Dialogue

[Lawrence]

The thread on critical thinking is blocked. I'm sorry for all concerned. The following may be useful. BookTalk and Chris has been kind to me. I hope I am giving back.

Frank, Thomas, Interbaine, Mr. P. et. al. I do not take personal offense that this thread has gone on for 15 pages and no one has cited my essay. (That’s a joke folks!) That being said, I believe the dialogue between me and my friend Maarten Van Swaay concernin his word smithing of my statement “The answer is there is no answer – only belief” The individual, personal, and unique belief of each person who asks and answers the question ‘is there life after death’ might offer a tranquil intervention to this thread. What follows is to me an example of critical thinking and respectful dialogue. I hope you find it useful.

"The answer is we have no answer now." Adding a word at the end, and
changing 'is' to 'we have' leaves the contradiction as stark as before.
If 'we have no answer' then 'the answer' cannot exist. If 'the answer'
is indeed 'the answer', then the statement is false. Both observations
unchanged from what I wrote earlier. The question 'is there life after
death' is a binary question; it can have only two answers: yes, and no.
But neither logic nor observation allow us to choose or dismiss either
answer, unless we make the question superficial by treating it semantically:
if life and death are seen as mutually exclusive, then on that semantic
ground the only possible answer is no. But neither you nor I seem
willing to escape by that facile route. So maybe we should acknowledge
that the casual understanding of 'life' and 'death' by itself raises
unanswered nontrivial questions.

If we do treat 'life' and 'death' as mutually exclusive, then we must
also admit that the question uses at least one, and maybe both words
with more than one meaning. Either we resolve the multiple meanings,
or we acknowledge the sentence as meaningless. That is old hat:
we can avoid the semantic problem by rephrasing: 'is there an afterlife?'
And if so, is that afterlife something other than death?

You tell me that I look at the issue 'like an x-ray machine'. Methinks
you have that backward. I look at the words for what they say.
You apparently want me to see them as you mean them, i.e. underneath
their visible outer appearance.

If you want people to think, should you not give them something
that 'makes sense', so that they have a starting point for their
thoughts? Try this for taste:

Maarten then proposes this rephrase of my statement.
"Neither logic nor observation can yield an answer, or refute a
proposed answer, to the question 'is there life after death'.
One may make peace with the question, by recognizing it as
unanswerable, or by admitting an answer that must then rest on
belief. That belief can only be personal: it may be possible to
describe it, but it cannot be argued, nor can it be imposed on others."

The time is late .... thanks for the challenge! It is one thing
to discover what strikes me as odd in your writing; the hard work
comes from prying it apart to find out why, and then to describe that
'why' precisely. Good to keep a mind awake!

I believe Maarten has presented a very clear example of dialogue and critical thinking. Thinking and Critical Thinking is such a pleasant civilized pastime.

Best wishes to all, Lawrence

[Interbane]

Hey Lawrence, good to see you back here. Where have you been?

To keep things in perspective, it should be realized that even though the question is binary, and we can't answer it, doesn't mean there isn't an objective truth to the matter. It just means that truth cannot be known by us. Either there is life after death, or there isn't. But we don't know.

I also think it's not true that the question will remain entirely binary. Posed with only "yes" and "no" as answers, the question castrates all evidence and reasoning for or against. Other such questions that are similar are the existence of a non-personal deity, and the beginning of the universe.

To emphasize what I mean, consider the idea that we are all a part of an alien dream. We can't know whether or not this is true. There are endless such ideas that are possible to be imagined by the human mind to which there is no answer. I'm sure if we took a large number of them and compared them for exclusiveness, many would negate most of the others.

If this is the case, which I believe it is, then we must consider it as evidence against answering "yes" to these unanswerable questions. But you're right, even then it is still only belief. This is why the filter of skepticism is a virtue.

[geo]

What follows is to me an example of critical thinking and respectful dialogue. I hope you find it useful.

Thanks for this post and, yes, I did find it very useful. I must not have been around for the original exchange so thanks for reposting it.

A critical thinker would likely not consider this question for very long, knowing that evidence will neither confirm or deny it. So, yes, it is a question that cannot be resolved and, as you say, the answer must rest on belief.

During our recent discussion about critical thinking, I put some thought into what I would describe as "rigidity of belief." It helps me to picture this on a spectrum, with absolute belief in God on one end and absolute belief that God doesn't exist on the other. In the middle of this spectrum are the two agnostic positions—agnostic theist and agnostic atheist. Thus, this spectrum would look something like this:



To relate this to your original discussion, I am making the assumption that a belief in God equates a belief in the afterlife.

Also, I should explain my terminology.

Gnostic Theist - "Gnosticism" denotes certainty of belief, therefore a "gnostic theist" is someone who absolutely believes in God. A Fundamentalist Christian or Fundamentalist Muslim would fall into this category. Their belief comes first, supplanting factual evidence that may contradict the belief, which is why a Creationists can believe the world is 6,000 years old.

Agnostic Theist - "Agnosticism" denotes the absence of certainty and so an "agnostic theist" knows that no evidence exists to support a belief in God, but chooses to believe anyway.

