Sceptical Theism
I have half made this point a few times on different posts, thought I would give it its own space, mostly because I believe it is an important concept that is under most a posteriori God arguments, which there seem to be steady stream of.
Skeptical theists are theists who are skeptical of our ability to make judgments of the sort expressed by premise, If God exists, the world would not be like. ( fill in the blank ). According to skeptical theism, if there were a God, it is likely that he would have reasons for acting that are beyond our ability to understand, and thus we are not justified in making all?things?considered judgments about what the world would be like if there were a God. In particular, the fact that we don’t see a good reason for X does not justify the conclusion that there is no good reason for X. Thus, skeptical theism purports to undercut most a posteriori arguments against the existence of God. It also undercuts any arguments from design that support the God is argument.
In short the sceptical theist claim is that we do not have any reason based ability to say anything at all about the nature of such a thing as God, if there is such a thing.
Wondering what folks think of this.
Skeptical theists are theists who are skeptical of our ability to make judgments of the sort expressed by premise, If God exists, the world would not be like. ( fill in the blank ). According to skeptical theism, if there were a God, it is likely that he would have reasons for acting that are beyond our ability to understand, and thus we are not justified in making all?things?considered judgments about what the world would be like if there were a God. In particular, the fact that we don’t see a good reason for X does not justify the conclusion that there is no good reason for X. Thus, skeptical theism purports to undercut most a posteriori arguments against the existence of God. It also undercuts any arguments from design that support the God is argument.
In short the sceptical theist claim is that we do not have any reason based ability to say anything at all about the nature of such a thing as God, if there is such a thing.
Wondering what folks think of this.
Comments (76)
Only to add you (generally, not specifically you) have no reason based ability to determine gods existence in addition to gods nature. (Is it part of gods nature to exist?).
Well that was quick
What discussion were you hoping for here?
As far as i know there are only 3 types of rational arguments against the existence of God.
Arguments from evil
No seeum arguments
And god paradox’s
If you value the rationality of skeptical theism, none of those arguments are valid.
What discussion were you hoping for here?
Thats just stating the concept of skeptical theism. I got it. What about it are you offering for discussion? The validity of skeptical theism? The validity of criticisms against it? A comparison to other theistic positions? If all you have to say is something like “any of those”, I would frustratingly remind you that YOU made the thread, YOU are supposed to have something to discuss instead of just offering what is essentially a definition of something. IF you were going to answer that way ;)
So what about skeptical theism do you want to discuss? Nothing? Just letting us know its out there?
Not really, a skeptical theist is still a theist. They believe in god. They just dont boeve in god based on what is known about god. Not a position with much merit, but not agnosticism.
A discussion about you being wrong it is then.
You are a bit confused about Skeptical Theism. It does not make the false equivalence you are making about faith based discussion on both sides. You have added this. It is actually a counter argument to the problem of evil and other, similar atheist arguments. You are mis-using the argument to make all “rational” discussion about god faith based, and thusly you do not actually have to defend your belief in god, or worse actually you make a false equivalence of your indefensible position and every other position including the very strongest non-theist positions.
I was going to refrain from arguing the value of faith, since you mentioned to someone else in another thread that you weren’t interested in discussing the value of faith, but for reasons I hope are obvious you are inviting the discussion.
Why is faith a good?
What is false equivalence please.
Think I said this
Quoting Rank Amateur
I am starting the position of skeptical theism that you can not make a reason based statement about the nature of god
If you think that is incorrect make an argument that ends with the conclusion therefore I can say something authoritative about the nature of god
When you compare two positions as though they are equivalent when they are not.
The Skeptical Theism argument is a good argument against problem of evil and other classic atheist arguments, but it does not apply to ALL arguments or reasons.
I feel no reason to defend my belief in god. The only concern I have is the claim my belief in god is unreasonable.
The nature of god is not the only reason to be an atheist. This is another false equivalence.
If you feel no reason to defend your belief, you are being unreasonable.
As best I can tell from discussing this for 20 years, philosophy can get to this point and then it gives up and quits. Rather than continue to build on this logic and explore the trail further, philosophers typically retreat back in to the familiar very well worn merry-go-round to nowhere patterns of the God debate.
As best I can tell, this happens because philosophy is experienced not as a means to an end, but as an end in itself. Thus, any path that appears to lead away from philosophy is rejected. To explore this theory, imagine that it were proven beyond all doubt that the best way to explore the God subject was to go bowling. Would we step away from philosophy and go bowling? If not, then what we're really interested in is philosophy and not God, and so we shouldn't be surprised if our God investigations never seem to go anywhere.
If a God investigation were to proceed beyond the same old tiresome ruts we might focus on two realities:
1) There has been an incredible level of interest in this subject for thousands of years, and...
2) Nobody is able to prove any position on that subject.
To summarize, some fundamental human need is driving this interest, and philosophy is not able to meet that need.
Why is philosophy not able to meet the need fueling the God debate? Imho, that's because philosophy is made of thought, the very thing generating the need. That is, thought is seen as the solution, when really it is the problem.
