This resonated. On the intellectual level I tend towards agnosticism. Rather I find the ritual and belief provide meaning shades of Viktor Frankl. Your email address will not be published. Notify me of new posts by email. Pick up the manna, it will see you through. Add a Comment Cancel Your email address will not be published.
Like what you're reading? Sign up here for updates and blogposts from Sinai and Synapses, and discover new tools and new language that are scientifically grounded and spiritually uplifting! Many, many people who believe in the existence of a god do so on faith, and this faith is contrasted with the types of knowledge we normally acquire about the world around us. Indeed, believing in their god because of faith is treated as a virtue , something which we should be willing to do instead of insisting on rational arguments and empirical evidence.
Because this faith is contrasted with knowledge, and in particular the sort of knowledge we develop through reason, logic, and evidence, then this sort of theism cannot be said to be based upon knowledge.
People believe, but through faith , not knowledge. If they really do mean that they have faith and not knowledge, then their theism must be described as a type of agnostic theism. This is a much more philosophical form of agnostic theism than that described here - it is also probably a bit more uncommon, at least in the West today. This sort of full-blown agnostic theism, where belief in the very existence of a god is independent of any claimed knowledge, must be distinguished from other forms of theism where agnosticism may play a small role.
It is not, however, an example of agnostic theism. Actively scan device characteristics for identification. Use precise geolocation data. Select personalised content. Create a personalised content profile. Measure ad performance. Select basic ads. Create a personalised ads profile.
Select personalised ads. Source idealists believe that the mental world existed before the physical world and caused the physical world to come into existence. This view is consistent with both ontological idealism and ontological dualism, and also with physical entities having both physical and mental effects.
It entails, however, that all physical entities are, ultimately, causally dependent on one or more mental entities, and so is not consistent with ontological physicalism.
The symmetry of source physicalism and source idealism is a good pro tanto reason to believe they are equally probable intrinsically. They are equally specific, they have the same ontological commitments, neither can be formulated more elegantly than the other, and each appears to be equally coherent and equally intelligible.
For example, it adds the claim that a single mind created the physical universe and that this mind is not just powerful but specifically omnipotent and not just knowledgeable but specifically omniscient. In addition, it presupposes a number of controversial metaphysical and meta-ethical claims by asserting in addition that this being is both eternal and objectively morally perfect. If any of these specific claims and presuppositions is false, then omni-theism is false. Thus, omni-theism is a very specific and thus intrinsically very risky form of source idealism, and thus is many times less probable intrinsically than source idealism.
Therefore, if, as argued above, source physicalism and source idealism are equally probable intrinsically, then it follows that premise 2 is true: source physicalism is many times more probable intrinsically than omni-theism. Notice that the general strategy of the particular version of the low priors argument discussed above is to find an alternative to omni-theism that is much less specific than omni-theism and partly for that reason much more probable intrinsically , while at the same time having enough content of the right sort to fit the totality of the relevant data at least as well as theism does.
In other words, the goal is to find a runner like source physicalism that begins the race with a large head start and thus wins by a large margin because it runs the race for supporting evidence and thus for probability at roughly the same speed as omni-theism does. An alternative strategy is to find a runner that begins the race tied with omni-theism, but runs the race for evidential support much faster than omni-theism does, thus once again winning the race by a margin that is sufficiently large for the rest of the argument to go through.
The choice of alternative hypothesis is crucial here just as it was in the low priors argument. Another would be a more detailed version of source physicalism that, unlike source physicalism in general, makes the relevant data antecedently much more probable than theism does.
Thus, it may be stipulated that, like omni-theism, aesthetic deism implies that an eternal, non-physical, omnipotent, and omniscient being created the physical world.
The only difference, then, between the God of omni-theism and the deity of aesthetic deism is what motivates them. An omni-theistic God would be morally perfect and so strongly motivated by considerations of the well-being of sentient creatures.
