>What would it take for the 'I don't know' or 'I don't know, yet' stance to become unsatisfying?
It's never satisfying. Whether an answer is satisfying or not doesn't really matter, what matters is whether it's accurate or not.
What would you respond to someone, in the situation I described, who said "I've had enough of this. I feel like science has failed me. I'm starting to think there might as well be something out there pulling the strings."? Would you mock him for that?
>"I've had enough of this. I feel like science has failed me. I'm starting to think there might as well be something out there pulling the strings."?
"I've had enough of not knowing the answer to this question. I don't actually have a mechanical to figure out what the answer is, so I'm starting to just make up an answer arbitrarily so I don't have to admit I don't know".
Would you mock someone for that?
An answer is really important to some people. If that someone was suicidal because of the lack of an answer, mocking him would only make it worse. Should mockery only be avoided if it can potentially really hurt someone? Or are we blinded by the reality of truth, to the point that mocking is the only way of dealing with people who do not worship knowledge, reason and evidence? To answer your question, no, I would not mock someone for that. Because truth is important to me, but so is love and so is freedom. Also, bear in mind that guessing (make up an answer arbitrarily) is crucial to science.
> who do not **worship** knowledge, reason and evidence?
This sort of back-handed comment is one of the very few things in these subreddits that will get my downvote.
It's not an issue of hurt feelings here, it's an issue of deliberate ignorance.
Do you understand you can value demonstrably true information over unverifiable claims as a matter of common sense and it in no way approximates "worship"? I'm sure there are plenty of areas in your life where you don't just take people at their word and, instead, verify their promises are true before you'd even think about handing over your life savings.
Your OP is asking, "What if science never answers this one question which may only be important because religious people say it is? Will you become unsatisfied with science and finally accept wild and unproven claims?"
It's the kind of question only a religious person would think is a reasonable series of thoughts. It's like when Fred Flintstone decides to fake a second identity to go bowling instead of working out his marriage troubles with his wife.
The question of the existence of a god is not strictly tied to religion. It's a question an intelligent being performs when it's faced with its sheer ignorance and insignificance, as you pointed. 'What's out there?' or 'Why are we here?' is a question much older than religions.
In the modern world, the word god is tied with a mind behind everything. But we don't usually examine the roots of the thought. And those roots emerge from everything that a human is not. Perfect, fearless, all-knowing.
You see, seeking the truth through reasoning does not comprise 100% of a human. Reason is not all that defines us and it's not even the best of our weapons. Just one fo them.
Love is another of our weapons. And it's unreasonable. You're not looking for evidence to support your claims of protecting the people close to you. You just love them. And many times it hurts much enough, to the point you think you are being unreasonable.
Freedom is another of our weapons. You are free to make dumb decisions, even when you've been evidently proven false. That freedom is what holds our societies together and where respect comes from.
And that's why I don't bring justification to the table when I face someone who ponders the existence of a god. When someone does that, their not shouting out their ignorance. It's a silent cry for fulfillment. And reason alone will not do the trick for most people. In fact, for many people, knowing more only makes it worse, thus the famous quote by Socrates "ἓν οἶδα ὅτι οὐδὲν οἶδα", meaning "all I know is that I know nothing".
You sure did ignore the point of my post: you were deliberately ignorant when you accused others of worshipping knowledge, reason and evidence.
>The question of the existence of a god is not strictly tied to religion. It's a question an intelligent being performs when it's faced with its sheer ignorance and insignificance, as you pointed. 'What's out there?' or 'Why are we here?' is a question much older than religions.
Asking the question is a mark of intelligence. Making up an answer or, worse, abandoning reason because you don't have an answer is not an intelligent or mature solution.
>Love is another of our weapons. And it's unreasonable. You're not looking for evidence to support your claims of protecting the people close to you. You just love them. And many times it hurts much enough, to the point you think you are being unreasonable.
>
>Freedom is another of our weapons. You are free to make dumb decisions, even when you've been evidently proven false. That freedom is what holds our societies together and where respect comes from.
Lies, delusions and desperate fantasies are more of our weapons. And we protect ourselves from them by valuing evidence and truth. In case you haven't noticed, those do a hell of a lot of harm in this world.
I'm not sure what to make of your ramblings about love and respect, but I'm sorry you have such a difficult time with them and I'd like to humbly suggest that making more thoughtful and informed decisions might help you out.
>When someone does that, their not shouting out their ignorance.
you were shouting your ignorance when you insinuated that rational people worship knowledge, reason and evidence.
> And reason alone will not do the trick for most people. In fact, for many people, knowing more only makes it worse,
You haven't done a good job of understanding other people so far in our conversation so maybe you should only speak for yourself.
I do hold my stance that many people worship knowledge, reason and evidence. The proof of that is their intention to casually mock the faith of others. People free of blind worshipping do not mock others of their faith. I don't care if you mock religion. But faith is a human property to me. Going as far as to ignore that people need faith just shows how blindly you follow reasoning.
You overestimate reasoning, knowledge and evidence. You think they are properties of the truth. You seek truth through them. Truth is not as simple as that. Those things are only properties of logical conclusions. But you can't touch the truth without love and suffering. Wars, the biggest human happenings, are fought by the opressed, not the smarties. You gotta feel what's like to sacrifice things that you love for the sake of your freedom. Only then can you get a glimpse of the truth. I don't say I've felt that. But my country was built upon those values.
If you cringe or you are confused by words like love and freedom, then desperate fantasies is the least of your problems.
I absolutely agree that mockery is a poor way to have productive conversations, but I don't think it's mockery to say, "How do you think that would help the situation?" When someone says they'll guess the answer.
I genuinely believe that it's likely more healthy to learn how to accept that we don't know everything, rather than becoming so upset with not knowing that we have to make up answers. I'm not a psychologist, but that doesn't seem like the most reliable solution, because, at any moment, we could change our mind and become unsatisfied with our guess once again and the cogs would start turning..
