On Mon, 2 Dec 2002, Richard Suitor wrote: >On Mon, 2 Dec 2002 14:37:15 -0800 (PST), David Silberstein ><davids at kithrup.com> wrote: > >>Of course, only agnosticism is actually *reasonable*. > >Well, I'd change "only" to "at most" or "not even" :<) Wow. I've never had a simple statement so completely misunderstood. Maybe you should go into politics? By "agnosticism", I meant only the philosophy of withholding certainty on such issues that are unprovable, such as a hypothetical entity that is identical to the first cause and what that entity might want >from its creations, especially given the absence of any testable evidence of that entities' existence, let alone hypothetical desires. Or to put it another way, "I don't know, and you don't either", and also "There isn't any reasonable way of knowing." >Regardless of where on the spectrum presented in these columns one >sits, one is still faced with questions like OK, I see a bunch of ethical/moral questions here. Since these all relate to behavior of human beings towards other humans beings, they are all in the real world. They can be answered based on one's experience of other human beings. What do they have to do with god or gods? Most such questions can be answered by starting with asking "How would *you* feel if someone else were doing it to you or your loved ones?", and arguing from there. >Should I support slavery? >Should I really support it but pretend to condemn it. > >Should I support Dean Swift's modest proposal? > >Should I support berth (sic) control? >Should (a variety of other topics which you can supply but which I omitted >out of consideration for any net nannies) > >Should I condemn all violence in any form? >If not, are there levels of condemnable violence and what are they? > >Should I hide my head in the sand on these issues as much as possible? >