An aesthetic deistic God, on the other hand, would prioritize aesthetic goods over moral ones. While such a being would want a beautiful universe, perhaps the best metaphor here is not that of a cosmic artist, but instead that of a cosmic playwright: an author of nature who wants above all to write an interesting story.
Further, containing such a line is hardly necessary for a story to be good. After all, what makes a good story good is often some intense struggle between good and evil, and all good stories contain some mixture of benefit and harm. This suggests that the observed mixture of good and evil in our world decisively favors aesthetic deism over omni-theism.
This makes no difference as far as the inference from step 4 to step 5 is concerned. That inference, like the inferences from steps 1 — 3 to step 4 and from step 5 to step 6 , is clearly correct. The key question, then, is whether premises 1 , 2 , and 3 are all true. In spite of the nearly complete overlap between omni-theism and aesthetic deism, Richard Swinburne 96— would challenge premise 1 on the grounds that aesthetic deism, unlike omni-theism, must posit a bad desire to account for why the deity does not do what is morally best.
Omni-theism need not do this, according to Swinburne, because what is morally best just is what is overall best, and thus an omniscient being will of necessity do what is morally best so long as it has no desires other than the desires it has simply by virtue of knowing what the best thing to do is in any given situation.
This challenge depends, however, on a highly questionable motivational intellectualism: it succeeds only if merely believing that an action is good entails a desire to do it.
On most theories of motivation, there is a logical gap between the intellect and desire. If such a gap exists, then it would seem that omni-theism is no more probable intrinsically than aesthetic deism.
For example, a deity interested in good narrative would want a world that is complex and yet ordered, that contains beauty, consciousness, intelligence, and moral agency.
Perhaps there is more reason to expect the existence of libertarian free will on omni-theism than on aesthetic deism; but unless one starts from the truth of omni-theism, there seems to be little reason to believe that we have such freedom. For example, if open theists are right that not even an omniscient being can know with certainty what libertarian free choices will be made in the future, then aesthetic deism could account for libertarian free will and other sorts of indeterminacy by claiming that a story with genuine surprises is better than one that is completely predictable.
Alternatively, what might be important for the story is only that the characters think they have free will, not that they really have it. Finally, there is premise 3 , which asserts that the data of good and evil decisively favors aesthetic deism over theism.
A full discussion of this premise is not possible here, but recognition of its plausibility appears to be as old as the problem of evil itself. Consider, for example, the Book of Job, whose protagonist, a righteous man who suffers horrifically, accuses God of lacking sufficient commitment to the moral value of justice. Instead, speaking out of the whirlwind, He describes His design of the cosmos and of the animal kingdom in a way clearly intended to emphasize His power and the grandeur of His creation.
On this interpretation, the creator that confronts Job is not the God he expected and definitely not the God of omni-theism, but rather a being much more like the deity of aesthetic deism. Those who claim that a God might allow evil because it is the inevitable result of the universe being governed by laws of nature also lend support, though unintentionally, to the idea that, if there is an author of nature, then that being is more likely motivated by aesthetic concerns than moral ones.
For example, it may be that producing a universe governed by a few laws expressible as elegant mathematical equations is an impressive accomplishment, not just because of the wisdom and power required for such a task, but also because of the aesthetic value of such a universe. Much of the aesthetic value of the animal kingdom may also depend on its being the result of a long evolutionary process driven by mechanisms like natural selection.
There is grandeur in this view of life, with its several powers, having been originally breathed into a few forms or into one; and that, whilst this planet has gone cycling on according to the fixed law of gravity, from so simple a beginning endless forms most beautiful and wonderful have been, and are being evolved. Unfortunately, such a process, if it is to produce sentient life, may also entail much suffering and countless early deaths.
