There are several ways of attempting to interpret this necessary being.

One way is to just leave the issue alone, recognizing the utter incomprehensibility of same, emphasizing the dialectical imagination and apophatic approach over the analogical imagination and kataphatic approach, claiming that any analogues between necessary being, as a whole, and contingent beings are too weak to gift us with meaningful intelligibility.

Others similarly recognize the incomprehensibility in the paradox of existence but emphasize the analogical imagination and kataphatic approach, claiming that analogues can gift us with intelligibility in the form of indispensable explanatory ideas, not to be confused with explanatory adequacy.

Those that think we can penetrate into the mystery of existence, even as we can never explain it away, include those who embrace either fideism or scientism, as well as those who accept both faith and reason.

Again, fideism is the reliance on faith rather than reason. Scientism is an exaggerated trust in the efficacy of the methods of natural science. Those that are scientistic generally subscribe to materialism, a theory that physical matter is the only or fundamental reality and that all being and processes and phenomena can be explained as manifestations or results of matter.

There are also scientists, who are agnostic, that cohort above that leaves the issue of ultimate reality alone, who are methodological naturalists without being metaphysical naturalists, most of whom are materialists but some who are open to alternate explications of fundamental being, for instance, by including consciousness as a primitive or fundamental property of reality, along side space, time, mass and charge.

Fideism, whether philosophical or theological, does not lend itself to an analysis of concepts in the same way these other positions do, so, for the most part, I will leave it alone, except to make the point that there are many who betray a serious philosophy life in the very manner that they live a life well lived. We must therefore draw a distinction between those who are truly fideistic and those who, existentially, very much subscribe to a philosophy of life and a theism, even if they don�t articulate it, essentialistically.

If one buys into our original characterizations of a worldview or philosophical system as a noetical-aesthetical-ethical system derived from an algorithm of metaphysics + epistemology, where metaphysics = cosmology + ontology, then there is a certain type of philosophical impoverishment that results from the agnostic�s failure to elaborate a coherent cosmology.

Whatever the agnostic�s noetical, aesthetical and ethical sensibilities, the agnostic who is also a dedicated scientist, sharing the aristotelian empiricist-realist epistemology has much in common with both believers and nonbelievers, who also are scientists. They have much to contribute even in our ethical machinations.

For the most part, though, they are pretty much forced to side with the materialists on the is-ought chasm or the so-called naturalistic fallacy, having nothing to say about what, to most people, seems to be a pretty important is, that being a cosmology that one can use to ground (or justify) one�s moral reasoning foundationally.

Even then, there can be a dialogue between the nonfoundationalist and nonauthoritative consequentialist approach (teleological) and the foundationalist and authoritative approach (deontolgical) to morality, because even a fides et ratio, faith and reason, affirms both deontological and teleological perspectives.

The agnostic�s general lack of grounding, cosmologically, has been described as a nowhere anchored and paradoxical approach to uncertain reality, a trusting of reality without an attempt to justify one�s trust in reality�s intelligibility.

Here again, we might fall back on our analysis of how we all have made unjustified leaps of faith in human reason, in reality�s intelligibility and in the existence of other minds.

To the extent that one�s faith in science has not been eroded by the extreme skepticism of the humean and kantian idealist systems, at the very least, the agnostic scientist has made the humean leap and has likely justified same based on either a pragmatic analysis or a reductio ad absurdum analysis or both.

I have already pointed out the inconsistency of pragmatic approaches to choosing between epistemologies --- kantian vs humean vs platonic vs aristotelian --- in that a preoccupation with one�s epistemological tools can obfuscate one�s epistemological goal, confusing process and product, usefulness and truth.

For instance, if the only epistemological tool one has is a metaphysically naturalistic hammer, then every ontological problem will look suspiciously like a materialist monist nail.

But were�re not talking about metaphysical naturalists, where agnostics are concerned, only methodological naturalists, which even believers and nonbelieving materialists can be.

Still, the agnostic and the nonbelieving materialist both share Kung�s nowhere anchored and paradoxical trust in uncertain reality, an unjustifed trust in reality�s intelligibility.

Is this at all distinguishable from the believer�s trust in uncertain reality, which may include the very same faith in human reason, in reality�s intelligibility and in the existence of other minds as the agnostic or nonbeliever that otherwise lacks a rational demonstration?