Why is thought the problem? The fundamental human need driving interest in this subject is a profound desire to reunite with reality, to overcome a sense of separation which generates fear, which in turn is the source of many human problems. Thought can not meet this desire for unity, because thought operates by a process of division.
As evidence, consider how all the great religions try to sell us some collection of thoughts regarding achieving unity with God and each other, and what typically happens instead is that these religions divide internally and begin to go to war within themselves. These religions generally have sincere good intentions, but don't realize they are trying to create unity using a tool, thought, whose explicit purpose is to create division.
The logic failure operating here is the unwarranted leap from the fact that thought is a very useful tool for very many jobs, to the unexamined assumption that therefore thought is the best tool for EVERY job. Theists and atheists seem united in making this mistake, and the more adamant they are about their position the more that is true.
So what then? Where do we go from here? It seems the philosopher should make a clear minded decision as to what their priority really is. Is it doing philosophy? Or is it in exploring and perhaps meeting the fundamental human need which is fueling interest in God topics?
If there is no compelling evidence that philosophy will ever lead to anything but more of the same old God debate we're already heard a million times, do we keep doing philosophy anyway, or do we set philosophy aside and search for other more useful tools?
What is our real interest?
I did promise myself that I would not get involved in this kind of nonsense, but I just have to ask, what is this method you're referring to for "exploring and perhaps meeting the fundamental human need which is fueling interest in God topics"?
I keep hearing arguments of this sort, every mystic, religious or other mumbo-jumbo begins by arguing that the topic of religion/mysticism cannot be explored by rational investigation from a physicalist premise, and then there's this huge pregnant "therefore..." and we all wait for the answer (which is inevitably their own brand of book/philosopher/alternative to physicalism).
I entirely agree that trying to say anything about God (including his existence) using rational thought is pointless. I think that saying things about God (such as prayers or expressions of feeling) serve a purpose that has nothing to do with the meaning of the words used in other contexts (for example, rational argument). But none of this leads to the discussion of books about religion, none of this leads to an interest in religious scholars or opinion. No mystical philosophy, no analysis. This is not because there is no meaning in religious language, its because religious language has no truth value in the sense that objectively valuing a text would require.
So yes, logical arguments trying to say something about the nature of God are nonsense, they take discourse suited to one language game and expect it to apply in another, but in order to keep to this distinction, the same must be true the other way round. No one should be consulting an ancient Buddhist monk for wisdom, the monk cannot in any way 'possess' some object (in the Tractain sense) which he can pass to the student, to treat him this way is to reverse the problem and treat his religious language game as if it were a epistemological one.
There is literally nothing to say about religion in the language game of a forum like this.
I agree. My only addition would be this.
I believe one can believe something to be true and act accordingly based on fact, reason, or faith. With the only caveat that what one believes by reason can not be in conflict with fact, and what one believes by faith can not be in conflict with reason or fact. The valid God arguments one can have in philosophy are those that test the boundaries of truth claims based on faith to see if they are un-reasonable, not outside reason, but against reason. All other faith based truth claims - both theist and atheist are outside of philosophy and are theology.
I'm not sure. The problem I can see with testing faith based positions against boundaries determined by rational statements of fact (or the limits thereof) is that the names (the terms) used in each area would have different meanings within their respective language games.
Let's say we were to ask "is it reasonable (by which we mean not in conflict with reason or fact) to believe that prayer brings about that which is prayed for?". The trouble with such an analysis is that 'brings about' and 'that which is prayed for' mean very different things in the language game of a prayer to a language game of the rational relation of facts. This would also be true of all of the terms used in the prayer.
Even for something as broad as the belief in God. To test the reasonableness of such a belief against the boundaries of a rational relation of facts, one would have to ask "is there some fact which prevents 'god' from existing? But to ask this is already to mix the meaning of the terms. 'some fact' means something very specific in the language game of rational relations, but 'God' does not mean anything in that language game, 'God' only means something in the language game of whatever religion or mystical experience one is expressing.
Jake - thanks the thoughts. I think the natural tension between philosophy and theology is a good thing. This tension allows us to continually test where the boundary is. This is good as long as the objective is truth. I just rarely think that is the objective, the objective in most discussions I have been apart of has been winning. The problem isn't good philosophy or good theology, shocker - the problem is people.
Like any good craftsman we need to make sure we are using the right tool for the job.
Let's say I make a claim that by faith alone I believe the world is flat. And I go to extraordinary effort to develop some reasoned argument in support of that claim to convince round earthers of their error and convert them to my faith based truth
It is the place of philosophy, and science to point out the error of this faith belief. To show this belief is in fact in conflict with fact and reason.
Yes, but that doesn't work if the person describing the world as flat then says "I don't mean 'world' in the sense you're testing, and I don't mean 'flat' in the sense you're looking at your 'world' to see.
He'd be perfectly entitled to do so, 'world' and 'flat' might mean something quite different in the language game in which he made the claim "the world is flat" to their meaning in the language game of the scientist who reports "the world is round".