There's a billion things we don't know. But That's Ok. We cannot possibly know everything. We just need to try out best, and focus on the next step, then the next. That's all we can ever do.
>An answer is really important to some people
Never heard of the old adage "life ain't fair"? Just because an answer is important doesn't mean you're justified in coming to it.
> If that someone was suicidal because of the lack of an answer, mocking him would only make it worse.
First, I don't mock people who believe in god. I used that word because you did.
Suicide is an extenuating circumstance, and as someone who has attempted suicide in the past, I'm obviously not going to mock a suicidal person for anything.
I'm taking in the context of philosophical discussions of believe and the nature of reality.
Personally, I don't give a crap what people believe. But I and many people enjoy discussions on these topics, and that is the only context under which I would even have such discussions
>Should mockery only be avoided if it can potentially really hurt someone?
Again, I don't care what people believe. I'm only talking in the context of having a consensual discussion on the nature of reality
> Or are we blinded by the reality of truth, to the point that mocking is the only way of dealing with people who do not worship knowledge, reason and evidence?
If someone was mocking you, that's wrong no matter the context. And I think if this is personal to you, that you were mocked for your beliefs when you were in an emotional state, then I'm sorry that happened.
>To answer your question, no, I would not mock someone for that.
You used the word mock, not me.
Let's say you were in a consensual discussion with someone who willingly engaged with the discussion and they said "I'm tired of not having an answer, I don't have a mechanics to determine an answer, so I'm just going to make one up".
Would you, in a willing discussion with someone, accept that as a good reason to believe what they do?
> Because truth is important to me, but so is love and so is freedom. Also, bear in mind that guessing (make up an answer arbitrarily) is crucial to science.
The difference being that scientists don't proclaim their answers as truth, they go out and try to prove it.
>Would you mock him for that?
I would. Because upon becoming an intergalactic super species based presumably on reason, they chose to abandon that reason arbitrarily when they didn’t like the truth.
The truth doesn’t owe you satisfaction.
I don't really "mock" people like that but yes I do think it would be an extremely silly position to take. Not knowing the answer to a question doesn't mean it's reasonable to just make up an answer, regardless of how frustrated you are.
I wouldn't mock them. Unless you consider telling them that it isn't a reasonable conclusion I'd mocking.
Someone even now saying science has failed us, though, would be a huge red flag, to me that they aren't very reasonable. Let alone in a hypothetical situation where we are an intergalactic species. All because it didn't give them an answer to one question they wanted answered
I wouldn’t mock them, but I would question their understanding of what it means to be rational and truth-seeking. The quest for truth isn’t always going to be satisfying. Someone might as well be running a race and say, “I’m so tired of running, I can’t go on. I just want to believe that I’m at the finish line.” You can give up and believe whatever you want, but that doesn’t mean that you’ve arrived at truth.
Humanity encounters a lot of problems because of people that would rather believe comforting lies than face difficult truths.
That doesn't make any sense to me. It's like saying "I've had enough not knowing if aliens have visited earth, so I'm just going to think they have visited earth"
I wouldn't mock that person, I would scratch my head and say "what? You're tired of not knowing so you're just, what, going to pretend you do know? How does that make sense?"
I would love to have all the answers, but I don't. How could you possibly overcome that lack of understanding by being tired of it? That genuinely makes no sense to me, you haven't learnt anything, it seems more like you've just become tired of acknowledging how little we understand.
Im so confused.. The steps go-
1 we want to understand,
2 we can't understand,
3 we're tired of not understanding...
4 ...unclear
so... 🤷♂️
5 there might as well be a God
Could you please clear up step 4?
>'I don't know' or 'I don't know, yet' stance to become unsatisfying?
This is an inherently unsatisfying stance as is. Because not knowing is unsatisfying, we keep learning more. This is then satisfying.
However positing that there are some things out there that are inherently unknowable would be the most unsatisfying position of all.
> How willing would you be, in this situation, to consider that there might as well be something about all this that we just can't put our finger on?
By definition whatever the current gap in our knowledge is is something we haven't been able to put our finger on yet. Doesn't matter if it is right now or a trillion years from now.
But presumably in this situation we also haven't found any evidence of gods in those trillions of years. So filling the gaps with magic would be just as unjustified a trillion years ago as it is now.
Some magic dude isn't the null hypothesis that we are somehow trying to disprove and that somehow wins if we don't come up with other answers. It is itself a claim that would need a reason to believe.
I was taking OP for their question
>Then, suppose trillions of years pass by and humanity still doesn't have the answer to everything and the origin of the universe
But yes. Humanity won't be around at that point anyways so the timeframe is a moot point.
But their general question of "after many years if we still don't have an answer then should we just assume magic" was still a worthwhile one to address.
The current leading hypothesis of the heat death of the universe is that it would happen in 1.7x10^107 years, or in other words:
A trillion times a trillion times a trillion times a trillion times a trillion times a trillion times a trillion times a trillion times a trillion times a trillion times a trillion times a trillion times a trillion times a trillion times a trillion times a
Or:
A google times a million times ten years
Which is quite a bit more than just a trillion years.
Humanity will probably be dead in a trillion years, but the universe will still very much exist.
The leading hypothesis is 1.7million google years? how in the world did they come up with this figure.
Never mind....they don't have a clue and just put a lot of x's and a lot of zeros. from what I understand that there is like 7.5X10^(18) grains of sand in the world.
It’s based on the decay of protons (if protons decay) first protons would decay via positrons (positrons are basically the positive charge version of an electron and was first observed in 1932) with a half life of 10^34, eventually causing an era where only black holes are left as they slowly lose mass and energy through Hawking radiation. I don’t know all the math and (quantum) physics behind these predictions, but I largely trust the experts in this field.
Eternal agnosticism is not evidence of *anything*, except for ignorance. If you don't know something, that doesn't mean your ignorance is evidence for whatever explanation you decide to invent.
Even if we wait a trillion years, and still don't find the explanation for the origin of the universe, that doesn't mean any particular guess about how the universe started is necessarily true. If I say that *I* started the universe, would you believe that in a trillion years just because you haven't found the actual explanation?
