RE: Agnostic: a pointless term?
January 26, 2015 at 11:49 pm
(This post was last modified: January 26, 2015 at 11:51 pm by Dystopia.)
Quote:I'm not so sure of that. Before human flight, lift wasn't defined, yet the birds made use of it daily.This is not a very good analogy - When we talk about the god hypothesis, we see that there are billions of people around the world during a period of thousands of years that claim deities exist - Yet there is not one precise definition of what a deity is supposed to be; it varies according to each religion, each theological position, each personal individual belief - Let's pick the example of Christians - Some of them may have a different concept of how god works or how god behaves or acts. My point is that if the god concept isn't even defined, I could as well dismiss it from the beginning under the form of a knowledge claim by saying something that is not defined cannot exist.
I sometimes cannot define my own emotions, yet I know that they are present.
Your emotions may be hard to define, but since you can feel them and it's possible to scientifically measure, account, quantify and verify emotions - You know they exist, regardless of your ability to sometimes determine with reasonable certainty what precise emotions you are feeling. [It's not possible to physically get a sample of emotions, don't get me wrong, but it is possible to observe body reactions and psychological responses humans have - For example, when you start shaking in front of eminent danger, that's an emotion - Fear; and it's verifiable trough observation of your individual behaviour]
Whoever fights monsters should see to it that in the process he does not become a monster. And if you gaze long enough into an abyss, the abyss will gaze back into you