If he claims, within the same language game as the scientist is playing "the world is flat" then the scientist could well reply "no, you're misusing the word 'flat' there". But the theist is not making the faith-based claim "God exists" within the same language game as the scientist claims the existence of something. The word 'exist' just doesn't mean the same thing in both games so to treat it as if it does gets us into a mess.
That is the point of philosophy, to dismantle these very confusions.
And thanks for the thread.
Quoting Rank Amateur
Sure, agreed. But, to be clear, that's not what I'm referring to in my comments. Personally, I'm referring to the tension between experience, and interpretations of experience.
To put it in your language (and with apologies that I've already said this) the Apostle John said "God is love". Love is an experience, not a philosophy or theology about experience. John's statement that love=god is of course a theology, but I forgive him for that sin :smile: because he boiled the theology down to three simple words, at least in this particular case. Three simple words which get directly to the point. If we're going to do theology that seems like a model that has merit.
Quoting Rank Amateur
Ok, but what is truth? Philosophers and theologians typically see "truth" as being ideas about reality, a collection of symbols whose relative merits can be examined. Conversations like this one typically take place within the model which asks, "which collection of symbols are the best?"
From my perspective, all symbols are made of thought, an information medium which operates by a process of division. So if the task at hand is an attempt to somehow transcend the experience of separation which is at the heart of the human experience, to reach for unity with reality and each other, it seems unlikely that a symbol building activity built upon a process of division would be the logical tool to choose.
That is, I'm proposing that no collection of symbols can be "the truth", just as a highway sign isn't the town it is pointing to. If true, then what we're left with is experience.
Speaking to the Catholic perspective, it might be noted that while billions of people will never be able to believe in Jesus no matter how hard they might try, the experience of love is accessible to all human beings in all times and places.
Except um, this would also be true of the person (like me for example) claiming that they don't know what they're talking about. If it's true the subject is beyond human ability, that would include all of us, not just "those other people over there".
And so we arrive at not Baboonism, but Bozoism. :smile: Bozoism claims that 1) an overwhelming pile of evidence points to ignorance being our mutually shared condition and 2) mining this abundant asset would be the logical way to proceed.
For you, and many of our other members, the first step might be this...
Forget about religion. Get over it already and move on. Religion clearly is a tool which doesn't work for many, so if that applies to you, be sensible and put the tool which doesn't work down, and walk away, putting it behind you forever.
PLEASE NOTE: Waving the tool of religion around in the air and claiming it is nonsense is not walking away, it's still being engaged, attached, bound to religion.
I'm being sincere here, not snotty or sarcastic, just to be clear. I'm attempting to escape the typical "our side vs. their side" God debate, because the evidence says to me that's going nowhere.
And so to Rank I would say, if religion is working for you, good, go with that. And to Isaac I'd say, if religion is not working for you, ok no problem, walk away and forget about religion.
Once the ever distracting God debate is swept off the table, perhaps that would be a good time to look at properties of the human condition which give rise to all these topics.
Why did religion arise in the first place? That's a discussion about religion which need not either attack or promote religion.
To me, the rational procedure is to identify fundamental human needs and attempt to meet those needs by whatever method works for a person.
People are imaginative, curious, intelligent... We like to know what is going on. For the last several hundred years we've been using science (broadly defined) to figure out what is going on. Before we had science (broadly defined) we had myth and mystery -- in other words, religion. Religion was a reasonably capable system to describe at least some of what was going on, in the absence of anything better. Beside religion there was a body of practical knowledge.
We bright, curious, imaginative creatures are also lonely, quite often. We sometimes feel isolated, alone, alienated, cold, wet, and miserable. A warm dry god comes in handy at times like those.
In time, religion became less important as a way of explaining physical reality to prescribing human behavior: what one ought to do, what one should hope for. Religion was capable at directing human affairs, though the priests usually didn't have the stage to themselves. There were also emperors, philosophers, generals, benevolent pisspots, bureaucrats, et al who also wanted stage time to tell us what to do.
Science (broadly defined) doesn't do a very good job of being a warm dry god. More often than not, science is a cold wind that chills us a little deeper. People still turn to their warm dry gods in time of cold, windy, wet despair. Frankly, it makes sense. If one is deep in cold, wet despair, one ought to pull out a warm dry god and wrap one's self up in it.
In conclusion its impossible to prove gods existence and we should not try it. Besides the harm religion can cause, in the long run it saves many people, we can not judge god and we should not because then we might discover there is no all loving god controlling the universe and we will be forced living in a cruel meaningless universe with no good, no bad.
All it is saying is, there is no argument based on reason that concludes with; therefore we can say this about the nature of such a thing as God, or what such a thing would do or not do. If one finds this argument compelling, that would say most arguments for or against God that rely on any assumption about the nature of God is unreasonable and should be dismissed from a philosophical point of view.
Yes, that's part of it. Though I must admit I find the comparisons between science and religion which dominate philosophy forums to be overblown. The constant comparison is basically an attempt to declare the acquisition of knowledge to be the "one true way" and then measure everything by that standard.
