Monday, July 9, 2007

Belief and analysis

That there may be no concept, does not preclude existence. It is quite possible that a detailed concept of God is beyond our capacity, just as Principia Mathematica is beyond an ant's capacity to comprehend.

A scientist may be unlikely to take the position that God exists. Yet he would not take the position that God does not exist to be absolutely certain.

Some beliefs which may appear to have no basis, may appear differently if we have more information. It has been argued that supposing God exists, is like supposing a chocolate cake orbits the Moon, and neither can be disproved. Yet if I were to tell you, in all seriousness, that my uncle's stepson was one of the astronauts that went on an Apollo moon mission, and that he told my uncle, who told me, that they routinely jettisoned any food suspected of contamination, and that among the items jettisoned were: some powdered milk, some freeze-dried apricots, and some freeze-dried desserts - including some freeze-dried squares of chocolate cake - might your estimation of the probability of a chocolate cake orbiting the moon now be changed somewhat?

So:

1) a lack of clear concept does not preclude existence, and

2) a seemingly frivolous supposition may, upon introduction of supporting or suggestive accounts, become more likely than before.

There are eyewitness accounts, reported in the Bible, of various miracles performed by Jesus. That alone makes them more likely to have occurred than if they had never been reported at all. The reliability of those accounts may of course be questioned and may be doubted by many. Yet the existence of those accounts makes the matter less like the original chocolate cake proposition, and more like the chocolate cake proposition after the introduction of the anecdotal account of occurrences which took place aboard the Apollo mission. Of course, there are differences too, but the point is that a seemingly frivolous proposition cannot be ruled out completely and that our estimation of it may change after the introduction of new information.

A scientist may be very doubtful of the existence of God but he cannot be certain that God does not exist, without violating his own rigorous approach to logic and analysis. This is all the more clear as the conception of God is taken to broad instead of narrow. Since our capacity to think and imagine is limited, a very broad idea of the nature of God may make more sense than a narrow conception.

I'm don't know what you meant by claiming that "(theist's) brain is wired (through mental abuse) fundamentally against knowledge discovery", so I can't really respond to that. If you'd care to expound I will try to address that matter as well. Hopefully you have found my post interesting and worth thinking about, and as always, thanks for reading and responding to my posts (which goes for everyone on this board as well).

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