Friday, August 25, 2006

Agnosticism does not exist.

Philosophy was one of my favorite subjects in college. If I had this guy as my professor, I might have suffered through enough classes to complete the minor. The writer of this piece is J. Budziszewski, a professor at UT Austin. He writes Socratic dialogues for the webzine Boundless. Well, basically in the style of Socrates based on conversations he has with various students over various topics. Here's an excerpt from an older one:

I smiled back and sipped my coffee. "I believe that you exist. And I believe that you don't know what to think. But you said an agnostic is 'not committed either way,' and I don't believe that there is such a thing as 'not committed either way.'"

He shook his head. "If I don't know the answer to the God question, then how could I be committed to an answer to the God question?"

"Commitments are reflected in movements of the will."

"What does that mean?"

"They're reflected in how we live."

"...there is no such thing as neutrality. Every way of life is some way of life. Inevitably, you live either as though there were a God, or as though there weren't. You stake your life on an answer that you say you don't have."

Read the entire article here.

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