Imagine that you and I attend the theater together and in the middle of the first act I jump up and yell that this story is totally fictitious and the people on stage aren't real they're just actors!!! Technically, I am correct. But because of my insistence on comparing art to science I've been unable to offer any useful commentary on the value of art.
Quoting Bitter Crank
Yes, and the useful question here is, why do we feel alone? We might shift our focus to trying to better understand the problem which god theories are attempting to address. This seems particularly relevant to those who find they are unable to be involved in religion.
If religion doesn't work for a person I agree they should discard that which isn't working for them. But discarding one possible solution does not in itself solve the problem.
If I'm trying to repair my car and one tool isn't working it makes sense to put that tool down. But the car won't be fixed until I select another tool which does work. Throwing the first tool on the ground in frustration and then ceaselessly yelling at it is not really the most rational way to fix the car.
Quoting Bitter Crank
Yes, just as religion is lousy science, so far at least science is lousy religion.
Ok, so once we've dismissed all arguments for or against the existence of God, then what? I agree with your analysis, and would like to see where you envision it leading.
We might recall the Europeans who sailed west hoping to find a shortcut to the Orient. They didn't find what they were seeking, but found something else instead, North America. Instead of saying, "Fuck this, it's not the Orient" and then going home, they explored what they did find and put it to good use.
That's where I see your line of thought leading. We had a huge God debate hoping to find The Answer, but instead discovered a vast realm of ignorance. We don't like what we found, so we keep pretending we found what we were looking for, so the God debate lives on.
Wouldn't be more rational to accept the results of the investigation and then turn our attention to making good use of what's been discovered?
Jake - I have seen you make this point, and I have tried to see where you are going with this. Sadly you lose me each time you make the point we should proceed to some other place based on the acknowledgment of what we don't know. Sure this is all my fault
Where I am going with this is just an acknowledgment that most if not all philosophical arguments either for or against God are inherently flawed. So they should stop, and both theists and atheists should acknowledge that each has a position based on faith of some type, and each respect the others right to such beliefs.
That may be, and I can't help that. Religion has never been practical knowledge (except accidentally or peripherally). For most of our history, religion and practical knowledge has been perfectly satisfactory. At the present time, science is clearly a much better form of practical knowledge, and religion does as well now as it ever did at providing a grounding: "This is the human situation"; "this is where you stand in the universe". The details of the universe vary--Buddhism's universe is different than the Abrahamic universe, and there are a several other universes (in terms of different religions).
Quoting Jake
I get your example. Religion isn't science or practical knowledge or engineering and one should not compare the two -- like in, "Biology has a better account of birds than the New Testament does." I would hope biology has a better account.
Fundamentalists (and pre-enlightenment, maybe pre-renaissance religious) have mucked things up by insisting that Genesis is a practical account of the earth. Genesis is a theogony with the same purpose as Hesiod's theogony. Neither are or were meant to be taken literally. I doubt that ancient Greeks thought that Aphrodite was literally born from the white foam produced by the severed genitals of Uranus (Heaven), after his son Cronus threw them into the sea. The business between Cronus and Uranus was about the unpleasant succession of gods. God, the Garden, Adam, Eve, the Serpent, and the Tree are clearly, obviously, dead ringers for literary characters who explain how it came to be that life sucks.
There is nothing wrong with loving the story of creation. There is something wrong on the part of religionists to claim it as any sort of stand in or form of science. It isn't. It never was, until reactionary fundamentalists got carried away.
Quoting Jake
"Why do we feel alone?" he asks. The religious answer is that man is fallen and that fallen man lost the sense of oneness and unity which he enjoyed in the Garden before the fall. It's more theogony: How did we come to be chronically cold, wet, miserable, and lonely? Life did not suck in the Garden of Eden until we screwed up, and life has sucked ever since.
The religious solution to being cold, wet, miserable and lonely is to find reconciliation with God and our fellow cold, wet, miserable and lonely fellows traveling through this world of woe.
The scientific answer is not a lot more comforting: We are beings locked up in our skulls with only second-hand sensory information to rely on. Furthermore we're descended from proto-primates who bequeathed to us certain characteristics (like desires that are difficult to fulfill, competitiveness, vindictiveness, and various other fine traits) that prevent us from achieving satisfaction of our peak Hierarchy of Needs.
The scientific solution to sucky life is to improve social performance. Become more competitive, only with a better arsenal of offensive and defensive skills. Don't just sit there and take being called a diseased pariah. Get up! Assert your worth, your value. Demonstrate your puissance. Don't just sit there being cold, wet, miserable and lonely: Fight for the warm dry blanket and the girl (or boy) wrapped up in it. It's a blanket stealing world, so take it, and if you have gotten tough, strong, and can fight like a MAN you will be successful.
Do you have further questions?
How did you get so funny? You’re a character. :)
[I]God works in mysterious ways.[/i]
What is calculus to an ant?
What is Mozart to a baboon?
The counter-argument is that even we (humans) can imagine a world of happy vegans in the garden of Eden.
