Belief And Unbelief

[poliphilo]

Is it possible to prove or disprove the existence of God- or indeed of any supernatural entity? Of course not. Human beings have been trying all through history- and have yet to come up with anything that holds water- which doesn't stop us- believers and unbelievers alike- from parading our certainties and pouring scorn- or worse- on the opposition.

A belief in God is ridiculous. So is atheism. Because in the final analysis it is ridiculous that anything exists. Even if the Hadron collider eventually establishes the "how" of the Big Bang, it won't be telling us "why". Did Mind produce Matter or did Matter produce Mind?  Both positions are equally plausible/implausible. You choose- if you do choose and your position isn't simply inherited or indoctrinated-  on grounds of intellectual fashion or aesthetic preference,  but not on grounds of  reason or evidence. Reason doesn't stretch that far and there is evidence- unsatisfactory, inconclusive evidence- on both sides. Mary saw a ghost; John says she can't have done because ghosts don't exist. Which of them should you trust? 

I think belief in God (don't ask me to define the word) makes life more interesting. And I notice that Richard Dawkins makes exactly the same claim for his disbelief. 

Comments

[wlotus.livejournal.com]

But is all truth merely subjective?

To a certain extent, yes. My sweater is navy blue...depending on the light, the vision of the person looking, their definition of navy blue, and so on. We can define navy blue by a certain wavelength of light, but even so, that definition started with a person's label, where someone else might have labeled that wavelength of light something else, had they had the chance (or had they been taken seriously when they did so).

And who said the sweater is mine, in the first place? :-)

[poliphilo.livejournal.com]

I'm a Platonist, I suppose. What we see in the cave are just shadows of the real things outside.

[wlotus.livejournal.com]

Fascinating: I had never heard of that term until you used it and I looked it up.

I used to be a Platonist, and it seems my experiences have driven me to the side of believing there are few, if any, absolutes. Or perhaps I have always been this way, and I suppressed it in order to survive the black & white environment in which I was raised and in which I chose to continue to move in as a young adult. My parents say that even before I was school-aged, I was good for asking recursive "what if" questions until the parent unlucky enough to be my audience that moment would say, "Wanda, stop what iffing!"

[poliphilo.livejournal.com]

"Stop that what iffing." I love it!