RE: Is Unbelief Possible?
March 22, 2014 at 12:43 pm
(This post was last modified: March 22, 2014 at 12:44 pm by Hezekiah.)
(March 22, 2014 at 2:05 am)Esquilax Wrote:(March 21, 2014 at 9:04 pm)Hezekiah Wrote: Yea, as illogical as that sounds, I suppose that is close to the route I'm trying to present an argument for. Maybe I should phrase it better this way: If I know something to be true through evidence provided (no matter what it is) that evidence still needs to be understood through my own mind. But how can I trust my own mind when it is faulty, and full of errors? I have to "believe" or "trust" in my own logically ability to think, in order to come to any conclusions, despite knowing that logic makes mistakes.
Is that better worded?
Man, I always shudder a little when I hear arguments like this one, because it's just a stone's throw away from presuppositionalism, which is the most profoundly dishonest position I've ever encountered. In your case though, I think you're just missing an important factor.
We don't trust our brains, or at least, we are wise not to. An honest person always leaves open the possibility of being wrong, or of new evidence altering what we think we know right now. That willingness to change removes any need to merely believe whatever your mind intuitively tells you is correct, and places your trust solely on the evidence.
Hell, whenever you see an atheist bring a theist to task for a logical fallacy, that's what you're seeing; you're seeing someone directing the theist to look at the evidence, and not just what their brain deems seemingly true. There are whole segments of the scientific method devoted to stripping away the biases and lazy shortcuts of the brain, after all.
We may never have a solution to the problem of hard solipsism, but so long as we actively attempt to defy our cognitive biases, we can hardly be considered to be laying belief in our brains, can we?
That's a great response. Thank you! And I agree we do account for human error in many ways (for instance, putting down our pride in the face of evidence). By doing this I try to maintain a path towards truth. And since I also personally believe that Ultimate Truth exists but is unobtainable, when acknowledging human error I take into account that I could always be wrong. This is the only path towards Truth that I can "believe" and engage in.