Why not God?
Ok, no problem, I seem to lose everybody, so you are not alone.
Part of the problem is perhaps that I'm trying not to spoon feed ideas but instead lay out the reasoning that leads to those ideas, and hope that some readers might follow the trail themselves.
You have followed the trail in your own way, by suggesting that a next step after recognizing our mutual ignorance would be for both theists and atheists to respect the faith foundation of the other's perspective. I agree with you that a first step in that process would be for atheists to see and acknowledge the faith foundation of their own perspective.
I'm not arguing with your proposal, just trying to chart an alternative course to widen the options. What if someone, theist or atheist, doesn't wish to retreat in to faith? What if they find themselves unable to swallow fantasy knowings of either the theist or atheist flavor? What if they wish to remain squarely within the realm of reason?
Such a person would seem to be like the European explorers who went looking for the Orient and found another continent instead. They don't want to pretend that what they discovered is the Orient. And so they are stuck having to figure out how to make the best of what they did discover.
Theists and atheists are united in the rarely examined assumption that finding The Answer should be the goal of the investigation. What if we did find The Answer, and it is that we are ignorant? What if we are discarding what we've discovered because it's not what we were hoping to find, because the ignorance we discovered doesn't sufficiently flatter us? What if what we did find is actually more valuable and useful than what we were looking for?
To me, this is where the path of reason leads. Instead of retreating in to fantasy and faith, how do we face the fact of our ignorance and make good use of what we've discovered?
Here we are, like it or not, in the midst of a huge mystery. Why be in such a big hurry to pretend otherwise? Why not stick around a bit to explore and enjoy what we've discovered?
Because we don't have that luxury. People who believe in certain religions believe that homosexuality is a sin, that abortion is a sin, that women should cover their heads, that adulterers should be stoned... Certain atheists believe that these things are not commanded by God and so can be allowed/disallowed according to our personal sensibilities. We have to decide which. Either homosexuality is legal or it isn't, either abortion is allowed or it is not, either adulterers are stoned or they are not. There's no in-between. We have to make these choices as a society and cannot just sit back in our armchairs enjoying how much we don't know what the 'right' answer is.
I know very few 'militant' atheists who rail against groups of housewives having tea with the vicar, or Buddhist monks meditating. What they oppose is a system where a belief leads to a behaviour which they find distasteful. And the same goes for most religious believers who are vocal about their beliefs. It's because they want others to behave differently. And we cannot behave in two ways at once. Ignorant or not a decision has to be made.
Yes, and imho, that is a correct answer, but it is phrased in language that is foreign to many in the modern audience. We might attempt an updated translation, something like....
The emergence of thought in human beings caused us to psychologically fall out of reality in to the much smaller symbolic realm between our ears. To use the modern expression, we are "lost in thought".
Science worshipers will declare that thought has proven itself to be very useful, and that is of course correct. What they're not seeing and dealing with however is that this powerful tool comes with a large price tag, the loss of the sense of oneness and unity. And so we see phenomena like this, we are smart enough to create nuclear weapons, and insane enough to actually do so.
Discarding religion does not on it's own solve this problem.
Quoting Bitter Crank
Yes, religions often attempt to reestablish the sense of oneness with reality through the creation of a relatable human-like character such as a God. We are of course free to discard this device if it doesn't work for us, but doing so does not solve the problem, but instead presents us with the challenge of finding or inventing some alternative path to the same desired destination, the experience of oneness and unity.
And millions of utterly innocent people were pointlessly slaughtered by explicitly atheist regimes over the last century, a real world fact I see you forgot to mention.
When you're ready to actually walk away from religion perhaps we might talk again. For now, it appears that you're not quite ready to let it go, and I don't know of any useful method of penetrating the distraction that attachment is generating.
Exactly. And all of those people would have been saved had the regime been a strictly Jaian one. So we have to decide. Its not about religious=bad and atheist=good, it's just a simple fact of living in a society with rules.
Belief (of any sort) leads to behaviours and behaviours (because we live in a society) sometimes have to be judged acceptable or not. That, by necessity entails making a judgement about which belief to go with. The lack of any decent argument to help us decide does not absolve of of the necessity of doing so.
I am not sure this is possible, certainly there is great empirical evidence it is not. We as creatures appear to have a need to understand why we exist, what is our purpose. To paraphrase Thomas Merton, reason is the path to faith, and picks up when reason can say no more.
I believe I have likened your outlined idea absurdism before, and I think it fits. If you have not done it yet, I would highly recommend you read the myth of Sisyphus by Camus. Basically it says we as humans have some need to understand why we exist, this question has no answer, this is absurd. And the best we can do is acknowledge it is absurd, and find meaning inside ourselves and in our own lives. The person who can do this, Camus would call his absurd hero. Others, like myself, who find meaning in other ways, most notably a belief in God, are committing a type of philosophical suicide.
I feel this idea is very close to what you are saying.
It is, at its core, a philosophical challenge to every proposition in every argument that says anything about the nature of such a thing as God, that asks ; what is the reason based justification that you can make any proposition about the nature of God.
