Philosophy Discussion Forums

Great post Belindi.
Eduk, I agree that the difference between the actions of an Atheist and a Agnostic are pretty much non existent. I think we also need to take into account what the agnostics perception of god maybe in order to understand their motivation to act in a particular fashion.
For example if the Agnostic was unsure of the biblical god he may subscribe to pascals philosophy, meaning the possibility of hell may still deter certain behaviours, however if they were agnostic of a diety I suspect the only difference we would see would be the expression of views in discussions such as this.

Felix - how is the absence of belief in something intellectual arrogance?
Would one be intellectually arrogant for not believing in all gods or just one in particular?

Felix wrote: ↑June 7th, 2018, 2:13 pm In those scenarios where intellectual arrogance is counterproductive, the agnostic has the advantage.

All believe is childish and counter-intellectual. Believe is the height of arrogance.

Belinda, I don't think we can assume that nature - Spinoza's god - is lacking in mentality. It might be, but an entity much smaller than us would not perceive us to be conscious either, or even necessarily alive. When captive within a system, there are aspects of containing systems that can't be probed.

I think much of the confusion relates to the Maslow's hammer concept, to quote: "I suppose it is tempting, if the only tool you have is a hammer, to treat everything as if it were a nail". Pareidolia is an example, where we can see faces and eyes in almost everything. So the dynamics of entities that are ostensibly without mentality, or have a completely different kind of flexible complexity, are reflexively attributed with humanlike minds and personalities by many. As with everything, how strong the projection tendency is will vary, the variations probably mappable as a Bell curve, and may well correlate with belief.

Brain dynamics and subtle interactions with environment can thus be interpreted as "speaking with God", and maybe in a sense that is what those interactions are? Or maybe not? (After all, I'm an agnostic :).

Sometimes I have the impression that theists and atheists alike are perceiving more similarly than they realise and simply describing their perceptions differently. To a fair extent I find a disconnect with theist and atheist language. Theists usually tend towards metonymy and other poetic devices, rhetoric and regularly use the terminology and language of ancient mythology. By contrast, atheists tend to use modern technical and scientific language.

The difference is so marked on forums that this use of language, with a few exceptions, might be considered a signifier of group membership - like accents or in-group jargon and slang.

Felix - how is the absence of belief in something intellectual arrogance?

Agnostics have an absence of belief, they neither believe or disbelieve, whereas atheists believe that God or some higher power does not and/or cannot exist. Belief or disbelief in something simply because it does not accord with one's personal experience and intellectual conceptions is a form of arrogance.

Felix wrote: ↑June 7th, 2018, 11:44 pm

Felix - how is the absence of belief in something intellectual arrogance?

Agnostics have an absence of belief, they neither believe or disbelieve, whereas atheists believe that God or some higher power does not and/or cannot exist. Belief or disbelief in something simply because it does not accord with one's personal experience and intellectual conceptions is a form of arrogance.

I do not agree with your definition. A-theism is defined as not a theist.
Theists have a belief that God exists, where as the atheist does not share that belief.
It appears you have pushed the boundaries one step further and claimed that atheists have a positive belief system in the non existence of gods in order justify your claim of intelectual arogance.
By your logic, any person who agreed or disagreed with any one claim or veiw in particular would therefore be intellectually arrogant, yes?

Felix wrote: ↑June 7th, 2018, 11:44 pm Belief or disbelief in something simply because it does not accord with one's personal experience and intellectual conceptions is a form of arrogance.

What would intellectual modesty or humility look like?
Believe and disbelieve nothing; believe and disbelieve everything, because I'm too stupid to grasp concepts or evaluate evidence?
What would a reasonable assessment of one's own intellectual ability look like?

Belindi. I'm not sure I am following your point properly. My OP was concerned with the definition of God to a large extent. This was partly prompted by a real life conversation where I asked someone the same question and they looked at me as if I was asking them to define 'up', they felt God to be so obviously clearly defined.
It is interesting to me that when people do attempt to define which God they are agnostic to they, so far, have never said Christian God or Muslim God or any recognised religions God. To me this makes them atheists. However they do define God in some very loose terms, a creater, the universe, etc. So my point was that they are only agnostic to their own personal interpretation of God and atheist to all the rest.
As Felix humbly points out they believe agnosticism to be intellectually superior but have thus far failed to explain why. Which is the point in my second question.
I personally greatly dislike the categorisation of people and then the writing off of people. If someone tells me they are a theist it tells me next to nothing about them, likewise with atheist and agnostic. To me this starting category is simply a place to start and ask questions from. For example Felix might learn more about an individual if instead of telling that person what they think they instead asked.