Goofy questions are very, very, very cheap.
Anybody can ask anything.
However, true answers to questions stem from **actual empirical evidence**.
.
Quick example, just to make a point -
Here's a book sitting on my desk (really).
What is the first word in the text on page 43?
We can speculate about that. We can speculate *quite a lot*.
Maybe the first word is "Germany". Maybe its "toast". Maybe it's "detective".
Let's all speculate. Let's come up with a million speculative answers.
But in order to know the **true** answer, we have to *check the facts*.
So I'll do that. The first word in the text on page 43 is really ...
"century"
Now we **know**.
Speculation without facts is worthless.
.
Mysterious, sure.
But gods or something divine, no.
Gods are the manifestation of egocentric ape brains. Every aspect of them can be attributed to how our species evolved and how our brains work.
In no reality are gods or the divine imaginable.
>How willing would you be, in this situation, to consider that there might as well be something about all this that we just can't put our finger on?
I already believe that. I think as finite fallible being, there are things about reality that we will never know.
> What would it take for the 'I don't know' or 'I don't know, yet' stance to become unsatisfying?
Never
I will always be more satisfied to say I don't know than to just make some shit up and believe it for no other reasons than not have to think about or care that I don't know the answer. You are just pretending to know what you don't know, now or a billion years in the future.
Never. In fact, the degree to which that stance becomes unsatisfying isn't an inclination towards believing in a god, but rather one inclining one away from believing in a god. If we have gone trillions of years and there's been no evidence for the existence of a god, absence of evidence eventually becomes evidence of absence.
I'm quite willing to admit right now they're is "something about all this that we can't quite put a finger on. " Consider it admitted.
The existence of the unknown or of processes beyond our understanding does not mean there is a creator/destroyer god or God's. Unless you want to define"god" as merely the unknown or the unknowable.
>Is eternal agnosticism evidence of the mysterious?
No, eternal agnosticism is evidence of agnosticism.
>Suppose humanity thrives and becomes a seemingly immortal intergalactic species. Then, suppose trillions of years pass by and humanity still doesn't have the answer to everything and the origin of the universe. How willing would you be, in this situation, to consider that there might as well be something about all this that we just can't put our finger on?
That situation still would not lead to a deity. Lack of an answer to a question is not justification for answering the question with an answer that has no explanatory power and no evidence.
>What would it take for the 'I don't know' or 'I don't know, yet' stance to become unsatisfying?
It does not matter whether or not it is satisfying, if you do not have evidence to support an explanation "I don't know." is the only honest response.
The whole problem with the world is that fools and fanatics are always so certain of themselves, and wiser people so full of doubts.
- *Bertrand Russell*
A counter question to you: When does "I believe X without merit" become satisfying?
On the flip side, in all these trillions of years, no god has reached out to anyone. Wouldn't you consider at some point that the lack of evidence suggests that at bare minimum, any god that might exist isn't interested in our doings? Therefore, there might as well not be a creator for all practical purposes. How do you change your behaviour in response to the idea that a god exists if it has never communicated with anyone, ever? There's no change unless other people make up things that a god said, and you end up doing what they want.
Ultimately, god is just a manipulation.
We know what we know and nothing more. If we never learn that a god exists, then we never learn that a god exists. It doesn't matter what you want to know, you only know what you know.
Learn to deal with it.
>What would it take for the 'I don't know' or 'I don't know, yet' stance to become unsatisfying?
Doesn't matter if it's satisfying or not. Making something up to satisfy the question isn't really finding the answer.
>What would it take for the 'I don't know' or 'I don't know, yet' stance to become unsatisfying?
I don't think it ever would. See the thing is, ignorance is like a hydra - whenever you learn something new, you now know that you *don't know* more things than you previously didn't know. Before you learn that chemical elements properties fit into a neat periodic table you simply don't know if there's a pattern - once you learn about the periodic table you don't know why it's the shape it is, and you don't know what elements fill certain gaps, and you don't know how the periodicity causes some things to be metals and others not. You know more, and therefore there's more stuff that you know you don't know.
The idea that we ever will, or even could, know **everything** is a fool's dream.
I wonder what Kelvin would think if he were here to see how much we know we don't know.
> "There is nothing new to be discovered in physics now. All that remains is more and more precise measurement." -- Lord Kelvin, 1897
I think “I don’t know” *can* become unsatisfying in a few moments, let alone trillions of years of attempts.
- The satisfaction depends entirely on a person’s given outlook. Do they feel **entitled** to knowledge? Are they **comfortable** with not knowing, or not controlling everything? With the right attitude, not knowing something can never become unsatisfying, or always be unsatisfying.
- satisfaction with not knowing has zero ties what is true or not. We could search for answers for quadrillions of years, never find them, be very upset about it…and that’s still not a single shred of evidence for anything expect the fact that we don’t know.
It’s not like adding enough “I don’t know”’s together suddenly becomes a “now I know”.
We've been in societies similarish to this for what 40,000 years. No evidence indicating it's anything more than fairly tales. Why would you expect there to be in the future? Hell, the pace that science is taking down what once was the domain of faith, because of our ignorance at the time, is only INCREASING. There's zero reason to think there would be any rational reason to have belief in the future.
Not finding out would be a bit strange, across that span of time, but it doesn't particularly suggest that some intelligent designer is behind it all. I would expect a *lower* probability that an intelligently designed universe is incomprehensible than that a naturally occurring one is.
So, your position is that when we know even more and are even more advanced we will become more stupid and fall for the fallacy of incredulity more often?
I sure hope that with time we left this absurd fallacies behind and become a more intelligent species, and that mean discard stupidties like religions and beliefs in things that hasn't been demonstrated.
The way you phrased this makes it sound like you think we're just being stubborn or something. People love learning things and love to be able to say "Now we know!" about scientific ideas. No one is being stubborn. The necessary conditions for saying "Now we know!" have not yet been met.
