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To: one_less who wrote (14250)	6/9/2007 11:43:00 PM
From: epicure	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 14758

I am not an atheist. I am an agnostic. I've been saying this for over 10 years, but people on SI seem to forget agnostics exist. I don't know why. But there seems to be a rather severe memory hole wrt agnostics. It is, imo, the only reasonable thing to be. Now there is no real mandate, imo, that people be reasonable, but if you want logic and reason, I think the only thing you can do is say "I don't know"- and that is the agnostic position. When something cannot be "nailed down" what that usually means is there is no way to quantify it, and no way to measure it, and no way to prove it to others. Where this situation exists, and where you choose to believe something about the situation, you verge on to faith, and your faith is irrational. You give the example of strangers, and the advice some parents may give regarding them. You can quantify and express the risk of strangers if you want to. You can make a child believe you on faith- and people are frequently irrational about their fears in this area (and there is statistical data on this irrationality)- but it is not unquantifiable or unprovable. We can actually quantify parental irrationality in this area- by seeing how parents rank their fears, as compared to the actuals dangers children face. It is not rational for parents to have unrealistic fears- but they do, but since children are at the mercy of their parents it is rational for children to attempt to believe their parents, or at least fake belief. The urge children have to believe their caregiver is so strong, that a child will attempt to reconcile physical and sexual abuse, if the parent says these things are for the child's own good. I do not think your example using parents is a particularly good one. I think we all know that science does not know everything- that's why science is always making new discoveries. The problem, imo, is that some people have faith that science will never know everything. I don't see how you can rationally assume that, any more than you can rationally assume it will someday know everything. That there are things beyond our knowledge at this point in time is obvious, the conclusion one draws from that, though, is not obvious. You cannot leap from the fact that we do not know everything, to the existence of the incorporeal that can never be known, imo- barring an irrational leap of faith. There is simply no reason to decide that. I've never seen a good reason offerred anyway- if you have a good reason for making such a final decision on the evidence we have today, let me know what it is. Faith and reason are not necessarily in conflict, but it depends a lot on what you claim your faith is. If your faith is "There are things we do not know, and we may find them out some day, or we may not"- then I'd say your faith is pretty reasonable. If your faith is "There are things we do not know, and we will never know these things"- I cannot say I see a basis for such certainty, just as I see no basis for "There are things we do not know and we will definitely know them all some day." Neither of those positions seems rational, and in fact they seem equally irrational to me.