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Objectivist's View on Religion

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... and to hopefully bring it all home for you, JUtley, since it would be wrong (using your logic) for you to assert there is NOT a race of undetectable Kaetok parasites sitting on your head causing your thoughts, it's entirely possible (using your logic) that your thoughts - your knowledge, your reason - to be not your own, but to be the result of Kaetok parasites. Your knowledge and reason would not be your knowledge or your reason; your thoughts would not be your thoughts; your mind would not be your mind.

So, do you maintain the possibility that your mind is not your mind?

Yeah. What relevance does that make? It doesn't mean that I'll suddenly start worshiping these parasites.

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Yeah. What relevance does that make? It doesn't mean that I'll suddenly start worshiping these parasites.

No, it means you accept a contradiction: that your mind is not your mind. It also means you accept as fact that Man's reason is flawed.

Agnosticism is anti-reason. If you're going to claim non-knowledge is knowledge, then you've abandoned any method of gaining any. If you're going to accept that not knowing deserves as much consideration as knowing, then there's nothing you can know. All of your knowledge must now be circumspect. You don't have a mind. You don't think. You can't know. If you're going to protest, I suggest you consider upon what basis you will protest. You can't provide any knowledge because the opposite is possible - you just don't know. In hopes of cutting to the chase, let me posit how the discussion would go between us:

Me: Do you have a mind that can reason to knowledge?

You: Of course I do.

Me: No, you don't. What you believe is your mind is actually God telling you what to think and imparting knowledge to you as He deems fit.

You: That's ridiculous.

Me: Prove it to be false, then.

You: Well, I can't prove it to be false.

Me: Then it's possible I'm right?

You: Well, I suppose it's possible. But I think it's false.

Me: Only because God tells you to think it's false.

So, either you disagree and know you do have a mind that can reason to knowledge, or you hold open the door to believing you may, or may not, have a mind that can reason to knowledge. In the former case, you affirm your ability to reason, accept reason as Man's method of attaining knowledge, and are an atheist. In the latter, you have no method of attaining knowledge since you're not even sure Man can attain knowledge - you can't even reason to the knowledge that you can reason. In such case, you are an agnostic and all your knowledge is in doubt.

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There are 4 types possibilities for knowledge: true, false, unproven, and unprovable. These last 2 are different to being false. Unproven ideas are those which are theoretically provable, but have not yet been proven (e.g. the existence of aliens). Unprovable ideas are those which do not interact with our reality at all. This last category is the one that Agnostics get so focused on, for some reason or another. The fact that they do not interact with out reality makes them 100% irrelevant - and unless the agnostics are proposing some way of interacting with them, they are just wasting their time and yours.

Edited by Sergio
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There are 4 types possibilities for knowledge: true, false, unproven, and unprovable. These last 2 are different to being false. Unproven ideas are those which are theoretically provable, but have not yet been proven (e.g. the existence of aliens). Unprovable ideas are those which do not interact with our reality at all. This last category is the one that Agnostics get so focused on, for some reason or another. The fact that they do not interact with out reality makes them 100% irrelevant - and unless the agnostics are proposing some way of interacting with them, they are just wasting their time and yours.

It's not necessarily time wasting. For me, giving it a little thought can be kind of fun. It's like a fairy tale to children. Sometimes it can spark an idea that does apply to reality. Now, I don't focus much attention to it, and chose think about reality pretty much all the time. I don't see how this could interfere with objectivism.

Also, the whole your mind is not your mind thing isn't a contradiction. It would have never been our mind, and would just be ignorant until gaining new knowledge.

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technically the unprovable is false because it has no evidence and the only claims of its existence are based in contradictions or faulted logic.

To prove things and gain knowledge we use reason. Reason is based in reality; you observe and make conclusions which are tested in reality, the natural world. God is supernatural by nature meaning he defies reality, reason, logic, existence, etc by definition. You cannot prove a contradiction and the method of disproving it is the lack of its proof or the faulted contradictions that attempt to prove it.

Basically God exists or reality does.

And to Juttles stop wasting our time ignoring everything posted and contradicting yourself. If you want to waste time fantasizing about mystical creatures and claiming they exists because you think contradictory logic and belief is knowledge that is fine but it's fairly annoying to blank your mind out and not make an effort to think.