When it comes to one�s faith in human reason, one�s faith in reality�s intelligibility and one�s faith in other minds, I think the true distinction between those faiths of the agnostics and nonbelievers and that of the believer is that both agnostics and nonbelievers rely on pragmatic justifications while believers tend to rely on both pragmatic and reductio ad absurdum analyses.

Now, at this juncture, there is a certain amount of epistemological parity between all of these approaches at the rational level, all requiring a certain amount of philosophical fideism.

Those who began with a humean perspective made an additional leap to an empiricist-realist stance, if they did not first begin there.

Notwithstanding the nature and number of these leaps, one is pretty much left with a choice to attempt to justify those leaps pragmatically or via a reductio ad absurdum whose premises are, in principle, empirically indemonstrable.

Those who do not find an essentially pragmatic approach compelling, lacking both sufficient existential warrant and rational justification, must then attempt a metarational justification employing a philosophical system that attempts an articulation of a coherent cosmology, which is an inherent deficiency in agnosticism.

Does one cure this �deficiency,� however, through metarational attempts that rely on metaphysical presuppositions that are not empirically demonstrable with such a conclusiveness as we have come to enjoy through science?

Again, I think we can gain some insight into how it is metaratonality and metaphysicality might be workable by looking at how it is we employ our analogical imaginations in the investigation of unknown causes, in general.

Typically, we try to understand veiled causes by looking at their effects and then by comparing those effects to other similar effects for such causes as are unveiled to us. In this way, we often gain intelligibility of those causes even as we continue to lack comprehensibility, and we gain some indispensible explanatory ideas even as we lack explanatory adequacy, and we enjoy at least a modicum of hypothetical fecundity, perhaps getting an ever-tightening grasp on reality even as it eludes us in its totality.

We thus continue to proceed by way of analogy, probing reality�s depths, whether in our models for the emergence of consciousness, in our quantum interpretations, in our speculative scientific cosmology or even in theoretical molecular biology.

When it comes to the problem of infinite regress, perhaps the most intractable of all, we persist in our attempts to render reality more intelligible even if we know we are pecluded, in principle, from tendering a complete account, a Theory of Everything, to complement our elusive Grand Unified Theory (of general relativity and quantum mechanics).

Here, we are faced with very real godelian constraints and here our methodological naturalism as an epistemology very often attempts to predict ontology, rather than model it, our tools defining the task rather than the task defining our tools.

Even here, theoretical scientific cosmologists attempt to solve the problem of infinite regress by proffering, at the quantum level, many worlds hypotheses, and at the cosmic level, parallel universe hypotheses.

Even here, metaphysicians challenge the instantiation of actual infinites in physical reality.

Whatever reality is doing with its paradoxes of existence and infinity, all would do well to remember Wittgenstein�s not how things are but that things are which is he mystical.

Aquinas argued with St. Bonaventure in medieval times about such as is described in modern reformulations of the Kalam argument and we might take his counsel that, from a metaphysical perspective, we cannot a priori declare the universe finite or infinite. If it is infinite, then it may be even wilder than we imagine but that would not be dispositive, in and of itself, of whether or not it resulted by fiat or was uncaused.

The paradox of existence remains whether we leave the question begging with an Unmoved Mover, whom is incomprehensible, or an Uncaused Infinite Multiverse, which is similarly incomprehensible.

Some are of the opinion though that these incomprehensibles can be made partly intelligible, again through our analogical imaginations.

So, the introduction of multiverse and many worlds and oscillating universes is an attempt to make our pre-BigBang origins more intelligibile and there is the possibility for gathering indirect evidence that is consistent with some of these hypotheses, although their transcendence of our conventional space-time plenum leaves them off-limits to classical empirical science.

These cosmologies are often trumpeted by materialists as a way to solve infinite regress paradoxes and to diss the cosmological argument for God. The manifest absurdities that would result from such as Tegmark�s parallel universe idea often comprise the reductio ad absurdum counter to such arguments, although using modal logic, Tegmark could in fact be offering a God hypothesis of a sort, himself.

What comes to mind is Haldane�s assertion that the univese is not stranger than we imagine but is stranger than we CAN imagine.

