From: Brett Paatsch (paatschb@optusnet.com.au)
Date: Sat Jun 07 2003 - 23:08:23 MDT
Steve Nichols writes:
> > From: "Brett Paatsch" <paatschb@optusnet.com.au>
> > > >
> > > > Historically if there has been a personal upside to atheism
> > > > for the atheist I can't see it. It seems to me that not
> > > > believing in things without evidence would normally be a
> > > > benefit to the individual. But not believing in that which
> > > > gives one's contemporaries hope
> > > > would be a detriment.
> > > >
> > >
> > > MAYBE JUST THE TRUTH IS SUFFICIENT IN ITSELF?
> >
> > I don't think so. "The truth" doesn't come at us or yield itself in
> > one big chunk.
> >
> > I think the individual's pursuit of "truth" amounts to a utilitarian
> > pursuit. Without a subjective basis and bias towards seeing the
> > world in an ordered and consistent way I doubt sentient beings
> > would bother too much with just any particular objective
> > factoid or even with grand unified theories.
> >
> > I think even the interest in objective facts like 1 + 1 = 2 is a
> > subjective one.
>
> Sure, 1+1=2 and whole of maths relies on the identity statement
> 1 = 1 ..... but maths says nothing about the world (if you take a
> fictionalist view of it as I do).
I agree maths "says" nothing about the world, in the sense that
clocks don't usually "say" anything about the time. Interpretation of
the symbols is an active process. But my point was that maths is
useful. We are able to do maths and reason and use language and
these capabilities generally confer an evolutionary advantage.
Arriving at the position of atheism however, if one lived in the time
of Hume, looks to me, from what I imagine as the personal human
standpoint of Hume to have been a little too much reasoning for his
own subjective good. I find harder to explain *why* someone
like Hume didn't rationalise away an unpleasant personal truth.
Or maybe he did. I don't know Hume's personal story that well.
But I am assuming, possibly incorrectly, that being an atheist
because that position made sense to Hume on intellectual grounds
would still have come at a subjective cost for him because it would
have meant (I am assuming) that he would have accepted that he
personally would be annihilated at death. I don't think Hume could
have put much stock in cryonics, uploading or radical life extension.
> However, EXISTENCE truth claims require (preferably)
> verification or proof ....
If you mean to say that the assertion that A is true requires
verification or proof, I agree, but only provisionally.
Someone else's assertion of A being true has to be *important*
enough to me for me to care whether it is true or not.
Whether "God" exists fits into the category of being worth
caring about, if one learns from one's childhood (as most in
the judeo-christian tradition do), that personal annihilation is
avoided at death because of a set of ideas of in which the
existence of a particular type of God is central.
> MVT on the other hand requires no suspension of disbelief,
> and anyone can inspect (if no longer experiment on) the
> pineal eye of a sphaenodon. The statement "Sphenodon lives"
> is true, whereas the statement "God lives/ exists" is
> unsupported by fact.
Sorry you lost me at MVT.
Brett Paatsch
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