An agnostic atheist considers the lack of evidence in God to mean a belief in God is not supported, but neither is there proof that God does not exist.

And, finally, the gnostic atheist is someone who absolutely believes that there is no such thing as God.

The two extremes on this spectrum, represented by gnostic theist, on one end, and gnostic atheist, on the other, are fundamentalist in nature and, I think, dictated by black-and-white thinking. I'd argue that the agnostic positions are the most reasonable and most consistent with critical thinking. A critical thinker typically doesn't subscribe to a belief that is unsupported by evidence and, even when a belief is reached, it is subject to change when new evidence comes into play. The agnostic theist reserves a special place for belief in a deity, but still adheres to reason and logic in all other areas.

It occurs to me that the agnostic theist and the agnostic atheist would generally get along pretty well.

I think what I'm trying to show here is that actual belief in God doesn't really matter, but rigidity of belief does. A person with a rigid or fixed belief system tends to have a limited worldview and resists new ideas or anything that might contradict his/her beliefs. And I think, as we see with various fundamentalist movements, there is a tendency to impose these beliefs on others.

And these are my random thoughts for the day, boys and girls. I just make this stuff up, so please feel free to argue with me.

[Chris OConnor]

Nice work, Geo! I've created a similar graphic, but I'm not sure where I have it stored right now. Mine is a quadrant, but the principle is the same.

The only difference I would have with your definitions of the terms is for those starting with gnostic. My understanding of gnostic is that it doesn't pertain to belief, but more to the claim of knowledge.

So while you have all 4 terms on one continuum I think a better way of portraying them would be in a quadrant. Damn I wish I could find the one I created. It's here in this computer somewhere.

There are two questions we all must answer....

---

Question 1 pertains to our beliefs and not our claim to knowledge. Our answer to the question determines whether we are an atheist or a theist.

Question 1 = Do you believe in a God or gods?

If your answer is yes then you are a theist.

If your answer is no then you are an atheist.

---

Question 2 has nothing to do with beliefs and everything to do with knowledge. Our answer to the question determines whether we are gnostic or agnostic, with regards to the subject matter.

Question 2 = Do you know whether a God or gods exist or don't exist?

If you answer yes then you are a gnostic.

If you answer no then you are an agnostic.

---

All people should be able to answer both questions (or have both questions answered for them if they are unable to answer or being stubborn and refusing to answer!)

Imagine a square with 4 quadrants.

Oh hell....I will look for the image. It isn't impressive. I created it using MS Paint.

[Thomas Hood]

Gnostic Theist - "Gnosticism" denotes certainty of belief. . . .

Geo, you are misusing the word gnostic. "Gnosis -- Intuitive apprehension of spiritual truths, an esoteric form of knowledge sought by the Gnostics." Gnosis is not a level of confidence, since persons may have a maximum level of confidence without gnosis from unquestioned cultural conditioning. The gnostic is confident because of direct, personal intuitive experience. An example of such a gnosis is the conversion of the scientist and ex-atheist Francis Collins to theism by encounter with the glories of nature while on a hike in the northwest.

Intuition is a confused term. True gnosis (my understanding) always has an objective component -- nature, for Collins. It is the combination of intellect and emotion. The fundamentalist experience of "being filled with the Holy Spirit" is emotional and trance, not gnosis.

Collins may profitable be compared to Thoreau.

Tom

[geo]

The only difference I would have with your definitions of the terms is for those starting with gnostic. My understanding of gnostic is that it doesn't pertain to belief, but more to the claim of knowledge.

Geo, you are misusing the word gnostic.

Yes, you folks are right. Gnosis has to do with knowledge or claim of knowledge, not belief per se. Regardless, I'm probably tweaking the definitions to make my point.

To sum up:

Gnostic-Theist = I am certain God exists.
Agnostic-Theist = I think/believe God exists. (open to debate)
Agnostic-Atheist = I have no God beliefs, or I think/believe God does not exist, or I see no reason to believe God exists. (due to lack of evidence)
Gnostic-Atheist = I am certain God does not exist.

Chris, I would like to see that quadrant of yours. My own little illustration lacks a certain, je ne sais quois . . .

[Chris OConnor]

I found it. It isn't much to look at graphically, but it should make some sense....I hope.

[geo]

Thanks Chris. The questions are excellent. It really is very easy to see where we fall within these four very broad categories.

I came across this graphic on the Richard Dawkins web site, but it's pretty confusing.



I think this graphic at least shows that the agnostic positions (theist and atheist) are probably the most common. The extreme certainty of knowledge is a fringe position (thankfully).

[Chris OConnor]

Wow that graphic is difficult to understand.

[Frank 013]

Geo
I think this graphic at least shows that the agnostic positions (theist and atheist) are probably the most common. The extreme certainty of knowledge is a fringe position (thankfully).

Unfortunately the church has a wild card called “faith” which seems to create Gnostic-Theists who then create their own evidence “knowledge” for their belief.

I am relatively sure you don’t see this phenomenon among Gnostic-Atheists… of course I do not know why they claim certainly in the first place, I don’t know of any to ask.

Later