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Reprint: So, this is a group for crazy people?
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In this post, Dan Norcott writes:
"Can you genuinely not see the difference in these two statements:
1) I do not believe in god
2) I believe there is no god"
I certainly can, and I do believe in G-d. I would, however, use the word "agnostic" to describe a position that affirmed statement one without affirming statement two. In that case, one simply lacks an opinion.
Of course, I'm a Jew, not a Christian. Judaism has not seen a tradition of evangelism since a brief era, during Roman times. From my point of view, evangelism seems presumptuous. If G-d exists, and He wishes that you should believe, he can certainly give you the experiences you need to be reasonably well convinced. If He does not wish to do so, who am I to second guess His choices? If, on other hand, He does not exist, and I should push you into a belief that you would not have found on your own, then in a mechanical universe, devoid of concern for us, I will have pushed you into belief in a fairy tale. Surely not a good thing.
I will be evangelistic in matters of Ethics, because one can see the impact of an unethical life on those around one, and no leap of faith is needed, beyond the one we all make when we assume that the sun will rise tomorrow - the faith that the world is fundamentally comprehensible. But as long as you lead a decent life, and a rational one, not denying that which we can know through observation, I don't really tend to care what you believe, and am amazed than anybody would.
Basic principle: Where there is no volition, there can be no imperative. Ethics is a matter of selecting among the choices we can make; notice that nobody speaks of an ethical command that one be devoid of infectious disease, even though such disease hurts those around one. Honest belief is not a matter of choice, it simply is what it is, so long as one has pursued the truth with due diligence, and thus an honest faith or an honest lack of faith can be neither moral nor immoral. Nor can it harm those around one, if G-d, Himself, is at all moral, because the harsh judgement some would say that He would inflict on those lacking faith would, itself, run into the very objection just raised.
G-d, being without vice, will not do that which is wrong, if He exists. If He does not, then the evangelist is left without a problem to address through his intended actions. I would have to view any scriptural quotation to the contrary as being, at most, an argument for ejecting documents from the canon. My faith in G-d's goodness takes priority over my faith in the people who decided what was and what was not scripture.
G-d is presumably infallible. Human beings are not, not even highly respected ones.
In this response, Chaplain_Murph says
"Dan,
You are proving my point exactly. Semantics, you are playing word games, to prove your point. Do you believe in God Yes or No? Are things True or are they False? Yes we as humans have to make decisions and yes we have to gather information before we make that decision but come on are you so wishy washy that there are NO absolutes in the world."
No, he is drawing a philosophical distinction which you are refusing to get, bringing us to a popular absurdity - a belief that piety demands cluelessness, that a proper respect for He who we worship demands anti-intellectualism. What would a hatred of the intellect imply about one's views of a being whose intellect is assumed to be infinite? Do you see the contradiction in that, a stance that must be followed in one's thoughts by a hasty disclaimer that "this does not include you, Lord, of course"?
There is a difference between affirming the negation of a given statement and denying to affirm that same given statement. A failure to accept this will lead one to the absurd conclusion that Occam's razor can be used to generate information about the real world, ex nihilo. Consider, for example, the question of whether or not the habitable world (other than Earth) closest to Epsilon Eridani resembles the fictional Vulcan. Occam's razor applied directly to that statement leads one to the common sense conclusion that one should not assume any such thing, as unlikely as it is. However ...
In principle, the number of possible configurations for a planet of anything resembling one earth mass is finite. Using Occam's, one could then strike down every alternative configuration, until the one that did look like Vulcan, or anything else one wished, was the only one remaining; ie. that reality would redesign itself in response to nothing more than the order in which we chose to put the steps of an argument. This is obviously absurd.
The distinction Mr. Norcott draws is neither hair splitting nor semantic. Without it, common sense breaks down in a heartbeat.
Posted at 8:27AM, 29 May 2011 PDT
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