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Originally Posted by Pookie
I think so. One is innate (in the theory I was using) and one is empirical (observed).
And by saying that religious belief is innate of course I mean that the mind is set up to be ready to accept belief. Other factors (cultural for example)fill in the detail.
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Yes... I suppose I just come down on the side that 'empiricism' may not observe everything, and isn't an answer in itself. The notion of a transcendental agent is fantastic, but the notion of a single human who lives entirely outside of societal factors (which would be necessary, to my mind, for an 'absolute empiricism') is fantastic too. I would no more purport to defend Theism
absolutely than I would denigrate empiricism
absolutely (or the opposite of each). I just refuse to believe that empirical science holds the answers to everything, or that it has the tools with which to observe everything (cf most social sciences, psychoanalysis, philosophy and huge swathes of neurological science), let alone interpret the findings. This doesn't really make me a defender of religion, so much as it marks me as a devout fence-sitter.
No man is an island indeed...