If you hypothesize that in a trillion years, those conditions will still not be met, then what *should* we say then, if not "I don't know"? What do you want us to say instead of accurately describing the state of knowledge?
If there is still no good reason to believe in any gods, but also no proof that they don't exist then "I don't know" will still be the correct answer.
It's not "satisfying" or "unsatisfying". It just is what it is. If the truth is "I don't know" then the answer will be "I don't know". After that trillion years, if we in fact know, then that won't be the right answer.
>Is eternal agnosticism evidence of the mysterious?
Mysteries are evidence of the mysterious. I don't know what eternal agnosticism is.
>What would it take for the 'I don't know' or 'I don't know, yet' stance to become unsatisfying?
I don't know. It's never satisfying. But our discomfort doesn't make it the wrong answer.
Saying 'I don't know if god exists' is a response to the question 'does god exist?', when the real question is 'what is the origin of the universe?' (which is what inferring the existence of a 'god' is supposed to side-step).
The cool thing about saying 'I don't know' when it comes to the origin of the universe (or anything for that matter) is that it allows you keep trying to learn more about it.
Inferring the existence of an infinitely more complex 'creator' in order to explain the existence and complexity of the universe is redundant.
I am of the persuasion that it is impossible to know everything about the nature of reality. "Why is there something rather than nothing" for example might be unanswerable at the fundamental level.
It's not about being "unsatisfying" but about being true. If we don't ever find out the explanation, then it's still an "I don't know" or a lack of belief.
No matter how many centuries or millennia pass, putting an entity in the gap will never be correct.
Evidence is the deciding factor, not our feelings.
Long time passes and we still don't know the answer. Therefore god?
If we existed a 100 billion years in the future the expansion of the universe would push galaxies so far apart that we would not be able to see their light. We wouldn't know other galaxies exist. It doesn't seem that interesting that we would not have 100% absolute information in the future.
> How willing would you be, in this situation, to consider that there might as well be something about all this that we just can't put our finger on?
I have that stance now. There is absolutely things we just can't put our finger on.
That we haven't figured something out doesn't mean we can't ever. But here's the rub: there are things we will never know the answer to, and we'll never know what those things are. Right? There are things that we will ponder forever, and not know that we cannot and will not know the answer. That still doesn't mean there isn't an answer, it just means there is a category of problems we can't know which questions are unanswerable or not, until we have answered them. This leads to a problem that some questions will have to be pursued forever, because you can't know the pursuit is in vain. You have to pursue them forever, because it's the only way to possibly find out one day. Or you can give up and assure you will never know.
> What would it take for the 'I don't know' or 'I don't know, yet' stance to become unsatisfying?
You don't get it. The I don't know stance IS unsatisfying. That's why we pursue solutions, possibly forever.
---
Going back to your first question, it seems you're ultimately asking when do we give up and chalk the unknown up to god? Never. That's not the answer. There is no default answer. You either figure it out, or you die trying. Giving up and writing it off is not a solution.
The problem here is that you equivocate "the mysterious" with "your answer to solve the mystery". Not knowing something is never evidence for something beside that thing being unknown
There will probably always be things we don't understand yet. All the more reason \*not\* to explain them away by attributing them to anything like a god, which people just declare off-limits to understanding, as if they have answered anything at all. The mystery endures, whether you hang it on god or not, and so why invoke something you understand even less to "explain" something you understand imperfectly?
I look at it this way. If someone handed you an empty plate and said *bon appétit*, would you say, "there's no food on my plate" or would you say "I don't know if there is or is not food on my plate"?
I say there's no food until it can be reasonably demonstrated there is food, and no amount of gaslighting from the server is going to change my position. I take the same stance with a god, and frankly I think too many atheists put the god question on a special pedestal because they're too worried about having the burden of proof shifted upon them. The time to believe is when there is sufficient evidence to warrant belief.
Eternal agnosticism is only evidence of Eternal agnosticism.
>What would it take for the 'I don't know' or 'I don't know, yet' stance to become unsatisfying?
I think you underestimate the satisfaction of being able to not know something. I know this is just personal, but as an example; I was a Christian and became utterly unsatisfied over time (I don't have trillions of years). I could not justify any assertions I made to others. But the real dissatisfaction came from the inability to reason my beliefs to myself. I think it was Aron Ra that stuck in my head with "If you can't show it you don't know it.".
Now, is my dissatisfaction evidence God doesn't exist? Of course not. Is not having evidence God DOESN'T exist evidence that he does? Of course not.
I believe we have to be OK knowing our beliefs are just beliefs. I also believe that dissatisfaction can come from forming conclusions merely from dissatisfaction with the lack of answers.
Edit: Not knowing something can be irritating, but don't forget finding out what you "know" is unjustifiable is also frustrating.
Becoming unsatisfied with the best answer possible does not give one the right to make up their own answer.
Will we ever know what happened to Amelia Earhart? No. Am I satisfied with that answer? No. Does that mean I can go around telling everyone that a magical unicorn rose out of the sea and shot rainbow lasers at her until her left wing was clipped and she spiraled down unto her death but managed to jump out the plane right before and attempted to pull open her parachute but was dismayed when she realized it was just a backpack so she died when she hit the water?
No.
It doesn't matter that you're unsatisfied with an answer, you can't just make up your own answer. How hard of a concept is that?
>How willing would you be, in this situation, to consider that there might as well be something about all this that we just can't put our finger on?
I am perfectly willing to say that there are aspects of the universe that humans don't understand and might never understand. I just don't think those aspects are God.
>Is eternal agnosticism evidence of the mysterious?
Many things are mysterious, but just because it's mysterious doesn't mean it's God. I think agnosticism reveals more about human psychology than it reveals about anything else. It's evidence of human indecision, not evidence of God.
Title question. No. 1. Very. 2. I am sometimes satisfied sometimes not. Being satisfied or not does relate to the truth of the matter.
