RE: Theists- do you believe without evidence?
April 27, 2013 at 9:17 pm
(This post was last modified: April 27, 2013 at 9:23 pm by Neo-Scholastic.)
(April 27, 2013 at 7:09 pm)Ryantology Wrote: ...you have chosen a worldview which satisfies what you wish to be true and which avoids accepting things you wish were not true....The substance of my post includes you. You, Ryan, have made an equally irrational choice. Certain axioms are logically necessary for rational thinking. That does not mean the axioms we presuppose match what actually is. It could be that said axioms only maintain our false belief that we are rational.
For example, the ability to reason effectively depends on an inherently ordered reality. So belief in an ordered reality is logically necessary. Yet reality may actually be completely chaotic. In that case our reason is just a useless fantasy, hence absurdity.
Likewise, belief in libertarian free will is logically necessary for rational thought. But it could be otherwise. Yet perhaps you cannot actually alter the course of your thinking or subsequent behaviour. That makes you a puppet of forces beyond your control, hence fatalism.
And these are only two examples.
(April 27, 2013 at 7:09 pm)Ryantology Wrote: You are terrified of oblivion, so you gravitate towards a system which promises to help you avoid it.You know nothing about what I fear. I gravitate to an intellectually consistent position that presupposes the ability to acquire knowledge, take responsibility for my own actions, make meaningful moral judgments, and provide justification for semiotic relationships between thought and reality.
(April 27, 2013 at 7:09 pm)Ryantology Wrote: I accept the world as it is, not how I wish it was.Is that so? You are deluded if you believe you know the world as it actually is? As a philosophical position, atheism undermines any notion you might have that your view of reality is logically coherent.