@KnowledgEcology do you know of any video/audio debates between Thompson and Metzinger?
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what's your take?
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I find Pascal's Wager to be deeply dissatisfying. I'm not sure what kind of reasoning I would find more satisfying.
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what are your thoughts? you seemed very dissatisfied with Batchelor-esque non-commital.
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Agnostic atheists are atheists because they don't believe in the existence of deities and agnostic because they claim that the existence of a deity is either unknowable in principle or currently unknown in fact
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So it is possible to say, this thing is unknowable, but I have no good reasons to believe it's true.
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that seems very close to Batchelor's position to me. I agree that it is reasonable to not believe an unevidenced claim by default. I sometimes like to think about the psychological utility of it though, which is why I mentioned Pascal.
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Pascal's wager tries to set up an asymmetry in the downsides of belief vs. disbelief but I don't accept the framing that Pascal used. I do find the utilitarian argument he makes to be a decent reason _not_ to believe. False beliefs are potentially immediately harmful.
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I think we've previously discussed my rather heterodox supposition that one of the goals of Buddha's teaching was to get people to stop believing in reincarnation. Harmful belief when constructed into a metaphysics with social consequences.
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