Atheism and Lack of belief
I think the lack of belief definition of atheism is problematic.
Look at these four statements:
1: I don't believe in gods or a God.
2: I don't believe in alien life
3: I don't believe the moon exists
4: I don't believe the Holocaust happened
These statements are all claiming an absence of belief in something but it seems clearly we would find them increasingly problematic.
There seems to be a clear distinction between types of lack of belief. Not believing in alien life might be a theoretical stance. Not believing in the moon would seem ludicrous and not believing in and denying a genocide can be a criminal offense or just offensive and harmful.
On the other hand at one stage like as babies there were numerous things we had a simple lack of belief about because of basic ignorance. But once you start being exposed to lots of information a lack of belief becomes more like a belief and belief stance based on an assessment of evidence.
I have become agnostic based on my evaluations of theory, evidence, probability, limitations of knowledge etc.
So I think the only real lack of belief is total ignorance like a babies where there is no evidence or concepts to evaluate.
Look at these four statements:
1: I don't believe in gods or a God.
2: I don't believe in alien life
3: I don't believe the moon exists
4: I don't believe the Holocaust happened
These statements are all claiming an absence of belief in something but it seems clearly we would find them increasingly problematic.
There seems to be a clear distinction between types of lack of belief. Not believing in alien life might be a theoretical stance. Not believing in the moon would seem ludicrous and not believing in and denying a genocide can be a criminal offense or just offensive and harmful.
On the other hand at one stage like as babies there were numerous things we had a simple lack of belief about because of basic ignorance. But once you start being exposed to lots of information a lack of belief becomes more like a belief and belief stance based on an assessment of evidence.
I have become agnostic based on my evaluations of theory, evidence, probability, limitations of knowledge etc.
So I think the only real lack of belief is total ignorance like a babies where there is no evidence or concepts to evaluate.
Comments (362)
I think disbelief requires a belief. How are you defining disbelief?
I don't believe in Santa Claus because I have another explanation of how my Christmas presents arrived.
If Christmas presents arrived at the end of my bed and no one I know claimed to have sent them and there was no explanation of how they got there, then disbelief in Santa Claus would be less valid because it is proffering a potential causal explanation for something.
But once you start offering explanations for your disbelief you have an underlying belief framework that can be scrutinised. So eventually atheism amounts to a system of beliefs in my opinion.
However agnosticism is admitting a lack of knowledge or claiming that the evidence you have seen is inadequate for you to form a strong belief. Some atheists attack agnostics because they claim there are good grounds to reject the idea of God.
If we choose to believe either despite our ignorance, it begs the question why. And the answer is usually that we believe to fool ourselves into thinking we are certain, because we prefer to feign certainty than to accept uncertainty.
Agnosticism or apathy is a more logical and honest way of approaching things we cannot be certain of.
- I don't know, so I choose not to believe either.
- I don't know, and it doesn't affect me, so I choose not to form opinions. (I choose "not to care")
"Atheism, in the broadest sense, is an absence of belief in the existence of deities"
At one stage in my life I had an absence of belief in the country Burkina Faso (a country with an unusual name and low profile.)
But that absence of belief had no bearing on the existence of the country.
My lack of evidence justified my absence of belief. But as has been said lack of evidence isn't evidence of absence.
I would be unwise to comment of the affairs of Burkina Faso based on my position of ignorance.
In which case 'belief' would be a superfluous word in describing the baby's mental processes. But that's not quite right, either. The baby that has cried when it was hungry and been fed is already making cause-effect connections. It is learning to believe that crying will result in food, or comfort; it very quickly learns that crying summons an adult, that adults are available to supply its needs, that it can rely on specific adults for regular care.... and so on. The baby is building up a conceptual data-base, and a system of beliefs.
If this baby is a bird, no cognitive dissonance need ever arise: the world is as he experiences it. For a human baby, problems start with the acquisition of language, when those same trusted adults start telling it truths and lies indiscriminately.
But we never get a chance never to have heard of the gods. They're in our faces all the time. Sure, there might be something somewhere that could conceivably called a god by somebody -- but that doesn't affect me and my believing or not believing in the possibility of its existence would have zero effect on anything. So, I don't believe in such a god in the same way I don't believe all the stuff I know nothing about - nor do i disbelieve them: they're simply absent from consciousness.
However, the stories and strictures and influence and threats from all those versions of deity that people tell about are very much present in my consciousness. That's what I actively disbelieve.
Sounds like a good start.
I became an atheist because my experience suggests a godless world; I lack a sensus divinitatis and no argument presented to me in support of the various gods in the world marketplace was ever convincing.
American Atheists put it like this:
Atheism is about what you believe. Agnosticism is about what you know.
I would say I am an agnostic atheist. Similarly, I don't know if Bigfoot exists, but I am not convinced it does. The time to believe it is when there is good evidence.
I would hold that agnostics are ususally atheists but for a range of reasons shy from the word.
My favorite argument for atheism isnt that the evidence isnt there, but that even if it were there, the concept of a god is a terrible idea and presents a really unappealing picture of the nature of traits and the basis of ethics. Everyone here ( that includes Dennett, Dawkins et al. They wish they could believe ) whose atheism or agnosticism is tied to evidence is a closet -believer until they can get to the point where they find the very idea of a god repugnant on its own terms, when they no longer wish they could believe.
I agree with much of this. But the general response will likely be 'no one says that the truth has to be appealing.'
I guess many atheists (especially those engaging with Americans) are thrust into the 'evidence/argument' space by apologists who constantly build edifices of 'proof' out of Aquinas et al. And yes, as a consequence atheism often resembles Islamic or Christian apologetics. What does Nietzsche say? Beware that, when fighting monsters, you yourself do not become a monster.
Quoting Joshs
Indeed. Care to say more about why?
Quoting Andrew4Handel
I think there are "good grounds to reject the" truth-claims of theism.
Nonsense. Neither belief nor knowledge requires presupposes "certainty".
I believe everyone should be exposed to religion and everyone has to deal with their own response to it. It's part of growing, which is the whole point of religion
This is an important point. It's interesting how 'absolute certainty' is itself a kind of god in a lot of thinking.
Can you really say there is a whole point to religion - or is this just a view? Surely religion, like humanity, is about many things, from bigoted cruelty to engagement and solidarity?
Doesn't "religion" have a certain definite meaning? It's a system of belief in the supernatural that arouses something, love or hatred to various degrees, in the soul
:up:
Some people think so. However, Karen Armstrong, a scholar of religion, holds that it's a subject that has no clear definition. I would say religion has multiple definitions and any attempt to say 'religion is X' is fraught.
But maybe you don't seem to believe in the supernatural. Those who do have a common experience. I think the word 'religion' has use because it speaks of something, an experience, within society. Is democracy easily defined?
Can you demonstrate this? It sounds wrong. I grew up in the Christian tradition which was as divided and antagonistic with each other over experience and belief as any other group of people.
Quoting Gregory
Now you're getting it. Abstractions like religion or democracy are notoriously difficult to define. At no point did I say religion is unique. But let's get back to the point - I made a comment about your claim that:
Quoting Gregory
I don't think we can readily say what the 'whole point' of religion is. That's all. :wink:
Two people can be opposed to each other and still be spiritual. Spiritual conflict is part of religion. People grow from struggle. From your side you would have to say romance is not definable so there is no point sharing stories about your first kiss with a friend
I was surprised as a young adult to find out the bible has numerous contradictions in it. And I felt I had been lied to as a child and not exposed to criticism of Christianity. I also think a lot of biblical stories are repugnant. Someone sacrificed his daughter to God (Jephthah), God has thousands of people arbitrarily killed, a man was stoned to death for picking up sticks on the sabbath under gods orders.
But that is an anti Judaeo Christianity stance.
Atheism tends to focus on wider concepts. It could be true a creator deity exists and every religion is false and nonsense.
Once atheism makes claims about wider issues such as about whether there is a creator, whether reality needs a first cause, whether reality is purely physical and so on whether morality can survive the death of religion etc.
These issue are separate from a general critique of very particular religious claims and where atheism becomes a metaphysical belief system in my opinion.
The idea is once you abandon religion the only other option is to be a materialist atheist reliant only on science. At one stage I felt that was the only option one or the other but now I feel atheists are trying to make that the only option.
If you take the Bible literally you've missed its message
However beliefs are motivating and demotivating. How you spend your 0 to 100 years could be marred by false beliefs.
It actually seems impossible to know what beliefs we should have and there appears to be no right answer about how to live our lives. I was posing that issue in my thread "Deciding what to do."
For some people a religion tells them what to do and or gives them something to aspire to. I can't think of a secular replacement for that other than an existential situation where you make up your own meanings and hope for the best.
But I do believe we need hope and some world views are not providing that. I think the major religions appear to offer some hope but are tainted by some nasty theology like hell and damnation. But I also think atheism does not offer hope if taken to a brutalist, reductionist no afterlife, humans are machines, consciousness is illusory (Daniel Dennett) eliminativist materialism (The Churchland's) et al.
I also think a lot of atheists seem to take for granted they can preserve things like morality and societal norms, law etc. In the absence of God without justifying claiming these things as part of their world view.
Why do you believe that?
This is definitely the case only in the absence of thinking critically and much lived experience.
Stereotyping "atheists" says much more about what you lazily take for granted than what you "think" says about them. :roll:
Agree.
Quoting Gregory
Should I add this to your other globalizing statement about religion below?
Quoting Gregory
Quoting Gregory
Not sure how this got into your argument since it neither addresses my point, or follows the discourse.
I would say romance is not a subject we can paint into a corner with hard and fast statements like the ones you've made.
You're really trying to justify ignoring spirituality because you it can't be put in a category? You cant grow much with only rationality. Faith is a calling and a higher logic. Everyone is influenced by it in their souls through society. Some hate it
Ah, but appeal IS a central element of what we call truth, especially in the sciences. An important value in choosing one theory over another is aesthetic appeal. The facts have no coherence outside of their relation to our pragmatic goals and purposes. We convince ourselves that we conform our empirical models to the cold, hard facts of the world, but those cold , hard facts are constantly shaped and reshaped by our evolving concerns, expectations and practices. The same goes
for our gods.
Quoting Tom Storm
At some point , we will no longer have need of a hypothesis that locks us into an arbitrary view of the world ( Im speaking both of religion and the view of science as truths that dont care about our feelings. God and objective realism are tied together, not opposites ).
Without a way to prove god's existence, what we can do is face the dislike we have towards god and really try to find ways not to be bothered by it. Loving god is faith/spirituality
Goodness, you're arguing about something entirely different.
Perhaps if I go over it it once more - we'll leave the thorny topic of religion/spirituality and look at what you did here.
Quoting Gregory
So at no point did I say we can't share stories. My point is precisely because there are so many potential stories to share, we should avoid painting ourselves into a corner about what constitutes romance. I can say for me it is about 'exhilaration.' But I can't say, 'the whole point of romance is exhilaration.' Some subjects take myriad forms and warrant a suspicion of globalizing statements and essentialisms.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/State_atheism
In 1967 Enver Hoxha, the head of state of Albania, declared Albania to be the "first atheist state of the world" even though the Soviet Union under Lenin had already been a de facto atheist state
Or the Dechristianization of France during the French Revolution?
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dechristianization_of_France_during_the_French_Revolution
Or The Brights movement?
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brights_movement
Or Eliminative materialism?
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eliminative_materialism
Or the God delusion.
I am responding to thing that have actually arising amongst atheists and stances taken by atheists not a caricature of them. I feel some gaslighting goes own when you confront people with things which have copious information in the public domain but they make it seem like you are imagining it.
Sounds a little like Richard Rorty.
I share some of these impulses/thoughts too, but I think this may be just a bit too 'extreme' for my worldview. I am still tied to reason since I can't imagine a way out of it and still have functioning humans. But I recognize the limitations of reason. Maybe this is the subject for a different thread.
Quoting Joshs
Yes I see this and this is in Nietzsche too. Something like, 'if you believe in grammar you're still a theist.'
I don't have an intrinsic problem with god and realism being tried together. Humans organize lives by reasons and values (regardless of their foundational value) some of these seem pragmatically better than others. I would rather have a germ base theory of disease than, say, one of demonic possession - you can get better, lasting outcomes with the first it seem to me. If preserving life is your goal.
Any 'not to difficult' paper or essay on this subject?
Prove that because religion comes in many forms it is not reliable as truth. You make premises without conclusions so it's as if you have faith in non-faith. A simple belief in God suffices.
We're not even talking about the same thing, Greg. Sorry man, I did my best. We can maybe talk about something else another time. Take care.
Accordingly, I am in no way (I never have been) ... spiritual. Music is "my religion".
Quoting Andrew4Handel
Those are questions best left open, as far as this atheist is concerned. I can't know those things, wouldn't begin to know where to start investigating them, and they're frankly none of my business
but
Quoting Andrew4Handel
is a human one that only humans can answer - not gods, not conjectures, not the biggest of bangs.
Quoting Andrew4Handel
That's one idea. "reliant only on science" sounds ominous, but all it means is trusting your senses and reason, learning, experience and memory, rather than stories that make no sense and don't appeal to you.
But if some of the stories do appeal to you, you have the option of holding onto them. Disbelieving in propaganda from one political source doesn't commit you to one other political party; it simply leaves you free to choose.
Quoting Tom Storm
Do you mean a lot of people think certainty is a god, or that a lot of people think that other people who claim to be certain of something are actually professing a religion?
I think it doesn't matter. Most of the time, without entertaining doubts, or even giving it any thought, we are sure of some things that we take them for granted: slide out of bed in the dark, expecting the floor to be where we left it; grope our way to the bathroom, expecting it to be where we left it, flush the toilet and expect it to flush like it always does. Even the most ardent theists absolutely believe in physical reality, but most of them, at some time or other, waver in their "sure and certain hope [?] of the resurrection"
Quoting Gregory
And if you have to 'interpret', read the commentaries, obfuscate and waffle over it, you've missed it's fatal flaw. Either the scripture is sacred and true or it's just literature.
Quoting Gregory
Loving a god is faith, yes, but spirituality is much more than fidelity to a single supernatural entity or idea, and it doesn't necessarily require "faith" - i.e. believing without evidence. Something as simple as awe when beholding the northern lights or being transported by a Schubert chorale can be a spiritual experience - all the way up to a complex relationship with the web of life.
I was referring to people's needs for 'absolute certainty' whether they are secular or religious. At one end is scientism and at the other end religious fundamentalism.
What do you make of @joshs argument:
Quoting Joshs
The idea that facts have no coherence outside of their relation to our pragmatic goals and purposes is probably accurate, but there is a lot to unpack in 'goals and purposes' and in how humans might live together in a shared world (as much as this is even possible).
If religion X says we need blow up the planet to fulfill prophecy, what do those who find objective facts problematic do with this?
Everyone approaches faith differently because they all experience religion differently. The Bible can be true for one and not another. Seriously. God gives spirituality to each person as he likes because it is as if we are children on this earth. Stories can be true and false to a child. The higher truth is God who makes the stories. My general point was that hatred toward religion can turn into love for religion without a conversion. Faith is groping in the dark
No. While an 'elegant' solution is much to be desired, and hard to let go, we settle for awkward, inconvenient, mean truths all the time. We always hope they will fit into a larger, more beautiful picture, and sometimes we luck out.
Quoting Joshs
No. facts have coherence whether we like them or not. We just make don't all all make use of them all all of the time.
Quoting Joshs
No. Facts do not change. Our perception of them may grow clearer, our understanding of how they fit together may render them less cold, but our concerns and practices shape nothing but our immediate environment, and our expectations are as often dashed as are fulfilled.
I don't know what this argument is meant to prove or demonstrate, but I think it's a rejection of reality that would not stand up in a court of law or a tax audit or a building design. Facts have very sharp teeth and I don't recommend turning your back on them.
Quoting Gregory
Oddly enough, I said that very thing in another thread. People take in what they hear, see, feel, read and they remix it in their head according to their previous experience, temperament and needs. Sure.
None of that affects the text itself or its relation to objective fact.
Quoting Gregory
Somebody can think it's literally true (I have some doubt about this: the people I've met who insisted that the scriptures were literally true were quite selective in the parts they quoted. They seem to like Paul for some reason... hm) but either was a woman named Esther in Persia or there wasn't; either she married Xerxes or she didn't; either he retracted the order to massacre the Jews or he didn't. Either Noah built an ark like the one in the Creation Museum in Kentucky or he didn't. I choose to believe Esther existed and Noah didn't, but that doesn't change their histories.
Quoting Gregory
Sweet... for those whom that fickle god likes. I have to squint really hard to see this, and it's not worth the effort. Microsoft fixed Windows 11 so that every time my cursor moves too far left, a window pops up with a too-familiar ugly orange balloon face in one of its frames, hour after hour, day after day... I can't see anything on the actual screen.
It often seems to me that some atheists use the lack-theism definition as a way of getting out of having to meet their burden of proof and/or epistemic justification. Usually in connection with other associated canards, such as knowledge/belief requiring certainty (as you mention), not being able to prove a negative, and so on.
And I can see the upside for a more inclusive definition of atheism in a social sense (strength in numbers, essentially)... but that doesn't mean this is a more useful definition for doing philosophy, where it is usually advisable to be able to distinguish between unthinking lack of belief, reflective disbelief, and reflective suspension of judgment.
Stop with this strawman. Atheism does not make any "claims". Atheism is disbelief in god/s. Period.
An incoherent idea. Idealists like Schopenhauer who are also avowed irreligious atheists expose this (your) patently false dichotomy (which I'd previously pointed out to you at the end of this post ).
