Can a Skeptic Believe in God?

http://www.skeptics....s/eric-god.html

I will reserve my judgement on this article for now. Feel free to comment in the meantime (or anytime).

I am a skeptic, and an atheist, and also a theist, an agnostic, and a deist, and what you have, all at the same time.

But I don't jump off the say 20th floor of a tall buildinng.

You see, when it is a matter of physical realities which are examined by the experimental sciences like physics, chemistry, biology, I am not irrational enough as to maintain a skeptical attitude.

But when it has to do with non-physical scenarios like the existence of God, or how we can know God, then I reserve to myself the luxury of belief and disbelief.

Skepticism, atheism, theism, agnosticism, and deism, all at the same time? Impossible? I assure you it is very possible, because all these scenarios are not the same as jumping out of the 20th floor of a building.

That is why I mention in several threads here that my religion is rational, provisional, and optional.

Susma

Skepticism, atheism, theism, agnosticism, and deism, all at the same time? Impossible? I assure you it is very possible, because all these scenarios are not the same as jumping out of the 20th floor of a building.

You've successfully confused me. Nonetheless I appreciate your input, you're never short of opinions.

Skepticism, atheism, theism, agnosticism, and deism, all at the same time? Impossible? I assure you it is very possible, because all these scenarios are not the same as jumping out of the 20th floor of a building.

That is why I mention in several threads here that my religion is rational, provisional, and optional.

Please take no offense but it also implies that your religion is irrational, inconsistent, and superficial.

I appreciate what you imply about how we are not *bound* to one idea or another but there is a kind of rational limit to how far you can assume contradiction before it is not paradox but simply shoddy thinking, shallow commitment not "optional", and unprincipled not "provisional."

The flexibility is valuable and needed so as to not *fossilize* our abilities but conversely like Bennet quipped about *Open Mindedness*:

I do not suggest that you should not have an open mind.... But, don't keep your mind so open that your brains fall out.
-William J. Bennett

Please don't take that as advocating conversely parochialism, in fact far from it.

I think a lot of people who have this mentality embedded in their mind, the idea namely of consistent and persevering loyalty even in such matters as how we can or cannot entertain theism, atheism, deism, skepticism, secularism, agnosticism, all at the same time.

That is why we observe the phenomenon of agnostics and atheists and secularists, and what else like for example Christians and Muslims and Buddhists of the West specially, all acting and speaking, and feeling as though they owe loyalty to these mental acrobatic scenarios.

In philosophy 101 I learned that nothing can be and not be at the same time on the same aspect. I say that I can be all those things at the same time, but I do not say that I am all those things from or on and by the same respect or basis or consideration or aspect of viewpoint.

That is what the agnostics, atheists, secularists, on the one side, and the theists like Christians, Muslims, and Western Buddhists, and among Christians the various groups, and also among the various factions of each religious system, they can't or are immunized to the fact that in the life of the mind as in itself, prescinding from the life outside the mind, one can be many things at the same time, but not on the same basis.

The exclusive permanent commitment habit or obsession of Western thinkers, I believe is maybe the greatest heresy in the intellectual milieu of the West.

But that is not how life is lived outside the mind. In life outside the mind, the human person is many divergent and contradictory characters at the same time. What is that about the whole world is a stage, and all the men and women thereof are players? of diverse and even contradictory scripts?

Let me put it this way: Life dictates mind, not mind dictates life. That's why I can be all those things like theist, atheist, deist, skeptic, agnostic, secularist, at the same time also a postgraduate Catholic still accustomed to a sense of religion of the theistic culturally oriented Catholicism.

Whereas a lot of guys claiming to be atheists, agnostics, secularists, skeptics, anti-religionists, have enslaved themselves to their mind world of atheism, agnosticism, secularism, skepticism, anti-religionism, whatever; they cannot imagine that they are free persons in regard to all such mental scenarios.

