This is interesting WW, I haven't investigated Hadot at all, But from what you say there is some commonality with both Hegel and Heidegger; the former in the sense that ideas are only really understood in their profoundest 'truth' when they are seen in their fullest dialectical relation to all other ideas, and Heidegger in the sense that we only really know something when that knowing is a lived, authentic understanding. For me that movement from inauthentic to authentic is the movement from a superficial generality 'what one does' or 'what one believes' to a profound particularity involving a commitment of the whole being. This idea is also to be found in Kierkegaard. It is also interesting that although Kierkegaard was very deeply and deliberately opposed to Hegel (to what he saw as Hegel's anti- individualistic 'objectivism', I think), digging deeper, a great deal of commonality could be found there.

According to the way you have framed it, wouldn't the analogy to " there is no such thing as pain" be "there is no such thing as belief in God" and not "there is no such thing as God"?

No, I don't see why it would.

You said that you can't refute someone saying they lack belief in God just as you can't refute their saying that they lack pain. So, if the analogy is between pain and belief in God, then saying there is no such things as pain is analogous to saying that there is no such thing as belief in God, no?

How do you deal with the fact that very smart people disagree with you? — darthbarracuda

I'll just deal with this question, as I feel I have a great deal of experience that is probably useless in this matter.

My method of dealing with this is usually taking a review of the given. The given that I am working from as well as the given that the others are working from in fielding a dialog. More than not, I have found that this is a place where misunderstanding and disagreements begin.

I try to make a habit of investigating the given and making more a critical analysis of this foundation., as (for the most part) logic employed by such people (and I try myself most of the time to do so as well) is not too poorly applied. Quite often the statements are clear and the arguments are valid, but the given might well be the issue that causes disagreement.

Also, it might well (and is very often the case) that these smart people simply are far more familiar with the topic at hand and I need to take care that my rantings and ravings are indeed held in proportion to my knowledge of a point of discussion. You might have noticed that many of my quips come with a disclaimer that I really doubt my ability to assist or that they might well be 'unqualfied'. This is not out of false humility or in hope that others treat me with 'kid gloves', but more that I really have a very limited knowledge in the manner; thus I need to make it clear from the git go that I am certainly not an authority.

This was one of my favorite comments on old PF (I'm not implying that it applies to you, but I feel I must often apply it to myself):

"You are taking your sense of wonder, combining it with your inability to conceive of certain things, and demanding from everyone else that they remain as ignorant. That's not good." - Kwalish Kid

Indeed good ol' KK was banned, but that does not negate the gem that this statement happens to be and the honest wisdom in holds.

Anyway...

... that's about all I have on the topic and is the usual I have no idea if this is of any help or has contributed something to the muddle. IF so, great and if not... sorry for taking up your time.

Meow!

GREG

If someone asked me how I dealt with very smart people that disagreed with me, I would respond by asking if they meant how I dealt with very smart people who disagreed with me. That would be my entire response.

The strong agnostic knows that there is no God. — Thorongil

"Know" here is being used in a confusing way. Knowledge generally requires that the object of the knowledge be true, else it's not knowledge. If I am certain Joe Biden is President and claim to know he is, the fact that he's not the President makes the statement "I know Joe Biden is President" false. Truth is a condition of knowledge.

So, someone can only know there is no god if there is no god and he has a justified belief there is no god.

At any rate, if we change the word "knows" to "believes" in my quote of you above, I don't agree with the statement. You have defined "strong agnostic" how I would define "atheist." An agnostic does not know whether there is God or not because he's unable to arrive at an adequate justification for his belief one way or the other. An atheist does not know (he only believes such) there is a God unless you're either (1) stipulating there actually is no God and he believes it, or (2) you're equivocating with the term "know" and just using it to emphasize the strength of his belief (as in, e.g., "I just knew Clemson would beat Alabama, but it didn't work out that way").

You mean... there are actual very smart people who disagree with me? Really? I don't believe it.

Personally, I find it spooky when actual smart people agree with me. My first response to that is 'what the fuck did they do wrong'.

Meow!

GREG

So, if the analogy is between pain and belief in God, then saying there is no such things as pain is analogous to saying that there is no such thing as belief in God, no? — John

No, because I'm setting up the "there is no pain" to parallel the strong atheist claim that "there is no God," not the weak atheist claim. To say there is no belief in God is oddly worded and clearly not true.

So, someone can only know there is no god if there is no god and he has a justified belief there is no god. — Hanover

Correct. That's why I said the strong version is a claim about the nature of reality.

