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Originally Posted by roachboy
if i understand this correctly--and i'm not sure i do--the claim regarding the razor would still obtain--all that would change is that you could be surprised by it. not meaning to be snippy with this, but---what else could it possibly be BUT an aesthetic commitment?
unless you imagine that there is some correspondence between it and phenomena in the world---but i'd argue that is also an aesthetic commitment.
uh...ok.
i'm not the one to help you with this, however.
that makes no sense.
you mean belief is like--say--having a nose?
all it seems like your saying really is that faith and proof are different from each other--which is entirely unobjectionable--and that faith can precede and condition the results generated by any given proof--in the way any axiom can--so....
all this is in pascal.
he was a smart guy--you might enjoy the pensées.
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Belief is an atriibute, because you either have it or not. Just like a nose.
I've come to this realisation by talking to many people with faith. They almost always say that they cannot explain how they know that there's a god, but that they just FEEL it (or similar expressions).
One of the things that always puzzles me is how almost all of the people who KNOW Jesus died for their sins were born to Christian parents, whilst all the ones that KNOW that Mohamed is the true Prophet were born to Islamic families.
My atheism is my rational response to the thoughts I have had about the world around me - I was raised in a Christian way, and attended several churches until I was about 18, but then stopped going - so in a way, I'm a Christian Atheist.
My confusion about "TRUTH" is that all the religions in the world are mutually exclusive. They all seem to be human constructs; even if you accept that the people who wrote the various holy books were sincere and were documenting their own heartfelt belief that they HAD spoken to God, the way that these faiths have been practiced in the intervening times has been affected by non-divine influences.
I guess that the thing I mis-trust is that if in historic times various prophets claim to have had messages from god delivered into their hands, why is it that the messages are so confused now, and that God has not sent any prophets for centuries?
Unless the Mormons are right, and they had one?
If there is a God, why are the messages so confused?
Also, as an asside - long ago, the scriptures or many religions tell us that Gd (or some divine entities) caused miracles on earth - there's different stories, but we've got powerful examples of massive wrld changing miracles in Judaism, Christianity, Islam, Hinduism, etc. etc.
So how come now the best that Jesus can do is appear on a tortilla chip, or the best that Vishnu can do is manifest as a deformed baby by the Ganges that lives for 10 days?
I supose that before I can acquire faith, I need to know which faith is right, and why the wrong ones have been allowed to carry on by an omnipotent, omniscient, loving creator. If this is what God is, why not just reveal the truth to everyone at the same time in an unambiguous way?
EDIT
Oh - and I left a bit out. Looking back I see that you called Occam's Razor aetheitic - I mis-read that as atheistic, and answered accordingly. You are quite right, William of Ockham was writing about aesthetics in the litteral sense.