What it does in my opinion, and where it adds value, it establishes a border between philosophy and theology. It is telling all who wish to enter into such discussions or thoughts, you have just left the land of reason based positions, and entered into the land of faith based positions, proceed with caution.
I don't think evaluating all ''possible'' options as anti-reason. To the contrary considering God as hyper-intelligent and, therefore, beyond the grasp of the human mind is a reasoned position.
If I could create a universe and populate it with sentient beings and physical laws then my mental prowess must surely exceed the inhabitants of such a universe.
Isn't the relationship between animals and humans similar to that between God and us?
I think skeptical atheism is a reasoned position but of its truth I can't say much.
To repeat myself even us, ''simple'', humans can create a universe without evil. Can't a programmer creat heaven on a computer? Of course it's possible. So, WHY did God create a universe that has suffering in it? That's the question skeptical atheists have to answer.
Free will?
If free will is so important why curtail our options by creating hell and provide incentives like heaven.
Something smells fishy and it's not the fish.
Quoting Rank Amateur
Yes, there is plenty of evidence that we are incapable of finding The Answer to the largest of questions, we agree on that.
But we don't have to accept a search for The Answer as being the only valid way of proceeding with the inquiry. We can "remain squarely within the realm of reason" by questioning that assumption. We can observe the evidence that a search by both theists and atheists for An Answer has not worked, in spite of the most earnest efforts of some of our greatest minds on all sides of the question. We can discard what is not working, and try something else. All of this is surely possible within the realm of reason.
Quoting Rank Amateur
To quibble a bit, actually most people don't care about any of this at all. You're confusing philosophy nerds like us with normal sane humans. :smile:
That quibble aside, it's surely true that many of us will ask such questions. And it's also true that every one has a right to whatever answers they prefer, which I think is your point regarding mutual respect of faith based beliefs. However, that is the path of faith, not the path of reason. Reason would look more like this...
1) We want credible answers.
2) The evidence suggests that we can't have them.
3) Ok, so why do we want answers?
4) Can we meet that need by some method other than answers?
The point here is that just because the quest for reliable theist or atheist flavored answers has failed we don't have to quit, nor do we have to retreat in to faith and fantasy knowings of whatever flavor. We might choose to do these things, which is fine, but we are not required to do so.
We can instead be loyal to reason by accepting the results of the inquiry we've invested so much work in. We are ignorant.
If one starts with the assumption that the only valid solution is An Answer, then the discovery that we are ignorant is bad news.
But again, we don't have to accept that assumption just because most theists and atheists do so. We are free to discard that assumption. We are free to look upon the ignorance we've discovered as a potential asset which might be put to good use. Again, when the Europeans mistakenly discovered North America, they didn't just quit and go home. They took what they found and put it to good use.
The path of reason. Accept what the evidence tells us, and use that information to continue the inquiry.
Quoting Rank Amateur
Ah, but if we can meet that need by some method other than answers, the absurdity is removed.
One can imagine all kinds of things, that does not however raise those ideas to level of supported propositions that are required to be accepted as truth to support a conclusion.
Quoting TheMadFool
Skeptical theists have no need to answer such a question. Quite the contrary, their entire point is we have no supportable argument to say we could or would understand such a thing as the actions of a god.
Just a point of clarification on your abbreviated argument from evil point, it is not that evil exists, it is that morally impermissible evil exits. We all understand there are morally permissible evils. When your 3 year old is screaming they don't want their vacations, that pain is morally permissible. So the argument from evil is really is the evil that exists morally permissible? And the skeptical theists point is we have no position, defendable by reason as true, to say we have the ability to answer this question about such a thing as God.
Please continue then, such as ......
What if God has answered the question we've been asking in the God debate?
"What is The Answer??", we cried again and again.
And again and again God answered, "Your ignorance. You can be united with me and with each other in your ignorance."
But we didn't like that answer, so we asked again and again. And again and again came back the ever patient reply, "Your ignorance."
But we said, "No, no, no, stop fooling around God, we know what we want, we want some knowledge!!"
And God sighed, rolled his eyes to himself, and asked us in return...
"Didn't I already address this in the very first book of the Bible?"
I understand what you're saying. What I'm very imperfectly attempting to do is encourage readers to follow the logic trail on their own, thus I'm deliberately not filling in all the blanks. I'm not doing that great of a job of this, and honestly, once one leaves the comfortable familiarity of the God debate one's audience tends to tune out or go bye-bye.
Anyway, on to your request. What I'm suggesting is...
The God debate generates various answers which are then debated. I'm attempting to escape that failed pattern by pointing out that ANY answer that can be offered will just be a symbol, and a mere symbol is not really what we are seeking. The proof of this is that we keep looking, searching, reaching for something, we're still hungry, no matter how many religions and philosophies we invent.