:up:
Quoting Vera Mont
Knowledge is taken to consist in a faithful mirroring of a mind-independent reality. It is taken to be of a reality which exists independently of that knowledge, and indeed independently of any thought and experience (Williams 2005, 48). If we want to know true reality, we should aim at describing the way the world is, not just independently of its being believed to be that way, but independently of all the ways in which it happens to present itself to us human beings. An absolute conception would be a dehumanized conception, a conception from which all traces of ourselves had been removed. Nothing would remain that would indicate whose conception it is, how those who form or possess that conception experience the world, and when or where they find themselves in it. It would be as impersonal, impartial, and objective a picture of the world as we could possibly achieve (Stroud 2000, 30).
How are we supposed to reach this conception? Metaphysical realism assumes that everyday experience combines subjective and objective features and that we can reach an objective picture of what the world is really like by stripping away the subjective. It consequently argues that there is a clear distinction to be drawn between the properties things have in themselves and the properties which are projected by us. Whereas the world of appearance, the world as it is for us in daily life, combines subjective and objective features, sciencecaptures the objective world, the world as it is in itself. But to think that science can provide us with an absolute description of reality, that is, a description from a view from nowhere; to think that science is the only road to metaphysical truth, and that sciencesimply mirrors the way in which Nature classifies itself, is according to Putnam illusory. It is an illusion to think that the notions of object or reality or world have any sense outside of and independently of our conceptual schemes ( Zahavi)
the success of science cannot be anything but a puzzle as long as we view concepts and objects as radically independent; that is, as long as we think of "the world" as an entity that has a fixed nature, determined once and for all, independently of our framework of concepts."
So much about the identity relations between different categories of mathemati-cal objects is conventional, that the picture of ourselves a describing a bunch of objects that are there "anyway" is in trouble from the start.
what leads to "Platonizing" is yielding to the temptation to find mysterious entities which somehow guarantee or stand behind correct judgments of the reasonable and the unreasonable.
Religious truths are not like scientific truths. Even scientific truths are relative to a degree. Only God is absolute. If you hold to objective truth and yet remain an atheist because of lack of evidence you're being hard headed and ignoring the whole experience of religion, which is supposed to grow our hearts. God can do anything
Every monotheism is "the absence of belief" in every god except "the one God" ... that's not saying much. I prefer to be clear: either (A) belief that there aren't any gods or (B) disbelief in every god. they are roughly synonymous as far as I'm concerned (and is my preferred definition of atheism until about fifteen years ago when I traded-up from mere clarity to precison ...) Anyway, the latter formulation (B) may seem more defensible than (A), but it's not, as they are two sides of the same shekel; complementaries such that (A) warrants (B) and (B) assumes (A).
Smith, my point is: disbelief is a mode of active belief and not a passive "lack of belief" as @Andrew4Handel's thread's title (OP) suggests.
Quoting Joshs
Do you see this reasoning as having any utility?
When Joshs talks of 'our pragmatic goals and purposes' presumably this could refer to an understanding of humans as sharing a 'common world' and having to make choices about better or worse ways of behaving towards each other and our environment. In this respect, I see theism as ultimately not being helpful in the ways you have already identified.
I don't read an "argument" here but instead an "aesthetic appeal to 'aesthetic appeal'" for its own sake. Chasing sniffing one's own tail.
I prefer more reasoning and less rhetoric in my Bitches Brew ...
How can you disbelieve in something you have heard of with out any reasons?
I have just started reading the SEP article on atheism and agnosticism by Paul Draper.
https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/atheism-agnosticism/
"The purpose of this entry is to explore how atheism and agnosticism are related to theism and, more importantly, to each other. This requires examining the surprisingly contentious issue of how best to define the terms atheism and agnosticism."
One issue it mentions is whether there would be atheists without theists.
I think there would have been because people have a commitment to the notion of an explanation of reality excluding creators and deities.
But I think once someone has raised a concept people form beliefs about it and then make claims to justify rejecting it such as the lack of necessity of a creator deity.
Quoting Vera Mont
When Hitchens describes the numinous and the transcendent in the clip above as being (and I am using my own interpretation of the description he gives here) in a sense, 'meta' to 'the material.' Do you think this helps or compliments the 'naturalist' position? Is a 'love' of music or an appreciation of certain architecture, esoteric is some way? Can the concept of the numinous be legitimately used as evidence for something beyond(meta) the material? I think Blair in the clip above tries his best to capitalise on Hitchens use of the terms transcendent and numinous. I think a 'love of music or certain architecture or art' is humanist and not transcendent or numinous(a term derived from the Latin numen, meaning "arousing spiritual or religious emotion; mysterious or awe-inspiring." ). Do you think Hitchens use of the terms transcendent and numinous was actually a wise subterfuge? as it let's the 'immaterialists' in a little, but he then uses that invite to discuss the consequences of letting them in any further, when he talks about the fact that, it would follow that, theistic authorities such as the pope would then have to be fully accepted by all adherents to such religious doctrines.(again, that's based on my own interpretation of what Hitchens says after Tony Blair finished).
For example if I believe that Paris is the Capital or France then that entails I believe London is not the Capital of France and That Berlin is not the capital of France and that A Monkey is not the capital of France.
So a belief can have weird entailments. In the previous case you could say believing that Paris is the capital of France entails that an infinite number of other things are not the Capital of France.
So I think it is probably impossible to have beliefs without entailments.
Everyone has a wide range of differing information they are exposed to that lead to different questions arising for them.
People are entitled not to investigate different questions just like most people have limited concerns and some people like a university professor has a specific in depth area of concern.
But I think it is a state of agnosticism not to commit ones self to an opinion on something.
In this thread I am not suggesting all people who classify as atheists are committed to XY and Z but that there are prominent strands of atheism that make positive claims and have a belief system.
I don't know where you stand on each issue. As a gay person there are lots of things I don't agree with other gay people about including the whole LGBTQIA+ ideology. I am not at all saying this relates to you but I think as a gay person I need to distance myself from things I disagree with that are labelled as part of my identity.
I am not saying atheists need to do this but certain things that come out of the what can be called the atheists community are claims that people can disagree with. Especially provocative books like "The God Delusion" and a promotion of physicalism and non dualism.
This sounds like you are from The States.
I grew up in a fundamentalist cult in England. I had religion all day every day until I was 17 from birth. The bible was read and prayers said everyday. On leaving I have felt under no compulsion to be religious
In UK in general now it is easy to avoid religion. It is interesting how People like Richard Dawkins and Christopher Hitchens arise from the UK which has never had the same religious culture as America and was already very secular in their childhoods.
They became very prominent and loud in talk about theism/atheism and opposing religion so it was in the public consciousness to the same extent as religion. Also militant atheism and secularism entered universities. It seems that atheism is most prominent in liberal non theocratic countries where there is no compulsion of belief (ironically?).
I am sure I have typed this before, but its worth making the point again. Misunderstood context either deliberately or by mistake can also result in interpretations such as F is the capital of France and L the capital of London. Look at the chasms between the various interpretations of religious scripts.
Nobody is authorized or empowered to lay that burden on me. My beliefs and unbeliefs are subjective and autonomous; I owe nobody a justification for them. Actions are - or may be - a different matter.
Quoting Gregory
I'm not stopping him! I'm not an atheist because of lack of evidence; I'm an atheist because of evidence to the contrary: far too much of what religionists have claimed is proved false. But that just means I do not subscribe; it doesn't mean you shouldn't. So long as you don't bully other people or hurt animals, I'm fine with whatever you believe.
Quoting Andrew4Handel
Only if the supernatural, and more specifically, deity, comes into it. For me, they don't. The big cosmic questions are simply beyond our ability to investigate: whether they contain something that somebody chooses to call a god or not will probably remain unknowable, so unless and until they do, I'm not require to believe or disbelieve. If you want to call that agnosticism, fine.
Quoting Andrew4Handel
People disagree about all kinds of things all the time. We are a contentious species. Crap comes out ever "community" - which just means some people talk crap - and wisdom comes out of every community, because some people talk sense.
Quoting Andrew4Handel
Doesn't matter where you are. All over the world, every single day, children are exposed to religious ideas. I very much doubt there is any adult who has never heard of religion.
Quoting Andrew4Handel
When? Why? In response to what? Look at historical cause and effect chains.
.
Consider Richard Dawkins for example. Religion pours hot coals on his mind everyday and it clearly has caused him a lot of suffering. Just because he thinks he knows everything when his suffering proves otherwise. Religion use to cause the same thing in me, a subjective ich, but now it's completely gone. Not because I found evidence for God, but because faith gives me peace from that. You can't grow when your rationality feels like it's cloaked in a hair shirt
Who is Richard Dawkins to me, or I to Richard Dawkins? Why should I consider his state of mind before settling on one of my own? Indeed, why should you?
I suppose Dawkins is reacting to some of the crimes of religious organizations and religious men - and he's quite right in feeling that way: those crimes have been enormous in scope and depth. In the present world, a number of very dangerous religio-political organizations are are perpetrating and contemplating further egregious crimes, in the name of the same deity (keeping in mind the Jehovah=God=Allah) and Dawkins may feel, along with many others, that they must be opposed. In this latter instance, I side with him. People have reasons for what they believe, what they think, what they consider to be worth suffering ans fighting for. I'm not in the business of telling them what that should be.
What about the crimes of Atheist and non theist regimes Like Stalin, Pol Pot and Chairman Mao and The slaughter of the French revolution? The current Genocide of the Uighurs in China.
Religious people were specifically targeted in these regimes. Also the crime of eugenics. What about the World Wars that were nothing to do with religion and Japanese nationalism?
There is no reason believe that an absence of religion leads to a better society or better people. The current Russian atrocity is irreligious. Modern Western societies are pluralistic with the cohabitation of multiple belief systems.
Richard Dawkins and Daniel Dennett et al are not targeting theocratic regimes but the soft beliefs of moderate Christians.
I posted this link earlier.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/State_atheism
What about them? Don't you think people react to that, also? Including atheists, believe it or not. Everyone has a reason for thinking as they think, but there's no law (no secular law, anyway) that says we have to agree with any of the others.
Quoting Andrew4Handel
That is why I don't believe that - not even when when intelligent, well-meaning people assert it. I have no faith in humanity.
Quoting Andrew4Handel
I mildly disagree, having heard some of Dawkins' opinions on Islam.
But I don't really care what he thinks.
And again - Why do you?
I have faith in some people not others and faith in human reason to some degree.
I favour general agnosticism about knowledge because one is not committed to making claims of certainty.
I can't think of an atrocity committed by an agnostic.
Atrocities should come, like packaged food, with a content label on the back, as to the mind-set of their participants:
Hindu ---- 48%
Muslim ---- 40%
Atheist ---- 8%
Agnostic ---- 3%
Don't know ---- 1%
They're usually group efforts, with more than one motivating factor. The only thing we be can sure of they're all 100% human.
He is an influential (his opinions seems to have softened recently in some areas.)
I am concerned about the status of human beings in law and ideology.
For example:
"A Paralympic army veteran told stunned lawmakers in Canada when she claimed that a government official had offered to give her euthanasia equipment while fighting to have a wheelchair lift installed in her home"
https://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/americas/christine-gauthier-paralympian-euthanasia-canada-b2238319.html
Peoples beliefs attribute a different value to human life and death. People religious belief or atheism and metaphysical stance are being used to advocate for policies that effect us all.
I do not believe the elderly or disabled or mentally should euthanised by stealth or encouragement.
I have no problem with your faith. You can linger as long as your health care insurance lasts; I won't unplug you against your will. But you just bloody well keep your pious paws off my right to die. Religious people have caused an incredible amount of unnecessary suffering with their "value of human life" claptrap - not by 'stealth and encouragement', whatever that means, but by the threat of insane asylum, prison or hanging.
The mainstream churches' "value of human life" vs capital punishment policies are especially intriguing as to the rationale.
I believe every person of sound mind has the right to decide when and how they will exit the world, including living wills and power of attorney for when/if they are no longer of sound mind. This means I'm against slaughter, torture, murder, war, the criminal negligence of letting half-wits run around with deadly weapons, capital punishment and ethnic cleansing.
If that's a morally inferior position to the "human life is sacred, unless it's in somebody we're mad at; non-human life is worthless, and we get to define who's human", I can live with that inferiority.
Atheists want religion to be perfectly clear and this itself is against faith. Faith involves using discretion and reacting even when reason doesn't give a reason. "How am I supposed to know which religion to follow" implies one is not immersing themselves in religion
Quoting Andrew4Handel
Wtf. Now you're moving goal-posts. :roll:
A definition of X is one thing and argument for X something else altogether.
Yeah, I think it was a gambit. I'm not sure if it was a wise one or not. He was a tour de force in debates, there is little doubt of that, but this particular gambit left him open to BS reactions such as:
anglican samizdat.
Pure BS. We're all "open" to such "reactions" no matter how loose or rigorous our arguments. I prefer sublime cathartic or ecstatic to the more ambiguous terms "numinous" or "transcendent", but in the contexts which The Hitch had used them I think his irreligious meaning was clear enough.
We are not Borg. Some atheists may want that - in an argument. Most of these discussions are started by a theist and the opening word is usually "Atheists"... want, think... believe... say... claim. Some atheist nearly always bites and come back: No, I don't; I think... this, thus and so. Then some theist responds as if he knew better what the other person thinks, and some atheist does likewise and it turns into a bunch of kids throwing sand in one another's eyes.
Please. Do not tell me what I want, what I think, or what motivates me. I already know, and you still don't seem to, even though I've told you.
Quoting Gregory
Nobody asks that.
Quoting Gregory
I believe this to be true, whether the subject understands it or not.
What are your examples here?
You don't personally have to value human life but I want to live in a society that values human life and doesn't endorse or encourage suicide and devalues palliative health care and encourages the elderly and disabled to feel like a burden.
Capital punishment doesn't place value on human life. Peoples moralities are inconsistent and hypocritical.
You say religious people have caused immense suffering but which ones? All of them what about the communist atheist regimes I mentioned? Who is responsible for the immense suffering caused by two world wars?
I have watched the debate between him and Lane Craig twice and I don't know why Hitch did not bury him. I don't think Craig won the debate against Hitchens but I do agree that Hitch did not nail him to his own petard, in the way he could have. Craig was destroyed in his exchange with Sean Carroll and then, he was just overwhelmed, by Roger Penrose and was reduced to inputting humbled single sentences, every now and then. Finally, Sean, Roger, Carlo Rovelli et al, got together and totally debunked his Kalam Cosmological argument and killed it stone dead. Only Craig and any remaining Kalam fundamentalists, believe that some kind of defibrillation is possible on the Kalam.
:up:
Lots. But I'm not having that debate again.
Quoting Andrew4Handel
And I want to live in a compassionate society that helps people as long as they can be helped, then lets them go when they decide it's time for them to go. I do not believe in the abstract "value of human life". Life has value to the one [not exclusively humans] living it and the ones who are affected by it. I do believe in the autonomy an dignity of individuals.
That's why we have this struggle against religious politics. I do not wish to impose my values on you, but you want to impose yours on all of society.
You want old people not to feel like a burden, but who is supposed to carry them? The government that enacts laws against assisted suicide does not provide quality homes or care for old people; allows them, quite often, to be neglected and abused in the institutions to which they're relegated when they can no longer pay their way in society at large.
It's a lot easier to want than to solve; a lot cheaper to decree than to repair.
Quoting Andrew4Handel
The powerful ones, from Popes through kings and Protestant legislatures who took the Bible as their guide in formulating legal codes.
I especially like this bit:
killing other people is fine and holy - as long as they don't want to die.
Well, that's absolutely amazin'! I couldn't have figured that out on my own mon ami. Gracias, muchas gracias.
Reminds me of a quote by Montesquieu
"Life was given to me as a favor, so I may abandon it when it is one no longer."
You are making things up here.
I mentioned this case:"A Paralympic army veteran told stunned lawmakers in Canada when she claimed that a government official had offered to give her euthanasia equipment while fighting to have a wheelchair lift installed in her home"
This is in Canada not the USA and I am, in the UK not the USA and we have a Free health service.
Assisted suicide is legal in Canada who also have free health care. The issue is the way it has spiralled inappropriately so the preservation of life is being less and less valued.
People values are imposed on each other through democracy and when one persons values triumph another persons loses out.
You are clearly expressing your biases here which seems to prove my point in the opening post. Atheism is not usually just a lack of belief in God.
I was involved with the care my brother who died a couple of years ago after a 25 year illness that paralysed him for many years. He was a Christian and I am sure that gave him some comfort. It was a horrible situation but he always asked to be kept alive until the last moment so I have a lot of experience around the issue of severe illness, palliative care and how the health service deals with these issues.
Burden of proof is a social convention governing debates/arguments, so yes, in a sense, they are. But if you don't care whether people listen or engage with you, then there's nothing stopping you from not abiding by this social convention. As with any other social convention; you don't have to wipe your shoes or wash your hands, but if you don't, people probably won't invite you over for dinner anymore.
And of course, if you never engage in arguments or debates then you aren't making any claims, and therefore not incurring a burden of proof. But if you are engaging in arguments/debates, and are making claims, then you bear a burden of proof to support those claims if called upon to do so, no less than anyone else; contrary to the common canard, burden of proof doesn't distinguish between positive and negative claims, or theistic or atheistic; any claim you make incurs a burden of proof.
Epistemic justification is a bit different, but in some ways analogous- our views and positions are only reasonable to the extent that they are based on good and sufficient reasons. If you don't care whether your views are reasonable or not, one can believe whatever baseless nonsense one wants. But most atheists want their views to be reasonable (and most people in general, I imagine), which means that atheism, like any other view or position, must be based on good and sufficient reasons or evidence.