At any rate, believers and nonbelievers could still miss Wittgenstein�s point if not careful, nontheists arguing past theists and attacking strawmen rather than a rigorously predicated set of divine attributes (apophatically), fideists confusing their theological presuppositions with metaphysical and physical hypotheses, placing God in causal gaps and causal joints that are not meta-metaphysical realties but physical and metaphysical realities.

At the same time, properly predicated, I really have no problem with a metaphysics of the gaps when science is otherwise struggling with intractable problems such as in scientific cosmology and speculative cognitive science. We can remain open to alternate metaphysical possibilities without their having any bearing on theological conclusions other than generating more analogues from which to learn more of the Creator.

There will always be alternate accounts for how reality is that will fuel speculation on that reality is and, in the end, the alternate speculations for that reality is can be judged, one against the other for internal coherence, logical consistency, external congruence, hypothetical consonance and interdisciplinary consilience and a host of other epistemic criteria, including reductio ad absurdum analysis or Zeno�s philosophical backdoor.

Agnosticism makes no rational appeal to these alternate accounts and can point to the standoff between materialism and theism, whose metarational and metaphysical accounts are both not unreasonable, are both logically valid, mathematically consistent and scientifically congruent, to bolster its pragmatic attempt to avoid the futility of such speculative enterprises.

Both materialism and theism can point to a certain intelligibility in their accounts, even while recognizing that they are indemonstrable in the classical empirical sense.

This intelligibility can be coupled with bountiful indirect evidence of manifold and multiform varieties and can make an appeal to the reductio ad absurdums that result from each account.

The materialists, for instance, raise causal joint paradoxes and theodicy issues. As far as causal joint paradoxes the theists offer a tu quoque pointing out the materialists� similar employment of their analogical imaginations in many branches of science and especially in emergentist accounts of consciousness, such as supervenience, and in cosmology with superstring theory, and in quantum physics with eigenstates and virtual particles and such.

Similarly, as far as theodicy issues, something both theists and nontheists should keep in mind is the Fuerebachian admonition to avoid anthropomorphizing God concepts, another tu quoque, actually.

Theists must recognize that metaphysical proofs of God mostly comprise hypotheses that demonstrate the reasonableness of faith but that do not otherwise generate rationally conclusive positions because, even though God hypotheses can be structured as valid arguments, because their premises are emprically indemonstrable (by definition), as logical arguments they are not going to be considered sound by those who, for whatever reason, find no existential warrant in those premises.

It must be noted, however, that we are seeing increasingly sophisticated constructions of modal ontological arguments that are increasingly compelling to many.

At any rate, if the masses of humanity are still believers, they believe for very good reasons. The indirect evidence, when taken as a whole, provides the existential warrant for the rational justifications that were long ago formulated and, which are still being improved upon by modern theologians as we move into the 21st Century.

And so, Phil, this is pretty much what I have gotten out of my dialogues with philosophers (academic and amateur, like me). And, w.c. , these bytes and bites should hold the key to better understanding much of the dialogue From Biology to Morality to Consciousness, which is a s....w...e...e....e..........eeeeeee....p...ing topic, to say the least.

And Brad, I added a LOT of stuff that I thought you might be interested in.

And finally, to Darwin, Freud and Marx, nothing you ever discovered had anything to do with God's essential nature. The teleological inference for God, dating back to Aristotle and Aquinas, was an analogue to physical and metaphysical purpose or teleology. It was and remains an analogical attribute to God's purpose and design and by driving any physical or even metaphysical notion of telos from biology, you weren't divesting meta-metaphysics or theology of one darned thing. You perhaps changed an analogue that now better reveals that we are radically free even if limited, an analogue certainly reinforced by quantum cosmology. And you have strengthed all analogues having to do with kenosis and Divine self-emptying.

Thanks all. Hope this helps a little. Now, to go back and italicize and mark bold words and add hyperlinks to all of my other contributions. On second thought, why don't y'all just use the Search button at Shalomplace and type in all the big words you'd like, knowing that you'll better understand those old posts now that you've read JB's Cliff Notes.

