Thursday, June 02, 2011

JP Laughlin's credo

From the bottom menu bar of JP Laughlin's blog:















I'd like to offer my own version:

An amoralist cannot be certain that moral values (such as "it is immoral to rape and kill all Caucasian atheists and dismember their bodies") do not exist, but can say that there is not sufficient evidence to believe that one does.
The onus of proof is upon the moralist to demonstrate that a moral value exists.
The onus of proof is also upon the moralist to demonstrate why it is their moral and not some other's.

And an alternative:
An alogician cannot be certain that logical absolutes do not exist, but can say that there is not sufficient evidence to believe that one does.
The onus of proof is upon the logician to demonstrate that a logical absolute exists.
The onus of proof is also upon the logician to demonstrate why it is their logic and not some other's.



2 comments:

bossmanham said...

Of course an A-theist, by the common way we use prefixes in our society, is someone who believes God does not exist, which is a truth claim and therefore has a burden of proof. These internet atheists get tiring with this ridiculous equivocation. If they don't know if God exists or not, even if they're highly skeptical, they're AGNOSTICS.

Matt said...

I like this essay by Drange, which presents a detailed taxonomy as to what exactly an atheist is, and what an agnostic is. Drange (mildly) takes other atheists to task for playing these kinds of equivocal word games.