To clarfiy: there are some questions of cosmology that lend themselves to empirical refutation. We have excellent reason to accept that the universe is billions, not thousands of years old. I’m not agnostic regarding biblical literalism; I’m agnostic regarding deism. I don’t think anyone has any way of testing that empirically. I understand that others are arguing for a position based on pure reason rather than empiricism, which I find unpersuasive. Here’s an analogy which I hope explains both why I say I don’t know and why I say I don’t care:
Suppose one day I wake to discover I am locked in a room that is pitch-black. There are many questions I would be interested in discovering, that I could answer with some degree of confidence even lacking any instrumentation: the dimensions of the room; the location, if any, of doors and windows, the kind of lock on the door, and if I’m really sensitive to gravity, my altitude. What I’m not going to do, once I’ve concluded that there aren’t any windows or other potential light source, is ponder the color of the walls, because a)there is absolutely no way I am going to be able to update my priors about it, b)it does not appear to have any practical consequences, and c)I have, presumably, a limited amount of time, and other questions are more pressing.
Just because you can’t currently conceive on an empirical test of deism, (a) that doesn’t mean that someone won’t come up with one eventually, and (b) that doesn’t mean that you can’t make inferences about deism.. The key point is this: Just because something is untestable, that doesn’t mean it’s unknowable. However, you said that you find such arguments “unpersuasive” for three reasons, which I’ll respond to individually:
a)there is absolutely no way I am going to be able to update my priors about it
You can update priors based on an argument—see the post I linked to above.
b)it does not appear to have any practical consequences, and
Even so, it is still a fact about reality and so it does have meaning even if it doesn’t have practical value to you personally. Again, see the post I linked to above.
c)I have, presumably, a limited amount of time, and other questions are more pressing.
This is logically distinct from the question of whether something is unknowable. While it may be a reason for you not to care, it’s not a valid argument that the question is unsolvable.
In summary: I don’t think there are reasons to believe that the answer to “is there a deistic God” is unknowable. Although there might be reasons that you don’t care about the answer, this is not the same thing as saying that no answer exists.
To clarfiy: there are some questions of cosmology that lend themselves to empirical refutation. We have excellent reason to accept that the universe is billions, not thousands of years old. I’m not agnostic regarding biblical literalism; I’m agnostic regarding deism. I don’t think anyone has any way of testing that empirically. I understand that others are arguing for a position based on pure reason rather than empiricism, which I find unpersuasive. Here’s an analogy which I hope explains both why I say I don’t know and why I say I don’t care:
Suppose one day I wake to discover I am locked in a room that is pitch-black. There are many questions I would be interested in discovering, that I could answer with some degree of confidence even lacking any instrumentation: the dimensions of the room; the location, if any, of doors and windows, the kind of lock on the door, and if I’m really sensitive to gravity, my altitude. What I’m not going to do, once I’ve concluded that there aren’t any windows or other potential light source, is ponder the color of the walls, because a)there is absolutely no way I am going to be able to update my priors about it, b)it does not appear to have any practical consequences, and c)I have, presumably, a limited amount of time, and other questions are more pressing.
Just because you can’t currently conceive on an empirical test of deism, (a) that doesn’t mean that someone won’t come up with one eventually, and (b) that doesn’t mean that you can’t make inferences about deism.. The key point is this: Just because something is untestable, that doesn’t mean it’s unknowable. However, you said that you find such arguments “unpersuasive” for three reasons, which I’ll respond to individually:
You can update priors based on an argument—see the post I linked to above.
Even so, it is still a fact about reality and so it does have meaning even if it doesn’t have practical value to you personally. Again, see the post I linked to above.
This is logically distinct from the question of whether something is unknowable. While it may be a reason for you not to care, it’s not a valid argument that the question is unsolvable.
In summary: I don’t think there are reasons to believe that the answer to “is there a deistic God” is unknowable. Although there might be reasons that you don’t care about the answer, this is not the same thing as saying that no answer exists.