I wrote it as penance.

pax,
jb

pax,
jb

Thank you, JB, for giving the gift of knowledge through your teaching. Normally you're involved in giving us the fruits of that gift, which can be just a tad difficult to decipher, although it was, at least for me, a motivation to try and pluck that ripe fruit I saw hanging just out of reach on the branch above.

I'm still slogging my way through all this (a pleasant slog) but I hope you don't mind me asking something you might have already covered. Something that occurs to me early on, JB, is what does it say about reality to have all these competing frameworks? I assume (and it does appear) that some are contradictory, and yet all are plausible. Boy, don't we appear to be one baffled species. But, really, does it not show us that we are forever in sort of a fog about some things? Is all this stuff at its most useful if it simply helps us realize our limitations and where they are?

JB, I appreciate your taking the time to write that little primer. Nicely done!

What if we were to start a separate thread with just those recent posts, and make them all a web page you can reference. Perhaps the thread could be a "basics in philosophy" or something. Maybe you'd even like to do an Internet class on this and present them as lessons, giving participants an opportunity to ask questions? Just a thought.

Alternate worldviews can seemingly meet all of these above-listed criteria and appear valid as good working hypotheses, even if mutually exclusive to one another. This is for the same reason that two logical arguments can be valid, which means they commit no fallacy as they follow through to their conclusions from their premises. If they are mutually exclusive to one another, among those arguments, however valid they may all be, only one will be sound, which is to say that it is not just valid but that its premises are true.

Righto! Religious beliefs, in this sense, can be viewed as just another set of premises, but the fact that they can be held while satisfying the sound criteria you laid out shows that they need not be irrational and may, in fact, have even stronger "modeling power" than other systems. I think you've demonstrated that very well in your dialogues.

Glad to hear the dialogue experience on the philosophy forum was satisfying for you! It seemed to me there was considerable frustration on both sides, but I guess that just kind of goes with the process, at times.

Teacher said: Truth be known, I have just wasted your time and my own for most people don�t choose a worldview; rather, they inherit one from their parents and/or society & culture and that�s about it. DARN!

I was fortunate in that regard (although I doubt, even when I was young, anyone would have had much success trying to impose a World View). Actually, to sort of tie this all together and relate this entire subject even beyond philosophy and religion, what did happen to me (now that I think back) is that a "Self View" (rather than a World View) was imposed from above (although if I take the idealism � or Buddhist - spin on this I could say I played a major role in this too � or the entire role).

Whatever World View one chooses (or has imposed), I am highly suspicious of any World View that does not tolerate � no, strike that � that does not welcome challenges and questioning. One might even said it's somewhat contradictory to say that any World View can ultimately be imposed if that view is open to questioning. But it's a pity that our internal psychological Self Views can be so stubborn in regard to questioning.

The Director of the Institute of Johnboysian Metaphysics said: It is something like the hard problem of consciousness, which perhaps disappears if there is no discrete difference between phenomenal consciousness (experience) and sensation and perceptual awareness, especially if godelian dynamics would not apply, which determining if they did could be an intractable problem of the metaphysics of the gaps variety.

I need a little help with the difference between phenomenal consciousness - and sensation and perceptual awareness. Are we talking about the difference between plain aural or visual stimulation as opposed to being aware of that stimulation? As an aside, there was an interesting Nova on the other night that featured THE famous brain guy (I forget his name) and which featured all sorts of people with unique brain injuries. One person had "blind sight" in the right eye. The optic nerve and everything was still wired. He could technically "see" out of that eye but was not consciously aware of what was "seen". But this applied only to static objects. If something moved within the right eye's field of vision then the object could be identified in his conscious awareness. It brought into the discussion the interesting idea of exactly why do we need awareness if, like a lizard that can track motion (presumably without awareness) to eat a moving fly or escape a predator, it doesn't seem to be needed.

quote:

Originally posted by Brad Nelson:
[qb] I'm still slogging my way through all this (a pleasant slog) but I hope you don't mind me asking something you might have already covered. Something that occurs to me early on, JB, is what does it say about reality to have all these competing frameworks? I assume (and it does appear) that some are contradictory, and yet all are plausible. Boy, don't we appear to be one baffled species. But, really, does it not show us that we are forever in sort of a fog about some things? Is all this stuff at its most useful if it simply helps us realize our limitations and where they are? [/qb]

To me, it says that reality, although it is ineluctably paradoxical, is still positively intelligible.