She claimed. OK. Did he force anything on her? So far, it doesn't sound like much of a crime.
But that's not what I was answering, was it? (Are her past occupation or present avocation significant to the case, or are they just thrown in for emotional effect?)
Quoting Andrew4Handel
Am I?
Quoting Andrew4Handel
Quoting Andrew4Handel
I know that. Because after a long, arduous fight, in which many people suffered through years of litigation, against people who think they know better what is right for us than we do ourselves, we finally made assisted suicide - under stringent regulations - legal. What you cite is unlikely to have been legal - but nor was it lethal.
No, you don't. You have a government-run universal health insurance scheme. It is very expensive, under attack from private enterprise, criticized from all directions, undersupported and overburdened - probably under just as much stress as ours.
I used the US example, because they have more religious institutions than the UK or Canada, and we would expect to see more church supported elder care, but basically, we're all in the same deep doo-doo: too many old people, too many diseases, not enough resources.
Quoting Andrew4Handel
Not quite. If you win, I lose my autonomy; I become subject to your values, no longer free to make my own life decisions. If I win, you lose nothing except power over other people: you're free to do as you please with your life. That's why I have to fight you, even though I would much prefer not to.
Quoting busycuttingcrap
]
Debates and arguments, yes. If one has made a claim, one should be able to support it.
Demanding that I prove why I don't believe something is not a debate.
Quoting busycuttingcrap
Proof of what, exactly?
"People tell a story. I find that story implausible, so I don't believe it."
"You haven't proved that it's not true!"
And I maintain that it's not my job to prove or disprove it. It's somebody else's story.
That tells us a lot about your judgement.
Does it? Then record this: I have not judged and never condemned anyone on hearsay.
Fun fact: Offering somebody the means of death is a big bad deal. Selling and donating weapons off mass destruction is international business.
Proof of any claims they make. Atheists can, and very often do, engage in debates or arguments, and so end up making claims. Claims for which they bear a burden of proof. But again, obviously if you don't engage in arguments and so don't ever make any claims, burden of proof doesn't apply... But epistemic justification still does. Any intellectual view or position we make, any propositional attitude we adopt, is reasonable to the extent that it is based on good and sufficient reasons... and that includes rejecting or failing to believe a given proposition. Even suspension of judgment must be epistemically justified in order to be reasonable.
Now, if one doesn't care whether ones atheism or agnosticism is reasonable, then no one is going to force them to base their views on good and sufficient evidence or reasons. But mostly people aspire to be reasonable, and atheists in particular. But contrary to the conventional wisdom in some very-online and philosophically-illiterate secular spaces, atheism, even of the lack-theism variety, is just as susceptible to epistemic justification as any other view or position. The good news is that atheism can meet this burden-whether of proof or justification- because the totality of the evidence strongly supports atheism/naturalism and the hypothesis that humans create gods and not the other way around.
Then those atheists should support those claims. I don't know exactly who made what claims and how they justified it. All I claim is my own disbelief, the reasons for which and the reasoning behind which I have explained many times.
As far as I'm concerned, "proof" doesn't apply to narrative. I don't demand that anyone introdude me to their patron deity, or demonstrate salvation or prove that a man with with the head of a falcon called the world out of a water mass. I simply fail to be convinced by the narrative.
Also, I defend those who do believe the narrative, because i acknowledge that faith is subjective.
So, again: What is it I'm supposed to have claimed that requires proof?
Fine. I dislike being so often swept up in raid on Dawkins et al, just because I also call myself atheist.
Oh trust me, I know the feeling all too well (being an atheist myself)- the intellectual legacy of the "New Atheists" is... a mixed bag, to put it mildly. But that was also why I wasn't calling out anyone in particular, and was mostly talking about dynamics that I've seen elsewhere, typically forums/boards/etc with a less philosophically sophisticated userbase than PF/TPF.
I didn't know I had a burden of proof. Especially as I have nothing to prove. I'm equally sure I don't have to justify any position I hold.
If you make some claims and I don't think that you have good reasons for holding to them then I will not believe your claims. I have no position on God. I have no personal concept of God. All I know about Him is what others tell me. So I make no claims.
Fundamentalists cause him (and me) some angst. Religion? Not so much. Unless it interferes with me and mine.
Get some consensus going, Greg. If there was only one god, only one religion and all adherents believed the same thing then I wouldn't be an atheist.
You can't all be right, but...
Having found this forum after spending a considerable time on various Christian forums, I am giddy with the realisation that here I can actually type something akin to 'Craig is a cocksucker' and not be imediately banned.
Be still my beating heart...
Atheism as lack of belief in God is to say that atheism is not a belief that needs to be addressed (if the boxer in one corner of the ring hasn't even risen to fight, the opponent in the other corner is ____ (lack of belief).
No doubt he can be. I'm sure some fundamentalists would think so.
Cheers...
Quoting Tom Storm
Quoting Gaius Valerius Catullus (c. 84 BC c. 54 BC)
Should this all be moved to the "respectful dialogue" thread?
It would be the term itself in t'other forum. An immediate ban for it.
You do make me laugh sometimes. Thanks. :rofl: The Catullus was a particular nice touch.
No religious man or woman denies the possibility of having no god or gods. They just believe that it or they exists.
Belief has no bearing on existence, as does a lack of belief.
When it comes to a being's existence, belief in it has no bearing on it, as does the disbelief.
This is a silly thread. You can't argue beliefs; you can argue logically only, if both opponents in a debate accept the same axioms or same premisses. This is why arguments between the faithful and the atheists always remain fruitless: their starting points are different, and the starting point of either side can't be proven or disproven.
Yes, it can be evidenced or not evidenced; but even still the evidence is not bound to be accepted by the opposing side.
This is a silly thread.
SEXISM ON THE FORUMS!!! The bearer of (i.e. the decoration around) a C can be just as capable as the CS.
Mind you, the CS could be either of the sexes. So I withdraw my complaint.
Beliefs are statements that can be true/false.
God exists is a belief, it's a statement.
God doesn't exist is a belief, it's a statement.
So, if atheism is a lack of belief, it's missing a corresponding thesis/statement, oui? It, obviously, can't claim god doesn't exist because that's a belief.
I think atheism is disbelief in theism.
Yes. I believe there was a historical figure named Socrates, but I do not (need to) have "faith in Socrates".
We've already danced at this rodeo not long ago, amigo:
https://thephilosophyforum.com/discussion/comment/763662 :halo:
My memory betrays me mon ami! Pardon.
Faith isn't restricted to a belief in gods. For example, I've noticed that a great many Americans have faith in their Constitution and the democratic process. People in western countries tend to put faith in their legal system (other places, not nearly so much). Many married people have faith in their partners and the institution itself. Far more people than I would have imagined possible still have faith in the future. There is a wide overlap between that faith and a faith in science and technology.
Atheism is specifically a lack of belief in deities. This lack of belief can range from indifference to active, passionate hatred of religion. It doesn't, however, preclude any other form of superstition, or any of the other faiths in the above examples.
But instead we Have Books like "The God Delusion" and The Dechristianization of France during the French Revolution
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dechristianization_of_France_during_the_French_Revolution
It is clear that atheism has not just left people in a simple state of unbelief but produced other motives in people.
I think agnosticism seems a great stance to takle because it is being cautious and saying I don't know. (South Park did a spoof of Fundamentalist agnostics)
Extremes on all sides of these debates cause fear and anger so lets avoid extremes and brutal dichotomies and exchanging slurs.
Why is it so hard to understand that those positions are not taken with regard to a god, but with regard to what men do in the name of that god?
Quoting Andrew4Handel
Atheism did not cause those motives; the motives, in reaction to the activities of Holy Roman Church, caused atheism. The priests, by taking possession of and misapplying the god, turned an awful lot of decent people against their version of godhood. The fundamentalists of today, both Christian and Muslim, are doing the same.
I think the problem of doing away way with gods is then that you have to justify norms without reference to gods.
Belief in gods has been used to justify a lot of social norms including the family and the justice system and even the notion of physical laws.
When atheists get involved in the business of creating society their atheism does effect their other beliefs and values.
:100:
Maybe apologists are, in fact, idolators who cannot imagine that their critics are anything but idolators too.
Quoting Andrew4Handel
:roll:
We were "justifying social norms" many millennia before "belief in gods" was institutionalized (e.g. animism).
Yes but now we have science which is being highly successful but does not justify social norms.
So we have society based on something similar to a religion that can't be validated without using premises that have been used to attack religion.
That is on reason I am a moral nihilist myself. I can't see any truth value in moral claims like wise many other "ought" claims and lots of societal values. But people who called themselves atheist had a chance to create societies on their principles such as communists regimes sans gods. Did it succeed?
As an ethical naturalist and fallibilist, the truth value of moral claims about 'what harms persons, other animals and ecosystems' is discernible, ergo preventable or reducible. 'Supernaturalist criteria' for "justifying the moral norms" of natural persons was a brief, maladaptive interlude of the last several millennia out of an almost two hundred millennia span of eusocial h. sapiens existence. 'Divine command theory', as far as I can tell, is moral nihilism (e.g. Plato's Euthyphro, Nietzsche's The Antichrist), and the last century or so of substantive secularization has been and continues to be a struggle against vestigial priestcraft and normative superstitions.
They make claims, certainly. Have you ever fact-checked the claims? How many can you disprove?
They do actions, as everyone does. To which particular actions are you referring here?
How do you know what causes what claims and actions?
Quoting Andrew4Handel
That's your problem, not mine. I think the concept of gods has always been problematic at best; at worst, it has been used as an excuse for horrific acts. Child sacrifice and self-mutilation leap to mind. Also some really very bad legal decisions. Torture and burning at the stake are some of the nastier examples of individual harm, but one might also mention wholesale slaughter in religious wars and wide-spread abuse of indigenous populations. Overall, not a good idea, imo.
Quoting Andrew4Handel
All those social conventions existed long before gods were invented. All those social norms existed long before humans walked on two legs.
Quoting Andrew4Handel
Nobody "gets involved in creating society". Society just grew. It's here and we're stuck with it, so we each try to nudge it a tiny little bit in the direction we wish it to go.
Why is the truth about what causes harm a moral claim? I don't believe that atheists have ever started a society from scratch without the influence of prior human religions, dogmas and supernatural beliefs etc.
Christians fought against slavery and as mentioned elsewhere David Hume religious skeptic funded a slave venture. Humans from all walks of life and belief systems exhibit extremely diverse contradictory behaviour. We end up with cherry picking again to claim whose system of beliefs is the least corrupt.
The point is however that vocal atheists have spent a lot of time trying to pick apart religion (mainly Christianity as opposed to Islam and Hinduism) but don't make the same demands of lots of other aspects of life that could be said to warrant equal scrutiny which appears to me like selective skepticism.
Can you provide evidence for this claim most human societies that have been recorded have been religious, or superstitious, had gods of some sort.
Lots of things like family and weddings and Christmas have very modern components that we mistakenly think are old traditions.
"In most cultures of the world, the beginning of family history is set in creation myths."
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_the_family
Nobody ever has. Get off that train; it's never leaving the station. Quoting Andrew4Handel
Some Christians fought against slavery 1600 years after the mainstream churches endorsed it. To wit,
If you're talking about facts, you need to be less selective, or you might end up with cherry picking again to claim whose system of beliefs is the least corrupt.
Quoting Andrew4Handel
Why would American and British atheists argue about Hinduism, which doesn't affect them? They do have quite a lot - none of complimentary - to say about Islam. And they also come out in protests against wars and segregation and police violence and the tyranny of capital; they campaign for candidates they consider worthy. But cherry-picklers on a mission miss those tiny fruits.
No problem! https://animals.howstuffworks.com/mammals/meerkats2.htmhttps://defenders.org/blog/2014/07/wolves-are-even-more-socially-complex-we-thoughthttps://wwf.panda.org/discover/knowledge_hub/endangered_species/elephants/african_elephants/https://www.nature.com/scitable/knowledge/library/primate-sociality-and-social-systems-58068905/
I didn't claim otherwise I was just pointing out the some opposed it including the most prominent abolitionists whereas David Hume philosopher and famer religious skeptic supported it.
"David Hume advised his patron, Lord Hertford to buy a slave plantation, facilitated the deal and lent £400 to one of the principal investors. And when criticised for racism in 1770, he was unmoved, writes Dr Felix Waldmann"
https://www.scotsman.com/news/opinion/columnists/david-hume-was-brilliant-philosopher-also-racist-involved-slavery-dr-felix-waldmann-2915908
I am attacking the false dichotomy about the conduct of the religious and non religious and whether a society without religion would be more fact based, rational and humane.
Let's try it for 2000 years and find out!
No one is denying that as far as I am aware we are talking about human societies and the history of humanity. We are living and communicating on a different plain to animals because we have language and ideas etc.
There is brutality among animals but also nothing to scale of what some would describe as human depravity.
We are the species most in need of a sound moral compass.
I am referring to social organizations, with families, norms, codes of behaviour and enforcement of rules.
As to physical laws, they've been around even longer. Every lemur understands gravity; every eagle has terrific depth perception; every cuttlefish knows the colour spectrum.
(I don't think you've had time to read all those articles.)
They have tried it under communist regimes and in revolutionary France it could be argued to have had a worse effect than religion with a higher death toll. As I mentioned in the evolution thread the Nazis embraced the survival of the fittest which was invoked in their Aktion T4 programme ("Alles leben is kampf" )
AKT4 was where gas chambers were first used to murder hundreds of thousands of disabled people and later adopted to make the killing of millions of Jews and others easier.
We don't know where society is going. Or Whether we'll be here in a hundred years but currently it works on the based as a multi-faith and no faith democracy where lots of diverse groups have an input. I am not sure which aspects of societal "progress" atheists can lay claim to. But they seem to want to blame religion for everything bad and assume all progress is some how linked to atheism or secularism-rationalism.
All believers are atheists insofar as there are many gods, etc which they don't believe in except their own. (We disbelievers are just more consistent atheists then you believers.) Also, large complex societies based on "religious faith" alone have never been viable or lasted long. In fact, people can live a long while on bread alone but not on "faith" alone thus, their relative values for life. Lastly, we are a superstitious species, and all that means is, like dogs, we can't help barking at shadows (à la Plato's Cave), it's how our brains are wired so your statement, Andrew, amounts to saying 'adults have never built societies who were also once children'. :roll: To the degree cultures and societies are secular is the degree to which they have outgrown, or put away, childish things like gods, religious dogmas & superstitions (e.g. conspiracy theories, institutionalized discriminations, patriarchy, celebrity-worship, pseudo-scientism, etc). As a species, in the main, we're still only adolescents.
Do I have to read the articles? I am well aware of pro-social animal behaviours but we are talking about humans and their well documented history. Humans aren't lemurs or wolf packs.
Maybe you are invoking a naturalistic fallacy where you believe that we should return to a state a of nature where things will be Good and natural or that things found in nature are good?
I don' think aping other animals resolves the issue. Evolution is supposed to have taken away the notion of teleology and purpose and an animals behaviour is just supposed to encourage gene replication and genes have no idea what we are doing.
No they didn't. The entire french dechristianization program only lasted about 2 years.
It didn't work, of course. The church got all the wealth and power back as soon as the monarchy came back. In fact, they're not doing so badly now. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_wealthiest_religious_organizations
As for the so-called communist regimes, they failed spectacularly in Russia and the Balkans and has made barely any effort in China. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Religion_in_China
A generation is nowhere near long enough for the priests to lose their stranglehold on the population.
Oh, so you're an evolution denier as well? ....Sad....
Quoting Andrew4Handel
Aping our own heritage? How? Social behaviour is social behaviour, in all species. It has been the norm among sentient creatures for a very long time before imaginative human hairless apes invented supernatural entities.
You seem to be doing the same thing as 180Proof and selecting natural behaviours you have a preference for. But you are not being explicit enough.
However if humans are apart of nature or our behaviour is natural and if we are genetic all of our behaviour. Religion is a result of evolution and genocide.
It amounts to you saying you have a preference for certain things that happen and want more things like that to happen.
A Good time for this Dawkins Quote again:
Are you advocating a return to nature? Taking inspiration from nature or transcending nature?
"The total amount of suffering per year in the natural world is beyond all decent contemplation. During the minute that it takes me to compose this sentence, thousands of animals are being eaten alive, many others are running for their lives, whimpering with fear, others are slowly being devoured from within by rasping parasites, thousands of all kinds are dying of starvation, thirst, and disease. It must be so. If there ever is a time of plenty, this very fact will automatically lead to an increase in the population until the natural state of starvation and misery is restored. In a universe of electrons and selfish genes, blind physical forces and genetic replication, some people are going to get hurt, other people are going to get lucky, and you won't find any rhyme or reason in it, nor any justice. The universe that we observe has precisely the properties we should expect if there is, at bottom, no design, no purpose, no evil, no good, nothing but pitiless indifference."
I picked social species at random to illustrate that family, social norms and standards of acceptable conduct predate the advent of religion. It's nothing to do with my preference; it was a simple response to your claim that religion was required to 'justify' social norms. I say it wasn't: we already had them.
What species would you prefer as a comparison?
Quoting Andrew4Handel
Yes, our behaviour is natural. Yes, our depravities have natural origins. Far from perpetuating natural behaviours that worked for millions of years for other animals, and about one million years for our own species, the big brain, its imagination and its lust for patterns resulted in the invention of some elaborations of social behaviour that eventually leads to our destruction. Religion is only one of those inventions.
I don't follow the genocide part.
