Re: Agnosticism
J J R (jrovira@juno.com)
Sat, 24 Oct 1998 17:35:38 -0400 (EDT)
<<...And if God sent me an e-mail or walked in the door and handed me
some
food, I'd believe in its existence, too. However, I think the idea of
"personal experience" is being used a little too freely here. People who
have the kind of personal experience with fiddledischnucks that you have
had with God would probably be put in an institution. It's only because
the existence of God is somewhat socially acceptable that people take it
as reality.
I'm just sort of playing the devil's advocate (pardon the multiplicity
of meaning) here because these are two extremes. The fact is, there is
no proof on either side, so the case must be thrown out. It should be OK
that we don't know all the answers. If we did, we'd no longer need God,
would we?
--Kari>>
Actually, I agree with your reasoning about 99%. We need to understand
that we're speaking of "proof" in a number of different senses, though.
First, there are logical proofs. These are the classical "proofs" of
God's existence, beginning with Aristotle's idea of a Prime Mover and
going on to (I think) Anslem's ontological argument for the existence of
God (which is actually an irrefutable proof when phrased properly but
tells us nothing about God beyond existence).
We haven't really discussed these.
Then there's "proof" in the sense of "personal experience." In other
words, if we all had the same or a similar experience we would come to
the same or a similar conclusion. In yet Other Words, you see the sense
behind me saying, "I believe my wife exists because I just saw her set a
plate down in front of me," because you'd believe my wife existed if she
had set a plate down in front of you.
It doesn't really matter that you didn't share my experience, just that
you accept my reasoning from my experience. For you to "know" my wife
existed, though, you'd have to either take me at my word or have the same
experience.
Personal Experience is a phrase I used with a lot of leeway, I admit. It
ranges from sensory data (seeing my physical wife set a physical plate in
front of me, hearing it go "clink" lightly on my desk, tasting and
smelling the food, and feeling the fork in my hand--in short, the
experience was validated by all my physical senses almost at once) to
something less empirical--the things people say they have experienced
when they say they have experienced God.
Now, you've experienced something very much like my wife setting a plate
down in front of me simply by having gone to a restaurant or being fed in
your own home by your mother or father or whoever did the cooking. In
other words, while you didn't share my experience, you have had
experiences similar to mine so my language about my experience makes
sense.
Now, the thing is, language about experiencing God isn't quite the same.
We don't all claim that experience. So, as Mr. Spock said to Bones after
dying and coming back, we can't even talk about it until you've shared
the experience. But like all language, the language of religion is the
language of metaphor, and religious language is chock full of metaphors
for experiencing God (as mentioned before, erotic or romantic love being
one of them).
NOW, getting to the POINT :), when you say there's no "proof" all you can
really mean is that you haven't shared the experience so my language
about it is meaningless to you. But you can't say there's no "proof." I
believe because I feel I have to in order to be intellectually honest. I
could lie about the existence of my wife, too, and be faced with a
certain form of Last Judgment the first time I ever acted on that lie :)
And to further reinforce the point, even empirical proof is only
available to those willing to accept it. The Gospel of Matthew records
that a voice from the sky said, "This is my Son..." immediately before
Jesus ascended into heaven. It then very honestly records that some
people heard a voice, while other people only heard thunder.
In other words, some people were open to the idea of a voice, while
others were closed to the idea a priori so were only able to hear
thunder. OR, some people were blithering idiots (that went on the change
the entire course of human history in spite of severe persecution) and
others knew thunder when they heard it.
Which conclusion you leap to is ENTIRELY dependent on your assumptions,
not on the data available.
So yes, here is where I agree with you--the data can always be
manipulated. You can always find a reason to believe or not to believe if
you try hard enough. In that sense there's no proof. There will never
be proof so watertight that someone Had to believe even if they really,
really didn't want to.
So, eh, did it really thunder? If you're willing to think, at least,
"maybe," then you may find out first hand if it did or not. If you
already think, "no way," then even seeing a miracle happen right in front
of you wouldn't convince you, because you'd refuse to see it.
But if that's the case, there's no use bitching about not seeing miracles
or having empirical proof ;)
Thank you Sean and Kari for the intelligent discussion. It's nice
responding to people who actually respond to what you said :)
Jim
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