It says that reality, although it is undeniably intelligible, is still inescapably paradoxical.

It says that when we experience comprehensibility that we must be looking at only part of reality.

It says that, where veiled causes are concerned, sometimes the veil lifts and we see truth, sometimes the veil parts and we see beauty and sometimes the veil is torn and we see goodness.

It says that if we are usually shrouded in a fog on the shores of an ocean of mystery, sometimes the sun burns the fog away for a time, and we can walk in the shifting sands of fortune and time to the edge of these waters and let their waves break over our existence, 'til the fog rolls in once more. It says we can take a bottle to this ocean's edge but cannot pour the ocean into it.

It says that we can know all that we need to know to live a life of meaning, beauty and goodness, and that our limitations are naught but a pointer to the Unlimited. It says that we can see truths that we cannot prove but that such awareness comes with a clarity of vision not only gifted by veils being sometimes set aside or fog being burned off but also by being here now in love.

What if we were to start a separate thread with just those recent posts, and make them all a web page you can reference. Perhaps the thread could be a "basics in philosophy" or something. Maybe you'd even like to do an Internet class on this and present them as lessons, giving participants an opportunity to ask questions? Just a thought.

I cannot hold myself out as a philosophy tutor because I have only probed what interests me in that discipline. I do claim to be a philosopher struggling to articulate his philosophy. If you think this would best be switched to another thread, that's okay. If you cut provide a link back to where this originated and a link from here to there, that'd work best.

pax,
jb

quote:

Originally posted by Brad Nelson:
[qb] Whatever World View one chooses (or has imposed), I am highly suspicious of any World View that does not tolerate � no, strike that � that does not welcome challenges and questioning. [/qb]

The idea is to be self-critical, which can be aided by answering other critiques. In my tradition, we call this Semper Ecclesia Reformanda Est or The church must always be reformed.

Playdough said: Is a knowledge of this veiled cause by its effects available by analogy to other similar effects of otherwise unveiled causes?

That's a wonderful clarification.

Thus we would have that pale image of the God of the Philosophers, which, when taken together with the body of evidence of Revelation, as a whole, makes for some rather compelling inferences.

I don't come from the same background (World View, I guess) as you do. I don't right off the bat (even if perhaps I should) put as much weight (or even enough to make a difference) in revelation (God's disclosure of His own nature and His purpose for mankind, esp. through the words of human intermediaries). And yet I'm hardly a spunky scientific materialist. Although I do put weight in inferences that come from personal experience, it's a bit harder for me to go up one layer of abstraction, particularly considering the nature of the evidence.

Taken as a whole, these inferences are more compelling to most people than other answers to the questions: Why is there something and not rather nothing? Why this and not rather something else? What about this infinite regress?

Why? Well, taken as a whole, the other answers are patently absurd.

I agree that these inferences can be very compelling, although (without wishing to sound even a bit like I'm being patronizing) I seriously doubt that most people go through that whole logical process (while acknowledging the huge amount of intuitive brain power and real-world experience that does go into it). I'm not sure exactly which answers you are referring to that are patently absurd (none taken), but one can still fail to be drawn to the apparently less absurd conclusions.

So, Craig takes on Sagan in cosmology, Behe takes on Dawkins in biology re: ID, Dembski takes on Dennett in spiritual machine/cognitive science (rather, we should say philosophy of mind) and Godel gets invoked against GUTs and TOEs of every variety.

Sounds like a Saturday night fight card. Probably as bloody too.

I suppose the litmus test for whether one is fideistic or scientistic is whether or not one has a stake in the outcome of the above problems/controversies of speculative cosmology, evolutionary biology (which ain�t exactly speculative) or speculative cognitive science.

I sort of gathered that. Technically, if no egos were involved, it shouldn't matter. Science is about the raw search for knowledge. That sound you heard was me just falling off a turnip truck.

Why this and not rather something else? is also dismissed as trivial and, at a quantum level, gets interpreted as a many worlds hypothesis and cosmologically as a parallel universe hypothesis.

Interesting. I never saw that connection before.

