Is agnosticism a cop-out?

Cypress said:
My two cents:

An infinite universe, and natural laws that can vary infinitely are assumptions that are not based on tangible evidence.

The idea that we live in a little tiny corner of the universe where the natural laws and physical constants are all precisely tuned to allow atomic matter, molecules, chemistry, and biology to exist seems too convenient to me. I think it's still an open intellectual and philosophical question.
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It is indeed an open intellectual and philosophical question, C.
No argument from me.

Without pedantically claiming to have figured it all out,
I've merely fallen upon a possibility that seems the most plausible to me.

Since we're two different people, it doesn't seem too convenient to me at all,
but I don't claim to hold the only arguable opinion--just the one with which I can presently live.

I will even admit to a bias.
I'm already a pretty angry guy.
If I actually believed that this shit show was all created on purpose,
I'd be beyond angry and possibly homicidally insane.





.
 
Daylight63 said:
All you do is namecheck. As such you don't really have ideas of your own. That's why you can never defend your position short of just finding some famous name you can namecheck.
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Thanks for tacitly admitting that whatever posts I write here, are actually not idiotic but are generally based on the best science has to offer.

When it comes to cosmology and astrophysics nobody on this board even remotely has the skill and talent to have their own independent and original ideas.

Most of what we know we don’t know directly. We gain such knowledge through testimony, we read textbooks, listen to teachers and subject matter experts, we listen to podcasts and read science magazines. None of us perform cutting edge science experiments or see the evidence directly ourselves.


Only deluded message board ego-maniacs believe they have their own original theories about cutting-edge physics and cosmology.
 
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Dutch Uncle said:
Agreed except his name Perry Pusillanimous or something like that. Like Sybil and Fredo, I shortened it to Perry PhD to save typing.

You already know where the "PhD" part came from. LOL

FWIW, quickly spotting the socks of certain personalities is like hunting to me. It requires time and patience. In this case looking for similar patterns of personality. You and I both saw how quick it was to spot the Novojank sock. Another member tried it a few years back and quickly fucked it up. In Perry's case it's his subpar intelligence and rationality. It was just inexperience for the other member. LOL
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Your sock hunting skills are superior.
His militant atheism, his obsession with following me around and participating on my threads, his claims that he wants nothing to do with religion but yet spends 50 percent of his time composing posts on religion threads, and other clues make it completely obvious that he is the latest sock puppet of Perry the PhD.
 
Cypress said:
Only deluded message board ego-maniacs believe they have their own original ideas about cutting-edge physics and cosmology.
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Can you lead me to any literature where the author shares a very similar view of the universe to mine?

I may very well have been influenced by what I read in my youth--more probable than possible--but frankly,
I don't remember any specific works.
 
Cypress said:
Your sock hunting skills are superior.
His militant atheism, his obsession with following me around and participating on my threads, his claims that he wants nothing to do with religion but yet spends 50 percent of his time composing posts on religion threads, and other clues make it completely obvious that he is the latest sock puppet of Perry the PhD.
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He's a wackadoodle. Fun to watch to a point. He truly believes he's fooling people.
 
NiftyNiblick said:
Can't one simply be too indifferent about a subject
to hold an unprejudiced opinion?

Aren't, for some people, many things too irrelevant
to be contemplated beyond superficial musings at most?

Too many things exist in this,
by my guess,
infinite universe.

We can only be aware of the existence of a tiny number of them

Of that tiny number, the manifestations that we actually care about,
many of them actually just ideas or theories more than physical manifestations,
will likely be another small percentage of the small percentage.

Then, when one gets old and jaded like myself,
many of the things about which one actually once concerned him/herself
suddenly get re-filed into the "I don't give a shit anymore" folder.

Atheism is merely a word I use to describe my observation
that no real tangible evidence of the existence of a supreme being
has ever revealed itself to me,
but countless evidence to contradict that
has indeed revealed itself more than I ever needed to see it.
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The Bible. Nature. Your very existence on Earth. The existence of Earth itself. All of these are evidence of a God.
Yet you deny them all.
 