Religion was invented as thought became more dominant in the human experience and thus the intimate primal bond animals and primitive humans had with reality was diluted to the point of being lost. The concept of "getting back to God" was born. This is the Adam and Eve story, we ate the apple of knowledge (ie. thought) thus expelling ourselves from the Garden of Eden. And now we're looking for a way back in. The first book in the Bible, brilliant, just outdated.
Thought operates by a process of division. Understanding this is key.
Thus, to the degree we are thinking, the unity with reality (and each other) that we seek remains out of reach. This is the steep price tag for the awesome powers that thought delivers. We are brilliant, and yet insane.
The great mistake of most religions is in attempting to cure the disease of disunity with thought, that which is the source of the disease. And so for example, we see Christianity make the earnest very well intentioned attempt to create unity through beliefs, while dissolving in to endless internal division within itself.
The mistake is in not realizing that the fundamental human problem does not arise from thought content, and thus can not be solved at that level. The problem arises from the medium itself, as proven by the fact that no thought content ever invented has brought us to the experience of unity which we seek. As evidence we can observe how every ideology ever invented has inevitably fallen victim to internal division and conflict.
From this perspective the God debate is essentially pointless, not only because nothing can be proven, but more so because whatever answer is chosen will still be a product of thought, and thus will still generate the experience of division and not the experience of unity.
So, this is of course way too wordy, evidence of my own poor writing skills. A better suggestion could be for readers to simply ignore all the theory above, get out in to nature somewhere, and learn how to lower the volume of thought. And then you will see for yourselves. Once that which is obscuring the experience of unity is removed, the Garden of Eden which has always been there reappears in our human experience.
I think that this place can be reached via either reason or faith, which is another reason why the God debate is pointless, and why I encourage readers to stay on whatever path they can best relate to.
As example, Catholic doctrine teaches that God is ever present in all times and places. Ok, that's great. Thus, I don't have to struggle to reach God because He's already there, everywhere. All I need to do is turn down the volume of that which is obscuring God from me, the apple of knowledge I ate in the Garden of Eden. But of course at the moment I label that experience "God" I'm back in land of thought and the experience is again reduced to being merely an idea.
We don't really want ideas about unity. We want the experience of unity. We think ideas are the path to the experience, but really they are the obstacle in the path. Thus, ignorance is good.
Whaddya know, the God debate has delivered useful information after all. But of course we're going to ignore it. :smile: And thus the human drama continues.
Hope something in there is useful. Gonna shut up now before I crash the server. :smile:
Put another simpler way....
If we abandon interpretations of experience, all that's left is experience, and that's what we're really looking for.
However I would appreciate you not sharing this personal information because the next step after declaring me a prophet is to start gathering together the hammer and the nails. :smile:
This isn't a proof issue or an argument that needs rigorous treatment. Skeptical theism, if I got it right, states that it is ''possible'' that we can't understand God and this is a defense, I believe, against ALL atheistic arguments we can think of.
As you already know all atheistic arguments are logical constructions but, I think, skeptical atheists are eager to point out that this logic is, at its heart, human. Why should God be limited by human logic?
This is, of course, just one ''possible'' scenario and the reasoning here is, interestingly, ''scientific'', at least on the matter of reviewing all possible hypotheses that can explain the state of affairs. However, it's an untestable hypothesis as it puts God beyond our reach from the get go. Skeptical theism doesn't need to be proven as it is beyond reason.
Quoting Rank Amateur
Well, if a chimp can solve a puzzle then it's a given that a human could solve it too, right?
If humans can imagine ''perfect'' heaven then why didn't or couldn't God, omni-powered and all, create heaven right away. Why?
How is this assertion, on which your theory is based, any less subject to the problem of never being able to provide a determinate proof than the assertion "God exists"? Do you know what kind of thing 'thought' is? How do you propose proving that it operates by process of division? Sure, you could expound some theory about what 'thoughts' are, I could forward an alternative theory, we could debate the issue of the validity of each theory ad infinitum. How's this any different now to the god debate, we can no more say what 'thoughts' really are than we can say what 'god' really is.
Quoting Jake
And you've examined "every ideology ever invented" to arrive at this conclusion have you? You do realise that every attempt ever tried to create a unifying theory of physical forces has failed too. Should we be talking to the physicists too and telling them that their failure to find a unifying theory is conclusive proof that the search is pointless?
Quoting Jake
You do realise how much this sounds like just about every religion ever invented don't you?
1. Carry out some set of behaviour (go out in nature, pray five times a day, fast for 40 days...)
2. Learn some special technique which sets this behaviour apart from 'normal' life (the inevitable self-immunising bit - "I tried what you said and it didn't work", "ah... That's because you didn't do it quite right, the 'right' way is written in my book..."
3.once all the things I've told you to stop thinking and doing are gone, you'll achieve the divine revelation you've been seeking.
It's a pretty tired pattern by now, did you miss the sixties?
Religious thought encompasses a huge range of human psychology from a need to tell stories to explain the world, through to ways of dealing with guilt and justice, and right down to simple social group dynamics. Pick up any book about the psychology of religion, even just Google it, you'll find it is considerably more complicated than you paint it.
Agreeing with this again, and trying to steer back towards the topic.
