> Take, for example, the atheist world-view, or conclusion, as to
what he is
> and his place and role in the cosmos. Articles of
faith abound, including
In the domains of epistemology and
theology, 'faith' doesn't just mean belief that is unjustifiably strong or not completely
certain. It means the specific
belief that there exist authorities -- books, priests, dreams, etc. --
whose assertions are considered beyond question, usually due to their
ultimately supernatural provenance. A person of faith may doubt that
any particular authority is authentic, but he still asserts that such
authorities exist. Atheists deny that any such authorities exist -- and atheists
of course do not ultimately ground this denial itself in any
authority. For an atheist, it's never acceptable for the last word to
be "because a magic book/man/dream said so". That's why we atheists say we lack
faith. But feel free to ignore this distinction, and to keep pointing out that
we (like all humans) have beliefs that are less than perfectly proven.
:-)
> convection tectonics, Lylist
gradualism, the theory of evolution, the brain
> as the seat of
consciousness, and genetics as the basis of
> personality. All of
these are elegant theories, none is proven.
Again, "proven" is an unfortunate
choice of words, because it equivocates between 1) "demonstrable by
strict logical inference from universally accepted premises" and 2)
"supportable as the best available explanation for the relevant evidence". By
(1) your "none is proven" statement is uninteresting, but by (2) your statement
is false.
> In what I have fun calling the Libertarian religion, there are two
> stunningly unsubstantiated articles of faith:
You don't need to redefine the terms
'religion' and 'faith' to diagnose a belief as insufficiently justified -- no
matter how much fun it might be to do so.
> atheists regularly render public
ridicule
> against anything vaguely religious
A little friendly ridicule of the truly
ridiculous isn't necessarily a bad thing. For example, Paul's periodic fits
of histrionic hyperbole are good candidates for this sort of
treatment.
> except their own articles of
faith.
Faith must be a pretty egregious epistemic
crime if its primary defense is to redefine it so that everyone's guilty of
it. :-)
> This is so true that the acknowledgedly religious in this very
group are
> reluctant to speak on certain topics for concern that they
will suffer the
> indignity of being scorned by verbal
aggression.
One man's disagreement is another man's
aggressive scorn -- especially where religion/philosophy is concerned. I'd ask
for examples of verbal aggression, but Paul seems to have already provided them.
:-)
> It's particularly
grating to be put into this position when the
> attacker so obviously cannot
even prove his own assertions.
This talk of "proof" is still too absolute.
It would be better to use a term like "justify", but doing so immediately
exposes how gray this area is. Our standards and judgments about
epistemic justification may differ in ways that make it hard to say which
of us is more right. (If this weren't the case, we'd pretty much all believe the
same things, right?)
> There's no proof that the brain thinks, only evidence of associated
activity.
> There's no proof that psychic events do not happen.
True -- but also uninteresting, given that
we already knew that no synthetic proposition is provable. Replace "proof" with
"reasonable grounds for belief", and your statements become more interesting --
but unfortunately false.
> To make operational conclusions about these things and then
incorporate
> them into a hence-forth unexamined belief system is to
create articles of
> faith and therefore to construct a personal
religion.
If a conclusion is sanctified into
revelation that can never be questioned, that's indeed faith. Atheism involves
no assertions that aren't subject to question and justification (including this
assertion itself). If you disagree, I invite you to cite an assertion or
authority that is held in the atheist literature to be beyond
question.
> Until I meet an atheist who supposes absolutely nothing,
You just changed your standard. Does
religion mean having at least some beliefs that are considered exempt
from examination, or does it mean having any belief that is not
mathematically/logically/objectively proven? The latter standard reduces
"religion" to a synonym for "belief-system", and makes your original assertion
uninteresting: "Atheism and Objectivism are [belief-systems] too". (Didn't
we already know that?) And it makes your subsequent statement a red
herring: "You can't define all [belief-systems] in terms of just one or just one
type". (He wasn't trying to define all belief-systems; he was pointing to
religion as a proper subset of them.)
> I cannot avoid seeing
atheism as a religion,
That's understandable, if you define
'religion' as 'belief-system'.
> albeit one that denies the
existence of a
> superior supernatural boss and clings instead to ego
(itself an unprovable
> part of the psychological mythology).
I'm not sure what you mean by "cling to
ego", but note again that "unprovable" here is an unremarkable
observation.
> if I can just get a
little MORE objectivism going,
By propounding an impossible standard of
objective "proof" in empirical/ethical matters, you might very well end up
promoting not objectivity but instead the naive relativism that holds
all worldviews to be equally unjustified (because none of them is objectively
proven).
> maybe I can reduce the unintended
consequences of atheists'
> general presumption
of intellectual superiority
One worldview can be intellectually superior
to another, but that doesn't imply a similar relationship between the believers
in those respective worldviews. If believer X can be
considered "intellectually superior" to Y, it's not because more of X's
beliefs overlap with truth than do Y's, but rather because X chooses beliefs
using a method more likely to yield truth. By this standard, there are quite a few theists who are
"intellectually superior" to most atheists.
> i.e., the suppression of
free thought within the
> party, and with it, the end of otherwise
irresolvable positional and
> platform issues (because they cannot be
articulated without this discussion).
This sounds interesting. I'd like to hear
more about this, either on this forum or offline.
> anything with "ism" ot "ity" in
its name is by definition a belief
> system, and allow that every belief
system deserves the respect accorded to
> anything held by its adherents
to be religious
I'll respect the believer (according to his
reasonableness and humaneness), but I don't have to respect the
belief.
> Because, in the end, it is presumptions of
superiority that cause all the
> ills in the world.
"All"? An interesting subset of
the ills in the world are caused by such casually categorical
statements. :-)
Brian Holtz
2004 Libertarian candidate for Congress, CA14 (Silicon Valley)
http://marketliberal.org