Quoting Andrew4Handel
NOTA/NA/WTF are you even talking about?
I think Religiosity and believing in a deity would be praiseworthy if it was simple presence of belief. It would amount to not needing to await evidence to establish one's beliefs.
Instead, we have religious wars, persecution, discrimination, intimidation, Autodafe and inquisition in the diligent pursuing of religious beliefs. Genocide and slavery.
You see, Andrew4Handel, the knife cuts both ways. The atheists at least stop at screaming and spluttering anti-religious sentiments. The religious go way beyond that, not just one step, but a thousand steps beyond that, to defend their faith.
I call your argument biassed and not significant, once you put the atheists' actions to the Christians' and other religious'.
You must be totally blind then to history.
- Autodafe
- The Turkish genocide of the Kurds
- Hitler's role of murdering 6 million Jews
- Biblical references
- the Violent Christianization of most of Europe
etc.
By killing people of other religions, they either convert, or else die.
Christianity's spread in Europe in the middle ages must have decimated the continent, with the result of eradicating hundreds, if not thousands, of tribal religious.
This is what they meant to say when they said "Religion (and its spread) is a result of evolution and genocide."
The Dalai Lama said, "Christianity is a beautiful religion. Too bad nobody practices it."
There you have it. By God himself.
You are employing the fallacy of "equivocation".
Faith in government, democratic process, money, is a trust. They obviously exist, and there is no one who can deny they exist. In that sense they are NOT a belief.
Faith in god is a belief.
The example you brought up is an exercise in not having a sense to pick up nuances in the meaning of words.
This phenomenon is a rampant error on this forum. You are not alone in making this mistake, repeatedly; you are in the majority.
Quoting 180 Proof
May be it's a bit of both. To start we need god (theism), but to maintain we don't need god (atheism). The ladder that must be used (to climb) and then thrown (once you reach the top) [re Wittgenstein]. By the way, I'm willing to bet my whole life's savings ($2.65 :cool: ) that we'll need god again at the end. El Rachum!
I am not advocating religion. I tend to advocate agnosticism. I assume you are ruling out communist atrocities as being unrelated to atheism?
Doing an atrocity not in the name of gods could be defined as an atheist atrocity (tongue in cheek).
There are atrocities like the two world wars that weren't religious. They aren't the fault atheism either but they don't support the idea that secularism will lead to better things.
"Soviet Union
State atheism (gosateizm, a syllabic abbreviation of "state" [gosudarstvo] and "atheism" [ateizm]) was a major goal of the official Soviet ideology.[49] This phenomenon, which lasted for seven decades, was new in world history.[50] The Communist Party engaged in diverse activities such as destroying places of worship, executing religious leaders, flooding schools and media with anti-religious propaganda, and propagated "scientific atheism"
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/State_atheism
You haven't heard of the uncarved block (re Daoism) then! :cool:
The reason why a child believes in god (gullibility) is different from the reason why an octagenerian believes in god (uncertainty). So, not exactly a return to childhood - an overlap of symptoms that has in this case led to a misdiagnosis. :smile:
I was part of this in Hungary, between roughly 1960 and 1972, when I was 6 to 18 years of age.
There were no public executions of priests, and there were no jailing anyone because they were religious.
That is true, however, that in schools, factories and offices, we had to support atheism as the state ideology. People still remained religious; about 1/3 of the total population.
It was not a "follow atheism or die" process.
In Hungary no places of worship were destroyed by the state. Instead, they were restored from the damages incurred during wwii, and they became national monuments, a type of tourist attraction.
Unfortunately Westerners got a heavily edited and falsified view of the communist states and life there within. Much like the Hungarian state television and radio at the time depicted a dire view of the west: a dog-eat-dog world, where man is another man's wolfe, no humanity, no humanitarianism.
The difference was that Hungarians did not believe the state propaganda about life in the West, and the people in the West believed everything, lies and truths, spread by their media about life in communism.
I disagree. " the use of ambiguous language to conceal the truth or to avoid committing oneself; prevarication." It is quite true that people "believe in" things like the constitution and the law and 'the invisible hand of the market', and expect those institutions to be just and right and benevolent and invincible - in spite of all evidence to the contrary. Those things are unreal - they "exist" in the same way gods do: they are concepts in the name of which people behave in certain prescribed ways.
Quoting god must be atheist
Must I? The sentence you quoted was a response to:
Quoting Andrew4Handel
I don't think those events are part of evolution; nor do they predate the invention of religion - and in no way did they cause religion.
Quoting god must be atheist
And, boy, did the bishops make a huge comeback once the Russians were gone! Even some little claimant to the ancient throne tried to come back. And lots of American missionaries. Much the same happened in Russia, the Ukraine, and Islam never went very far underground in the annexed eastern territories of the USSR.
You said -- please check the above quote and the originals -- that you did not understand the genocide part. That's what you stated you did not understand. So I explained the GENOCIDE part, eh? why bring in more things you don't understand and can't figure out on your own, and blame my answer for your inability of working out thoughts, as if I were a custodian of your thinking processes. And please note I inserted into the question I answered a phrase "and its spread". That is a key element in there.
I understand that you disagree with me about many, many things. That's half the fun of it. But I am getting more and more tired of arguing with you. Let's put it this way: I state my criticism of your claims, you deny the validity of my criticism, but I shan't go further into the argument, because if you did not understand my critical views the first time, you never will; not in the least because you are so doggone emotionally attached to your opinions.
In other words:
1. You say something.
2. I argue that that something is wrong.
3. You say that that something is not wrong.
and that's where the buck stops.
I won't go into "4. proving to you just once more that you are wrong", because that is the most frustrating experience on this site: going over something over and over again with somebody obstinate enough to insist that their first and wrong opinion is right.
I understood them.
I am no judge to know what you understand and what you don't. I am just going by your replies.
Agreed.
If there are different types of lack of belief it means that there are also different types of belief. However, they all refer to an opinion, conviction, confidence or trust that something exists or is true.
The difference between the 4 cases of lack of belief that you presented lies in the amount of evidence and/or agreement on each of them, as well as the extent to which this is shared by people. Let's take the subject of God, for instance. If you say "I don't believe in God" in front of a religious group, the people will consider it as ignorance and maybe as an insult (if they are religious fanatics). But if you say the same thing in front of an atheist group, they will find it just natural. So, if we suppose that there are as many theists as atheists in your community, your statement in general would not indicate either ignorance or irrationality.
Similarly about the Holocaust. However, the difference here is that that there is evidence about it --historical accounts, testimonies, stories, photos, etc.-- which is accepted by the majority of people, i.e. the majority of people agree about its historical truth. In this case, a statement like "I don't believe that Holocaust ever happened" will sound foolish. Yet, there are many people from what I know that share this belief!
As for "I don't believe the moon exists", if you start going around with such a statement, most probably you will end up in a madhouse! :smile:
See, it's the amount of agreement or lack of it that exists among people that makes a belief sustainable or not.
Quoting Andrew4Handel
Based on what I described above, "ignorance" is only one of the characteristics or reasons of "lack of belief" and then it is itself disputable. But evidently, if I say "I don't believe that God exists", certainly does not show ignorance, since 1) the word "God" means different things to different people and 2) in its most known descriptions there is no evidence about its existence. This is called lack of evidence, not ignorance.
***
Final note: Agreement means reality. Not literally, but in the sense that if you disagree with me about something it means that your reality about it differs from mine. So, saying "I don't believe in God" reflects my reality about (the subject of) God.
But there was in other countries I don't know about Hungary but the rest is well documented. There is footage of churches being destroyed and priests being executed. But your background certainly sounds very interesting.
"According to some sources, the total number of Christian victims under the Soviet regime has been estimated to range around 12 to 20 million.[8][9] At least 106,300 Russian clergymen were executed between 1937 and 1941."
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Persecution_of_Christians_in_the_Soviet_Union
In relation to this thread topic atheism has gone beyond being a simple lack of belief or simple disbelief and enforced.
Quoting god must be atheist
See my above info.
The overall point is that there is a lot of evidence of atheism going beyond the no burden of proof simple lack of belief and My overall point was that not only has atheism being tried as a belief (state atheism) it is has failed and caused lots of harm which does not make atheism the less harmful stance of religious versus atheists.
But I have not heard of agnostic atrocities so until I do i would hold that agnosticism is the way forward.
But what counts as evidence for God?
I think the burden of proof is on the atheist because something exists rather than nothing and I believe the existence of reality asks for an explanation. God is one explanation. Atheism means not believing in a creator of reality without a feasible alternate explanation.
If someone comes to believe that there are no mysteries about reality (consciousness/infinity/existence etc) than they may feel their atheism is justified. That is where atheism teams up with evolution and the big bang to claim there is no longer any role for God in reality which I view as faulty and more of a faith position.
~Carl Sagan
Quoting Andrew4Handel
Two questions:
1. Why do you "believe the existence of reality asks for an explanation"?
2. Does this "explanation" beg the question (i.e. also requires its own explanation)?
You tell me your definition of "God" and I will derive from that definition "what counts as evidence for your God".
In many years on Christian forums, I have never seen an atheist claim that. Although I have very often read Christians who claim that they do. And those Christians will be generally be YECs and/or creationists.
If someone wants to claim that a god was behind evolution and created the big bang, then fine. I'll call that god Nature and they can call it what they prefer.
However...If they insist that it was God AND He sent His son who was born to a virgin to save us, created mankind especially, answers prayers, will accept you into heaven or send you to hell, has installed an eternal soul into each of us etc etc then I'll discount that because of a lack of evidence.
Because all around me things have causes. Cause and effect works and things don't pop into existence for no reason.
Quoting 180 Proof
There is no requirements on the explanation other than it explains something that clearly needs explaining.
We may find an infinite regress of reasons but we may not. However atheism is a non explanation in the face of something that is subject to reason and to forms of inquiry and explanation.
This is one of the reasons I don't describe myself as an atheist and came into conflict with atheists because I believe they misrepresent and under estimate the problems.
They make heavy attacks on Christianity but accept their own moral values on flimsy grounds and are seemingly unaware of things like the atrocities of state atheism that I have highlighted on this thread whilst making a big deal about religion causes wars and prejudice.
When I left Christianity I went quickly to nihilism because I accepted the problems of replacing a religious world view with anything meaningful.
I have edged back from nihilism since doing a philosophy and psychology degree and realising what we don't know and what are open questions. I had to read articles by Dawkins and Dennett as part of books we read on the implications of Darwinism and in Consciousness studies where you also encounter conscious state skeptics The Churchland's among others. That is where I learnt atheist were attacking things like conscious states, meaning and values in order to shore up atheism and pushing for determinism.
Quantum indeterminancy is "all around" every thing (i.e. QFT, quantum fluctuations). This is known with about nine decimal places of precision. Also, causality as such is not an explanation (i.e. what's the cause/s of causality? Oops! :yikes:).
... which does not explain anything. :eyes:
Consider: if "God" is conceived of as "uncaused" or "self-caused", why can't we conceive of what you call "the existence of reality" as uncaused or self-caused but without the non-evident middle man-"Creator" (as per Occam's Razor) instead? :chin:
You can't really shore up atheism. Scientism maybe. Atheism is simply that we don't accept the proposition god/s exist. An atheist might be a secular humanist or believe in the occult or idealism.
My atheism, as an example, is a simple. I have heard no good reason to accept the proposition that god/s exist. I have no sensus divinitatis so for me the notion of god's is incoherent and they explain nothing. You can't explain a mystery (existence or consciousness) with another mystery (god/s). God/s have no explanatory power. They are being used as a kind of hole filler to cover up the gaps in knowledge.
Russell suggested the counterexample: each person around me has a mother, therefore the human race as a whole has a mother.
Cause takes place within the world. There's no demand that the world as a whole be caused. it might, but it might not.
And if it did, then... well, causes tend to be in terms of something else. X causes Y. But then one can ask what caused X; and so on. So whatever cause is proffered, the question repeats itself.
God is supposed to rid us of this by being uncaused. That's blatant question begging.
Then there are the possibilities of infinite regress and circularity, neither of which implies a contradiction.
And there are things which "pop into existence for no reason" in the quantum world. That this is even contemplated shows that there is no contradiction in something being uncaused. Indeed, if God is uncaused, why not the big bang or whatever other cosmology is your preference?
Atheism is, in any case, seperate from these considerations. It is more about certain cultural and religious practices than about cosmology.
What grounds are they, then, that are shared by all atheists? That's a pretty shallow accusation.
:fire: Amen, brother!
:100:
I am not personally advocating God or gods as explanations. I am only asking for an explanation.
If there is a breakdown of casualty that undermines everything including reason and laws.
It is the equivalent of researching your ancestors and finishing at your great grandmother as if she appeared from nowhere for no reason. That would be an existential explanatory gap compromise your understanding of your self. We don't need to know our ancestors to assume they existed because of causality.
I personally don't think a god will appear as an explanation. But what a god stands for in an explanation is the equivalent of what a human stands to in the explanation of a piano. We created the piano. We are intelligent and can be asked about how we did it, our motives etc. We are the things that have, reasons, thoughts, mentally represent, use symbolic logic and so on. We can never ask the matter of the universe why it exists but we can ask intelligences like ourselves. It is the classic tension between the meaningless mechanism of mater and symbolic thought and mental representation in philosophy
Atheism would be a less compelling stance without evolutionary theory because how would people explain the existence of billions of plants and animals etc?
Now evolution is considered to have explained biology now we have the problem of explaining minds. And some how the most prominent eliminative materialist and consciousness skeptics are prominent atheists. That is why I think they are trying to prop up atheism.
Mental properties fit the bill of things we considered supernatural. They are invisible, you can't see thoughts and dreams or words and beliefs in the brain yet they somehow cause actions. So they are ripe to be dismantled or to be deflated in the pursuit of expunging the supernatural.
You're incorrigibly talking in circles, Andrew. :roll:
Quoting Banno
Quoting Tom Storm
The quesrion of an 'ultimate explanation', especially in religious terms, is simply incoherent.
Initially most atheists I have spoken to have accepted morality on no grounds whatsoever.
They just believe in moral entities and moral facts. They don't even feel they have to defend where there moral values came from.
You mean.... Atheist do the right thing simply because it is the right thing to do! Oh, No!
They are half-decent to others without the threat of eternal damnation? Incorrigible!
Personally I have little interest in attempting to provide what should be expert views on subjects like physics, biology or neuroscience that require significant expertise and knowledge unavailable to most folk (and me). I am not convinced we even have the questions right. No way does this lead to a magical man or aliens as creators of life, or whatever we might feel the need to fill the gap with.
Quoting Andrew4Handel
There may well be a lot of piss-poor atheists out there.
I don't think it is unreasonable to accept morality based on it being a code of conduct that generally works (no killing, no stealing, no lying, no cheating) and has evolutionary explanations like empathy, the benefits of cooperation, strength in numbers, the fact we are a social species. It's not all that hard.
Quoting Causation in Physics (SEP)
You're afeared of a Snark.
Do we not all have an ancestral mother/female in common?
This is not usually how people reason though in my experience.
They have a rational common sense notions of causality, where they use reasonable assumptions and not wild extrapolations to negotiate the environment successfully . So Russell appears to be (as was his style) straw manning the general publics reasoning ability.
Quoting Banno
It is not clear where causes take place. The world is a human perception and causation is a human perception. Our model of causation is not dependent on there being a world. For example we don't have a causal explanation for consciousness but we believe that it is in the world. What we want is an explanation of how X (The brain maybe) causes Y (Consciousness) we are not committing ourselves to wider picture of what exists in totality. Just looking for causal coherence and why X and Y occur or come to exist somewhere in some form.
Quoting Banno
The only relevance of gods here is that they are attempts at explanations and to some extent causal explanations.
We have numerous theories about who Jack The Ripper is but none of them are likely to be true but they are attempts to explain. So we look for an explanation of the Whitechapel murders we don't look for a non explanation. We don't settle for a well maybe nobody caused these murders.
So either atheists are not looking for an explanation for existence. Or they don't care or they believe science will one day explain reality mechanically or something.
Would you class Christopher Hitchens as one of these because he appeared to take this stance
He addresses the issues you raise about morality reasonably but without distinction. But he is not a philosopher and is more of a baroque polemicist. I would say he is a better atheist than many, but clearly has his flaws.
It depends on how you are defining morality. What does morality mean and where did you learn the notion from?
You seem to be assuming morality refers to something in the way people think God refers to something. We can use terms that don't refer to anything or don't have concrete references.
I grew up in a Plymouth brethren church and we had numerous moralistic rules. No radio. No Television no make up. No shopping on Sunday and so on. That is why I became a moral nihilist on leaving because I realised you can create numerous arbitrary oppressive rules under the guise of morality without a coherent reason but when you try and justify them they turn out to be dogmas imposed by force or coercion of some sort. Even the most mild seeming diktat becomes an imposition of someone else's values.
Scientifically-literate dis/believers abductively look for testable explanations within nature.
Here's the argument again: Each human has a mother, therefore the human race as a whole has a mother.
But on the contrary, the human race is not the sort of thing that has a mother. There is a category error going on.
Analogously, some claim each event has a cause, and that hence there must be a cause for everything as a whole. A parallel category error.
Quoting Andrew4Handel
What is the supposed argument here? That because we "negotiate the environment successfully", everything must have a cause? How is that supposed to work?
If cause were a vital feature of physics, you would expect it to be mentioned prominently in your favourite physics text, Bet it isn't. You'll be lucky to find a mention. Causation is an invention of philosophers and theologians, not scientists.
Quoting Andrew4Handel I quite agree, but that doesn;t seem to count in favour of your account. If you insist that every event has a cause, then you might at least allow that the cause be identified. Now you say they could be anywhere.