Of course, they don't admit that, but when you read them they are in their innermost psychology bound to a loyalty that is exclusivistic and permanent, and they would feel terribly uncomfortable to be 'disloyal', or receptive of various divergent and even contradictory mind scenarios -- remember, from different viewpoints. Viewpoints, that's what it is all about, those scenarios in your mind.

Susma

My Psychology

I am a collector, and I hate to divest my mind of scenarios I have come to know about.

Then also I am guided by one principle, free inquiry, and of course its sister, free speech, understand that as in a civil mode.

Then also I a a creature of habit, that's why even though I profess to be in religion: rational, provisional, and optional, nonetheless I am by family background and personal history of the culture of Catholicism.

That's why I call myself a postgraduate Catholic. Post as in past, and graduate as on graduation day in the commencement rites we step out from the security of the campus cradle to the risks of freedom in the world outside.

Graduate, the word, is from the Latin, gradior, gradiri -- to step, to walk; thus you have also graduation, gradation, ingress, egress, progress, regress.

And I think I have the best of psychology in regard to an intellectual mentality.

Susma

My present obsession

I have come to realize that all my posts here have to do one way or another with finding out how the arcane world can be of use to the mundane world. The mundane world is also the dismal world as opposed to the ideal world, also I call the mundane world the drab world whereas the ideal or arcane world the garb world.

Thus I am critical of Buddhism and philosophy because I am still trying to find out how these two arcane worlds can be of practical use to the concerns of the mundane, dismal, drab world of everyday routines and challenges, like looking for a small screw I dropped on the floor and hving a hard time, and not finding it.

Susma

I say that my sense of religion is rational, provisional, and optional; and this is what I mean:

Rational, in that I have reasons to maintain my sense of religion; my sense of religion is not a matter of blind stubborn arbitrariety. Didn't some also very profound student of human behavior two thousand years ago, and a teacher of religion, tell people of religion, to always be ready with a rational account of their religion or faith?

Provisional, in that I know that my sense of religion is for the time being, as to the state of my knowledge and mastery of the world; as I come to more knowledge and more command of the world, the universe, my sense of religion can change, be more simple or more subtle; I can modify my way of relating to the objects of my sense of religion. That same scholar also said something about how we know now as seeing shadows, but much later we would see clearly as we proceed in time with our investigation and speculation.

Optional, in that I keep intact my choices, so that I can change my sense of religion, I can take a leave of absence from my sense of religion, I can adjust my kind of beliefs and observances. And that is precisely also the attitude of many a genius of religion, telling people who would be religious, not to be bound to one form or one stage of human religious evolution or development, but to be open-minded to all and diverse forms.

And yes, I can be with a sense of religion, all at the same time to the exasperation of people who have bound themselves to an exclusivistic permanent commitment to a single mental scenario, all at the same time I can be without any religion, an atheist withal being theistic simultaneously, and an agnostic no less, then also a deist, a secularist, an irreligionist, depending upon the grounds for each kind of scenario I entertain in my mind.

Consider that there are very brilliant and learned minds at this very moment of human intellectual history who are theists and there are who are atheists, also there be Christians and Muslims and Buddhists, and all of them are people of the utmost intellectual acuity and possessed of the most vast expanse of learning and insights into man and the universe. So, why should I not be all of them in my mind all at the same time -- but of course on various grounds.

Susma

The ecumenical Buddhist

From my stock reading, Buddhism is represented by Buddhist spokesmen as one religious-philosophical system that allows or even enables a person to be at the same time a Christian, a Muslim, a Jew, an atheist, a theist, an irreligionist, or whatever, a scientist, a philosopher -- but not a drunkard and much less a drug addict.

Maybe I should sign up with the Buddhists. Hahaha and hehehe. For I am all those things except into alcoholism and drug use.

So, you see, I am not alone in being eclectic in my mind, a host to all kinds of essentially speculative thought scenarios, and I seem to have a richer intellectual life therefrom(?)

In college disciplines for degree curricula, there are subject courses which are required, others are even more than required, they are basic, and even prerequisite; then we have the electives and the optionals.

