Posted on 10/06/2003 6:00:49 AM PDT by OESY
Edited on 04/22/2004 11:50:03 PM PDT by Jim Robinson. [history]
"We have always had atheists among us," the philosopher Edmund Burke wrote in his "Reflections on the Revolution in France," "but now they have grown turbulent and seditious." It seems that in our own day some prominent atheists are agitating for greater political and social influence. In this connection, leading atheist thinkers have been writing articles declaring that they should no longer be called "atheists." Rather, they want to be called "brights."
(Excerpt) Read more at online.wsj.com ...
Good point. The question is, though: is there any way we humans can avoid having to rely on making definitions at some level?
I think the answer is probably "no." For example, if we conside Physics in conjunction with Godel's Incompleteness Theorem, then we are left with something similar to what Kant said, and we're left to rely on definitions.
(BTW, according to the link, Godel's theorem seems to be an example of a negative proof...)
For a science book, I think that is prudent, but it is bit odd that he included the "big bang," which it is doubtful he experienced, I mean, in the cosmological sense.
Hank
Fair enough. I know you are correct that the "brights" stuff is a nothing but a 'packaging" ploy that will only appeal to the egotist cult among the athiest side.
But to me, atheism is itself a belief that requires no less a leap of faith than believing in God. It's what we believe, not what we can prove. You look at the "evidence" and say the case is not proven so it must not be true. I look at the same evidence and say that the more we learn, the more intricate the next puzzel is and there must be some higher power to have created all of this elegent complexity.
Really? I don't see how it's possible to prove the nonexistence of God, especially the Deist version who kicks off the universe and then doesn't interfere.
I'm actually agnostic; I think it's possible that God exists, possible that he doesn't, and don't believe either can be proved.
I do not think religion is a bad thing unless it is used as justification to hurt other (suicide bombings, murder, etc.).
Agreed.
Its been a long time since I got out of university, and never read Kant while I was there, and am sorry that I hadn't read him earlier (although I'm not sure I would have understood what Kant was trying to say -- at this point I will only claim to have an inkling, but for me it has opened up a whole world of ideas).
At the serious risk of oversimplification, Kant just states that there are those things which we can know, the phenomena, and things we cannot know and can never know, the noumena, although he also says that we as humans will never give up trying to know these things, and that is perhaps the most marked characteristic of the human race...
A word of caution though -- Kant is a sharp sword which cuts ALL dogma, the socialist/atheist dogma, the Islamic and Christian religious dogma, and the rationalist/scientific dogma as well...!
Heisenberg's uncertainty principle would be another example of a "negative proof" - the better you know the position of an object, the less you know its momentum, until at the ultimate point you know all about one and nothing about the other.
Hank Kerchief has pointed out that the way get a believer to understand disbelief is through appropriate use of definitions. My reply was that if the definition is nebulous enough, ala Deists' ideas about God, the definitional approach might not work.
To prove a negative actually means someting different. It is possible to prove that something does not have this or that attribute, (e.g. a number system does not have completelness, for example) but not possible to prove something does not exist. Personally, I am not convinced this is true. Take jimt's example: If I postulate the existence of gnorixes, for example, who control the rate of corrosion on pennies, can you prove they don't exist?
They can, in fact, be pretty easily disproved, because the nature of the corrosion of pennies is well understood, and we know exactly how that rate is determined. Occam's razor precludes another redundant cause for the same thing, however wonderully imagined it is.
This was my point about definitions. Most of the things that one supposedly cannot disprove are only difficult to disprove because what they are supposed to be is left vague. As soon as a postulated existent is actually defined, it is usually fairly easy to determine if it assumed attributes are possible.
I am surprised by those who argue against God that this argument is never made. In every day life, the theists attribute everything from the country's economy to the health of their dog to the action of God. Most of these things, however, already have complete explanations, just as the corrosion of pennies do. Attributing an additional cause, like the action of God, to events the cause of which is already fully understood is a violation of Occam's Razor.
The cause of the house burning down cannot be both the act of the arsonist and the act of God, unless God is the arsonist, of course.
Hank
I don't think this is really what it means to say one cannot prove a negative, which almost always pertains to an existent. The fact that one cannot determine the exact position of something depends on it actually existing.
Hank
Yes, you said: " It seems, though, that your argument is vulnerable to a nebulous definition - for instance, that God created the universe. The Deists believed that God's "testament" was in His works, which we see all around us."
That is my very point. The Deists do not define God, they simply use the word and it amounts to nothing more than "whatever came before everything else." As soon as someone attempts to assign actual attributes to it, it becomes testable and probably disproveable. In the mean time, to believe in something on the basis of a "word" without definition is identical to my Morkano, which exists and no one can prove it doesn't, because it has no definition.
Absurd? Just because I used the spelling Morkano instead of God?
Hank
As one who belives in an afterlife, I'm willing to wait a bit longer than tomorrow for the answer. ;~))
Just so we're clear, you're claiming that proofs of negative statements do not exist. You'll need to prove that statement before I believe it -- a rather pretty paradox, no?
But at a deeper level, please note that you've completely excluded the use of attributes in the realm of negative proofs -- which is both artificial, and absurd. It's difficult to see how one can prove that "something" doesn't exist without having access to the attributes that make it "something."
I think what you're really doing, BTW, is butting up against the limits of axiomatic thinking, and masking the problem by arguing about attributes.
They can, in fact, be pretty easily disproved, because the nature of the corrosion of pennies is well understood, and we know exactly how that rate is determined. Occam's razor precludes another redundant cause for the same thing, however wonderully imagined it is.
However, Occam's razor is nothing but an assumption that the simplest explanation is the correct explanation -- and also that we have a full understanding of what the "simplest" explanation really is. That's not necessarily true, however -- I think all of us have seen cases where the "simplest" explanation is incorrect, for any number of reasons.
If I postulate the existence of gnorixes, for example, who control the rate of corrosion on pennies, can you prove they don't exist? Particularly if I'm fast enough with the soft shoe routine to add any facts you may deduce about penny corrosion to the gnorixes catalog of behavior?
While Occam's razor points us in the right direction, I think proving gnorixes don't exist could be a lifetime effort with no guarantee of success.
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