"I can feel nothing but compassion for those who sincerely lament their doubt, who regard it as the ultimate misfortune, and who, sparing no effort to escape from it, make their search their principal and most serious business."
(Blaise Pascal)
I have not verified whether Blaise Pascal's quote in
2PhiloVoid's signature is rightly attributed
, but assuming it is, I'd like to pose a question.
What is more honest, an assurance based on unverifiable, unfalsifiable or otherwise fallacious suppositions, or a search for truth and remaining in doubt until a verifiable, falsifiable and/or otherwise scientifically sound answer is obtained?
I'm coming back to your OP and starting again since you seem to not be coming to any new realization about the weakness of your position here, BigV.
First of all, you said you cared about some concept called "honesty," whatever that actually is in REALITY and whatever that means for you. And being that you've thus far stated here that you highly prize the act of 'verification,' whatever that supposedly amounts to in your estimation, I would have thought that you'd have wanted to follow through and make good on your expressed affinity for honesty by showing me, or the rest of us, that you most definitely verified that your interpretation and evaluation of the text in question (i.e. again, Pascal's quote) has been done in an even-handed and "honest" way. But, I beg your pardon, as far as I'm concerned, that hasn't been done!
No, all that has happened so far in this thread is that you've merely claimed that you value honesty and that we should assume that you do and that you actually maintain this in the process of your inquiry and challenge. You also seem to imply that all of this is somehow (self-evidently?) obvious and should be seen as such by the rest of us.
You've then proceeded to critique this, that and whatever about Pascal's form of Christian faith at your leisure, but all the while in doing so, you've left me waiting to see that you've actually noticed and addressed Pascal's central focus in what I call
Pascal's A.A.S.S. (or Argument Against Sociopathic Skepticism) which essentially hones in upon the question of whether or not someone actually even cares about his own impending fate in death and the potential for Eternal Life afterward in a way that is sane, healthy, and of moral significance.
In all of this, you've merely skirted your own claim that verification is important, but it seems that according to you, it doesn't have to actually be implemented if........................one instead is "honest." Honesty for you appears to displace the need for verification in all circumstances, all of which sounds very intriguing but leaves me to think you haven't really thought out your own ethics in all of this, nor have you really comprehended what Pascal is getting at, especially since you really haven't thought about Pascal's A.A.S.S.