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Spamgaard's Profile
Spamgaard Free
My avatar is licensed under the Creative Commons (CC BY-NC-SA 3.0). Peace be upon ------------------------------------------------------- Interesting forums and blogs: ------------------------------------------------------- I am an agnostic atheist, the most smug of all positions to embrace!
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@rvernon:
Thatās fine. But you can add me to the list of people who donāt find skepticism of existing arguments to be a persuasive counter-argument.Touche! My response was meant to be tongue-in-cheek (with apologies to Douglas Adams), as a substantive (and unique) critique of the ontological argument would take a bit more time to write, and someone would probably just flag it anyway! Hmm, one more thing to do when I have some real down timeā¦
Iām an agnostic. I donāt think itāsā possible to prove or disprove the existence of God, because faith is not something that can be proven or disproven. If you base your belief on empirical evidence, thatās science, not faith. Faith is something you feel. Itās perspective, and it doesnāt make any more or less sense than the belief that everything happens by chance.I agree with most of what youāve written. My perspective tells me that faith in the existence of something which cannot be proven is intellectually dishonest, at best. Faith may have many positive values, it may inform you, it may even be based on a logical construct that has merit. At its core, however, it is based on nothing more substantial than a gut feeling, a hope, a dreamā¦ an intangible abstract thought.
And even when there is no hard evidence, many theories are widely accepted. I donāt think thereās any reason to dismiss the plausibility of God any more than there is to dismiss the plausibility of extrasolar life.
Do you have a specific theory in mind? Scientific theories differ from faith in that you can have a logical āprovisional beliefā in a theory, but as evidence accumulates, that theory (and the ābeliefā in it) must necessarily be weakened or strengthened (otherwise, it isnāt science). With faith, however, no evidence is required. Evidence contrary to oneās faith generally does not sway belief in that faith.
How do you determine what is plausible? I would say evidence and observation. Is extrasolar life plausible? Sure. Why? There is evidence that Earth-like planets likely exist in other solar systems. There are billions upon billions of solar systems in the universe. It is plausible that life may exist or have existed on another planet.