Quoting Andrew4Handel
It is? So now you side with Bishop Berkeley. You'll find precious few who concur with such idealism.
Quoting Andrew4Handel
So there are no causes unperceived? Again, your idealism will not sit well. Quoting Andrew4Handel
How does that work? Presumably the events one wishes to explain are in the world... that one billiard ball hits another, causing it to move, does seem to be dependent on there being billiard balls. Our idea of causation appears very much to be dependent on there being a world in which there are events and their consequences.
Whatever point you are attempting to make seems to be falling apart.
I think he helped set the tone of the debate with this type of comment:
I challenge you to find one good or noble thing which cannot be accomplished without religion.
This is an example of him taking for granted that there are good and noble things which the moral nihilist is challenging.
It helped other atheists assert you can be moral without God without arguments. When the question really is does morality itself make any sense without God.
It is evidence of the success of causal reasoning and helps us not to die. So it is by no means a banal process.
The way I defined morality in the post you quoted from will do for the sake of this discussion. Why do you believe, Andrew, that nature doesn't ground a definition of morality like mine that has no need of 'supernatural support'?
I don't see that at all. Even if you say 'God did it' we'd still want to know how. As we have done with evolution. And the formation of stars and black holes. And planets. And continents and seas and mountain ranges. We know the process. If all we get to the question as to how God did it is a shrug of the shoulders or an appeal to some divine snap of the fingers then that's not an explanation at all. That's something being used instead of an explanation.
Ah. My condolences.
Have a think about Russell's comments: The notion of cause. It might show you a different way of thinking about such issues.
As for morality, why do we need reasons before we do good? Isn't that it is the right thing to do sufficient for our doings?
Sounds to me like you are a bit stuck. That's fine. I've been there.
This site is full of good arguments (you have participated in some) for why morality transcends theism.
You seem to think morality is magic. I see no connection between god/s and how we conduct ourselves with others.
I'm in no position to plunge into Hitchens' oeuvre and drag out references; as I say he was a polemicist. Hitchens used to argue that the human race would not have got very far if tribes had no interdiction against killing, theft, lying and cheating. Hitch saw morality as a building block of group cohesion.
Humans are self-organising, value generating creatures, why would they not come to similar conclusions about how to manage territory, relationships, possessions, suffering, life and death?
I am insisting ona causal explanation which is somewhat different.
For example I could say "I studied social psychology because I am really interested in humans" That is what gets called a "reason giving explanation". It is causally satisfactory without positing a physical mechanism or strict mechanical substrate. It is also compelling and probably true. But it is not committed on the explanation being reduced to physics.
Quoting Banno
Stating that perception is constructivist and indirect does not amount to a commitment to idealism. But it is reality because how else can we form any knowledge about a reality without consciousness and perceptions?
Even physics posits the invisible sub atomic world is not similar or veridical to our perceptions.
Quoting Banno
Similar to how Maths and logic works using concepts. The concepts may be dependent on an external physical world but it is not clear how.
2+2 = 4 seems true in any possible world .
We need to know we are doing good and we don't and possibly can't. If I judged people based on my own moral intuitions it would condemn a lot of human activities which is one reason we need to resolve moral disputes.
Do no harm. You're half way there. The golden rule will take you most of the rest of the way. And reasonable arguments might help to reach a final decision on any dispute. If not, then so be it. No-one says there's a right answer to every question.
I believe the opposite is true. As I have already said a couple of times in here, the burden of evidence lies on the one who claims that something exists, is this or that way, has happened etc. For a simple rason: how can someone who does not believe in the existence of something prove that it doesn't exist?
You tell me that there's a huge bird sitting at the top of a building. I can't see any bird. How can I prove that there isn't any? It is for you to prove it, e.g. by taking a photo with your phone. (I could also take a photo myself that will show no bird, but then you could tell me ... "It just flew away!" And so on.)
Now, as far as the existence of God is concerned, well, as I said, this is based on a personal belief. As with angels. ghosts, visions, oracles and so on. They are real for some and unreal for others. Only that no evidence can be given about ther existence or occurrence.
Quoting Andrew4Handel
I'm not sure if I got that right. Do you mean that an atheist does not have or can give an alternate explanation other than that a creator exists? If so, an explanation that such a creator exists must have been already given by the theist, which is what? Anyway, explanations is not the point here since thay can be millions of them based on unfounded assumptions. The point here is evidence.
Quoting Andrew4Handel
Yes, one might say that. But an atheist might not believe in th Big Bang either. (In fact, there are a lot of people in the area of science today who reject this theory.)
I am an "atheist", in the sense that I don't have ot believe in a "God", esp. the Judeo-Christian one. I don't exclude though the existence of some Supreme Being or Power. But I have never felt its presence or can even justify it, i.e. have any evidence or explain or argue about its existence. So I don't really care. It just doesn't make any difference for me. I guess, this actually makes me an "agnostic" ... (I avoid putting labels on myself or others, hence the quotation marks, meaning "so-called".)
Quoting 180 Proof
Quoting 180 Proof
What you have described sounds to me more like ignosticism.
Per the wikipedia entry, there is an open debate whether ignosticism is a type of atheism or if it is a separate category unto itself.
Indeed, my description matches that of ignosticism. If so, atheism as a lack of belief must mean atheists don't believe in God which is just another way of saying god doesn't exist.
G = subject of theism (or deism)
I've always had trouble with that. If it "seems", then it's an empirical observation. Have you/we/anyone seen all possible worlds?
This is an axiom in math, therefore it is immovable in that system. But math is a logical structure, built on axioms, and if you remove or change any of the axioms, then the superstructure changes, yet, the axioms are always accepted as true. Thus, 2+2=3 is a different axiom, and it does not fit in our accepted math, but if you remove 2+2=4, and substitute it with 2+2=3, and leave every other existing axiom intact, then it won't produce an inner self-contradiction; it will produce a different superstructure of math concepts.
Not a axiom, but a theorem.
Quoting god must be atheist
"Seems" is a poor phrasing. It doesn't just "seem", it "is".
Quoting god must be atheist
Immovable? It's true. And the funny thing is that it's not just true on paper or during mental calculation, but in the world. So if you have two grapes and another grape...
Quoting god must be atheist
Yeah, it will. One of the principles of arithmetic is that you can substitute one string for another to which it is equal. So 2+2+2=6 in the old system, but now since 2+2=3, we can substitute to get 2+3=6; but elsewhere we have 2+3=5, and hence 5=6. These inconsistencies will cascade through the whole system. The consistency of arithmetic dissolves.
A better way to think of arithmetic is not as the result of empirical considerations, but as a way of parsing them. If you come across a situation where 1+1=1, you are counting the wrong thing.
Consider two raindrops running down a window pane, meeting and becoming one.
I chose not to reply to 's post. it was going to become quite difficult. He started to mix intentional acts with physical acts by saying that his choices were causal, an area that is fraught with issues. He also made a shift on his position on idealism, from the world being a perception to it being a construction. Too many compounded errors to sort out.
But in case it is, then 1+1<2 is true.
Because if you add two given volumes of space, then their energies combined will be less than the sum of energy stored in either.
Again, this needs verification.
---------------------------
Another way of looking at this, is the Non-Euclidian geometry. The circle comprises more than 360 degrees. So 90+90 <180.
These are two theorems (if they stand) that gives a proof that 2+2 may equal 3 can be part of a math system that is still compatible with reality and with its own inner structure.
Disclaimer: I understand neither QM nor the non-Euclidian geometry.
Quoting god must be atheist
This bit, too. A logically possible world is stipulated, rather than discovered. So when one wonders, for example, what would have happened if Zelenskyy had not gone in to politics, one is stipulating a possible world, and one can make further stipulations and consider the logical consequences. Logically possible worlds are different to the worlds in, say, multiple-universe quantum considerations.
So given the previous point, that 2+1=3 in every possible world, then a world in which 2+1=4 is an impossible world...
Quoting god must be atheist
Rather, 1+1=2, but that arithmetic is not suitable for such a universe. It's like the much simpler raindrop example.
Quoting god must be atheist
Arithmetic still functions in spherical geometry. It's just that the three angles of a triangle inscribed on a sphere add to more than 180º. The addition is done in the same way in alternate geometries.
The three angles of a triangle inscribed on a saddle add to less than 180º.
Aha. No-one mentioned in my studies that EG is on curved space. Then it's not a triangle, is it. A triangle strictly exists in two-dimensional space. A curved space ALTHOUGH a SURFACE, is three-dimensional, nevertheless.
Quoting Banno
So it is NOT universally true. Does that not mean that 1+1 <> 2?
You misunderstood me. Perhaps I should have said that equation was not suitable. That is, in our universe multiple volumes are summed using a simple addition, but I suppose that in some other universe the volume might need a more complex equation. But in no universe is it not the case that 2+2=4. (Well, except for impossible universes...)
I don't think I misunderstood you. I think I did not understand you.
And I believe the QM example I bought up applies to this, OUR, existing universe. (Verification needed.) So if the equations don't stand up in a universe, then it does not stand up in our universe, either. You said multiple volumes are summed using a simple addition, and you said multiple volumes are summed with a different, more complex equation. The funny part is that in OUR universe, it is summed up both ways.
Much like Schroedinger's cat: both alive AND dead. Both simple and necessarily not simple.
Not really. Everyone has a concept of god. Much like everyone has a concept of Santa Claus. Some believe she exists, some believe she doesn't exist.
It's not that attributes don't stick in an atheist's world view. They stick, in his world view, too, very much. The atheist just does not believe that the unit actually exists.
Is it to my thinking? Or are they contradictions very much applicable to reality as we observe it?
So what's the difference between lack of belief in god and the belief that god does not exist?
I don't understand why you asked this question, but I'll answer it to the best of my knowledge.
Lack of belief in god leaves perhaps, but not necessarily, other things as presence of belief, but of all things a person can believe god is not one of them.
The belief that god does not exist presents a world view which the person makes it his own, including that he believes there is no god.
That is true. Therefore 2+2=3 is not how things are, and 2+2=4 is not how things are, since both describe reality (as per parts of the foregoing discussion, in which it was shown that a simple summation is sufficient in one instance, and insufficient in another instance of the same conceptually measured quantity.)
This bring in the question whether 2+2=4 is a concept, only an abstraction, or is it reality.
If it's reality, then reality is contradicting itself.
If it's not reality, then its contradiction is valid, since 2+2 only exists as thought, not as reality, and contradictions are known to exist in thought, or in its reflection, in speech.
Again, if you find 2+2 is not 4, you are saying it wrong.
Did we not agree that 2+2 is not 4? You said it needed some different equations, but the upshot was that 2+2<>4, and we also agreed that a 30 degree angle plus a 60 degree angle plus a 90 degree angle do not equal 180 degrees.
It's all up there in previously said things.
If you say that the differences can be explained by different ASPECTS, then that ALMOST sticks, but the mathematical expression, without doubt is that (90+60+30) degrees is not equal to 180 degrees, which means, schwartz auf weiss, that 90+60+30 is not equal to 180.
Whether it is due to a special case, or circumstencial differences, the end result is pure math, and it states something that can't be directly derived from the axioms, instead, it realigns the entire math superstructure built on arithmetic additions or summations.
Certainly not.
The naming of the two DIFFERENT TYPES of ANGLES ONE SINGLE NAME is the source of confusion. It's like giving work a unit measure of force, or giving current a unit measure of resistance. The two are not equivalent, yet the literature tragically ignores that fact.
Not so much. There are clear definitions of each, that work in hyperbolic, elliptical and flat space. Just three lines intersecting.
The clear definitions of each what?
This is not the first time we, that is, you and I, debate something due to your imprecise, and insufficiently differentiating language. There are crucial problems arising from that, and which problems could have been avoided with a little more effort to avoid ambiguity.
You see, the way you put this, "There are clear definitions of each" implies that the definition of angles are different with clearly explained differences. And that is what I had suggested, and you argue that that is what is incorrect, because the definition is the same... except they are not the same, as you argue here.
More precise and rigorous translation from concept to language is needed, as the way -- I am sorry to say -- you do it, leaves to a lot of confusion in the readers' perception due to ambiguity and other forms of unclear writing.
------------------------------------------------------------------
Okay, I see the explanation you drew since the utterance I am questioning.
What you drew are not triangles on flat two-dimensional spaces, but shapes in three-D, with curved sides. That goes against the definition of a triangle, and that was precisely the thrust of my earlier criticism, that they named something triangle which is not a triange. They ought to have named the things differently, to separate the two types of shapes; you came in then, that the angles are still described by three intersecting lines.
That is not the issue. The issue is that triangles have straight lines, and the concepts you showed have no straight lines.
This is preposterous to call them, then, the same name.
Oh, geesh. Atheism is a belief system that includes a lack of belief in god. The entire thing is a belief, but one element that theists believe is in the system (system: world view, weltanschauung) is believed to be not there in the system by atheists... the god concept.
It's not the entire worldview of atheists that is a lack of belief... only one element therein.
I hope this makes sense.
You mean you read what I wrote. There's not a whole lot of point in anyone answering your puzzlement if you won't listen. Those shapes are triangles, those lines are straight, given the definitions of straight and triangle in non-euclidean geometry. Google it.
Quoting Banno
Then how do you explain this:
Quoting Banno
In other words:
(X+Y+Z) degrees is not equal to (sum of X, Y, and Z) degrees
Then divide both sides of the inequality by "degrees" and you get
X+Y+Z <> sum of X, Y and Z.
I know you will say I am arguing in circular reasoning. But I am not, I am just showing you earlier parts of our conversation paraphrased, in order to show that you are wrong in denying what I claim we had agreed on.
That doesn't make sense (to me) and even if it does, does the atheist mean that "god doesn't exist" is not his position on god? If it is then the alternatives are a) god exists (theism) and b) god may exist (agnosticism) or c) he means something else entirely. Which is it then?
To take a step back from what I said above, a worldview that doesn't include god is Laplacian science (I had no need for that hypothesis) i.e. god is irrelevant/superfluous to science and by extension atheism. However, that doesn't mean science is a lack of belief in god.
Absolutely not. The atheist BELIEVES that there is no god.
Nobody can tell for sure if there is a god or not. If anyone states otherwise, they are a fool
The question of god's existence is a matter of personal belief. Believe it exists, or believe it does not exist. There is no proof either way. You can't find knowledge on that issue. You can only have a belief in god, or a belief that there is no god.
I am tired of explaining this any further. Sorry. Ask someone else with more patience.
Have you looked at your drawings? They are on a surface of a curved plane. It is impossible for the sides of the triangle to be straight. "Given the definition"... so they are defined DIFFERENTLY form triangles drawn on flat, two-dimensional planes. So why not have a different names for them, for crying out loud? "Triangle" and "triangle" are different concepts on Euclidean and non-Euclidean geometry. Why have the same name then?
I am sure you are not to blame for it. (-: But to insist that two things that are different should be called the same name is just not right.
Quoting god must be atheist
I am tired of explaining this any further. Sorry. Ask someone else with more patience.
.Quoting 180 Proof
I have already addressed why "lack of belief" is useless:
Quoting 180 Proof
I believe I got it now - there's no justification either way i.e. belief is moot. Why should I believe god exists when it hasn't been proven and why should I believe god doesn't exist when that too hasn't been proven? It differs from agnosticism in that unlike agnosticism, it doesn't permit/allow beliefs like agnostic theism/atheism.
Well, since the crux of the issue is theism's truth-value and not god's non/existence, your "moot point" is also moot, Smith. One can believe or disbelieve whatever one wants, but what I think is decisive is what we know / don't know and what we can know / can't know. We don't know / can't know g/G beyond the predicates we claim as (uniquely) g/G's, and yet we do know / can know whether or not our claims about g/G are true or not. Why? Because a g/G without discernible, or attributable, predicates is indiscernible from not being a g/G, so knowing the truth-value of claims about a g/G (assumed to exist) is inescapable.
When scriptures (or testimonies, visions, legends, superstitions, etc) say "g/G did XYZ", this means that something (somewhere somewhen) has been changed in a way that only g/G could have changed it, and therefore, we can check it out in order to learn whether or not such a sui generis change which could have been caused only by g/G has happened. When you know any claim's truth-value (or that you can know it eventually), mi amigo, "belief" is irrelevant. :fire: :eyes:
1. God exists or does not exist [truth]
2. We don't know [knowledge]
3. We can believe or not believe [belief]
I don't have to prove god doesn't exist because I have refused to form a belief either way.
Interesting. There are testable claims pertaining to god (predicates) and as the Epicurean riddle demonstrate, none of the attributes of god pass the test. If so, god's an inconsistent (internally and externally) idea - it sticks out like a jigsaw piece out of place.
I take option 3. :wink: Does the below muddy the waters?
If someone has no belief 'either way' then they are an atheist. Not having a belief in god is atheism. Even if it is a weak version. For me, being an agnostic is essentially being an atheist. If one is not actively engaged in belief or can't commit to belief, one is (at the risk of repetition) not a believer. The matter of gods existing or not is a seperate affair. Not being able to make up one's mind is equivalent to not believing in a god. It just avoids taking a stand on making a positive claim - that god does not exist.
I've never found the matter complex although there are some more dogmatic atheists that different views.
For me - I have heard, and am aware of no reason that supports the idea god/s exist. One is either convinced or one is not. (The evidence seems slender and relies heavily for its perpetuation on hucksters, shills, the confused, the fanatical - pretty much no one I can take seriously. You'll note god/s never actually appear to settle the matter (except to the insane) - cue Nietzsche quote).