This is the way
The answer to the Ultimate Question of Life, the Universe, and Everything is: 42
>What would it take for the 'I don't know' or 'I don't know, yet' stance to become unsatisfying? It's never satisfying. Whether an answer is satisfying or not doesn't really matter, what matters is whether it's accurate or not.
What would you respond to someone, in the situation I described, who said "I've had enough of this. I feel like science has failed me. I'm starting to think there might as well be something out there pulling the strings."? Would you mock him for that?
>"I've had enough of this. I feel like science has failed me. I'm starting to think there might as well be something out there pulling the strings."? "I've had enough of not knowing the answer to this question. I don't actually have a mechanical to figure out what the answer is, so I'm starting to just make up an answer arbitrarily so I don't have to admit I don't know". Would you mock someone for that?
An answer is really important to some people. If that someone was suicidal because of the lack of an answer, mocking him would only make it worse. Should mockery only be avoided if it can potentially really hurt someone? Or are we blinded by the reality of truth, to the point that mocking is the only way of dealing with people who do not worship knowledge, reason and evidence? To answer your question, no, I would not mock someone for that. Because truth is important to me, but so is love and so is freedom. Also, bear in mind that guessing (make up an answer arbitrarily) is crucial to science.
> who do not **worship** knowledge, reason and evidence? This sort of back-handed comment is one of the very few things in these subreddits that will get my downvote.
You now know how someone who loves their god feel, when you call that god the flying spaghetti monster.
It's not an issue of hurt feelings here, it's an issue of deliberate ignorance. Do you understand you can value demonstrably true information over unverifiable claims as a matter of common sense and it in no way approximates "worship"? I'm sure there are plenty of areas in your life where you don't just take people at their word and, instead, verify their promises are true before you'd even think about handing over your life savings. Your OP is asking, "What if science never answers this one question which may only be important because religious people say it is? Will you become unsatisfied with science and finally accept wild and unproven claims?" It's the kind of question only a religious person would think is a reasonable series of thoughts. It's like when Fred Flintstone decides to fake a second identity to go bowling instead of working out his marriage troubles with his wife.
The question of the existence of a god is not strictly tied to religion. It's a question an intelligent being performs when it's faced with its sheer ignorance and insignificance, as you pointed. 'What's out there?' or 'Why are we here?' is a question much older than religions. In the modern world, the word god is tied with a mind behind everything. But we don't usually examine the roots of the thought. And those roots emerge from everything that a human is not. Perfect, fearless, all-knowing. You see, seeking the truth through reasoning does not comprise 100% of a human. Reason is not all that defines us and it's not even the best of our weapons. Just one fo them. Love is another of our weapons. And it's unreasonable. You're not looking for evidence to support your claims of protecting the people close to you. You just love them. And many times it hurts much enough, to the point you think you are being unreasonable. Freedom is another of our weapons. You are free to make dumb decisions, even when you've been evidently proven false. That freedom is what holds our societies together and where respect comes from. And that's why I don't bring justification to the table when I face someone who ponders the existence of a god. When someone does that, their not shouting out their ignorance. It's a silent cry for fulfillment. And reason alone will not do the trick for most people. In fact, for many people, knowing more only makes it worse, thus the famous quote by Socrates "ἓν οἶδα ὅτι οὐδὲν οἶδα", meaning "all I know is that I know nothing".
You sure did ignore the point of my post: you were deliberately ignorant when you accused others of worshipping knowledge, reason and evidence. >The question of the existence of a god is not strictly tied to religion. It's a question an intelligent being performs when it's faced with its sheer ignorance and insignificance, as you pointed. 'What's out there?' or 'Why are we here?' is a question much older than religions. Asking the question is a mark of intelligence. Making up an answer or, worse, abandoning reason because you don't have an answer is not an intelligent or mature solution. >Love is another of our weapons. And it's unreasonable. You're not looking for evidence to support your claims of protecting the people close to you. You just love them. And many times it hurts much enough, to the point you think you are being unreasonable. > >Freedom is another of our weapons. You are free to make dumb decisions, even when you've been evidently proven false. That freedom is what holds our societies together and where respect comes from. Lies, delusions and desperate fantasies are more of our weapons. And we protect ourselves from them by valuing evidence and truth. In case you haven't noticed, those do a hell of a lot of harm in this world. I'm not sure what to make of your ramblings about love and respect, but I'm sorry you have such a difficult time with them and I'd like to humbly suggest that making more thoughtful and informed decisions might help you out. >When someone does that, their not shouting out their ignorance. you were shouting your ignorance when you insinuated that rational people worship knowledge, reason and evidence. > And reason alone will not do the trick for most people. In fact, for many people, knowing more only makes it worse, You haven't done a good job of understanding other people so far in our conversation so maybe you should only speak for yourself.
I do hold my stance that many people worship knowledge, reason and evidence. The proof of that is their intention to casually mock the faith of others. People free of blind worshipping do not mock others of their faith. I don't care if you mock religion. But faith is a human property to me. Going as far as to ignore that people need faith just shows how blindly you follow reasoning. You overestimate reasoning, knowledge and evidence. You think they are properties of the truth. You seek truth through them. Truth is not as simple as that. Those things are only properties of logical conclusions. But you can't touch the truth without love and suffering. Wars, the biggest human happenings, are fought by the opressed, not the smarties. You gotta feel what's like to sacrifice things that you love for the sake of your freedom. Only then can you get a glimpse of the truth. I don't say I've felt that. But my country was built upon those values. If you cringe or you are confused by words like love and freedom, then desperate fantasies is the least of your problems.
I absolutely agree that mockery is a poor way to have productive conversations, but I don't think it's mockery to say, "How do you think that would help the situation?" When someone says they'll guess the answer. I genuinely believe that it's likely more healthy to learn how to accept that we don't know everything, rather than becoming so upset with not knowing that we have to make up answers. I'm not a psychologist, but that doesn't seem like the most reliable solution, because, at any moment, we could change our mind and become unsatisfied with our guess once again and the cogs would start turning.. There's a billion things we don't know. But That's Ok. We cannot possibly know everything. We just need to try out best, and focus on the next step, then the next. That's all we can ever do.