It is arguably far more plausible that in such a scenario the value of preventing horrendous suffering would, from a moral point of view, far outweigh the value of regularity, sublimity, and narrative. If so, then a morally perfect God would not trade the former for the latter though a deity motivated primarily by aesthetic reasons no doubt would. To summarize, nearly everyone agrees that the world contains both goods and evils. Pleasure and pain, love and hate, achievement and failure, flourishing and languishing, and virtue and vice all exist in great abundance.
In spite of that, some see signs of cosmic teleology. Those who defend the version of the decisive evidence argument stated above need not deny the teleology. Mulgan and Murphy and in particular when it is interpreted as directed towards aesthetic ends instead of towards moral ends. In this section, an argument for the falsity of a more ambitious form of agnosticism will be examined.
Because the sort of agnosticism addressed in this section is more ambitious than the sort defended by Le Poidevin, it is conceivable that both arguments succeed in establishing their conclusions. This form of agnosticism is more ambitious because knowledge is stronger in the logical sense than rational permissibility: it can be rationally permissible to believe propositions that are not known to be true, but a proposition cannot be known to be true by someone who is not rationally permitted to believe it.
Another difference concerns the object of the two forms of agnosticism. In this section, the target is omni-theism versus the local atheistic position that omni-theism is false.
The previous section focused on two arguments for the conclusion that this form of local atheism is very probably true. In this section, the question is whether or not that conclusion, if established, could ground a successful argument against strong agnosticism. This leaves premise 2 , the premise that, if atheism is very probably true, then atheistic belief is rationally permissible. One might attempt to defend this premise by claiming that the probabilities in premise 2 are rational credences and hence the truth of the so-called Lockean thesis Foley justifies 2 :.
The Lockean thesis, however, is itself in need of justification. Fortunately, though, nothing so strong as the Lockean thesis is needed to defend premise 2. Also, the defender of 2 need not equate, as the Lockean thesis does, the attitude of belief with having a high credence. Even this more modest thesis, however, is controversial, because adopting it commits one to the position that rational i.
In other words, it commits one to the position that it is possible for each of a number of beliefs to be rational even though the additional belief that those beliefs are all true is not rational. To see why this is so, imagine that a million lottery tickets have been sold. Each player purchased only a single ticket, and exactly one of the players is certain to win. Now imagine further that an informed observer has a distinct belief about each of the million individual players that that particular player will lose.
According to thesis T , each of those million beliefs is rational. Since, however, it is certain that someone will win, it is also rational for the observer to believe that some player will win. It is not rational, however, to have contradictory beliefs, so it is not rational for the observer to believe that no player will win. This implies, however, that rational belief is not closed under conjunction, for the proposition that no player will win just is the conjunction of all of the propositions that say of some individual player that they will lose.
Defenders of premise 2 will claim, very plausibly, that the implication of T that rational belief is not closed under conjunction is completely innocuous.
Others e. They contributed in a variety of ways to making this entry much better than it would otherwise have been. The author is also grateful to Jeanine Diller and Jeffrey Lowder for helpful comments on a preliminary draft of this entry. Atheism and Agnosticism First published Wed Aug 2, Global Atheism Versus Local Atheisms 4. An Argument for Agnosticism 5.
An Argument for Global Atheism? Two Arguments for Local Atheism 6. Such an atheist might be sympathetic to the following sentiments: It is an insult to God to believe in God.
Strawson By contrast, anti-God atheists like Thomas Nagel — find the whole idea of a God offensive and hence not only believe but also hope very much that no such being exists.
Consider, for example, this passage written by the agnostic, Anthony Kenny 84—85 : I do not myself know of any argument for the existence of God which I find convincing; in all of them I think I can find flaws.
Global Atheism Versus Local Atheisms Jeanine Diller points out that, just as most theists have a particular concept of God in mind when they assert that God exists, most atheists have a particular concept of God in mind when they assert that God does not exist. It follows from 1 and 2 that 3 There is no firm basis upon which to judge that theism or atheism is more probable than the other. It follows from 3 that 4 Agnosticism is true: neither theism nor atheism is known to be true.
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