froze over- take a verbal stand against "the violent charlatans and organized religions and militant atheists" on an internet list, then it is not surprising that that freedom might vanish at some point. What distinguishing features or concepts can adherents of atheism, agnosticism, some religion or some theoretical formalism point towards, that other groups remain ignorant of? That only agnostics know what modesty is (btw how modest of them...)? Or that a self-selected category of beliefs is sufficient basis to judge the world (hmm, let me guess: your beliefs) ? This person wrote this or that, and so we can all penetrate our navels with certainty: that person is evil! He unjustly appealed to authority! Omg wtf are we gonna do now? As if we're somehow escaping the theological labyrinth, ethical conundrums, or delude ourselves as to having freed ourselves from the exclusionary limits of functionalism, its fuzziness etc. And all of the posts here fall into this trap, as if life were some internet beauty contest. Y'all ain't authorities on beauty though. None of you has ever run a pageant. So I don't see why folks should give a shit: none of these positions or concepts weighs more or less than all the categories we already use to compete with and distinguish ourselves. Agnostics can be as evil and stupid as religious folks and/or atheists. To make sweeping generalizations with some interpretation of history in tow is easy. What does believing xyz NOW offer in concrete terms? That agnostics, atheists, theists, christians etc. are insulated from being evil or wrong? That’s wishful thinking with a dash of vanity. None of these concepts help us navigate the barriers that cause pain or the usual interpersonal bullshit. Nobody is having the time of their lives discussing this, so why does publicly stating "I believe xyz" mean anything to us at all? Because public navel-gazing, playing university, playing class and measuring of dicks is fun (when we can see we're not too inadequate, right?)! Let's measure Carlin's and Dawkins' dicks and dig up Einstein's for good measure? Not the time of our lives, but still fun, right? PGC -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "Everything List" group. To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com. Visit this group at https://groups.google.com/group/everything-list. For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/d/optout.
