On Sun, 22 Oct 2006 11:49:38 -0700 (PDT) Wojtek Sokolowski
<swsokolowski at yahoo.com> writes:
>
>
> --- Chris Doss <lookoverhere1 at yahoo.com> wrote:
>
>
> >
> > Theism and atheism are fundamental metaphysical
> > positions, like idealism, materialiam, solipsism and
> > so forth. There is no conceivable empirical
>
> Only if you interpret them in ontological terms, i.e.
> as a proposition of the existence of some kind of
> entity. However, I do not take an ontological
> position, but an epistmological one. I propose that
> there is no such thing as the concept of 'god' -only a
> word with emotive connotations, which you should
> recognize as a radical nominalist position. This
> position precludes taking an ontological stance either
> in favor or against the existence of the entity
> denoted by the said word. It claims that the question
> itself is nonsensical and thus cannot be answered.
Your position sounds like the verificationist position concerning religious language that has been taken over the years by such people as the logical positivists, Antony Flew (at least before his recent conversion to deism), Sidney Hook, Kai Nielsen, and more tentatively, Michael Martin. All these people in varying ways have held that for language to be cognitively meaningful, it must make assertions that are in principle verifiable or falsifiable. Assertions that cannot be in principle verified or falsified are said to be lacking in cognitive meaning, although they might have other sorts of meanings.
Most people who have held such views concerning religious language have been for all intents and purposes atheists but there have been a few theological thinkers who have held similar views while continuing to embrace religion.
>
> Stated differently, if you came up with a plausible
> concept of god, say, as some sort of hitherto unknown
> vital force or energy (different from forces that we
> know today) - we can at least speculate if such a
> force exists or can be discovered, even if we are
> fundamentally unable to settle that debate. But I
> doubt that such conceptualization will be accepted by
> most people swayed by religious thinking. Au
> contraire, most of them would vehemently reject such
> conceptualization and came up either with some
> antropomorphic image (a white man on a throne or an
> androgynous humanoid with six arms) which is aburd on
> its face, or a claim that god is beyond anything that
> we can possiblyy know - which is self contradicting,
> because if we cannot possibly know anything about this
> entity, that would also apply to its existence, no?
> An if we know only its existence, why not other
> attributes? Or how do we know that we will not know
> its attributes?
>
> You can easily see that this kind of thinking slips
> into epistemological absurdity, meaningless babbling,
> uttering sounds that may evoke emotions but have no
> other connotations. Debating them can only stir
> emotions, but it will not produce any understanding.
>
> As to the question of the roots of my "atheism"
> (posted earlier to this list,) there are two answers,
> philosophical and sociological. I think I just gave
> the philosophical answer - I am not an "ontological
> atheist" but an 'epistemological agnostic.' I am open
> to discuss the possibility of anythying that has some
> conceptual substance or consistency, even if science
> has little to say about it at the moment. However, it
> makes no sense to debate sheer expressions of emotions
> that have no conceptual substance.
Sidney Hook BTW seems to have taken a somewhat similar position. He held to a verificationist account of religious language while at a sociological level, he developed a theory of religion that was derived from Feuerbach and Marx.
>
> As to the sociological answer - I tend to oppose
> religion insasmuch as it is the force of the right
> wing or fascist mobilization, or fascist populism.
> However, I also believe that religion may be a force
> that integrates society instead of dividing it, and I
> think this is essentially a good thing. I also
> recognize that religion may give people emotional
> suupport and motivation they need in everyday life,
> and this is also generally a good thing.
>
> On a personal level, I have always had instinctive
> revulsion toward mobs, especially those ganging up to
> beat up some "trouble maker" or unpopular minority.
> Since I often observed that religion served as a
> platform for such behavior, or clergy using religion
> to suppress dissent and force people into one mold of
> thinking, I felt revulsion toward it. But at the same
> time, I also met very intelligent and thoughful
> religious people - and I enjoyed talking to them even
> though I disagreed with some of their ideas.
>
> Wojtek
>
>
>
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