On Thu, Jan 15, 2015 at 8:14 PM, meekerdb <[email protected]> wrote:
> On 1/15/2015 8:47 AM, Bruno Marchal wrote: > > Do you believe in a source of reality beyond the apparent physical > reality we find ourselves in now? > > > No. I don't "believe IN" anything. I entertain hypotheses. > > > Good. But you don't always talk like that. Sometimes it looks like you > do believe that our origin is physical. > > > You only think that because I don't believe IN Platonism. > History, in terms of us having accessible records and writing, frames the Greeks as the first to value critical scientific thought, where nothing can be hidden from questioning and doubt. This doesn't confer them some godlike status as they didn't invent doubt or critical thinking. The use just complies with accessible historical data. You seem to have a problem with "Platonism" as linguistic label, which I say because I assume you value critical thought and scientific method on semantic level. Because "believing in Platonism" is nonsense if Platonism is framed as the first tradition in accessible history to value reasonable, scientific doubt, without resorting to radical theological extremes. In effect therefore, you state on semantic level "I don't believe in reasonable doubt". That's why I guess you're arguing a language problem and not semantic level. Nevertheless, this use of language, I refer to "pushing atheism to swallow agnosticism" the last months, aims to assign all kind of stereotypes of low sensational kind to group of "Platonism believers", as I can't see an argument or position emerge out of all this posting other than some fundamental "no!". But saying "No!" to critical thinking and its historically marked tradition/reference is what it is. That is, in my view, unscientific use of language, the kind we all seem to criticize elsewhere: why talk to someone if you have their "beliefs/philosophy cornered" and we frame ourselves as being too sophisticated to entertain the same? In the end, arguing atheism in this way, we imply that we're somehow "beyond believing propositions", while at the same time commenting how anything is nonsense when it leaves rationality behind for a nanosecond. We leave it behind for eternity when reasoning like this though. At least the mystics can offer some plausible account (not truth, even by their standards, see Plotinus) as to why they want to talk theology, and why the act of doing exactly that is problematic. Why talk and get angered by people as home brewed mascot projections of labels in our heads, when we can talk to real people and explore their thinking? What's behind the labels? Sure, we need the labels for reference. But I'd like to think that good science doesn't believe in those. That's why all this talk around "agnostics are really atheists" is dubious: in assigning to certain ideas fixed literal meaning (God as person or whatever), the atheist does and goes beyond what the agnostic refuses to do: to believe strongly, with a certainty and confidence, that should be alien to scientific practice. 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 [email protected]. To post to this group, send email to [email protected]. Visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list. For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/d/optout.