Arguments from contingency; personal anecdote; design; miracles; scripture, whatever, all seem underwhelming, unconvincing. But I appreciate they are meaningful to others.
Nevertheless "Atheism" is so encrusted in bullshit and dogma, not to mention disinformation by Muslims and Christians who take it to mean a world view (which it is not), that I can't blame people from not wanting to use the word. I've usually preferred freethinker.
:up: But when a Bible/Quran/Occult-thumper begs for it, I say pandeist instead just to tilt the fuck out of their "god/woo-of-the-gaps" mindgames ...
Parents sometimes tell their children that Santa Claus came and left them presents. Later on they admit they left the presents not Santa. Santa was playing the causal role of presents giver but was adequately replaced by another explanation/cause.
I don't think the same can be said about God. I think there are substantial Gaps in our knowledge that seem unlikely to be explained by science like First cause and the infinite regress of causes and issues like consciousness, mental representation, emergent properties etc.
I think it is a straw man to present God in a way that seems easy to disbelieve like portraying God as the Flying Spaghetti monster which ridicules the notion of God so people forget about the more sophisticated arguments like causal role/explanatory Gaps.
I think this is a very common belief and the source of half the threads here. The god's of the gaps are a well known fallacy. But I'm as averse to impoverished scientism and quantum woo as I am to theistic non-answers.
I've very comfortable with the words, 'I don't know'. No need reach for a magic man or universal consciousness whenever there is an unanswered question or a stumbling block in knowledge. I'm comfortable with the notion that humans may have limited capacity to understand what they assume is reality - we are clever apes who use language to manage our environment. I'm not even sure half the questions we ask are any more than flawed inferences, mystifications of language and category errors. But this angle of 'gaps' has been flogged to death here and answered so nicely by a particularly adroit member: .
I think there's a potential new title for the forum. Repeating Ourselves To Death. :wink:
Notice though that atheism is also the stance that god doesn't exist which is a belief. Clearly, this is inconsistent with atheism being a lack of belief, unless, as you seem to think, withholding belief = belief that false.
There is difference between a gap filler and a fundamental role.
My point in relationship to this thread is that disbelief in gods is a disbelief in a causal need or role for gods so it is an evaluation about the lack of need for gods. In comparison, lack of belief in santa is based on a causal role being completely filled.
I am agnostic based on my beliefs about the explanatory limitations of current paradigms.
I think it is large claim to make that physicalism science will one day satisfactorally explain everything.
Forget about "god", amigo, and focus on theism (and its static shadow deism). Why is that so hard for you/them? Or maybe it's my 'focus on theism instead of "god"' that's misguided and you or somebody smarter than us both, Smith, like @Gnomon or @Wayfarer or @Gregory or @Sam26 can explain it to me/us. :point:
First off, agree that what I call the God hypothesis is, wonder of wonders, testable (re the problem of evil & Epicurean riddle) i.e. it's a scientific hypothesis, unfortunately/fortunately falsified. Perhaps this is the reason why you're an atheist despite the emergency repairs attempted by theists (free will).
When you say "forget about "god" [...] and focus on theism [...]" do you mean that's barking up the wrong tree because theism doesn't care. Had they, theism would've never existed.
I'm late to the party here, so I'm not sure if key terminology has been defined and agreed upon. I am neither an Atheist nor a Theist, but like all humans, I do have personal beliefs about Ontology (existence) & Epistemology (justified belief), which are still debatable after all these millennia.
For me, a Belief is a feeling, not a fact; a stance, not a truth. And dis-belief in the creator hypothesis indicates more confidence (credence) in empirical Science (what is) than in theoretical Philosophy (what might be). Besides that basic preference for objective evidence vs subjective inference, Atheism seems to be an emotional response to certain aspects of Theism, especially the notions of divine intervention and ultimate damnation. So, you are correct that Atheists are not withholding belief, but holding a stance. Suspension of belief or disbelief, on moot points, is the stance of Agnostics, who admit that ultimate questions are unprovable, and merely inferrable. Si, no? :smile:
Belief is not true/false, but good/bad for me :
Beliefs are inherently subjective. Individually and collectively, we may hold a belief for which we have a particular sense of certitude and conviction. Now, this does not mean that just because one is certain that ones belief is true, that it is not infallible. Believing in something does not necessarily make it true.
https://ineducationonline.org/2021/01/29/knowing-our-own-truth-belief-vs-facts/
Note -- "Incredulity" is negative belief, and an antipathetic feeling toward some conjecture.
"Credulity" is a positive feeling toward a postulation. "Skepticism" is a temporary suspension of belief, pending further empirical or logical evidence. True or False?
Quoting Andrew4Handel
Which is not a claim I am making, although it may be accurate. The point is we don't know. As I said, I am not confident that humans have access to reality, or even have access to the right questions.
Quoting Gnomon
If you're not a theist, then you're an atheist. Don't be afraid of the word. If you are not a believer in any kind of deity then you're effectively an atheist. I think many people with 'spiritual beliefs' are atheists.
From the American Atheist Website
Quoting Gnomon
All arguments can be said to be emotional responses to something. Theism is an emotional response to the fear of death, etc... A lot of atheism has shaped by its ongoing culture war with the dreadful Evangelical movements. Much atheism has become stuck in reasoning and presenting polemical counterarguments against fundamentalists. Understandable and necessary, but just one aspect of the position.
Does it matter whether or not you believe in gods? Should beliefs entail action? Do they cause actions?
Everyday we seem to be acting on a complex array of beliefs but would we behave differently with a different knowledge set? So it seems our beliefs or lack of could be very influential and our main motivating force.
I want to to decide what to do based on best evidence by my reasoning. There is a lack of knowledge and we have to invent a path for ourselves through life. Some people like Dawkins seem to want people to act as if there is no God and No afterlife.
:100:
:roll:
So take the proposition that "The cup is red". We have two possible truths:
And hence there are four possible beliefs:
These can be paired up to list the possible consistent beliefs Fred might have about the cup.
Fred can't consistently believe that the cup is red and that the cup is not red.
Fred can't consistently believe both that the cup is red and not believe that the cup is red.
Fred can't consistently believe that the cup is not red and not believe that the cup is not red.
Fred can consistently believe that the cup is red, and not believe that the cup is not red. Fred woudl be a red cup believer.
Fred can consistently believe that the cup is not red and not believe that the cup is red. Fred is a red cup atheists.
But in addition, Fred can neither believe that the cup is red nor not believe that the cup is red. This is just not to have any belief concerning the cup. Fred is a red cup agnostic.
Symbolically, and changing cups to there being a god, let B be "Fred believes" and "G" be "there is a god"
The four possibilities are:
The inconsistent combinations are:
These are inconsistent because they each contain an assertion and it's negation.
Theism is consistent:
Note the positive belief, bolded: BG.
Atheism is consistent:
Again, note the positive belief, B~G.
Agnosticism is also consistent:
Note the absence of a belief: both are ~B.
Theism is the consistent belief in god. Atheism is the consistent belief that there is no god. Agnosticism is not having a belief concerning god.
Therefore rocks are agnostic!
Interesting note: the original humanists of the Italian Renaissance were often in trouble with the Church, for predictable reasons - but they were not, in today's terms, atheist or materialist in outlook.
Not sure about rocks but my cat is definitely an agnostic.
Was it Comte who said that he wasn't an atheist on the grounds that it took the idea of god too seriously?
I don't believe there is a god on the basis that no case has been made which convinces me. Does that count? I also think the idea of god is incoherent and lacks any explanatory power, I really don't know what people mean by god except as a kind of vague, Tillich-like mystical metanarrative, or more frequently, a literalist mega-moron as per Islam or Christianity. The American version of evangelical religion often strikes me as a kind of Donald Trump of the sky - petulant, petty, unethical and hopeless and believed in by multitudes. :wink:
So they make shit up.
'I am afraid we are not rid of God because we still have faith in grammar ' ~ The Great Moustache
Quoting Banno
To me this is the core of the problem.
Ha! That's an Atheist twist on a typical Christian argument. I suppose you're saying that the god-question is binary (either-or). But Agnosticism takes the third option : that a supernatural deity is unknowable by the ordinary means of Epistemology (knowable world). In that case, suspension of both belief and dis-belief is the reasonable stance. Or, blind faith replaces knowledge.
However, unlike physicists, rational philosophers do not limit their mental explorations to the physical sensory milieu. So, a fourth option is Immanentism, which defines the logical (mathematical) & self-organizing (life-like) attributes of Evolution are limited to space-time Nature itself, while making no hypothesis about eternal-infinite origins. Then, there is a fifth option, that of Deism. In that case, the logical inference of a First Cause is made, based on the arrow of causation pointing away from the beginning of world development. Thus, implying a Creator without defining that concept in mundane terminology.
Hence, Deists do not claim to have super-natural knowledge. So the specific "nature" (attributes) of that Prime Mover are not knowable. Nevertheless, both Plato and Aristotle used abstract analogies & metaphorical language, instead of concrete anthro-morphic descriptions, to label their notions of what we moderns call the "Big Bang" & beyond (multiverse?). For example, "Logos" merely implies that the emergence of Reason in the world must necessarily have a Rational*1 origin. Likewise, "First Cause" or "Prime Mover" simply means that the known process of Causation in nature, must logically have an Impetus*2 .
Those Agnostic alternatives to Atheism, avoid commitment to any particular form of Theism as a doctrine. So, they don't deserve to be lumped into a category that they are designed to avoid. Don't you agree? :wink:
*1. Rational : ability to evaluate relationships -- ratios -- between things as meanings
*2. Impetus : the force that makes something happen
Let's twist again, like we did last summer.
There's nothing accomplished by invoking god in any context I can think of, unless you happen to have particular questions that seem better when stoppered up by a magic man.
Quoting Gnomon
I'm not convinced humans have special powers to solve questions which may simply be reflections of faulty language and conceptual foibles - not to mention may be the product of neurocognitive systems that don't necessarily allow us to do much more than generate stories of explanation. I think George Lakoff calls these frames.
Quoting Gnomon
I don't really care. My atheism is mainly predicated on fundamentalists and those who think only a magic man can explain things to them. Outside of that, as long as people don't want to stack the Supreme Court with twisted religious morality or judge gay people and women and social policy based on a thing in an old book, I don't mind people's religious beliefs.
I am an agnostic atheist - a standard definition amongst atheists I know. Agnostic in terms of knowledge, atheist in terms of belief.
:smirk:
Quoting Banno
And the other two possibilities?
:up:
:ok:
This formulation is inconsistent, Banno: both 'negative atheism' (~BG) and 'negative theism' (~B~G) asserts mutually exclusive concepts (as stipulated above).
I think that describes apatheism (or ignosticism). Agnosticism, actually, is 'not having knowledge concerning god'.
Atheism does not entail irreligion. In almost all cases, religious believers are also atheists except, of course, with respect to their own g/G; and many clergy also do not, or no longer, believe.
:100:
As a lack of belief, atheism let's itself off the hook - no longer is there a duty to justify itself (no belief, no justification needed).However, one must justify the outlook itself and that comes in the form of beliefs should be justified.
Nice. I'm an antitheistic atheist. Antitheist in terms of knowledge, atheist in terms of practice (aka "freethinker" :cool:).
That's ok.
As I say - it's one of the consequences of the way Western thought, in particular, evolved. Because Christian orthodoxy absorbed so much of so-called pagan philosophy, and then made it subject to right belief, all of it tends to be lumped together and then abandoned together. The Indian view is very different.
Pretty sure there are only six.
Quoting 180 Proof
If you have no beliefs concerning god, then you don't believe in god and you don't believe there is no god. You seem to have missed the point, which is to do withthe difference in scope of the belief and it's obhject. ~BG is not the same as B~G.
Quoting 180 Proof
Exact same argument works if you substitute knowledge for believe. Six possibilities, three are inconsistent, the others have theism as having knowledge of god, atheism as having knowledge that there is no god, and agnosticism as not having knowledge either way.
True that. Fine distinctions you're making there. Kudos. I used to follow New Atheism, but it's kinda lost steam over the years with the most vocal members having withdrawn almost completely from public life. A change of guard hasn't taken place in any real sense - Hitchens for example seems to be irreplaceable.
I'm left wondering whether this isn't just some kinda mistake we're making. If there is a connection between e.g. philosophical nonphysicalism and religion, then necessarily if one sinks the other does too. Have you seen ships drop anchor? The chain holding the anchor consists of rings linked to each other. As the anchor descends, it takes along with it the first link which pulls the other link attached to it and soon enough the entire chain disappears into the depths.
Not having the belief that there is a god does not commit you to having a belief that there is no god.
And if there are more than six possibilities, what are they?
:lol:
:lol: That's exactly the point I was looking for. Rocks lack belief. So are rocks atheists if atheism is, as some claim, a lack of belief?
:ok:
Quoting Tom Storm
Quoting Tom Storm
Based on what I'm reading, it sounds like you are closer to ignosticism - which (in essence) says that the very notion of a deity or deities is incoherent.
Is ignosticism a sub-category of atheism? The answer is still being debated, but my 2 cents is that ignosticism is a distinct category unto itself and not some sub-category of atheism and/or agnosticism.
Yes. Atheism is a response -- part rational, part emotional -- to traditional religious god-models of a "magic man" in the sky. But philosophers typically avoid anthro-morphic definitions for their ultimate/universal (non-particular) Ontological theories. And, since their logical models are hypothetical, they don't claim to have physical evidence to support their notions of Logos or First Cause.
So, what if the "god" invoked by Enformationism is a hypothetical meta-physical Principle or Property or Qualia, like insubstantial Pure Energy/Causation*1, instead of an imaginary anthro-morphic wizard, hiding behind the curtain of Quantum Uncertainty*2. Can you think of any "particular questions" about the opaque shroud of fuzzy randomness that caused Quantum pioneers to turn to Eastern philosophies for metaphorical answers?*3 What if it's the god-like gap-stopper of the Quantum mass gap*4.
Perhaps you "don't care" about the esoteric mysteries of Eastern Religions or Quantum theory, but they undermine the "solid" foundation of classical physics and materialistic philosophy with open questions. And the esoteric mystery of Ontological origins is a fundamental philosophical concern. :smile:
*1. Pure Energy :
[i]"Pure energy" doesn't mean anything in physics. Energy can take many forms (mass, kinetic energy, or any of many forms of potential energy), but no one of them is "pure" in any sense, no more so than any other form.
Energy is a property of light and matter and not a substance in itself.[/i]
https://physics.stackexchange.com/questions/15122/what-is-pure-energy
*2. Quantum Weirdness :
Phillip Ball introduces his topic by clarifying the murkiness of Quantum Physics : what has emerged most strongly from this work on the fundamental aspects of quantum theory is that it is not a theory about particles and waves, discreteness or uncertainty or fuzziness. It is a theory about information. [My emphasis] He then admits that quantum information brings its own problems, because it raises questions about what this information is . . . because information is not a thing that you can point to . . .
http://bothandblog7.enformationism.info/page43.html
*23 The Evolution of God : by science writer Robert Wright
The Progression of Human Understanding
Although he says materialist is a not-very-misleading term for me, and that he wrote this book from a materialist standpoint, he still concludes that the religious worldview may have some validity. The story of this evolution itself points to the existence of something you can meaningfully call divinity. But quickly concedes that the kind of god that remains plausible . . . is not the kind of god that most religious believers currently have in mind. Instead, it seems to be the kind of First Cause Creator that Bloom called the Inventor, and that I call G*D or Logos.
http://bothandblog7.enformationism.info/page43.html
*4. Why is Yang-Mills mass gap important? :
The mass gap is an important challenge because solving it should force mathematical physicists to confront directly the messy question of exactly what the observables of QCD are.
https://physics.stackexchange.com/questions/9704/why-is-the-yang-mills-existence-and-mass-gap-problem-so-fundamental
Maybe. I generally agree with that gods are incoherent ideas. But it is easier to say one is atheist as it's a word people know. I never find much profit in getting bogged down in definitions. If you don't believe in god then you are an atheist, regardless of any other beliefs. It's the answer to a single question.
Quoting Fooloso4
Nicely put.
Quoting Gnomon
Yes, I know all that. I read Paul Tillich and was close to theosophical and Buddhist groups in the 1980's. I studied Carl Jung and I read J Krishnamurti. There's probably not a version of god or higher awareness, idealism, non-dualism or quantum speculation I haven't been exposed to, at least in part.
Quoting Gnomon
Yes. I'm also not interested in air conditioning or folk dancing. Unlike you perhaps, I am not overcome with the need to make meaning or find 'ultimate realty'. I am content and mostly satisfied by life as it appears and frankly whatever ontological beliefs we hold, the moment we leave home we are all naïve realists. :wink:
Quoting Gnomon
Amongst many hundred of other philosophical concerns. Great that it matters to you. I'm all for diversity.
Really? So your preference is to render the term useless. Fine.
If you go back to the origins of Pyrrhonian scepticism with Pyrrho of Elis, he is said to have voyaged to India (likely Gandhara, in the Swat Valley, straddling today's Afghanistan and Pakistan, then a major cultural center) where he spent some period of time with the 'gymnosophists' (naked philosophers i.e. ascetics) and Buddhists (specifically Mah?y?na in that time/location.)[sup] 1[/sup] On his return he began to teach his doctrine of "non-assent to what is not evident", in pursuit of ataraxia - indifference or tranquility. This, it is said, was derived from the Buddhist principle of nirodha - cessation or turning away from attachments and sources of craving - in pursuit of release - mok?a or Nirv??a - also epoché (suspension of judgement) which is compared to the Buddhist principle of emptiness (??nyat?). Buddhists reject the existence of a personal creator god (Isvara) on the basis that we are authors of our own destiny (although as the tradition evolved a pantheon of demi-gods were later to appear in the form of celestial beings, past and future Buddhas and so on.) But the point behind all this is that this form of ancient scepticism was still firmly grounded in the pursuit of liberation from the cycle of birth and death. It was, from our modern perspective, still a religious philosophy, albeit grounded in a completely different kind of religious vision to the Biblical faiths (hence the interminable arguments about whether Buddhism really is a religion, or is a philosophy or way of life. That is because it doesn't fit within the implicit faultlines that have been carved into Western culture by history.)
