On 2/5/2017 3:14 AM, Telmo Menezes wrote:
Inconsistent? Would you have people who oppose fascism not have a
definition of fascism - so that they were just opposing some undefined,
amorphous ideology?
It is interesting that you bring this up. Are you familiar with the
essay "Ur-fascism" by Umberto Eco? He discusses precisely how hard it
is to define fascism:
http://www.pegc.us/archive/Articles/eco_ur-fascism.pdf
Yet he defines "Ur-fascism", the eternal fascism, and is critical of
it. So are you saying I should talk of ur-theism when I mean belief in
the God of the Bible, Quran, and Torah? And leave "theism" to be used
to mean the truths of arithmetic; So Bruno and I will both be misunderstood?
I was born in the aftermath of the carnations revolution in Portugal,
and was raised in a society that considered itself to be almost
religiously anti-fascist, but without a clear definition of what
fascism is. Some of these "anti-" people were as vicious, if not more,
than what they claimed to oppose. My mother received a letter from the
communist party saying that she should abandon her job, since my
father also had one. She was also told to denounce anyone speaking
against the communist party. She refused to do both, and was then
included in a list of people that were to be hanged in public. All
this was done under the label of "anti-fascism". Fortunately there was
a counter-revolution before it came to that. I am grateful to the US
for helping at that stage -- although this is an historic period that
is still not openly discussed.
And so do you think of yourself as agnostic about the value of
fascism?...or communism?
They did. For example, the rejection of Mendelian genetics and the
insistence on Lamarkism for purely ideological reasons in the USSR.
Marxism-Leninism was based on a belief in a specific type of social
engineering, the idea that you could gradually improve society by
changing the way people act and then wait for these behaviour to be
transmitted and accumulated across generations. Scientific theories
that implied that you cannot transmit characteristics that you
acquired after birth through purely biological processes was verboten,
and overwhelming scientific evidence resisted (just like the
creationists do).
You make my point. They had scientific rational reasons they put forth for
their policies. It was wrong science and it was enforced by violence (as
other religions have done) - but it wasn't an appeal to supernatural
revelation and faith.
That was true in the beginning, but once you put your beliefs above
empirical evidence, like they did, I don't see where the difference to
an appeal to supernatural revelation is.
It's only a difference of degree. Theists also try to make scientific
arguments (e.g. first-cause, fine-tuning,...), but they also explicitly
appeal to revelation and faith.
Then they built monuments to science and progress, made to inspire awe
and fear, just like cathedrals. An example is the Fernsehturm in
Berlin, made to resemble the Sputnik and the be seen from afar. It was
also a powerful TV signal transmitter, in an attempt to silence the
dangerous transmissions from the west. People who like facts and
reason are not afraid of debate. They don't try to silence the
opposition.
They also don't use words to obfuscate meaning.
I don't think any of us is doing that. We are debating definitions,
which is arguably 90% of philosophy.
Then why do people feel the need to crate the word "agnostic"?
I think it's a cop out to avoid the question of whether the God of theism
exists. Agnostics were originally people who were not just uncertain about
God, they held that the question was impossible to know anything about,
a-gnostic. So it was not a "nuanced" position - epistemologically is was
an extreme position and so deserved a name.
Yes, I tend to agree with this epistemological extreme, because I
think it is a necessary implication of Gödel's theorems.
?? Godel's theorems are about what is entailed by axioms in a formal
logical system. As such it has nothing to do with facts in the world.
Do you suppose juries should always vote "Innocent" because there are
truths that are unprovable from the prosecutions evidence? Do you avoid
sailing west from Portugal because we can't be sure the Earth isn't flat
and has an edge you could fall off of?
When Dawkins, who is often castigated as
a radical atheist, was asked, on a scale of 1 to 7 how certain was he that
there is no God, he said "6". And since you like to credence original usage
of words over current usage you should know that agnosticism was originally
just considered a form of atheism - since it implies not believing in God.
I don't have such a preference. I am trying to apply reductio ad
absurdum to your argument. You accuse me of obfuscating meaning by
going against the current use of a word. If that is not permissible,
anyone who did it before me should also be denounced, so let's retreat
to the original definition.
Why does it follow that someone should be criticized for using a word to
be understood in his time and place. I'm only criticizing using in a
way to be misunderstood in the time and place it is used.
And even deists, like Thomas Jefferson and Tom Paine, were considered
atheists because they didn't believe in the god of theism.
I get that. I wouldn't be particularly offended to be labeled "atheist
agnostic", in the sense that I do not believe in any of the gods
described in abrahamic religious texts. But I know nothing about god
in general.
Because "god in general" includes animist, deist, polytheist, and other
supernatural entities. But even such a broad category has its
boundaries. They are all agents having wills and acting unpredictably
as do people. They are all inconsistent with the idea of ubiquitous,
impersonal deterministic laws; the Laplacian worldview.
Brent
Yes, I used to tell people I was an agnostic. But the problem was that they
assumed I was just on the fence and undecided about their God (usually
Christian in the U.S.). But I wasn't at all undecided about Yaweh, any more
than I was undecided about Zeus or Baal or Thor.
I understand that, I have the same problem.
And although I supposed
there could be some god-like being, e.g. the great programmer in the sky of
our simulation, it was a bare possibility which I estimated to be less
likely than finding a teapot orbiting Jupiter. So I decided it was
disingenuous to call myself an agnostic, and also led to annoying attempts
to convert me.
Right, my wife makes a similar argument (not giving the religious
people any ammunition by making it sound that you are open to
considering their belief system). I can see your point.
Telmo.
Brent
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