Like lost Japanese pilots on a deserted Pacific island, decades after the WWII was over, some Intelligent Design holdouts dig in with irreducible complexity hypotheses.



the empiricist-realist approach is Aristotelian

Thank goodness I chose this approach before it was eliminated. I feel like a lucky contestant on Survivor.

In biological evolution and, more speculatively, in nucleosynthesis and biosynthesis, any teleological inferences of an extrinsic variety remain explanatory ideas but haven�t had near the traction that darwinian and neo-darwinian theories have had in providing both hypothetical fecundity and explanatory power.

One can view natural selection as the driving force behind evolution. But I wonder if it might be viewed as simply an arbiter (a referee) as life, in its various forms, struggles toward some unknown goal. Natural selection pares and culls (and perhaps shapes) that which is already on the move by some other process or force. When life runs into other life (or different environmental circumstance) then natural selection process does its thing. It's mowing the lawn. But what causes the grass to grow?

Anthropic principles raise interesting questions at cosmological levels but, from a post-BigBang perspective, are really sort of trivial at the physical level of reality, which is a reality we can observe precisely because it produced us as observers.

Well, really BIG answers may come in small packages. That's know as Brad's Razor (there's a pink version for ladies too). But seriously, that's a wonderful bit of enlightening thinking there. One wonders as we dig down in scale whether we sort of curve back on ourselves and see something big.

quote:

Originally posted by Brad Nelson:
[qb] The Director of the Institute of Johnboysian Metaphysics said: It is something like the hard problem of consciousness, which perhaps disappears if there is no discrete difference between phenomenal consciousness (experience) and sensation and perceptual awareness, especially if godelian dynamics would not apply, which determining if they did could be an intractable problem of the metaphysics of the gaps variety.

I need a little help with the difference between phenomenal consciousness - and sensation and perceptual awareness. [/qb]

In this nontechnical article, Facing Up to the Problem of Consciousness by David Chalmers , he writes:

quote:

Why is it that when our cognitive systems engage in visual and auditory information-processing, we have visual or auditory experience: the quality of deep blue, the sensation of middle C? How can we explain why there is something it is like to entertain a mental image, or to experience an emotion? It is widely agreed that experience arises from a physical basis, but we have no good explanation of why and how it so arises. Why should physical processing give rise to a rich inner life at all? It seems objectively unreasonable that it should, and yet it does.

If any problem qualifies as the problem of consciousness, it is this one. In this central sense of "consciousness", an organism is conscious if there is something it is like to be that organism, and a mental state is conscious if there is something it is like to be in that state. Sometimes terms such as "phenomenal consciousness" and "qualia" are also used here, but I find it more natural to speak of "conscious experience" or simply "experience".

Chalmers also goes into detail on the definition of the hard and easy problems of consciousness.

pax,
jb

I agree that these inferences can be very compelling, although (without wishing to sound even a bit like I'm being patronizing) I seriously doubt that most people go through that whole logical process (while acknowledging the huge amount of intuitive brain power and real-world experience that does go into it). I'm not sure exactly which answers you are referring to that are patently absurd (none taken), but one can still fail to be drawn to the apparently less absurd conclusions.

I was unclear about where certain absurdities are located in this context. For the most part, I am thinking of nihilism, solipsism, radical skepticism and such and how the humean and kantian and platonic perspectives over against the aristotelian yield absurdities along with raw pragmatism. These are the fundamental premises that then are used to counter the inferences of natural theology, that there is a God of the philosophers and of the deists and of Aquinas' proofs.

I would not want to make quite as strong a statement about the particular articles of faith embodied in the different Abrahamic and Eastern traditions although I do feel that the inference that their common mystical core is testimony to the God of the philosophers, the Unknown God, is difficult to reject.

I would recognize that people of large intelligence and profound goodwill differ on even the less controversial inferences but I would hold that it would at least be patently absurd for any serious minded individual (re: the more controversial inferences) to not investigate, in earnest, the revelatory truth claims of the revealed religions and to not pass some verdict on their evidence, even if that results in a hung jury. Unfortunately, I think few people go through this process either, analogous to the point you made about people reasoning to conclusions, more or less absurd.

