Thinking further, the unknowability of god is a second order characteristic, that depends on the first. If they peepholes you describe do exist, god is knowable (though you may not see anything when you look through them.) If they don’t, God is unknowable. But in neither case does assigning a value to this lead to a contradiction.
Here I agree with you. These are perfectly valid reasons to doubt the claim of strong agnosticism. They are not a proof, but have the advantage of being valid. Smith has this nasty habit of feeling he has to prove a lot of things where proofs are either not called for or where the thing being proven is incorrect.
This can’t be right. As a trivial case, the solution to the halting problem is provably unknowable. All we have to be able do do is define the problem to know this.
I don’t believe strong agnostics are claiming that they can prove god is unknowable, just that he is. I don’t think they even claim they know he is unknowable. So, not being able to prove god is unknowable in no way means that he isn’t.
Anyhow, in my example, the unknowability of god from not being able see to the creation has nothing to do with god, but has to do with the universe. We weren’t arguing about the characteristics of god, remember. If we posit a god who only operates beyond our event horizon (a pointless god indeed) that god is provably unknowable, though we know nothing about it except this one fact. Of course we don’t know if this god exists or not, but agnostics don’t claim it does.
Now one disproof of strong agnosticism that makes sense to me: if you define god as all powerful, but unknowable, then he cannot make himself known. A god who could make himself know must be more powerful than this god, contradicting the claim of an unknowable god.
True for non-supernatural entities, but since god is supposedly outside of time, not true for him. But since we’d have to observe this god outside of time using non-supernatural means, we wouldn’t be able to do it. So we can’t say if there is a god there, but we can say we couldn’t observe it.
Things like that are not proved in the logical sense of a series of sylogisms. It is postulated that the electrical and chemical activities in our brains constitute our thoughts, dreams, etc. and result in our walking, talking etc.
So we can hook up electrical apparatus so as to record our brain activity. If we stimulate a person in a certain way, such as having them read, the activity in certain parts of the brain increase and it’s repeatable. If we speak a different part of the brain springs to life, if we walk another, etc.
Furthermore, if certain parts of the brain are electrically stimulated dreams and thoughts arise from that stimulation.
There is a lot of evidence that our minds are not some disembodied spiritual entity but are the result of physical activity in our brain and that activity takes the form of electrical and chemical effects.
I think it is a well supported conclusion that when the brain stops exchanging oxygen and CO[sub]2[/sub] with the blood and an EEG shows absolutely no electrical activity that our mind ceases to exist and that’s the end.
As others have already pointed out, almost everything you’ve said is mistaken.
Only “strong” or “hard” atheists have a positive, active belief that there is no God, but such hard atheists are very rare (I have never encountered one, and I know an awful lot of atheists). The overwhelming majority of us are “soft” atheists. A soft atheist can only be defined as someone who has neither an active belief in God OR an active disbelief in God. We simply lack such beliefs entirely. Therefore, we DO NOT have faith! So you are dead wrong in your premise.
Also, although not all that relevant here, you can prove a negative. It’s an enormously popular but false belief that you can’t. It depends on the specifics.
??? As I understand it, there IS no solution to it: the whole point of the proof (which can be known) is demonstrating that a general algorithm cannot exist. That’s not the same thing as it being unknowable. There is nothing TO know.
The presumptive idea behind agnosticism in the first place is that we’re dealing with elements of knowledge, not belief. Of course it’s possible to believe that god is unknowalbe on faith, but then it’s possible to believe anything at all that way.
Let me restate that. What is unknowable is whether any given Turing machine will halt. You can prove that some will, and that some will not, but it is unknowable in the general case. This implies that there is no algorithm to determine this. The non-existence of the algorithm is know, the halting property of a machine may not be.
I agree, but I suppose an agnostic would say that we can’t know if god is knowable, therefore one must either believe or lack belief in it.
It’s too bad that no one has stepped up to defend the strong agnostic position - I’m getting the impression that neither of us may be doing it justice since neither of us accept it.
I didn’t know you had been anointed the most high originality dictator! :dubious: Why didn’t I get the memo?
I notice that you suck at your job, though. I’ve seen thousands of posts that restate earlier posts in threads, some even right here in this one. I wonder why you let them pass, your supreme omniscience?
Oh, and at least I can spell!
Finally, I have to commend you not only for your brilliant originality, but for the extreme importance and worthiness of your post. You certainly didn’t waste any time and efforts!