> "Sensible Talk" in itself does not faithfully reflect an
> ontologically valid reality out there. What is "sensible" and what is
> not depends on the premises of "sensibility" that you are operating
> upon, discourses that you are participating in.
What I mean by "sensible talk" is this: I state that there are two chairs in the room I am presently in. As it happens, this is true. If someone else walked into the room and maintained that there were three chairs in it, I would point out their mistake. If they persisted in their claim, I wouldn't know how to talk sensibly with them.
This doesn't depend on any fancy thing like "discourses." Or perhaps it depends on the assumption that we are both using the kind of discourse in which one ordinarily talks about chairs.
What happens with religion? I would maintain that it is true to say that God (in the Western monotheistic sense) does not exist, in exactly the same way that I maintain that there are two chairs in my room. Apparently folks who do talk about this God existing are using some other kind of discourse. I would call it something like poetry, but they distinguish sharply between their religious talk and what they consider poetry. But however they twist and turn, to me "truth" is the two-chairs, no-God truth; it seems pointless to try to mean anything else by the word. Yes, you can talk about "poetic truth," but that just means that a poem you call "true" has a strong effect on you. (As does religion for religious people.)
> IMHO, you can't argue with religious fanatics from an inherently
> superior vantage point of truth. With all honesty, the best we can do
> is to present our arguments from our specific will to knowledge, from
> our own hegemonic articulations. If that makes me an epistemological
> nihilist, I plead guilty.
I don't think that "truth' in the two-chairs truth is a "superior vantage point"; it's just simple, ordinary truth. The reason that I don't accept that "there is a God" is true is that there is no reason, as far as I know up to now, to believe that this proposition is true -- that's all. If someone wants to convince me, present me with a valid argument. I've studied all the arguments for the "existence of God" that I could find since I was a philosophy student, many years ago, and I have still to find a valid one. But who knows? Maybe there is one out there that I've overlooked.
Jon Johanning // jjohanning at igc.org __________________________ When I was a little boy, I had but a little wit, 'Tis a long time ago, and I have no more yet; Nor ever ever shall, until that I die, For the longer I live the more fool am I. -- Wit and Mirth, an Antidote against Melancholy (1684)