law said:
Life: Torch goes on
Death: Torch goes out
WOW... that's believable - when you're on your death bed, your views will soon change. Happens all the time.
But do their views change because there exist moments of hyper-rationality amongst the general cognitive decline, or as an emotional shield against the existential anxiety brought on by the inevitability of death/nothingness?
law said:
Do atheists have no faith? I mean, atheists cannot disprove God's existence, therefore atheism is based on the FAITH that God doesn't exist.
Anyway, if atheism is more of a "doubting God" then it would be the same as agnosticism.
Ok, I can understand that atheists are adamant about there being no God but agnosticism is something I fail to properly understand.
I mean, everyone doubts things from time to time, even Jesus during his time but I believe each human should move on from this doubt. Isn't having a life all about moving on and progressing?
I'm reading "Life of Pi" at the moment and I came across this line:
"To chose doubt as a philosophy is akin to choosing immobility as a means of transportation."
The whole idea doesn't really make sense to me...
You misappropriate the Life of Pi quote. The kind of doubt practiced there is more akin to the
Pyrrhonian Skepticism described by Sextus Empiricus which involves suspending belief with regards to everything. Atheists don't practice a philosophy of doubt any more than most theists who similarly deny the existence of a great number of culturally prominent entities, e.g. Zeus, the Sphinx and Valkyries . It's not about doubting for doubt's sake, it's about sound intellectual practice, burden of proof and deference to the best available explanation (aided along the way by Ockham's Razor). Do you think it is reasonable to believe in Valkyries right off the bat, in the absence of evidence? I certainly don't. I merely extend this same reasoning to the judeo-christian god and many other entities. Formally I am an agnostic because I am similarly yet to see a knock down argument against god (though I lean on the side of atheists in terms of the broad balance of evidence).
Once more, agnosticism is not about 'doubt', it is about intellectual honesty and following the evidence. If researchers didn't use an appropriate level of agnosticism (in non-god domains) we would suffer from the innappropriate use of drugs and all other sorts of technology, e.g. suppose a drug trial is being conducted and it is unclear whether the drug in question is beneficial or harmful. Is it really appropriate for the researchers to say "I'm going to cast away this life of doubt!" and subsequently claim that the drug is beneficial (or, alternatively, that it is harmful) without evidence either way? No, it is throroughly inappropriate because if they are wrong they will harm people, either by giving them something harmful or by omitting something beneficial. Etc... Etc... The agnostic position is intellectually
healthy when used in the right situations.