At any rate, if we change the word "knows" to "believes" in my quote of you above, I don't agree with the statement. You have defined "strong agnostic" how I would define "atheist." An agnostic does not know whether there is God or not because he's unable to arrive at an adequate justification for his belief one way or the other. An atheist does not know (he only believes such) there is a God unless you're either (1) stipulating there actually is no God and he believes it, or (2) you're equivocating with the term "know" and just using it to emphasize the strength of his belief (as in, e.g., "I just knew Clemson would beat Alabama, but it didn't work out that way"). — Hanover

All of this is impenetrable to me, I'm afraid. At the risk of repeating myself too many times, I will only emphasize once more that these terms OVERLAP. They are not totally mutually exclusive. They answer different questions but they are perfectly compatible with each other.

All of this is impenetrable to me, I'm afraid. — Thorongil

Push harder I always say. The payoff is worth the effort.

At the risk of repeating myself too many times, I will only emphasize once more that these terms OVERLAP. They are not totally mutually exclusive. They answer different questions but they are perfectly compatible with each other. — Thorongil

I can only say how I use and understand terms. I take the person who simply does not know whether God exists to be an agnostic. He throws his hands up and shrugs his shoulders when asked the question.

Do you think O.J. killed Nicole? You've got three choices: yes, no, or I don't know. If you say yes, you're a believer, no a non-believer, and if you just don't know, you're an agnostic. That's how I use the terms.

And that's all that this is about: belief. It's not about knowledge. That is, do you believe in God is the question. If you say you "know" God exists, you're simply trying to emphasize how firm your belief is, but I'd contend you can't know it in the traditional sense of the term "know" because your justification is not based upon a rational basis, but it's based upon faith.

The weak agnostic simply lacks knowledge of God. The strong agnostic knows that there is no God. — Thorongil

This doesn't make much sense in light of your statement,

The Greek word gnosis means knowledge, while the prefix a is a negation. So the agnostic is "without knowledge," — Thorongil

How can a form of agnosticism claim knowledge when the word means, "without knowledge"?

Versions of agnosticism can be distinguished by the missing feature of the knowledge claim (i.e., justification, truth, or belief). An agnostic can be one that lacks knowledge because they lack belief (atheist) and also an agnostic might come down on the conditions of justification or truth (e.g., there is insufficient justification for the statement "God exists" and so one cannot make a knowledge claim or one cannot know, "God exists" because the statement is false, or likely false). I'm not sure how to distinguish any of those as a "strong agnostic" claim or a "weak agnostic" claim, unless you take strong agnosticism is the one claiming that "God exists" is false by virtue of knowledge of the truth condition of "God exists", in which case strong agnosticism is a self-defeating position.

I understand the distinction between weak and strong agnosticism is the strength of the claim in terms of the possibility of knowing. Weak agnosticism claims, "I do not know if 'God exists' is true" and strong agnosticism claims, "'God exists' is unknowable". An atheist (strong or weak) can be a strong or weak agnostic depending on the missing feature of the knowledge claim. A theist is more likely to be a weak agnostic, if agnostic at all, wherein knowledge is unnecessary for confidence in belief (i.e., faith does the job), but would likely not commit to the strong agnostic claim that "God exists" is unknowable.

Well, you wrote this:

I might also point out here that the weak forms of atheism and agnosticism reflect the psychological state of the individual. The strong versions are making claims about the nature of reality. This is important to note. You can't refute someone who says they lack belief in God, for they are just expressing a fact about themselves to you, not presenting an arguable point. It would be akin to someone telling you they don't feel any pain. That's different from saying "there is no such thing as pain." — Thorongil

I get your distinction between "weak" forms of atheism and agnosticism and strong claims about the nature of reality.
But you are analogizing the subjective experiences of believing in God and feeling pain, and asserting that people cannot be mistaken about those. I think it is fair to say that, apart from feeling pain, there is no such thing as pain; and yet this would not be to suggest that feeling pain is illusory. In the same way we might say that apart from belief in God, there is no God, and likewise, this would not be to suggest that belief in God is illusory.

Of course if you think it is coherent and plausible to think of God as an objective entity independent from the believing in Him, then belief in God could not be analogous to feeling pain at all unless you were to posit that it is coherent and plausible to think of pain as an objective entity independent from the feeling of it; which would seem, at least at first glance, to be an absurdity. So, the burden would seem to be on anyone that wants to justify the analogy, to argue for the coherence and plausibility of thinking the objective, independent existence of pain.

