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Politics : Sharks in the Septic Tank -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Solon who wrote (78419)	10/28/2003 1:25:01 PM
From: The Philosopher	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 82486

Of course one can doubt evereything, if one wants to. And each person chooses what to doubt and what not to doubt. But I have more proof of the existence of God than I do of the existence of the SI poster using the screen name Solon. So if you exist, God exists. If you don't, then maybe God does and maybe God doesn't exist. I can't know.

To: Solon who wrote (78419)	10/28/2003 2:34:55 PM
From: one_less	Read Replies (2) \| Respond to of 82486

"Why then do people put more credibility into allowing the possibility of God (agnosticism) than they allow the possibility of (say) fairies? Especially, since God is a far more extraordinary and incredible belief than elves?" Fairies are a creation. It is possible to examine the whole of creation to search for evidence of fairies. The doctrine of fairies indicates that there should be some physical evidence and some human experiential evidence to account for their presence. Such examinations reveal only the the source of such myths and account for the lack of physical evidence. In other words, they disprove the existence of fairies except as a source of fantasy. They have no particular impact on human beings except as an object for flights of fancy. The extraordinary belief in God is accountable by the extraordinary drive human beings have regarding order and purpose. God is not a creation and is not testable; as in "thou shalt not tempt the Lord thy God." Order and purpose are attributed to God, giving God an essential role in the purpose, vision and Goals of man. The weight of importance that an agnostic should give to the "possibility" of God is far more than that of the possibility of fairies.

To: Solon who wrote (78419)	11/4/2003 5:43:11 PM
From: TimF	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 82486

"The trouble with the agnostic argument is that it can be applied to anything. There is an infinite number of hypothetical beliefs we could hold which we can't positively disprove. On the whole, people don't believe in most of them, such as fairies, unicorns, dragons, Father Christmas, and so on. But on the whole they do believe in a creator God, together with whatever particular baggage goes with the religion of their parents." His analogy was clearly to imaginary or "unprovable" things outside of proof, as being equally unprovable. This is why he instanced elves, unicorns, and dragons (as being mythological creatures) and thus equally capable of an agnostic indifference as to their existence...and equally as invulnerable as somebodies idea of "God" to being disproven. Elves, unicorns, and dragons are generally represented as having physical tangible forms that might leave evidence. But if you want to suppose either a wholly supernatural and non-physical elf, dragon or unicorn, or such a creature that physically exists but has strong supernatural powers that it can and does use to hide the evidence of its existence then in a sense I am agnostic about them. I lean towards skepticism but I'm not prepared to flat out say that no fantastic supernatural creature along the lines of elves, dragons, or unicorns exists. This is esp. true given the flexibility in the definition of these things (as you have shown about dragons), and the vastness of the universe. My viewpoint about these things might be similar to Karen's about God. I don't believe that something like Smaug the dragon from The Hobbit exists on Earth (like Karen doesn't believe in "the father God", but I'm agnostic about supernatural fantastic creatures of some type existing somewhere (like Karen is agnostic about some divine creator). Tim