Spamgaard's Profile
Spamgaard Free
My avatar is licensed under the Creative Commons (CC BY-NC-SA 3.0). Peace be upon http://www.jesusandmo.net/ ------------------------------------------------------- Interesting forums and blogs: http://www.centerforinquiry.net/forums/ http://scienceblogs.com/ http://forums.randi.org/ http://www.skepticforum.com/ http://forum.friendlyatheist.com/ ------------------------------------------------------- I am an agnostic atheist, the most smug of all positions to embrace!
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@rvernon:
That’s fine. But you can add me to the list of people who don’t find skepticism of existing arguments to be a persuasive counter-argument.Touche! My response was meant to be tongue-in-cheek (with apologies to Douglas Adams), as a substantive (and unique) critique of the ontological argument would take a bit more time to write, and someone would probably just flag it anyway! Hmm, one more thing to do when I have some real down time…
I’m an agnostic. I don’t think it’s’ possible to prove or disprove the existence of God, because faith is not something that can be proven or disproven. If you base your belief on empirical evidence, that’s science, not faith. Faith is something you feel. It’s perspective, and it doesn’t make any more or less sense than the belief that everything happens by chance.I agree with most of what you’ve written. My perspective tells me that faith in the existence of something which cannot be proven is intellectually dishonest, at best. Faith may have many positive values, it may inform you, it may even be based on a logical construct that has merit. At its core, however, it is based on nothing more substantial than a gut feeling, a hope, a dream… an intangible abstract thought.
And even when there is no hard evidence, many theories are widely accepted. I don’t think there’s any reason to dismiss the plausibility of God any more than there is to dismiss the plausibility of extrasolar life.
Do you have a specific theory in mind? Scientific theories differ from faith in that you can have a logical “provisional belief” in a theory, but as evidence accumulates, that theory (and the “belief” in it) must necessarily be weakened or strengthened (otherwise, it isn’t science). With faith, however, no evidence is required. Evidence contrary to one’s faith generally does not sway belief in that faith.
How do you determine what is plausible? I would say evidence and observation. Is extrasolar life plausible? Sure. Why? There is evidence that Earth-like planets likely exist in other solar systems. There are billions upon billions of solar systems in the universe. It is plausible that life may exist or have existed on another planet.