Thinking critical: Theists have a belief that God exists, where as the atheist does not share that belief.

Neither agnostics nor atheists share that belief, do you see no distinction between the two?

Alias: What would intellectual modesty or humility look like?

In respect to this subject, it would be not equating mental conjecture with understanding.

P.S. - My sentence that you quoted should read belief (not belief or disbelief) in something.

Greta wrote:

Belinda, I don't think we can assume that nature - Spinoza's god - is lacking in mentality.

Spinoza's god doesn't lack mentality. Mentality is a state ("mode")of nature. A blade of grass is a state of nature. A cup of coffee is a state of nature. The perception of green is a state of nature as is blindness , or stupidity, things of nature. President Trump is a state of nature. Historical Jesus and the Paulian concept of a supernatural saviour are things of nature.The stories we tell ourselves are states of nature. Sorry! I am partial to lists.

Some ideas are better than other ideas. Spinoza reckons that adequate ideas are those that are reasoned. So the best approach to knowing ourselves is psychoanalysis .Please see Lacan for this connection.

We might see Spinoza as being a very sophisticated analogue of the earlier Stoics in that Spinoza’s universe consists of a rationally comprehensible ultimate reality, where every action of ours is determined insofar as it is a part of a single, deterministic process, and where we stand to gain if we recognized this fact and adjusted our lifestyles accordingly.

www.lacansalon.com/spinoza-notes

Greta, your own 'peak' experience I do believe is not an experience of relative or even rational truth, but is an experience from the perspective of eternity. Eternity is also within nature/god but is a different perspective from the normal feet of clay experience. It's probably true to say that you were temporarily blessed with abnormal brain chemistry at that time which allowed you to lose your feet of clay as long as the peak experience/abnormal chemistry lasted. This state is not at all invalidated by the coincidence of subjective state and objective brain chemistry. This last paragraph of mine is not all from Spinoza, and I have no idea whether or not Spinoza, despite his interest in eternity, was interested in vedanta as such. However Spinoza did validate the perspective from the eternal.

Alias wrote:

What would a reasonable assessment of one's own intellectual ability look like?

Psychoanalysis?

Eduk, I agree that agnostic and atheist are vague epithets.Personally , I refer to myself as an atheist only on a rare occasion when somebody presumes that I am some brand of a conventional religionist. For instance a recent convert to Catholicism began to hope that my mild interest in her religion stemmed from faith in Catholicism so I identified myself to her as an atheist. She was immediately disapproving , as unlike yourself, she had no interesting intention to question my assertion. With regard to popular epithets such as 'agnostic' and 'atheist' I recommend application of Wittgenstein's dictum that the meaning of a word is its use. That's to say that when one is confronted with a word like agnostic or atheist one needs to look at the social situation. As regsrds the social situation I just described perhaps it would have been more polite simply to say that something anodyne such as "I'm not actually a Catholic but I do sympathise a lot and I do so much like Pope Francis". However the anodyne response is patronising and so is disrespectful.

I'd not use those a and a words to other philosophers unless I was prepared to define my terms for the purpose of the conversation.

I like the Wittgenstein dictum. I wish more people would adhere to it, it would result in much less arguing with oneself.

Felix wrote: ↑June 8th, 2018, 4:20 am

Thinking critical: Theists have a belief that God exists, where as the atheist does not share that belief.

Neither agnostics nor atheists share that belief, do you see no distinction between the two?

Sure, I can see there is no distiction between the two based on this comment alone. This is what happens when one cherry picks - its a tactic to distort the intented conclusion of an argument.

So yes, neither atheists or agnostics share the same belief in gods as a theist, however agnostics go on to say they have a degree of uncertainty or they are unsure, and are open to the possibility that gods may exist.
As an atheist myself my position is this - "I see no reason to even contemplate the possibility that gods exist".

There is no arrogance in being confident in ones own opinion of a premise such as "gods exist" when it is presented in the absence of any objective evidence.

ThomasHobbes wrote: ↑June 7th, 2018, 5:19 pmAll believe is childish and counter-intellectual. Believe is the height of arrogance.

So that's what you believe…

Thinking critical: As an atheist myself my position is this - "I see no reason to even contemplate the possibility that gods exist". There is no arrogance in being confident in ones own opinion of a premise such as "gods exist" when it is presented in the absence of any objective evidence.

What sort of "objective evidence" would you require to verify the existence of a Supreme Being?