RE: Theists: What is the most compelling argument you have heard for Atheism?
March 23, 2017 at 12:25 pm
(This post was last modified: March 23, 2017 at 12:25 pm by Neo-Scholastic.)
(March 23, 2017 at 11:27 am)Jörmungandr Wrote:(March 23, 2017 at 10:26 am)Neo-Scholastic Wrote: By justified I mean having satisfied any epistemic obligations regarding one's opinions. In other words, can one believe that people should be fair and act on that belief without being obligated to provide supporting evidence. Secondly, if someone has normal cognitive capacities and directs those faculties successfully towards attaining truth, can that person be called irrational?
Human instincts, such as the instinct for fairness, are fundamentally irrational if by rational you mean founded upon an objective logical basis. So yes, such a person can be called irrational, if you like. However I would say that this incorporates a misunderstanding of the foundational sense of what meaning is composed of in thinking of it as something which is objective in process or logical in make up. Nothing in our psychological make up is founded upon logic alone; all our impulses rest upon illogical emotional components. With that in mind, what is your overall point?
Not really driving at anything in particular. I'm just kind of trying to get a handle on what people consider reasonable with respect to the management and regulation of opinion. I'm getting the sense that skeptical AF members feel theists have in some way failed to fulfill an intellectual duty with respect to their opinions, as if everyone "should" require that "all" their opinions trace back to defined criteria, such as self-evident principles or incorrigible observations. I'm also concerned about the charges that theists are irrational for not accepting whatever validation criteria skeptics believe "should" always apply.