Within that context, 'unknowing' or 'suspension of judgement' is not at all like what scepticism is taken to mean in day-to-day speech, although there are some overlaps. But the context makes a major difference. If you do one of the ten-day meditation retreats, all 'philosophising' is completely forbidden (although you're certainly allowed to raise questions about the difficulties you're having, which are often considerable.) The instruction is, invariably, pay attention to your breathing, watch your thinking processes as they arise and cease, but don't pursue them. That is what 'scepticism' means in that context. I'm also fairly sure it's close to what it meant for the early Greek sceptics and cynics.
:smirk:
If people don't agree on a definition of morality then that is an unresolvable problem itself with no objective arbitrer to refer to. I think it is arbitrary to pick some features of nature you like to have as your morality. Why can't you be a moral nihilist and an atheist? Why can't one be an atheist and nihilist and believe it has negative ramifications?
I don't believe the prognosis that you can be an atheist and nothing need change because that really amounts to hanging onto the coat tail of believers who believe in objective values or others coopting peoples meanings.
I am a fan of Religious Classical music through the ages and Gospel music from America. I realise that that would not have been created without religious belief. I don't assume anything we have now in society would exist without religion and its motivations and myths etc. I am not a fan of counterfactuals so I have no idea what a purely atheist history of humans would have looked like.
It seems impossible now to be an atheist uninfluenced by religious cultures and to be able to claim these cultures could have been created by atheists.
Sure. But nor could you claim that atheists could not have created a similar culture. Or even that it might have been better (less guilt, less piety, less misogamy, less ritual, less colonization, less hang ups about sex, etc).
Quoting Andrew4Handel
Indeed. But the problem is atheists don't have a lot in common, except for where they stand on one question. They might be right wing or left wing, libertarians or communists. So morality, like today, would be about aiming for a consensus amongst the contradictory cacophony of opinions.
Quoting Andrew4Handel
But it is seen as an unresolvable problem and always has, unless we are in a dictatorship or a theocracy.
Even within the one religion there is no agreement about morality. Look at where Christians are (all over the shop, frankly) on abortion, women's rights, trans rights, capital punishment, homosexuality, stem cell research, gun ownership, etc... Religious people and atheists only have personal preferences and philosophy to resolve the matter of how we should conduct ourselves towards others. In theists' case, it's derived from their personal interpretation of who they think god is and what they think god wants. How could that possibly go wrong? :scream:
That makes sense if you're out and about. Maybe I'm being too generous in this assessment, but here in TPF I think we're all reasonably informed enough to understand the distinction.
You have my permission to call yourself an ignostic . . . :smile:
What do you think would have motivated atheists living in primitive conditions? I assume they wouldn't have churches, religious architecture and art and religious/supernatural based hierarchies. What fantasies would be generated based solely on reason? Religion is part of colourful fantastical thinking meaning we aren't restricted just to pure reason it seems.
If they reached the current conclusion of evolution by natural selection thousands of years ago what influence would that have had on them? Part of the current thinking is that there is no teleology or purpose or end goal plus the eventual heat death of the universe through entropy.
I left religion in the early 1990's in an advanced UK culture and I experienced bad nihilism after that was hard to overcome but has improved.
Quoting Tom Storm
The role religion had in morality is in claiming there was a moral law giver and that that entity could generate moral truths.
I would agree that we could create a pseudo moral system that benefitted some people in creating a some kind of harmonious society focused on equality and harm prevention.
But I think a lack of moral truth is still problematic in terms of resolving moral disagreements and having the feeling that you know you are doing the right thing and enforcing the good.
Which atheist is presenting God like that? The fsm isn't a version of God. The only way that I know what God is meant to be is by being told by those who believe in Him what they think He is. And I haven't been convinced by what any of them say. They are presenting God in ways that are relatively easy to disbelieve.
I can't present God in any way. I can only repeat what others have told me.
Are you including the philosophical arguments for God in this?
The cosmological argument.
The moral argument for God.
Aquinas's Five ways
The ontological argument
The argument from beauty
The argument from consciousness
The teleological argument
And more: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Existence_of_God#Arguments_for_the_existence_of_God_or_gods
How many people are aware of these arguments? That has not been my experience of the online and public discourse on these issues.
The discourse seems to have changed in more recent years. though
https://medium.com/grim-tidings/scientism-and-the-downfall-of-new-atheism-919213775919
I understand that but it's pointless if no one can agree about what the truths are. The thing that actually matters - a morality - is missing.
Quoting Andrew4Handel
You keep forgetting that there is not an atheist worldview. You might be thinking of secular humanism. Or scientism. Atheism is about the answer to just one question. There are atheist idealists and mystics. They are not all Richard Dawkins.
Quoting Andrew4Handel
I am an atheist - I have almost no interest in causation or teleology or quantum woo. As I keep saying humans make up stories and manufacture intersubjective communities of truth. Some of those truths can be tested empirically, many cannot. We can't possibly hope to know the answers to many of the questions we pose. They may not even be proper questions, just the limits of the human imagination going around and around making meaning, dreaming up scenarios.
They are arguments for deism, not God.
Yep, the traditional 'proofs' of god. Most atheist books and freethinker polemical works respond to these old things. There are thousands of pages answering these arguments. There are thousands of words on this site answering each and every one of these arguments already. We go around and around. :wink:
The point is we have many potential alternatives to 'god of the gaps' or goddidit.
'I don't know' is perfectly reasonable too.
And fallacies like the appeal from ignorance or the argument from incredulity are not a good solution to such hoary old questions.
"I can't imagine another answer for X but the magic man did it." - is not a solution.
That is what I am disagreeing with and the argument of this thread. I have been arguing it entails a worldview.
Quoting Tom Storm
This goes against the idea of a simple disbelief in gods if you have to write thousands of words in response to arguments for God.
Atheists themselves in their writings have linked their atheism freely and closely with other beliefs. What was the motivation for notable atheist Lawrence Krauss writing the book "A universe from nothing"? It was clearly to try forestall a creator deity from having any role in existence.
I am just trying to clarify things to myself now after having years of interactions with atheists where they were arrogant, certain, ridiculed the notion of gods and took their own worldview for granted. I think that if it is acceptable to attack one set of beliefs it is acceptable to attack all of them.
I think that there are nihilist consequences to atheism in conjunction with scientific materialism that has been promoted and denied at the same time. I don't think atheists should be complacent in their atheism nor religious people complacent in their theism. It is an ongoing process of trying to understand reality and find meaning.
So the atheism of e.g. materialist Marx and idealist Schopenhauer "entails" the same "worldview"? :sweat:
:up: :up:
I think this is a wise observation.
Note: I believe there are also many wonderful people who believe in god, who practice religion, who behave justly and are inclusive. I am friends with several.
Quoting Andrew4Handel
I'm not convinced but I guess you may hold a definition of worldview which is different to mine. I think atheism is a very broad church (if you'll pardon the term) with a diversity of views. But it is true that there are some atheists who have a worldview which embraces scientism.
Quoting Andrew4Handel
If the opposite of nihilism is theism, which holds values that allow for the torment and torture of believers with stories of sin, guilt and hell fire, etc, then nihilism looks promising.
Quoting Andrew4Handel
Probably a key exponent of scientism, right? His argument may well be correct. But who would know? Are you a physics genius who fully understands this material? I know I'm not. His motivation is anyone's guess, but I suspect it is to let people know that choosing the God-of -the-Gaps option is not the only story available or useful.
Quoting Andrew4Handel
Not really. Many atheists see themselves as former victims of religion. Hence the very popular self-help group, "Recovering from Religion". Many are also horrified by what is being done around the world in the name of gods. And theists/apologists constantly claim the best use of reason proves god. Often variations on the very arguments by Aquinas you put up earlier.
That's a major reason why atheists cultivate and respond to arguments. There's a culture war over god. Theism can be defended or it can be dismissed by reason. The arguments do not belong solely to the theists.
The debate matters because the consequences of prominent theisms around the world, held in place by these ratty old arguments, are so often bloody awful - think Modi's Hindu nationalism, the Saudi's Wahhabi Islam, American evangelicalism, and the role of religious violence worldwide (Myanmar, Sri Lanka, Syria, Kenya, etc, etc).
The question of belief in god can not be separated from the behavior theism so often generates. So if you say atheism leads to nihilism, I would say to you, if the opposite of nihilism looks like theism as practiced around the world, then how is it better?
Quoting Andrew4Handel
How many thousands of words are there in the arguments for God? Certainly the folks debunking these arguments are allowed to use the same number of words, yes?
People don't seem to comprehend the lack of truth value in issue in morality.
Morality may as well be a religion if it is just making up a system of rules and ideas to keep people happy.
But it has no truth value. No one has discovered a truth value to moral claims or moral instructions.
So moral systems are a sham at heart but people don't believe that so keep on making moral claims relentlessly.
......
So my charge is that non religious people are acting indistinguishably from religious people in a lot of their beliefs under the veneer of skepticism.
That's not a small statement.
There is a large body of ethical theory that insist that moral statements have a truth value, but do not rely on a deity.
And in addition there is the Euthyphro dialogue, which points out that god doesn't actually give us any help in deciding what is good, anyway.
When folk leave the comfort of an authoritarian ethical system, they begin to realise just how difficult deciding what to do is.
There is far more to atheism than moral scepticism. Ethics is a broad field.
~Lucius Annaeus Seneca
Quoting Andrew4Handel
This fact demonstrates that to do good or bad and learn or not from the consequences most people do not need "divine permission" in order to survive and to thrive. So what are peculiarly "religious values" good for? :chin:
[quote=H.L. Mencken, journalist & critic]
Morality is doing what is right, no matter what you are told. Religion is doing what you are told, no matter what is right.[/quote]
[quote=Steven Weinberg, Nobel physicist]
With or without religion, good people can behave well and bad people can do evil; but for good people to do evil - that takes religion.[/quote]
What I mean is that they are acting in a quasi religious way with unsubstantiated values.
They have not transcended religious superstition and unfounded premises ,they just apparently don't care about the truth value of their claims as long as the words "God" or "gods". is not attached.
Why don't you need your statements to have truth value? The value of religious values is that they are motivational just like equally made up social values.
Neither is an issue of you are not concerned with the truth value of statements. Then you just have your subjective perception of society working. Which I assume is how you judge the success of your value claims.
I want to know that my actions are good or bad objectively and not speculatively, subjectively or arbitrarily.
This would be impressive if there was a right thing to do but no one has proven that anything is right or wrong and nature allows everything to occur whatever value we put on it. Genocide and self sacrifice.
What are you referring to? When I studied moral; philosophy no theory we were presented with was able to give convincing evidence for moral truths.
I believe moral nihilism should be the default position and then any moral claims ought to be presented with substantial evidence. Otherwise I think it is a faith position to believe you know what is right and wrong.
People say there is no evidence for gods. I say there is no evidence for moral truths and they deserve equal skepticism. Some people accept nihilism as a consequence of atheism. Not accepting a nihilist consequence to atheism may mean you believe in some kind of objective values and these objective values like morals and beauty or just the presence of natural laws have constituted arguments for god.
An analogy might be someone claiming to not believe in atoms. Atoms are still going to contribute to your existence whether or not you believe in them. I think a lack of belief in gods doesn't rule out gods or the notions of gods influence in your life.
I think a nihilist, which I have been, is someone who is committed to true skepticism about the grounds for meaning and doesn't take anything for granted and in my case they may gradually reassert some meaning claims that they feel have some warrant.
Why do you assume that? I've claimed the opposite with respect to morality more than once (links below) which you have either ignored or given vague meandering responses.
https://thephilosophyforum.com/discussion/comment/773861
https://thephilosophyforum.com/discussion/comment/774287
https://thephilosophyforum.com/discussion/comment/774318
Quoting 180 Proof
:chin:
Remember religious or theistically derived morality is just as much of a sham. The morality of any believer is as subjective and dependant upon interpretation and personal preferences as any kind of moral system. It's something no person can escape, no matter whether they believe in Jesus or jack shit.
The desire for a magic position, a transcendent foundation seems to be concept that is hard to shake.
Morality is an open conversation humans have about what they value and how they should live. In most countries today, legislation seems to do the bulk of the work and sometimes gets changed as behaviors which communities used to consider immoral no longer are - homosexuality, women getting the vote, use of illicit drugs, square dancing in a round room, etc.
This is a lovely paragraph, thanks. It's the closest I think I could get to finding an objective way forward in this space. I suspect many people already understand that what harms conscious creatures and the environment is anathema and from here we can locate a foundational basis for most approaches to moral problems. I need to keep being reminded of this.
I have often thought too that divine command theory is just a variation of moral nihilism - it commits the human to the status of an empty drone and it is utterly disrespectful to our innate capacity for love, empathy and solidarity.
Indeed, ought. We're here to create a/the moral dimension. It doesn't exist, we have to make it exist. It's not true, we have to make it true. In short we add one more facet to the diamond (of reality) and make it sparkle even more.
Quoting Andrew4Handel
Quoting Andrew4Handel
I've been trying, unsuccessfully so far, to understand what you're saying. You're agnostic and you want to know whether your actions are good or bad, but then you say that it can't be done.
So then what?
Not knowing whether or not there is a g/G does not entail believing in g/G or disbelieving in g/G. Being agnostic is irrelevant.
Observing the foreseeable (e.g. net harmful / unjust) consequences of actions is effectively pragmatic and replicatable aka "objective". I've no idea what @Andrew is talking about either.
Just like no one has discovered a truth value to medical diagnostics or treatments. :roll: What is harmful to our species is knowable and therefore preventable and reducible (i.e. in medical terms, 'therapeutically treatable'). Ergo, no "supernatural value systems" are needed (or are objective in any practical sense). Andrew seems incorrigibly confused.
No one is obliged to take a medical treatment. But if they cure an illness they do what they say they do.
Quoting 180 Proof
I don't see how you get from an assessment of harm to a morality. Our ability to perceive harm does not imply we should take a moral stance on it. My dislike for harm leads me to antinatalism. But there are many other facets to moral judgements other than harm calculations.
Also I do not think people would accept the results of harm calculations if they were actually made comprehensively.
Would people give up a large chunk of their expendable income to help the poor if a utilitarian calculation led to that? Would they spend more time in the week helping others, stop eating meat? Stop taking foreign Holidays? Stop having children? Adopt a child. Visit the lonely elderly? These calculations would be easy to dismiss or ignore and not have the imperative of a law.
Other aspects of morality are moral obligations, moral character/virtues, a conscience, integrity or just the a lack of desire to have a moral system imposed or otherwise.
Quoting Andrew4Handel
You reply:
Quoting Andrew4Handel
So no ethical theory convinced you. Note that whether or not you were convinced is different to whether or not the theories were true or false. You might be, indeed presumably were, unconvinced because the theories were false. If so then they do indeed have a truth value.
Furthermore, perhaps it's not evidence that is relevant. Evidence tells us what is the case. But what we are after in ethics is not what is the case but what we ought make the case. You'll be familiar with the is/ought distinction from your studies.
It's not, I hope, at all difficult to present ethical statements on which we would agree. So for example i doubt that you would agree with kicking puppies for pleasure. And that is to say, we agree that "One ought not kick puppies for pleasure" is true.
It's worth paying some attention to the alternative. If someone were to claim that "One ought not kick puppies for pleasure" is false, we would not generally just submit, on the grounds that such issues are relative. In this way, moral statements are very different to statements of personal preference, such as "I like vanilla ice cream". Personal choice applies to me alone, while moral choices are applied to others.
We do have expectations for the behaviour of ourselves and of others. So if moral nihilism is the view that moral statements do not have a truth value, then it does not seem to be the default position. Rather we start by thinking some moral statements are true, others are false.
Ethics, then, is the conversation about which of these statements are true, and why. A worthy puzzle.
A second point I'd make is that it is not at all apparent how introducing god makes a difference. This is derived from the Euthyphro mentioned previously, the question of whether the good is just what god wills, or whether god wills what is good. The problem is that, if we include god, we are still left with the fact of our having to make a choice. We can choose to do what god wills, or to go against his will.
There being a god does not automatically tell us what is good and what is bad. The existential fact is that the choice remains ours.
So, two points: it is not so obvious that moral statements lack a truth value, and it is not apparent that there being a god helps us in deciding what to do.
Uh huh. :roll:
For what it's worth ...
https://thephilosophyforum.com/discussion/comment/554048
I am saying atheism seems to lead to moral nihilism and other forms of nihilism. If someone is consistent about not believing things without evidence or not believing things involving supernatural claims.
I also think the idea you can own something and have property is a metaphysical/supernatural claim because I don't think ownership is a natural property and it can only be enforced by brute force such as the police or army. A lot of social norms and claims are being maintained by brute force not reason.
I don't think one child deserves to go to Eton/a private school and another child deserves to not be educated living in a slum. Communists have forcibly dismantled some previous societal structures based on what they see as their inequality and lack of justification. But communism is also not scientific and a statement of of a preference for an alternative way to structure Society that led to a lot of conflict an death.