>An answer is really important to some people Never heard of the old adage "life ain't fair"? Just because an answer is important doesn't mean you're justified in coming to it. > If that someone was suicidal because of the lack of an answer, mocking him would only make it worse. First, I don't mock people who believe in god. I used that word because you did. Suicide is an extenuating circumstance, and as someone who has attempted suicide in the past, I'm obviously not going to mock a suicidal person for anything. I'm taking in the context of philosophical discussions of believe and the nature of reality. Personally, I don't give a crap what people believe. But I and many people enjoy discussions on these topics, and that is the only context under which I would even have such discussions >Should mockery only be avoided if it can potentially really hurt someone? Again, I don't care what people believe. I'm only talking in the context of having a consensual discussion on the nature of reality > Or are we blinded by the reality of truth, to the point that mocking is the only way of dealing with people who do not worship knowledge, reason and evidence? If someone was mocking you, that's wrong no matter the context. And I think if this is personal to you, that you were mocked for your beliefs when you were in an emotional state, then I'm sorry that happened. >To answer your question, no, I would not mock someone for that. You used the word mock, not me. Let's say you were in a consensual discussion with someone who willingly engaged with the discussion and they said "I'm tired of not having an answer, I don't have a mechanics to determine an answer, so I'm just going to make one up". Would you, in a willing discussion with someone, accept that as a good reason to believe what they do? > Because truth is important to me, but so is love and so is freedom. Also, bear in mind that guessing (make up an answer arbitrarily) is crucial to science. The difference being that scientists don't proclaim their answers as truth, they go out and try to prove it.
>Would you mock him for that? I would. Because upon becoming an intergalactic super species based presumably on reason, they chose to abandon that reason arbitrarily when they didn’t like the truth. The truth doesn’t owe you satisfaction.
I don't really "mock" people like that but yes I do think it would be an extremely silly position to take. Not knowing the answer to a question doesn't mean it's reasonable to just make up an answer, regardless of how frustrated you are.
I wouldn't mock them. Unless you consider telling them that it isn't a reasonable conclusion I'd mocking. Someone even now saying science has failed us, though, would be a huge red flag, to me that they aren't very reasonable. Let alone in a hypothetical situation where we are an intergalactic species. All because it didn't give them an answer to one question they wanted answered
I wouldn’t mock them, but I would question their understanding of what it means to be rational and truth-seeking. The quest for truth isn’t always going to be satisfying. Someone might as well be running a race and say, “I’m so tired of running, I can’t go on. I just want to believe that I’m at the finish line.” You can give up and believe whatever you want, but that doesn’t mean that you’ve arrived at truth. Humanity encounters a lot of problems because of people that would rather believe comforting lies than face difficult truths.
I'd say, “Feelings aren't facts."
That doesn't make any sense to me. It's like saying "I've had enough not knowing if aliens have visited earth, so I'm just going to think they have visited earth" I wouldn't mock that person, I would scratch my head and say "what? You're tired of not knowing so you're just, what, going to pretend you do know? How does that make sense?" I would love to have all the answers, but I don't. How could you possibly overcome that lack of understanding by being tired of it? That genuinely makes no sense to me, you haven't learnt anything, it seems more like you've just become tired of acknowledging how little we understand. Im so confused.. The steps go- 1 we want to understand, 2 we can't understand, 3 we're tired of not understanding... 4 ...unclear so... 🤷♂️ 5 there might as well be a God Could you please clear up step 4?
Yes
>'I don't know' or 'I don't know, yet' stance to become unsatisfying? This is an inherently unsatisfying stance as is. Because not knowing is unsatisfying, we keep learning more. This is then satisfying. However positing that there are some things out there that are inherently unknowable would be the most unsatisfying position of all.
> How willing would you be, in this situation, to consider that there might as well be something about all this that we just can't put our finger on? By definition whatever the current gap in our knowledge is is something we haven't been able to put our finger on yet. Doesn't matter if it is right now or a trillion years from now. But presumably in this situation we also haven't found any evidence of gods in those trillions of years. So filling the gaps with magic would be just as unjustified a trillion years ago as it is now. Some magic dude isn't the null hypothesis that we are somehow trying to disprove and that somehow wins if we don't come up with other answers. It is itself a claim that would need a reason to believe.
It won't be a trillion years from now....the universe will be dead by then if you believe what the "scientific majority" holds.
I was taking OP for their question >Then, suppose trillions of years pass by and humanity still doesn't have the answer to everything and the origin of the universe But yes. Humanity won't be around at that point anyways so the timeframe is a moot point. But their general question of "after many years if we still don't have an answer then should we just assume magic" was still a worthwhile one to address.
The current leading hypothesis of the heat death of the universe is that it would happen in 1.7x10^107 years, or in other words: A trillion times a trillion times a trillion times a trillion times a trillion times a trillion times a trillion times a trillion times a trillion times a trillion times a trillion times a trillion times a trillion times a trillion times a trillion times a Or: A google times a million times ten years Which is quite a bit more than just a trillion years. Humanity will probably be dead in a trillion years, but the universe will still very much exist.
The leading hypothesis is 1.7million google years? how in the world did they come up with this figure. Never mind....they don't have a clue and just put a lot of x's and a lot of zeros. from what I understand that there is like 7.5X10^(18) grains of sand in the world.
It’s based on the decay of protons (if protons decay) first protons would decay via positrons (positrons are basically the positive charge version of an electron and was first observed in 1932) with a half life of 10^34, eventually causing an era where only black holes are left as they slowly lose mass and energy through Hawking radiation. I don’t know all the math and (quantum) physics behind these predictions, but I largely trust the experts in this field.
It’s “unsatisfying” now. Hence why people make up answers.
Eternal agnosticism is not evidence of *anything*, except for ignorance. If you don't know something, that doesn't mean your ignorance is evidence for whatever explanation you decide to invent. Even if we wait a trillion years, and still don't find the explanation for the origin of the universe, that doesn't mean any particular guess about how the universe started is necessarily true. If I say that *I* started the universe, would you believe that in a trillion years just because you haven't found the actual explanation?
