[103] in Discussion of MIT-community interests
Re: Objectivist morals (was RE: LIVING WAGE SIT-IN AT HARVARD (fwd) )
daemon@ATHENA.MIT.EDU (Benjamin A Chambers)
Fri Apr 20 11:56:07 2001
Message-Id: <200104201556.LAA01640@benelli.MIT.EDU>
To: Benazeer Noorani <benazeer@MIT.EDU>
cc: mit-talk@MIT.EDU
In-reply-to: Your message of "Fri, 20 Apr 2001 11:14:08 EDT."
<v04020a1db705fed22756@[18.238.2.202]>
Date: Fri, 20 Apr 2001 11:56:02 -0400
From: Benjamin A Chambers <bac@MIT.EDU>
In message <v04020a1db705fed22756@[18.238.2.202]>, Benazeer Noorani writes:
>I have less respect for agnostics than atheists because I see agnosticism
>as a copout. I only have anecdotal evidence to support my opinion, but the
>majority of agnostics I"ve met have been too lazy to really examine issues
>of eternity, hell, good, evil, God, etc. and come to an intelligent
>conclusion of their own. Agnosticism is an intelliectual equivalent of
>sitting on the fence.
Okay, as an agnostic myself, I feel the need to defend my lack of
decision. Sure, some of it is intellectual laziness. But really, why
should I bother trying to figure it out? The existence of a deity is
not something that I believe I will ever be able to prove or disprove
to myself. Furthurmore, I believe that it only matters to those who
are trying to decide whether or not they should bother appeasing the
deity.
The way I live my life is already morally far superior to the large
majority of the population, theists and atheists alike. I live my life
according to the way I think people should act, in an "ideal" sense,
because that makes me happy. I do this completely outside any kind of
framework of possible afterlife repercussions. It doesn't matter to me
whether a deity exists or not; I figure that any "reasonable" deity
will approve of how I've lived my life, and I'm uninterested in
serving an unreasonable deity.
So to summarize, I'm an agnostic because I believe that a.) it's
impossible to ever settle the question of whether a deity exists and
those who try are mostly wasting their time and kidding themselves,
and b.) the answer is irrelevant to me since either way, it's not
going to change how I live my life.
The way I see it, beyond basic curiosity, the answer to the question
only matters to those who are interested in seeing how much they can
get away with.
-Ben
----------------------
<Benjamin A. Chambers>
<bac@mit.edu>
