Knowledge, belief & agnosticism (Agnosticism)

by dhw, Friday, March 14, 2008, 12:58 (5885 days ago) @ clayto

Clayto reports on a theory that life has always been here and the universe has always existed, though both are constantly changing. - First of all, thank you for your understanding. Yes indeed, you had to reply, but I'm glad you replied again! - An endless succession of universes, big bangs and crunches, and evolutions of life is pretty hard to get one's head round, but then so are all the other theories. The difficulty of actually believing in such concepts gives me an excuse (thank you for this too) to revive the question concerning "the nature of knowledge, belief and agnosticism", which George Jelliss originally raised under Absence of Evidence (27 Feb. at 20.18) along with the useful maxim that "one's belief should be proportional to the evidence". - On the understanding that I am using the word "belief" in the sense of an inner conviction that something is true, I would like to find out just what it is that constitutes evidence, and why some people are so confident that their unproven theories are true while other people's aren't. The majority of contributors to this website who have so far professed inner convictions are atheists, although it could be argued that agnostics in the "pure" sense of the word have the inner conviction that it is impossible to know whether God exists. It's easier to tackle the problem in an atheist context. The example we've discussed earlier ... and are still discussing ... is the belief that life on Earth originated through spontaneous (i.e. taking place without the intervention of any outside intelligence) physical and chemical processes. Despite long years of research by many scientists, there appears to be no evidence of the theory, and therefore belief can hardly be called proportional to the evidence, so what is the inner conviction based on? (I could just as well take the example of a Creationist who believes in the literal truth of Genesis, but we don't have any Creationist contributors to ask.) Conversely, if an atheist were confronted with a group of people who had clinically died, been resuscitated, and described how they had entered an extraordinary new world (see Pim van Lommel), why would he/she automatically assume that they hadn't? - I must stress, as George did originally, that this is not about abiogenesis (or about near-death experiences), but about the nature of belief. The answers won't lead us to any of the so-called "deeper" truths, but perhaps they might have a bearing on our social behaviour and the way we use language ... the word "evidence" being one example.