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It is not logically rigorous, but it illustrates a point. Can you expand on why the distinction you are drawing is important?

andagainagain 6y ago
Trying to steel man David Foster Wallace here, I would say his point is that, if you define "religion" instead as a sort of personal philosophy, then we all have one. And because we all have a philosophy of some sort, we all have desires, rules, and some sort of ethical principles, we don't have atheists. The point he has relies on a faulty premise. When people talk about religion and atheism, they aren't using the definition of Wallace. They're using the strict definition - non-theist. Not a theist. They don't believe in god. they are saying absolutely nothing about the rest of their philosophy. He RELIES on changing the definition of religion into something it very clearly isn't. And he does this in order to provide evidence that people, who obviously exist, must not according to his definition. It's like saying "Homosexuality doesn't exist, because all homosexuality is is is rejecting the beauty of certain genders. But we all recognize the beauty of our mothers and brothers and fellow humans, and the grace they give and the home they provide. No human would be human without loving thy neighbor". It's insulting. And other than that, it has absolutely no value, intellectually, morally, or otherwise.
alexashka 6y ago
Because the absence of logical rigor is what enables charlatans to continue to make a living off of people's desire to believe in something that is not so. This is a problem that's bigger than religion - when people can't tell when they're being bullshitted to or when they use emotion instead of reason to decide on matters that significantly affect their lives and lives of others (not just which flavor of icecream to have), it's a problem.
- chmod600 6y ago
  Logic - at least rigorous logic - is much more limited in applicability than we'd like to believe. Religion probably has the most influence over family structure, a topic where it's hard for me to imagine that logic would play a leading role.
  - nfw2 6y ago
    Even science is pretty hard to justify with formal logic. There's a pretty big gap between inductive reasoning (statistics) and deductive reasoning (formal logic), called the problem of induction. No logician or philosopher has come up with a widely accepted way to solve it in the roughly 200 years since David Hume started writing on the subject. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Problem_of_induction https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Problem_of_induction
    - deleted 6y ago
      [deleted]

andagainagain 6y ago

Trying to steel man David Foster Wallace here, I would say his point is that, if you define "religion" instead as a sort of personal philosophy, then we all have one. And because we all have a philosophy of some sort, we all have desires, rules, and some sort of ethical principles, we don't have atheists. The point he has relies on a faulty premise. When people talk about religion and atheism, they aren't using the definition of Wallace. They're using the strict definition - non-theist. Not a theist. They don't believe in god. they are saying absolutely nothing about the rest of their philosophy. He RELIES on changing the definition of religion into something it very clearly isn't. And he does this in order to provide evidence that people, who obviously exist, must not according to his definition. It's like saying "Homosexuality doesn't exist, because all homosexuality is is is rejecting the beauty of certain genders. But we all recognize the beauty of our mothers and brothers and fellow humans, and the grace they give and the home they provide. No human would be human without loving thy neighbor". It's insulting. And other than that, it has absolutely no value, intellectually, morally, or otherwise.

alexashka 6y ago

Because the absence of logical rigor is what enables charlatans to continue to make a living off of people's desire to believe in something that is not so. This is a problem that's bigger than religion - when people can't tell when they're being bullshitted to or when they use emotion instead of reason to decide on matters that significantly affect their lives and lives of others (not just which flavor of icecream to have), it's a problem.

chmod600 6y ago
Logic - at least rigorous logic - is much more limited in applicability than we'd like to believe. Religion probably has the most influence over family structure, a topic where it's hard for me to imagine that logic would play a leading role.
- nfw2 6y ago
  Even science is pretty hard to justify with formal logic. There's a pretty big gap between inductive reasoning (statistics) and deductive reasoning (formal logic), called the problem of induction. No logician or philosopher has come up with a widely accepted way to solve it in the roughly 200 years since David Hume started writing on the subject. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Problem_of_induction https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Problem_of_induction
  - deleted 6y ago
    [deleted]