Perhaps we should make a different thread?

Belief about God is entirely possible. Knowledge about God is not possible.

Believers can have no more knowledge about God than atheists can have. Many believers claim to know a lot about God. They are deluded -- not in their belief that God exists, but in their claimed knowledge about God. Atheists assert that they do not believe in God, so there is nothing for them to know, nothing for them to believe, about God.

Believers who assert that they know nothing about the God they believe in are, paradoxically, on more solid ground than believers who have all kinds of "knowledge" about God. Why?

God is unknowable. You tell me how we very finite, narrow-minded, pig-headed, flesh-embodied beings can "know" anything about a being who is infinite, immortal, invincible, all knowing, and always present everywhere (and for Christians, is 3 Persons in 1 Being--just to make things a little more difficult than they already were). If God is our invention (which is what I think) then we have invented an "unknowable 'mystery". Unknowable mysteries of our own making are, of course, a contradiction in terms. That is the primary flaw in the "received religions" -- Judaism, Christianity, and Islam. The God that believers claim to know is unknowable. I say, believe, then shut up about the object of belief. There is nothing to say.

On the one hand, believers say "we don't know what God will do, God is a mystery, His ways are mysterious, etc." But then they will turn around and say that God did this, that, or the other thing. And, of course, God wants us to do x, y, and z, but not a, b, and c. They want it both ways.

Perhaps we should make a different thread? — darthbarracuda

At last! A universally applicable principle.

God is unknowable. You tell me how we very finite, narrow-minded, pig-headed, flesh-embodied beings can "know" anything about a being who is infinite, immortal, invincible, all knowing, and always present everywhere. — Bitter Crank

Knowledge of God, including but not limited to whether God exists, can be acquired through a divine knowing event. Knowledge of God can be satisfied in the individual as long as the justified true belief conditions have been satisfied. If an omnipotent being wants to confer knowledge to another being so as to satisfy the conditions of knowledge, it is not immediately obvious to me how that acquisition of knowledge could/would fail.

P1: If God or a Greatest Possible Being (GPB) exists, and God wants a finite being to know, as a justified true belief, a finite detail of God's nature, then the finite being will know a finite detail of God's nature.
Assume: God or a Greatest Possible Being (GPB) exists, and God wants a finite being to know, as a justified true belief, a finite detail of God's nature.
C: The finite being will know, as a justified true belief, a finite detail of God's nature.

The above argument doesn't show there is knowledge of God, but is meant to argue how such knowledge is possible. There will be a challenge in showing the assumption is true without the presupposition of the existence of God, and the truth of the assumption might rely on the very assumption being made, but at least the argument is valid.

The God that believers claim to know is unknowable. I say, believe, then shut up about the object of belief. There is nothing to say. — Bitter Crank

This summarizes my belief really in a nutshell. In fact, it's my belief that any attempt to attribute substance to God in terms of what he is, how he looks, what he does, etc. is idolatry in the broadest sense of the definition. Just like we are prohibited from chiseling our gods from rocks and sticks, we are prohibited from attributing anything to God that specifies what he is and makes him subject to worship.

I'd argue that the first commandment tells us that there is but one God, the second that we shall not make a graven image of him (which I take most broadly as noted above), and the third that you shall not take his name in vain, which Orthodox Jews actually take to mean you shall not speak his never ever. For that reason, the actual name of God as written in the Torah is considered unpronounceable since no one has dared said his name since folks last spoke to him.

Leaving aside all the horseshit interpretation surrounding such biblical passages over the millennia, I take all this to mean just what you said: God is too great to even consider, so stop considering him and just sort of accept him in all his esteemed nebulosity.

So do come join me this Tuesday (that's my holy day) at the Hanover Church of Nebulosia. We speak not of that which cannot comprehend, but we have spaghetti dinners every Tuesday. Wednesday is Ostracism Day where we cast out certain members for violating our rules. We are a religion after all.

Well, it went from a thread about having confidence in one's beliefs to explicitly theological semantics.

Everything begins in mysticism and ends in politics.

Everything in politics ends in mysticism; the circle is complete...

Now I am the master!

Just becuase someone is smarter does not make them infallible. You act as though these people are gods. Thier belief system does not have to be yours.

The fact that someone is qualified on one subject doesn't mean that they can't be wrong about another subject, topic, issue or question.

Michael Ossipoff

I believe, as jesus said at one point, that both the experience of hell and heaven lie within us. I have been through both and made it through the other side.