On 1/15/2015 2:56 PM, Platonist Guitar Cowboy wrote:
On Thu, Jan 15, 2015 at 8:14 PM, meekerdb <[email protected]
<mailto:[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".
On the contrary I believe in science, which is not just reasonable doubt. It's a
combination of reason and observation. Plato (429-327BCE) denigrated observation and
promoted mysticism and armchair speculation. He promoted the idea of an afterlife in
which the scales of justice got balanced. And his approach tended to shut off the
scientific enterprise that started long before in Ionia with Thales of Miletus
(624-547BCE), Anaximander (611-546BCE), and Democritus (460-370BCE). I don't know why
Bruno thinks he's a Platonist when his idea of "The One" was already put forward by
Anaximander who called it "aperion": */
"In his cosmogony, he held that everything originated from the apeiron (the “infinite,”
“unlimited,” or “indefinite”). Anaximander postulated eternal motion, along with the
apeiron, as the originating cause of the world." /*
Science was stifled for 900yrs by the fall of Rome and a combination of Platonism and
Aristotleanism that were incorporated into Christianity by Augustine and Aquinas. Science
didn't resume until Galileo.
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
When I first joined this list I explained that usually described myself as an agnostic in
philosophical discussion because I'm agnostic about the existence of some gods, but I
describe myself as an atheist at cocktail parties because otherwise I get buttonholed by
someone who thinks I'm uncertain about the God of his Bible. Of course one can't be
absolutely certain of anything (maybe I'm a brain in a vat or a computer simulation) but
I'm as certain about the non-existence of the god of Abraham as I am about anything.
Notice that I capitalize "God" (as does Bruno) since it's supposed to be a proper name,
name of a person, and that's exactly the kind of god I don't believe exists.
Brent
I suggest that the anthropomorphic god-idea is not a harmless
infirmity of human thought, but a very noxious fallacy, which is
largely responsible for the calamities the world is at present
enduring.
--- William Archer, 'Theology and War'
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