Very few people arrive at common sense by reasoning their way there. They reflexively and intuitively perform reductio ad absurdum analyses. The way I affirm your observation elsewhere is by stating that few people essentialistically articulate their existential warrants by setting them forth in formal logical arguments or rational justifications. Most are, so to speak, unconscious competents. Kant and Hume are testaments to how a great deal of intellect can be invested in false premises to construct elaborate philosophical systems without foundation. It has been said that, starting with a false premise, a genius, through incredibly powerful and efficient logical tools, can get further from the truth than any idiot could ever aspire to.

Footnote: It has occurred to me that I could substitute it is difficult FOR ME to understand as a more politically correct version of my more contentious it is patently absurd . After all, I don't want to come across as Gov. Dean with rabies

Why this and not rather something else? is also dismissed as trivial and, at a quantum level, gets interpreted as a many worlds hypothesis and cosmologically as a parallel universe hypothesis.

Interesting. I never saw that connection before.
+++++++++++++++++++++++++++

Of course, I'm not making a physical observation re: quantum gravity or a GUT, but am making a metaphysical analogy.

Seabiscuit Sylvest overtakes Nelly Nelson in the final stretch, now leading with 1444 posts

Gensler's Philosophy Exercises is cool.

It has been said that, starting with a false premise, a genius, through incredibly powerful and efficient logical tools, can get further from the truth than any idiot could ever aspire to.

Never heard that one before. Great thought.

When it comes to one�s faith in human reason, one�s faith in reality�s intelligibility and one�s faith in other minds, I think the true distinction between those faiths of the agnostics and nonbelievers and that of the believer is that both agnostics and nonbelievers rely on pragmatic justifications while believers tend to rely on both pragmatic and reductio ad absurdum analyses.

Apparently what you're saying is that by having a trust in uncertain reality, scientific materialists (for example) have already paid admission to enter the theme park and yet haven't acknowledged that those costumes Mickey and Goofy are wearing might (or must) have a label on them that says "Made in Japan." And because they're all near-sighted (and forgot to bring their glasses) there's no point in trying to read the labels.

When it comes to one�s faith in human reason, one�s faith in reality�s intelligibility and one�s faith in other minds, I think the true distinction between those faiths of the agnostics and nonbelievers and that of the believer is that both agnostics and nonbelievers rely on pragmatic justifications while believers tend to rely on both pragmatic and reductio ad absurdum analyses.

Good explanation.

Agnosticism makes no rational appeal to these alternate accounts and can point to the standoff between materialism and theism, whose metarational and metaphysical accounts are both not unreasonable, are both logically valid, mathematically consistent and scientifically congruent, to bolster its pragmatic attempt to avoid the futility of such speculative enterprises.

And that.

I wrote it as penance.

No doubt you did. And what sin of mine was so big that I actually read it all?

To me, it says that reality, although it is ineluctably paradoxical, is still positively intelligible.

It says that reality, although it is undeniably intelligible, is still inescapably paradoxical.

It says that when we experience comprehensibility that we must be looking at only part of reality.

It says that, where veiled causes are concerned, sometimes the veil lifts and we see truth, sometimes the veil parts and we see beauty and sometimes the veil is torn and we see goodness.

It says that if we are usually shrouded in a fog on the shores of an ocean of mystery, sometimes the sun burns the fog away for a time, and we can walk in the shifting sands of fortune and time to the edge of these waters and let their waves break over our existence, 'til the fog rolls in once more. It says we can take a bottle to this ocean's edge but cannot pour the ocean into it.

It says that we can know all that we need to know to live a life of meaning, beauty and goodness, and that our limitations are naught but a pointer to the Unlimited. It says that we can see truths that we cannot prove but that such awareness comes with a clarity of vision not only gifted by veils being sometimes set aside or fog being burned off but also by being here now in love.

Veeeeery nice. That's like the grand finale; the final burst of fireworks after an already terrific show of sparks.

Seabiscuit Sylvest overtakes Nelly Nelson in the final stretch, now leading with 1444 posts.

I'm just gonna have to turn all pragmatic on you and now say that it's quality not quantity that counts. When I run off at the mouth sometime while you're on vacation, I'll change that around.

But really, you did a nice job making a highly complex subject much more understandable. But with all them big words and difficult concepts, do you ever feel like the 13-year-old kid holding a magnifying glass over an ant on a sunny day?