From: Menno Rubingh (rubingh@delftnet.nl)
Date: Sat Jan 22 2000 - 16:39:44 MST
On Sat, 22 Jan 2000, Max More, the President of this truly admirable Institute,
wrote:
> AGNOSTIC AND ATHEIST:
> I just see no positive reason to believe this, many strong reasons to
> doubt it, and so lack belief.
Is it therefore not possible for an atheist to make life easier to himself by
simply reformulating the statement "I doubt the belief in God" into a more
positive statement like "man is on his own without any God to help him, to
trust in, or to blame" ?
The second, more positive, formulation above makes it easier, for example, to
make positive predictions like "Jesus will NOT resurrect, and will NOT visit
Jerusalem, in the year 2001". The first, doubtful, formulation above of
atheism doesn't allow direct predictions like this -- but any atheist would (I
think) be very willing to bet a large sum of money on this prediction ! I
think that any atheist who SAYS he only supports the first, more doubtful,
statement, in practice very probably uses the second, more outspoken,
statement anyway.
Lack of evidence either way makes it (I think) *possible* to reformulate one's
"beliefs" into positive statements in this way without any change in one's
claims about the 'truth' of these theories. So, when doing so might turn one
into a more effective entity, why not exploit this and -- purely as an act of
'memetic engineering' of the theories one uses as one's 'operating system' --
reformulate atheism/agnosticism (when these stop more or less after saying "I
don't know and I can't make any predictions") into a more outspoken statement
that
- Presents the same thing as a *positive* item of "knowledge" and which
therefore (I think) is easier to use as a basis for one's actions,
and/or that
- Drags into the open the assumptions one uses in practice anyway ?
> Onward!
Excelsior !
Best regards, Menno (rubingh@delftnet.nl)
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