Quote:
Originally Posted by RVCA
Lack of belief in deities is in no way mutually exclusive from avoiding to make a decision about deities. While you can lack belief because you haven't had the opportunity to form an opinion on the matter at hand (being unaware of said matter), you can also reject to form an opinion which results in lack of belief.
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My point was and is that being an atheist you have made the decision already, which eliminates the agnostic position by definition. Maybe I'm nitpicking here, but the mutual exclusion between agnosticism and atheism is not based on that they are referring to two different concepts - gnosticism and theism respectively - but what underlying concept they
both are referring to, i.e. a deity. The atheist has made a decision visavi the concept of a deity, the agnostic has not, that's the difference.
Of course, one may use the term 'agnosticism' in a wider perspective than just theism, but in such case we're not discussing god's being or not being exclusively and the concept of atheism is no longer useful. That is to say there may as well be a lot of phenomena we cannot explain and know for sure are the way we think they are, and as far as I'm concerned there are. Enter epistemology.
Quote:
Originally Posted by tore
I think you missed the point. I don't see love in your list of elements there  As Pratchett might put it, even if you'd grind the universe to the finest powder and sieve it through the finest sieve, you won't find one atom of "love".
It's a name we put on a set of feelings which have an existence entirely dependent on our highly advanced biology and not a force of nature. |
Well, our advanced biology and its ontology is indeed a force of nature itself. Love is a human concept, entirely dependent on our consciousness and freewill, all being a part of our nature and thus part of the universal laws applied on us. I'd say that love, in the most universal understanding of it, is when we choose to acknowledge the existence, seek to identify the nature of the objects within it and the rules by which they exist and work, and to acknowledge the very nature of ourselves and the relation between us. In short, love is the perpetual quest for ultimate understanding and the ideal of living on par with existence, the universe, everything. Love is knowledge is understanding is harmony is peace.
That's what "Close to the edge" is about, by the way. I know. I wrote a whole B-level essay about it.