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technically the unprovable is false because it has no evidence and the only claims of its existence are based in contradictions or faulted logic.

To prove things and gain knowledge we use reason. Reason is based in reality; you observe and make conclusions which are tested in reality, the natural world. God is supernatural by nature meaning he defies reality, reason, logic, existence, etc by definition. You cannot prove a contradiction and the method of disproving it is the lack of its proof or the faulted contradictions that attempt to prove it.

Basically God exists or reality does.

And to Juttles stop wasting our time ignoring everything posted and contradicting yourself. If you want to waste time fantasizing about mystical creatures and claiming they exists because you think contradictory logic and belief is knowledge that is fine but it's fairly annoying to blank your mind out and not make an effort to think.

Dude, you're getting the wrong idea. I may think about clearly unprovable ideas, but I never claim they exist. I also completely understand what you all are saying, I just can't see it in black and white like you all because I accept that we are not omniscient. You do not know that there is no god. It's impossible for you to know for sure. How this can lead to atheism I can't understand. I can understand choosing not to believe in a god, and that's what I do. But I won't say "There is no God," because I don't know.

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Not as we see reality.

So that's a yes, but you qualify it as saying we "can't see it." What's the difference between something that is invisible, non-corporeal, has no heat signature, displaces no atoms, is totally undetectable, and leaves absolutely no traces upon existence and something that doesn't exist at all? Magic?

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So that's a yes, but you qualify it as saying we "can't see it." What's the difference between something that is invisible, non-corporeal, has no heat signature, displaces no atoms, is totally undetectable, and leaves absolutely no traces upon existence and something that doesn't exist at all? Magic?

What's the difference between that and...?

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Prove it's impossible.

Prove ghosts do not exist.

Prove unicorns do not exist.

Prove fire-breathing dragons do not exist.

"Prove that the fourth moon of Jupiter did not cause your sex life and that it was not a result of your previous incarnation as the Pharaoh of Egypt."

Ayn Rand said that you cannot prove a negative statement for any statement that has no positive evidence. That is called arbitrary. If not being able to produce "negative evidence" (whatever that is) means something is automatically true, then by this reasoning, every god and imaginary creature ever invented by man's imagination must exist, since you can’t prove it false. This means Yahweh is not the only god, and Christianity is negated.

The burden of proof is on you that make the claim.

Edited by 2046
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Prove ghosts do not exist.

Prove unicorns do not exist.

Prove fire-breathing dragons do not exist.

"Prove that the fourth moon of Jupiter did not cause your sex life and that it was not a result of your previous incarnation as the Pharaoh of Egypt."

Ayn Rand said that you cannot prove a negative statement for any statement that has no positive evidence. That is called arbitrary. If not being able to produce "negative evidence" (whatever that is) means something is automatically true, then by this reasoning, every god and imaginary creature ever invented by man's imagination must exist, since you can’t prove it false. This means Yahweh is not the only god, and Christianity is negated.

The burden of proof is on you that make the claim.

There's no proof for it either. That's why I just don't have any opinion when it comes to supernatural stuff.

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There's no proof for it either. That's why I just don't have any opinion when it comes to supernatural stuff.

So I take it you retract your former statements about supernatural beings interacting with reality in a way that humans can't see?

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So I take it you retract your former statements about supernatural beings interacting with reality in a way that humans can't see?

I'm not saying I believe in it. I never did. I'm just generating ideas. I don't believe we can know anything about the supernatural, so I don't claim that none of it exists.

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I'm not saying I believe in it. I never did. I'm just generating ideas. I don't believe we can know anything about the supernatural, so I don't claim that none of it exists.

But you can know. Objectivism holds that man's reason is fully competent to know the facts of reality. In fact, you just admitted you are generating ideas. If you know you are just generating ideas out of your imagination, why claim you don't know anything about them? Of course you know things about them. You just imagined them. I know you just imagined them. That's why I dismiss them, yet you imagine them, know you imagine them, then claim ignorance about them, even though you know you just invented it and have no proof for it.

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You can't prove they're non-real though.

I've offered evidence against a god, it's just that you reject knowledge as a means to understanding the world around you.

Since you insist on rejecting that which IS known in favor of wanting to believe something is possible for which there is evidence against, I don't see the point of continuing this discussion with you.

Edited by RationalBiker
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