Quoting Andrew4Handel
Well, one of us is playing with the wrong of the mule:
Quoting 180 Proof
Are you committed to the notion that all harm is bad? Harm = Bad? Some harm is bad? We should prevent all harm? We should prevent subjective harm as experienced by the individual (I hate going to school)?
In utilitarian thinking this has led to lots of absurdities such asthe idea that we should destroy all life because harm outweighs the good inevitably. Other claims are that we should manufacture suffering out of animals by genetic modification. Or that we should kill one healthy person to save 6 sick people by using this person as an organ donor.
If you wouldn't kill one healthy person to save six dying or suffering people then you are not committed to an ethics based on harm minimisation but have different moral values such as the sanctity of life, consent and so on.
.......
What I would want a morality to do is to convince someone not to shoot me in the head. And if they did to know they would get some kind of karma/judgement that is guaranteed into this life or the next. An afterlife justice scenario means you can never escape your wrong doing which is currently happening with unpunished murders genocide and unsolved crimes in general were someone gets away scot free with harmful behaviour.
Not sure what this has to do with the topic at hand, but there's not often a need to resort to force in order to maintain social norms. The meaning of the words you are reading is social, but there is no one threatening the use of violence in order to enforce that meaning.
If one comes from a patriarchal background in which violence and authority are presumed to underpin social norms, it may well be difficult to see that folk will act sociably without that threat.
A friend or relative goes missing and no one currently knows what has happend to them.
You are not justified to say that they are alive and well and you are also not justified to say that they are dead.
You could give false hope or cause false despair so instead you admit you don't know (agnosticism) what has happened to the missing person.
It is emotionally important not to take away peoples hope as well as not to give them exaggerated hope.
I think the atheist is usually making an assessment of evidence to reach a belief about gods based on the current scientific knowledge failings of religion etc but that then is not a simple disbelief.
I've referred many times to 'preventing / reducing NET harm' in my formulations of an ethics. Your strawmanning only leads to non sequiturs, thus your confusions persist.
The important thing to do in your analogy is to go out and look for your missing friend, and muster what support you can for the search.
Your stance on whether she is alive or not is only of relevance in so far as it influences your actions.
And that's the rub with regard to ethical thought: it's what you do that counts, not why you do it.
Because they don't enforce themselves like natural laws. I am saying atheists are relying on social structures created through force not reason which is similar to what religious people do.
When I left religion at 17 I became a nihilist because life lost it's meaning and purpose to me and I could see a failure to justify anything (This was before I studied philosophy). Nihilism can be a real problem. Most antinatalists are atheists, atheists have less children and various other stats which suggest a causal link between abandoning religious ideas and losing motivation and meaning.
That's why I don't embrace atheism as neutral, (harmless without ramifications) something needing promoting, superior to religion etc.
My analogy is about what beliefs you form when someone goes missing. Sometimes there is nothing you can do. The police are searching. The person has made it hard for them to be found but you remain in the situation of the agnostic. Lacking adequate knowledge and proceeding with caution.
But overall if you don't know you really dont know it really is a place of lack of knowledge from which few conclusions can be drawn. In my opinion. You start acting on faith from that basis.
And I am pointing out that many social structures are not dependent on enforcement by violence.
I went to an event last night that had eighty folk in one small room enjoying an excellent musical performance. No one hurt anyone else, folk moved so as to allow entry and egress, applauded the performance, ordered and paid for food and drink - all done without the threat of violence from some authority figure.
Overwhelmingly, folk try to get on with those around them without hitting each other.
Unlike in Marvel movies.
What's the alternative to nihilism you can identify in the world today that does not come with any harms or problems?
Call it faith if you must. Again, it's not what you say that counts so much as what you do.
Because you don't live in Ukraine. You I assume live in a country with a vigilant army and police force keeping you safe and where the general population have submitted to the system. Meanwhile a lot of aspects that enabled this culture involved exploitation, colonialism, slavery past and present. It seems more like complacency to me. The system works for you not everyone.
You are not being forced to defend a lot of your values, They have already been fought for.
Agnosticism to me would entail only acting on facts and when facts are not available acting with caution.
I am not saying there is a solution but I prefer this way of thinking to current models. In the end it could all descend into meaninglessness.
Fair enough. My own view is that life is a bucket of shit - more for some than for others. Don't overthink things. Actions matter more than theorising. Do what you can to prevent suffering.
Sure.
I received a cup yesterday from Kiev, a present purchased by my daughter, delivered from the other side of the world without the use of a gun. Life goes on.
Putin is not inundated with volunteers to support his war. He pays mercenaries and conscripts young men under threat of jail.
If that room last night had, instead of eighty people, been eighty dogs, cats, monkeys or just about any other animal, the result would have been pandemonium.
To be sure, people do evil things. But this is the exception, and we pay it considerable attention. Overwhelmingly, people do cooperate. (those who don't are in the main disenfranchised males).
Anyway, this is well off-topic; what about a response to ?
The course book I read pointed out the problem with all the theories. And they all competed with each other so you would have to select one from several going and hope other people also did.
What did not convince me is whether they had truth value or were enforceable or whether they crossed the is-ought divide.
Quoting Banno
Some people kick puppies for pleasure so they don't share your intuition, If I have no desire to do something personally I don't ned a moral law about it. If it was legal and praiseworthy to kick puppies I still wouldn't have a preference for it. The idea we need morals to stop us doing something implies we have preference for that thing as part of our character.
Quoting Banno
We are not encouraged to question social expectations. It is indoctrination it seems. But people don't live up to our expectations and really we have no reason to expect anything off them (unless they are our primary care giver)
But then we need to have some kind of shared goals. People cooperate for different reasons with different belief systems. People want different things for their children and from their children's schools.
If atheism is a simple lack of belief what is the average goal of an atheist? Their hope for the future? Aspirations? Motivations? Motivations for continuing/propagating life?
I feel that some atheist believe that almost everything has been explained and that the lack of explanation for consciousness is not a big gap in our knowledge its just a byproduct the brain.
And that we shouldn't expect an afterlife and just make do with what we've got and not have wild ideas. My opinions come from the discourse I have seen and been involved in.
Nice, a funny and acute observation.
Quoting Andrew4Handel
Sure. Ethics is not easy. That doesn't mean that it never leads to any conclusions.
Quoting Andrew4Handel
I want to be clear about what is being claimed here. Sure, some people kick puppies for pleasure. But we agree that "One ought not kick puppies for pleasure" is a true statement.
Therefore there are true moral statements.
And further, it is not the case that you and I think that if someone wants to kick puppies, that's fine. We expect other people to agree with us that one ought not to kick puppies.
Therefore the truth or falsity of moral statements is not relative to the individual.
Quoting Andrew4Handel
I disagree, and I've presented examples to support my case - the puppies, the concert, the cup, Putin's war and so on. In each case cooperation is the norm, violence and coercion the exception.
To be sure, there are folk who live each day by threatening and being threatened. I hope this is not you, and if it is, then again, that is exceptional, and regrettable.
I'm guessing you do not live in a bunker surrounded by weapons; that you can wander down to your local shop and swap money for a coffee. That you do not live in the expectation of an invasion by your neighbour.
People do live up to our expectations.
Of course, it's not all wine and roses. There are exceptions, but overwhelmingly...
________________
Quoting Andrew4Handel
Sure... well, more accurately, we need activities that at least do not conflict, and preferably which are of mutual benefit.
That's not hard. But also, there are plenty of carers, doctors, nurses, teachers, and others who don't treat human interactions in purely transactional terms. They look after other people without consideration of what is in it for them. It's an attitude that receives little attention, but which is fundamental to humanity.
And again, notice that it is what people do, rather than the reasons they have for what they do, that is salient.
Quoting Andrew4Handel
Atheism is not monolithic, of course, so goals vary. But like most folk, atheists do what is appropriate not because they are convinced by profound ethical considerations, but simply because it is the right thing to do.
Quoting Andrew4Handel
Of course, you don't genuinely expect to be able to ward of your assailant by engaging in a philosophical discourse...
You'd be better off doing personal defence training if that is your need.
Pardon my probing for meaning : How do you characterize your "indifference" to philosophical Ontological origins*1? Is it aggressive Atheism, or apathetic Agnosticism, or mundane Traditionalism*2, or some other pre-Philosophy understanding of the natural world*3? Or just Anti-Religion, as the parallel to politics for the cultural powers-that-be to dominate the common people? Or perhaps merely Anti-Ontology as a feckless waste of time in a heartless/mindless/pointless material world? :joke:
*1. Ontology :
In metaphysics, ontology is the philosophical study of being, as well as related concepts such as existence, becoming, and reality.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ontology
Note -- the search for "ultimate reality"
*2. In pre-science Traditional cultures, for most people, the existence of gods or natural forces is not a well-reasoned philosophical worldview, but merely going along with the majority, and taking the conventional doctrines of sages for granted. In National Geographic, primitive cultures don't practice formal creedal religions, but mere follow ancient un-written assumptions & practices (natural magic) that seem pragmatic to them. Their gods & spirits are equivalent to what moderns call Natural Laws and Forces. And they tend to be satisfied with metaphorical myths & analogies that seem (to non-philosophers) to be plausible explanations for ultimate origins.
*3. Primitive gods :
Before we go further we must get clear the difference between magic and religion, for there has always been a good deal of confusion. Magic then or art-magic resembles religion in dealing with unseen powers, so that it is entirely distinct from what is called sympathetic magic. This last is not properly magic at all, but the science of the savage, by which he tries to bring rain, make the crops grow, or do other things which he believes he can do himself. This may be crude science; but there can be no question of either magic or religion till he comes to things which he believes can only be done by the unseen powers. Magic may also be like religion in outward form, and sometimes even becomes religion when our relation to the unseen powers is differently conceived. The distinction is in this relation; and it is absolute. In magic we do not trust the unseen powers we are dealing with: in religion we do.
https://www.giffordlectures.org/books/knowledge-god-and-its-historical-development-volume-1/lecture-10-primitive-religion-1
So I am an atheist (and I know from experience that atheists hold different values and beliefs, aside from this one small matter of belief in deities). Just as Christians, say, are likely to have radically different answers to the same questions. Humans do not fall into rigid categories merely based on a belief they hold.
The questions you pose are, I suspect, somewhat unnatural. People live and do things and hold values without holding a shopping list of explicit value statements you seem to be fishing for.
Me
Average goal for the atheist? I have no idea what this question means, but I can tell you my plans for this year.
Hope for the future? I hope humans get their act together - minimise suffering and take some substantive action to address inequality.
Aspirations. I'm looking to buy a new house. Someone close to me is dying of cancer - I will help support them.
Motivations I am content and generally positive and fortunate. I wish others were too. I tend to take each day as it comes and make minimal plans.
You're welcome to probe. Not that I have much to say. I don't think humans have access to reality as it is in itself - the best we do is generate provisional narratives that, to a greater or lesser extent, help us to make interventions in the world. These stories tend to be subject to revision and never arrive at absolute truth. I also hold that my experience of the world does not have need for most metanarratives; I am a fan of uncertainty. I am also a fan of minimalism and think that people overcook things and want certainty and dominion where knowledge is absent and where they have no expertise.
:clap: :fire:
Not bad for some who doesn't take philosophy too seriously. If I could, I'd drink two double whiskeys to that, mate! :cool:
Quoting Andrew4Handel
I'm still not understanding you. In your OP you identified yourself as agnostic. Does agnosticism also lead to moral nihilism? If not, could/would you please explain the difference.
If you're a theist, pray.
If you're an atheist, don't pray.
If you're an agnostic, neither pray nor don't pray. What exactly is that? Tertium non datur.
:ok:
Nope. Leaving religion turned me into a nihilist. Now I am agnostic I have recovered some hope.
In this thread I have been exploring whether atheism is just a lack of belief or has any entailments and what facets of society can be maintained coherently on an atheist worldview.
I have Quoted prominent atheist Dawkins previously:
" The universe that we observe has precisely the properties we should expect if there is, at bottom, no design, no purpose, no evil, no good, nothing but pitiless indifference.
"(..) safe inside gigantic lumbering robots, sealed off from the outside world, communicating with it by tortuous indirect routes, manipulating it by remote control.
They are in you and in me; they created us, body and mind; andtheir preservation is the ultimate rationale for our existence. They have come a long way, those replicators. Now they go by the name of genes, and we are their survival machines."
My views on atheism are derived from atheists. They have written books and set up societies disseminating their opinions.
:roll:
For very strong, sound arguments in favor of atheism, read (contemporary) philosophical atheists like e.g.
André Comte-Sponville
Theodore Drange
Paul Draper
Michael Martin
Kai Nielson
Michel Onfray
J. L. Schellenberg
Victor Stenger
Rebecca Goldstein
and avoid the merely irreligious polemics of "New Atheist" like R. Dawkins, S. Harris, C. Hitchens et al which traffic in much weaker, or less thoughtful, arguments.
Also, you may find it helps to dispel your disregard of atheism, Andrew, to watch the three-part BBC series A Rough History of Disbelief (by Jonathan Miller from the early oughts) that illustrates my (Nietzsche's) point that religious belief, not principled atheism, is manifest an expression of nihilism.
My guess, Andrew, is that losing your religion, yet oblivious to the nihilation philosophical suicide of religious belief, left you with nothing to hold on to but the feeling of naked nihil itself. If being agnostic (ignostic, apatheistic or whatever) works for you, then good for you stick with it; likewise, atheism works for many who live principled ethical lives as best they can, and just because it didn't work for you, doesn't mean atheism can't work for those who understand their disbelief apparently better than did (do).
I feel sorry for you that that the act of abandoning religion left you unable to find joy/meaning in your life. But that is on you. While I cannot point to any peer reviewed studies, I feel confident saying that the overwhelming majority of atheists lead meaningful productive lives and are not nihilists. Just for example, I suggest you re-read Tom Storm's post above
Quoting Andrew4Handel
And here I'm still not getting your point. Why does being not sure if a God or Gods exists give you hope - while believing that no God (or Gods) exist make you a nihilist? Does the possibility of a God (or Gods) existing give you hope? If yes, then it seems like you are seeking for a religion. But maybe I'm misunderstanding you.
Boom! :100:
Well the majority of atheists are middle class people living in the wealthy west. Atheism has less ramifications here and there are a lot of distractions. But you are not a starving child living in a slum I assume.
Lots of people including children have died prematurely in poverty and war without the chance to have a meaningful life.
I would question whether anyone's life is meaningful. I think meaning is objective but this is up for debate. If meaning is subjective you could find paint drying meaningful but that would hardly be profound. If there is no innate purpose or teleology for us or our species then we are not going anywhere. There are no values beyond subjective feelings towards events and wishes.
However how happy one is is obviously not proof that ones beliefs are true or valid.
I think atheists that are not nihilists haven't grasped the ramifications of their position. My agnosticism is wider than agnosticism about gods but also concerns other positions atheists have closely aligned with atheism like physicalism, scientism, eliminativism, no afterlife, reductionism and so on.
If what you mean is that values are our responses to things in the world, then of course they are.
You seem to conclude that somehow therefore they do not matter or are of no significance.
But that just does not follow.
What could be more important than what you value?
Facts I would say.
Facts restrict desires or the outcomes of desires.
Some restrictions maybe down to limitations of our knowledge and imagination but other limitations are external/physical.
So you value facts more than values? How's that?
Try this. Look at the direction of fit of a couple of sentences. Say the kettle is boiling... you can produce a sentence that sets out how things are: "The kettle is boiling". You make a sentence that fits how things are; you state a fact. The sentence is made to fit the world.
But suppose instead the kettle is cold, and you want it to boil. "The kettle is boiling" is not a fact, but it is a situation you value. In this case you can change the world so as to fit the facts, by putting the kettle on the heat. The world is made to fit the sentence.
When we set out a fact, we make our sentences fit the way the world is. When we set out a value, we say how we want the world to fit our sentences.
It remains that we can and do change how things are, and that we do so either in accord or discord with what we value.
It would be an error to think that what you value has no import.
But this is what you seem to conclude from your considerations of atheism.
And again, there seems to me to be a further issue that you have not considered, which is, even if god did exist and make his values clear to us, it remains open for us to reject his advice. That is, even if one grants theism, the choice of what to do remains with each of us. God does not solve the problem of what one ought to do.
:clap: :lol: :up:
No. Facts trump values because they impose themselves. I can't change the laws of physics based on my desires and values.
Quoting Banno
It is certainly impressive that we can influence the external world. That may even be considered a philosophical puzzle. But its value is subjective to our desires.
Our desire for meat has lead us to create many abattoirs that can slaughter billions of animals a year. That can seem somewhat macabre and not in the best interest of the animals.
There is a conflict of values.
The values invoked by religion were transcendent eternal values and this life a temporary stop over. Life felt eternal because you believed you had an immortal spirit/soul. No one would be left behind because even those with the most short miserable lives would go onto something better.
Sure. But far from interesting.
Quoting Andrew4Handel
That is what values are. That they are subjective does not, as you seem to suppose, render them irrelevant.
Quoting Andrew4Handel
Sure. Therefore there are values.
The bolded bit. You can't escape it. You have to choose what to do, god or no god. That the responsibility rests with you and not the all-father is part of realising that you are human.
Quoting Andrew4Handel
Baby wants his womb back.
Picture me grabbing you by the collar, shaking you and yelling "grow up!" into your face.
Now, what you going to do about it?
Your choice.
Try Pyrrhonism. For every argument, a counterargument and/or refutation. The scale of truth is perfectly balanced. This aporia (bewilderment/puzzlement) leads to epoché (suspension of judgment) which in this case is agnosticism.