Electives if I remember rightly are subject courses which you can choose one or the other, to fill up the required quantity of units for graduation or to merit the academic degree sought after.

Optionals, I don't know now what role they play in the strict compliance for the degree program. But the very name itself seems to suggest that as they are not required for attaining your degree discipline, like civil engineering, they are good for your culture in your particular chosen field of studies. Thus you are training to be a civil engineer, but it is good for your engineering culture to also take up such an exotic course as "The Catacombs of Rome".

No, I don't think I am all mixed up for being at the same time, a theist, an atheist, a deist, an agnostic, a scientist wannabe, a skeptic, and whatever; but not one who would jump off the 20th floor of a building.

Susma

Corrigendum

My Psychology

I am a collector, and I hate to divest my mind of scenarios I have come to know about.

Then also I am guided by one principle, free inquiry, and of course its sister, free speech, understand that as in a civil mode.

Then also I a a creature of habit, that's why even though I profess to be in religion: rational, provisional, and optional, nonetheless I am by family background and personal history of the culture of Catholicism.

That's why I call myself a postgraduate Catholic. Post as in past, and graduate as on graduation day in the commencement rites we step out from the security of the campus cradle to the risks of freedom in the world outside.

Graduate, the word, is from the Latin, gradior, gradiri -- to step, to walk; thus you have also graduation, gradation, ingress, egress, progress, regress.

And I think I have the best of psychology in regard to an intellectual mentality.

Susma

Correction: wrong -- gradiri, correct -- gradi.

Sorry.

Susma

I scanned the article and I'm sorry, Susma, I didn't read all of your posts here. Perhaps later. Thought I would at least offer the following concerning that article.

Looks like I satisfy the characteristics of the skeptic. Guess I am not an atheist though I don't ascribe to any existing religious perspective as to what god is. I guess I am agnostic but I shouldn't be in keeping with the following which seems to come up with an idea of what god is that appears to fit in with empirical evidence:

In about 1972 I read a little book by a guy named U. S. Andersen called "Three Magic Words" http://www.mpowers.c...magicwords.html That web site kind of lauds it a bit more than I would but I found it quite intriguing and do embrace the idea. That recent movie "What the Bleep Do We Know" also touches upon the same subject. If you are going to see if you can find the book at your local library or something, I wont tell you what the words are to suspend the surprise. I should probably get another copy and either follow the suggested meditation practice or redesign it to fit what makes sense to me. If I remember correctly, it would not need much alteration to be something I should and want to do.

I Am an experiencer of my being here on the Earth right now. This experience includes the thoughts of theist, atheist, agnostic, and many more. In this I think experience I share with many others here. I experience what I am induced by the moment to experience.

This moment can be dominated by logic and reason, or it can be dominated by feeling and insight, or by acceptance of what others are feeling or experiencing. I am a creature of my environment in this way so I can share in some of what susmariosep is saying here.

We are creatures of our environment. We act and feel based on what events and exeriences we run into in our lives. This of course includes mystical experiences with the source of all things which is so strong of an experience that it confounds the logic center of the brain.

I have had the experinece of being beyond the physical realm which is so called enlightenment, I then came back to physical reality and found that mystical experience hard to ground into the day to day living of the physical world we live in.

In this way I would say that your consciousness is able to expand as far as you might dare to do so. This is the true limit of experience, It is limited to your courage to explore and understand what limits our understanding. Logic can only take you into areas that can be defined by logic. Some areas are best left to feelings and impressions that are started in logic but have their roots in higher than logic experiences of mind.

We are not Spock. Our logic is only a part of our lower base experience storage understanding level. We have a higher level that is not well explained with more base logic arguments. The animal nature is always wanting us to be only our physical lower being self. Our highest self is outside of this logic and we can only feel what is right for us and search with this finer sense of right what and where to go next in our path to understanding our true nature.

i think for the solution you must compare descartes, berkeley and locke. their way of questioning will lead you to an answer.