Tilted Forum Project Discussion Community - View Single Post - Richard Dawkins is an atheist. Hardcore atheist.

roachboy · 02-11-2007, 04:35 PM

km: i was actually addressing the charge that theists are "less rational" than richard dawkins.
to do that, i reduced "rational" to the ability to follow certain procedures. both a theist and non-theist (whatever) could be able to follow these rules/procedures, and in that rational can be understood as a way of describing the ability to follow procedures, one party could not claim that the other was any more or less "rational"---so if you were going to run a proof with two parties, one of whom included a god term at the level of axoims and one of whom did not--both could follow the rules correctly, so in each respective proof the process would be "rational"--but obviously the results would vary, and pretty widely, because of different assumptions built into the axioms.

it is hard to have debates about axioms. you certainly can't do it from inside of demonstrations that are informed by them. (this is what i saw filtherton and will getting tangled up in, which is the other reason i posted in the way i did)
you have to make them into objects for demonstration.
typically, the best christian types can do on this is end up with circular arguments like the "ontological proof" in aquinas--which is "that god is is a tautology." because god contains the categories, and being is a category so qed.
it's not that i think the axiom sets are equivalent--i do not believe that god refers to anything, it doesn't name anything outside itself, it more creates a space that people fill up with projections---but i dont imagine that i'd have much luck convincing a believer that this was the case--and frankly the project wouldn't interest me. i also couldnt demonstrate that god absolutely did not exist. same problem. what i can say is that on christianity's own grounds, no=one can know either way.

personally, i have no problem with not knowing.

i also have no problem with not caring about the matter one way or another.
all the assumption means is that if i were to talk about some phenomenon in the world, i wouldn't use this empty category "god" to explain anything, and if i ran into a counter-argument that did, i would go after it on the grounds
that it (the name "god") doesn't and cannot explain anything.

but i wouldn't go out of my way to find such a counter-argument.

because i really dont care about it.

02-11-2007, 04:35 PM	#80 (permalink)
roachboy Super Moderator Location: essex ma	km: i was actually addressing the charge that theists are "less rational" than richard dawkins. to do that, i reduced "rational" to the ability to follow certain procedures. both a theist and non-theist (whatever) could be able to follow these rules/procedures, and in that rational can be understood as a way of describing the ability to follow procedures, one party could not claim that the other was any more or less "rational"---so if you were going to run a proof with two parties, one of whom included a god term at the level of axoims and one of whom did not--both could follow the rules correctly, so in each respective proof the process would be "rational"--but obviously the results would vary, and pretty widely, because of different assumptions built into the axioms. it is hard to have debates about axioms. you certainly can't do it from inside of demonstrations that are informed by them. (this is what i saw filtherton and will getting tangled up in, which is the other reason i posted in the way i did) you have to make them into objects for demonstration. typically, the best christian types can do on this is end up with circular arguments like the "ontological proof" in aquinas--which is "that god is is a tautology." because god contains the categories, and being is a category so qed. it's not that i think the axiom sets are equivalent--i do not believe that god refers to anything, it doesn't name anything outside itself, it more creates a space that people fill up with projections---but i dont imagine that i'd have much luck convincing a believer that this was the case--and frankly the project wouldn't interest me. i also couldnt demonstrate that god absolutely did not exist. same problem. what i can say is that on christianity's own grounds, no=one can know either way. personally, i have no problem with not knowing. i also have no problem with not caring about the matter one way or another. all the assumption means is that if i were to talk about some phenomenon in the world, i wouldn't use this empty category "god" to explain anything, and if i ran into a counter-argument that did, i would go after it on the grounds that it (the name "god") doesn't and cannot explain anything. but i wouldn't go out of my way to find such a counter-argument. because i really dont care about it. __________________ a gramophone its corrugated trumpet silver handle spinning dog. such faithfulness it hear it make you sick. -kamau brathwaite Last edited by roachboy; 02-11-2007 at 04:39 PM..