Cypress said:
Thanks for tacitly admitting that whatever posts I write here, are actually not idiotic but are generally based on the best science has to offer.
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You are not discussing any theory of science, Sybil.
Cypress said:
When it comes to cosmology and astrophysics nobody on this board even remotely has the skill and talent to have their own independent and original ideas.

Most of what we know we don’t know directly. We gain such knowledge through testimony, we read textbooks, listen to teachers and subject matter experts, we listen to podcasts and read science magazines. None of us perform cutting edge science experiments or see the evidence directly ourselves.
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Science isn't a magazine. Science is not an experiment or a laboratory. Science is not evidence.
Cypress said:
Only deluded message board ego-maniacs believe they have their own original theories about cutting-edge physics and cosmology.
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You ignore physics, Sybil. You think a Magickal Holy Gas can somehow create energy out of nothing.
 
Cypress said:
Your sock hunting skills are superior.
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You can't blame your socks on anybody else, Sybil.
Cypress said:
His militant atheism,
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There is nothing 'militant' about atheism.
Cypress said:
his obsession with following me around and participating on my threads, his claims that he wants nothing to do with religion but yet spends 50 percent of his time composing posts on religion threads, and other clues make it completely obvious that he is the latest sock puppet of Perry the PhD.
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You can't blame your socks on anybody else, Sybil.
 
NiftyNiblick said:
Can you lead me to any literature where the author shares a very similar view of the universe to mine?

I may very well have been influenced by what I read in my youth--more probable than possible--but frankly,
I don't remember any specific works.
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Off the top of my head, I can't think of any literature, but I know for a fact it is considered a perfectly decent hypothesis that the physical constants might vary in value, and we just happen to live in a corner of a larger or infinite universe where they are set to values which make atomic matter, chemistry, and biology possible.
 
Cypress said:
The grave blunder you made as a strict physical materialist is that you mistakenly assumed that anything real has to be made of material substance.

It goes to show that every time you insinuate my posts are idiotic, I can show that my ideas are shared some preeminent physicists at the very top of their profession.
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I enjoy your posts, even though we differ on some issues, I respect your viewpoints. You are always respectful to me.
 
Cypress said:
Off the top of my head, I can't think of any literature, but I know for a fact it is considered a perfectly decent hypothesis that the physical constants might vary in value,
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Math error. A constant is fixed in value. Always.
Cypress said:
and we just happen to live in a corner of a larger or infinite universe where they are set to values which make atomic matter, chemistry, and biology possible.
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Math error. A constant is fixed in value. Always.
 
anonymoose said:
Huh?
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You want me to repeat my post??

Richard Dawkins is not an atheist. He is a believer in the Church of No God, a fundamentalist style religion. They often try to call themselves 'atheists', but they are fundamentalists.

An atheist has NO religion. He doesn't care whether any god or gods exist or not.
Science is atheistic. It doesn't care whether any god or gods exist or not.
Same with mathematics. Same with logic.

ANY claim on whether any god or gods exist or not is a circular argument. By itself that is not a fallacy. The other name for the circular argument is the Argument of Faith. All religions, even the Church of No God, depends on faith.

Attempting to PROVE a circular argument TRUE or FALSE is the Circular Argument fallacy. It is not possible to prove whether any god or gods exist or not. Attempting such a proof is what a fundamentalist does.
 
Into the Night said:
You want me to repeat my post??

Richard Dawkins is not an atheist. He is a believer in the Church of No God, a fundamentalist style religion. They often try to call themselves 'atheists', but they are fundamentalists.

An atheist has NO religion. He doesn't care whether any god or gods exist or not.
Science is atheistic. It doesn't care whether any god or gods exist or not.
Same with mathematics. Same with logic.

ANY claim on whether any god or gods exist or not is a circular argument. By itself that is not a fallacy. The other name for the circular argument is the Argument of Faith. All religions, even the Church of No God, depends on faith.

Attempting to PROVE a circular argument TRUE or FALSE is the Circular Argument fallacy. It is not possible to prove whether any god or gods exist or not. Attempting such a proof is what a fundamentalist does.
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Makes sense. Sounds to me like what you’re saying is a so-called atheist can’t prove there is no god and a fundamentalist can’t prove there is one. So basically everyone is an I Don’t Knower.
 
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