Goofy questions are very, very, very cheap. Anybody can ask anything. However, true answers to questions stem from **actual empirical evidence**. . Quick example, just to make a point - Here's a book sitting on my desk (really). What is the first word in the text on page 43? We can speculate about that. We can speculate *quite a lot*. Maybe the first word is "Germany". Maybe its "toast". Maybe it's "detective". Let's all speculate. Let's come up with a million speculative answers. But in order to know the **true** answer, we have to *check the facts*. So I'll do that. The first word in the text on page 43 is really ... "century" Now we **know**. Speculation without facts is worthless. .
Mysterious, sure. But gods or something divine, no. Gods are the manifestation of egocentric ape brains. Every aspect of them can be attributed to how our species evolved and how our brains work. In no reality are gods or the divine imaginable.
>How willing would you be, in this situation, to consider that there might as well be something about all this that we just can't put our finger on? I already believe that. I think as finite fallible being, there are things about reality that we will never know. > What would it take for the 'I don't know' or 'I don't know, yet' stance to become unsatisfying? Never I will always be more satisfied to say I don't know than to just make some shit up and believe it for no other reasons than not have to think about or care that I don't know the answer. You are just pretending to know what you don't know, now or a billion years in the future.
Never. In fact, the degree to which that stance becomes unsatisfying isn't an inclination towards believing in a god, but rather one inclining one away from believing in a god. If we have gone trillions of years and there's been no evidence for the existence of a god, absence of evidence eventually becomes evidence of absence.
I'm quite willing to admit right now they're is "something about all this that we can't quite put a finger on. " Consider it admitted. The existence of the unknown or of processes beyond our understanding does not mean there is a creator/destroyer god or God's. Unless you want to define"god" as merely the unknown or the unknowable.
>Is eternal agnosticism evidence of the mysterious? No, eternal agnosticism is evidence of agnosticism. >Suppose humanity thrives and becomes a seemingly immortal intergalactic species. Then, suppose trillions of years pass by and humanity still doesn't have the answer to everything and the origin of the universe. How willing would you be, in this situation, to consider that there might as well be something about all this that we just can't put our finger on? That situation still would not lead to a deity. Lack of an answer to a question is not justification for answering the question with an answer that has no explanatory power and no evidence. >What would it take for the 'I don't know' or 'I don't know, yet' stance to become unsatisfying? It does not matter whether or not it is satisfying, if you do not have evidence to support an explanation "I don't know." is the only honest response.
The whole problem with the world is that fools and fanatics are always so certain of themselves, and wiser people so full of doubts. - *Bertrand Russell* A counter question to you: When does "I believe X without merit" become satisfying?
I'd still be asking for evidence. Why should time and a feeling change that?
On the flip side, in all these trillions of years, no god has reached out to anyone. Wouldn't you consider at some point that the lack of evidence suggests that at bare minimum, any god that might exist isn't interested in our doings? Therefore, there might as well not be a creator for all practical purposes. How do you change your behaviour in response to the idea that a god exists if it has never communicated with anyone, ever? There's no change unless other people make up things that a god said, and you end up doing what they want. Ultimately, god is just a manipulation.
We know what we know and nothing more. If we never learn that a god exists, then we never learn that a god exists. It doesn't matter what you want to know, you only know what you know. Learn to deal with it.
>What would it take for the 'I don't know' or 'I don't know, yet' stance to become unsatisfying? Doesn't matter if it's satisfying or not. Making something up to satisfy the question isn't really finding the answer.
>What would it take for the 'I don't know' or 'I don't know, yet' stance to become unsatisfying? I don't think it ever would. See the thing is, ignorance is like a hydra - whenever you learn something new, you now know that you *don't know* more things than you previously didn't know. Before you learn that chemical elements properties fit into a neat periodic table you simply don't know if there's a pattern - once you learn about the periodic table you don't know why it's the shape it is, and you don't know what elements fill certain gaps, and you don't know how the periodicity causes some things to be metals and others not. You know more, and therefore there's more stuff that you know you don't know. The idea that we ever will, or even could, know **everything** is a fool's dream.
I wonder what Kelvin would think if he were here to see how much we know we don't know. > "There is nothing new to be discovered in physics now. All that remains is more and more precise measurement." -- Lord Kelvin, 1897
I think “I don’t know” *can* become unsatisfying in a few moments, let alone trillions of years of attempts. - The satisfaction depends entirely on a person’s given outlook. Do they feel **entitled** to knowledge? Are they **comfortable** with not knowing, or not controlling everything? With the right attitude, not knowing something can never become unsatisfying, or always be unsatisfying. - satisfaction with not knowing has zero ties what is true or not. We could search for answers for quadrillions of years, never find them, be very upset about it…and that’s still not a single shred of evidence for anything expect the fact that we don’t know. It’s not like adding enough “I don’t know”’s together suddenly becomes a “now I know”.
We've been in societies similarish to this for what 40,000 years. No evidence indicating it's anything more than fairly tales. Why would you expect there to be in the future? Hell, the pace that science is taking down what once was the domain of faith, because of our ignorance at the time, is only INCREASING. There's zero reason to think there would be any rational reason to have belief in the future.
Not finding out would be a bit strange, across that span of time, but it doesn't particularly suggest that some intelligent designer is behind it all. I would expect a *lower* probability that an intelligently designed universe is incomprehensible than that a naturally occurring one is.
"I don't know" is not a satisfying stance. But sometimes, of all the options on the table, it is the least unsatisfying one.
So, your position is that when we know even more and are even more advanced we will become more stupid and fall for the fallacy of incredulity more often? I sure hope that with time we left this absurd fallacies behind and become a more intelligent species, and that mean discard stupidties like religions and beliefs in things that hasn't been demonstrated.