It seems this limitation you point us to can be overcome by anyone willing to embrace faith, whether of a theist or atheist flavor. This seems logical and reasonable to me. If a person requires an answer and answers are not available by any method other than faith, one does what one needs to do, as we all do.
And I also like your proposal as it seems to pull the rug out from under the repetitive patterns of the God debate. If theists and atheists are both using faith, which I agree they are, then there's really little to debate. As you suggest, each person of faith believes what they personally need to believe, and mutual respect of these choices seems wise. Mutual respect does not require us to agree with any political proposals which may arise out of beliefs other than our own.
So far so good, but...
What about the person who finds themselves unable or unwilling to use faith as a solution? On a philosophy forum at least, this seems a relevant issue.
If a person declines faith it seems they have little choice other than to face the absurdity (want an answer, but can't have one) you referred to earlier and try to figure out how to make the best use of that situation. I'm not knowledgeable about the philosophers you referenced (regarding absurdity) but it seems to me the situation is absurd only if one refuses to deal with it.
Please list for us all the religions which explicitly reject all dogma and doctrines, including anything they themselves may say. Thank you.
You appear to be so very eager to play the glorious role of The Great Debunker that it's distracting you from reading carefully. As example, note this...
Quoting Jake
This applies to my ideas as much as anybody else's. And so I wrote...
Quoting Jake
Point being, unlike the vast majority of religions, there's no need for anybody to believe anything I said. Readers can instead run the experiment suggested and come to their own conclusions. Or not, that's fine too.
Jake - attached the myth of Sisyphus for you. Worth the read.
http://www2.hawaii.edu/~freeman/courses/phil360/16.%20Myth%20of%20Sisyphus.pdf
Here's a quote from the beginning of the article to add to our conversation...
1) Yes, obviously, to the probability of suffering and the certainty of death.
2) No to "a fate which human reason cannot accept as reasonable."
3) I can't comment on what Enlightenment writers may have said or not said regarding "the absurdity" but I have plenty to say about it, way too much. :smile:
Or maybe the realization that such writers were not as rational as they imagined themselves to be?
My thesis is that the silence is not unreasonable, but rather an ever open (if unfamiliar) door waiting patiently to serve our longing for happiness. Though "happiness" is perhaps not the most precise word one could use.
If one sees that it is the medium of thought itself which is what obstructs the experience of unity that we seek, then silence becomes not unreasonable, but a welcoming oasis from division and conflict. Not a permanent solution (because we still need thought to survive) but just an oasis along the path of our journey.
I would argue that in both cases these are second hand sources of information. That doesn't automatically make them worthless, but perhaps reason would suggest that instead of focusing so much on what people say about reality, we turn our attention to the primary source, reality itself.
This can be done from either the theist or atheist perspective. As example, for the theist reality can be seen as "the book that God wrote" whereas holy books are merely "the books that men wrote". The process of shifting focus to the primary source, reality itself, should be even easier for the atheist. In either case, theist or atheist, it seems reasonable to suggest that we might consider aligning our psychology with the nature of reality, to the degree that is possible.
It appears that reality is overwhelmingly nothing, from the smallest to largest scales. Or perhaps relative nothing for the physics sticklers. Things, objects, existence form the tiniest fraction of reality, as best we currently can tell. More to the point, things depend entirely upon the nothing for their existence, for it is the nothing which defines the something. You know, it is the empty space around the Earth which defines the Earth as a "thing".
For the theist, we can see that this nothing pervades every something down to the very smallest of scales, much as God is claimed to do. In fact, it appears that science is having increasing difficulty finding the boundary between nothing and something, so it might not be unreasonable to state that every something is basically made of nothing.
Ok, you get the point, nothing is a really big deal.
If we were to use nature, reality itself, as our "holy book", our chosen authority, a guide whom we turn to for advice regarding how we can best live....
.... this would seem to suggest that the thought objects in our minds should be surrounded by, and infused with, a great deal of nothing, of silence.
Seen this way, philosophy can be seen as useful, but concerning itself with a very small fraction of reality. It would seem reasonable to suggest that even more effort might be invested in to the study of nothing, of silence, given that it forms the overwhelming majority of reality, our chosen authority for the purposes of this post.
So much noise about silence!! Yes, it's silly, contradictory, agreed. I don't claim otherwise, and am just attempting to honestly share my own somewhat absurd human condition.
There's a kind of logic to the madness though. It's typically the loudest humans who discover the need to study silence.
THOUGHT CONTENT: If we begin from the assumption that fundamental human problems arise from incorrect thought content, from bad ideas, then philosophy is a logical place to turn in the search for solutions.
THOUGHT ITSELF: If on the other hand we begin from the assumption that fundamental human problems arise from the nature of thought itself, from how it operates, then silence is a logical place to turn in the search for solutions.
What I see is that we typically assume without questioning that human problems arise from bad thought content, and so we dive immediately in to the logic dancing that folks such as ourselves love so much. And by accepting such an important premise without questioning reveal ourselves to not being so logical after all?