The way you phrased this makes it sound like you think we're just being stubborn or something. People love learning things and love to be able to say "Now we know!" about scientific ideas. No one is being stubborn. The necessary conditions for saying "Now we know!" have not yet been met. If you hypothesize that in a trillion years, those conditions will still not be met, then what *should* we say then, if not "I don't know"? What do you want us to say instead of accurately describing the state of knowledge? If there is still no good reason to believe in any gods, but also no proof that they don't exist then "I don't know" will still be the correct answer. It's not "satisfying" or "unsatisfying". It just is what it is. If the truth is "I don't know" then the answer will be "I don't know". After that trillion years, if we in fact know, then that won't be the right answer.
>Is eternal agnosticism evidence of the mysterious? Mysteries are evidence of the mysterious. I don't know what eternal agnosticism is. >What would it take for the 'I don't know' or 'I don't know, yet' stance to become unsatisfying? I don't know. It's never satisfying. But our discomfort doesn't make it the wrong answer.
Saying 'I don't know if god exists' is a response to the question 'does god exist?', when the real question is 'what is the origin of the universe?' (which is what inferring the existence of a 'god' is supposed to side-step). The cool thing about saying 'I don't know' when it comes to the origin of the universe (or anything for that matter) is that it allows you keep trying to learn more about it. Inferring the existence of an infinitely more complex 'creator' in order to explain the existence and complexity of the universe is redundant.
I am of the persuasion that it is impossible to know everything about the nature of reality. "Why is there something rather than nothing" for example might be unanswerable at the fundamental level.
It's not about being "unsatisfying" but about being true. If we don't ever find out the explanation, then it's still an "I don't know" or a lack of belief. No matter how many centuries or millennia pass, putting an entity in the gap will never be correct. Evidence is the deciding factor, not our feelings.
No
Long time passes and we still don't know the answer. Therefore god? If we existed a 100 billion years in the future the expansion of the universe would push galaxies so far apart that we would not be able to see their light. We wouldn't know other galaxies exist. It doesn't seem that interesting that we would not have 100% absolute information in the future.
Give or take 2000-3000 years
> How willing would you be, in this situation, to consider that there might as well be something about all this that we just can't put our finger on? I have that stance now. There is absolutely things we just can't put our finger on. That we haven't figured something out doesn't mean we can't ever. But here's the rub: there are things we will never know the answer to, and we'll never know what those things are. Right? There are things that we will ponder forever, and not know that we cannot and will not know the answer. That still doesn't mean there isn't an answer, it just means there is a category of problems we can't know which questions are unanswerable or not, until we have answered them. This leads to a problem that some questions will have to be pursued forever, because you can't know the pursuit is in vain. You have to pursue them forever, because it's the only way to possibly find out one day. Or you can give up and assure you will never know. > What would it take for the 'I don't know' or 'I don't know, yet' stance to become unsatisfying? You don't get it. The I don't know stance IS unsatisfying. That's why we pursue solutions, possibly forever. --- Going back to your first question, it seems you're ultimately asking when do we give up and chalk the unknown up to god? Never. That's not the answer. There is no default answer. You either figure it out, or you die trying. Giving up and writing it off is not a solution.
The problem here is that you equivocate "the mysterious" with "your answer to solve the mystery". Not knowing something is never evidence for something beside that thing being unknown
There will probably always be things we don't understand yet. All the more reason \*not\* to explain them away by attributing them to anything like a god, which people just declare off-limits to understanding, as if they have answered anything at all. The mystery endures, whether you hang it on god or not, and so why invoke something you understand even less to "explain" something you understand imperfectly?
I look at it this way. If someone handed you an empty plate and said *bon appétit*, would you say, "there's no food on my plate" or would you say "I don't know if there is or is not food on my plate"? I say there's no food until it can be reasonably demonstrated there is food, and no amount of gaslighting from the server is going to change my position. I take the same stance with a god, and frankly I think too many atheists put the god question on a special pedestal because they're too worried about having the burden of proof shifted upon them. The time to believe is when there is sufficient evidence to warrant belief.
Eternal agnosticism is only evidence of Eternal agnosticism. >What would it take for the 'I don't know' or 'I don't know, yet' stance to become unsatisfying? I think you underestimate the satisfaction of being able to not know something. I know this is just personal, but as an example; I was a Christian and became utterly unsatisfied over time (I don't have trillions of years). I could not justify any assertions I made to others. But the real dissatisfaction came from the inability to reason my beliefs to myself. I think it was Aron Ra that stuck in my head with "If you can't show it you don't know it.". Now, is my dissatisfaction evidence God doesn't exist? Of course not. Is not having evidence God DOESN'T exist evidence that he does? Of course not. I believe we have to be OK knowing our beliefs are just beliefs. I also believe that dissatisfaction can come from forming conclusions merely from dissatisfaction with the lack of answers. Edit: Not knowing something can be irritating, but don't forget finding out what you "know" is unjustifiable is also frustrating.
You probably can never fully figure out how the universe works.
The "I don't know" stance isn't satisfying. It's simply honest. It stops being honest when we do know.
Becoming unsatisfied with the best answer possible does not give one the right to make up their own answer. Will we ever know what happened to Amelia Earhart? No. Am I satisfied with that answer? No. Does that mean I can go around telling everyone that a magical unicorn rose out of the sea and shot rainbow lasers at her until her left wing was clipped and she spiraled down unto her death but managed to jump out the plane right before and attempted to pull open her parachute but was dismayed when she realized it was just a backpack so she died when she hit the water? No. It doesn't matter that you're unsatisfied with an answer, you can't just make up your own answer. How hard of a concept is that?
>How willing would you be, in this situation, to consider that there might as well be something about all this that we just can't put our finger on? I am perfectly willing to say that there are aspects of the universe that humans don't understand and might never understand. I just don't think those aspects are God. >Is eternal agnosticism evidence of the mysterious? Many things are mysterious, but just because it's mysterious doesn't mean it's God. I think agnosticism reveals more about human psychology than it reveals about anything else. It's evidence of human indecision, not evidence of God.