"Why I don't believe in God" Greta Christina
Opinion | Why I don't believe in God
[sup] Greta Christina · Raw Story · Sep 19, 2023[/sup]
(? excerpts from "Why Are You Atheists So Angry?: 99 Things That Piss Off the Godless" (2012) by Greta Christina)
1. consistent replacement of supernatural explanations of the world with natural ones
2. inconsistency of world religions
3. weakness of religious arguments, explanations, and apologetics
4. increasing diminishment of god
5. fact that religion runs in families
6. physical causes of everything we think of as the soul
7. complete failure of any sort of supernatural phenomenon to stand up to rigorous testing
8. slipperiness of religious and spiritual beliefs
9. failure of religion to improve or clarify over time
10. complete lack of solid evidence for god's existence
Whether for the same reasons or not, some 5/6 contemporary philosophers agree. [sup](2009, 2020)[/sup]
I think, though, it's worthwhile differentiating the elaborate religions/faiths (typically involving lengthy stories, religious texts, divine intervention/participation, personal/divine revelations, personal deities, rituals, commands/rules, fate designations), and more abstract/idealized entities (vague, nebulous, unidentifiable, often from apologist arguments like intelligent design, fine-tuning, cosmological, ontological, neither of which can differentiate the elaborate religions/faiths, nor differentiate "the unknown" for that matter). The two are different categories, with no particular entailment between them gap. The former beliefs are presently dominant worldwide. I'm guessing atheism primarily is concerned with the former (elaborate), and agnosticism more found in the context of the latter (idealized) both of which could be held by one person, and thus need clarification.
Anyway, Christina brings a few good points to the table.
[sup] Greta Christina · Raw Story · Sep 19, 2023[/sup]
(? excerpts from "Why Are You Atheists So Angry?: 99 Things That Piss Off the Godless" (2012) by Greta Christina)
1. consistent replacement of supernatural explanations of the world with natural ones
2. inconsistency of world religions
3. weakness of religious arguments, explanations, and apologetics
4. increasing diminishment of god
5. fact that religion runs in families
6. physical causes of everything we think of as the soul
7. complete failure of any sort of supernatural phenomenon to stand up to rigorous testing
8. slipperiness of religious and spiritual beliefs
9. failure of religion to improve or clarify over time
10. complete lack of solid evidence for god's existence
Whether for the same reasons or not, some 5/6 contemporary philosophers agree. [sup](2009, 2020)[/sup]
I think, though, it's worthwhile differentiating the elaborate religions/faiths (typically involving lengthy stories, religious texts, divine intervention/participation, personal/divine revelations, personal deities, rituals, commands/rules, fate designations), and more abstract/idealized entities (vague, nebulous, unidentifiable, often from apologist arguments like intelligent design, fine-tuning, cosmological, ontological, neither of which can differentiate the elaborate religions/faiths, nor differentiate "the unknown" for that matter). The two are different categories, with no particular entailment between them gap. The former beliefs are presently dominant worldwide. I'm guessing atheism primarily is concerned with the former (elaborate), and agnosticism more found in the context of the latter (idealized) both of which could be held by one person, and thus need clarification.
Anyway, Christina brings a few good points to the table.
Comments (113)
Hello Jorndoe,
Although I am not familiar with that book, I would like to just share some brief comments on the 10 reasons you expounded for not believing in God.
I find that these terms are regularly deployed in vague and superficial manners, where either can be used to consistently and coherently explain reality: it just depends on how loose or precise the definitions are of them.
This just simply doesnt entail that God doesnt exist: it entails, if granted as true, that world religions are false. Seems like a non sequitur to me.
If we are talking about mainstream apologetics, arguments, etc., then I agree; but so do most theists I talk too! If you are claiming that arguments for theism are all weak, then I dont buy that. I have heard sophisticated and rational arguments for and against Gods existence.
Based off of the rawstory article you linked, I believe you are referring to humanity being able to explain what was once called supernatural with natural events. Although this may prima facie count in favor of a physicalistic metaphysical theory, I think there are plenty of theistic arguments that hold weight as well.
Likewise, some people (like myself) would place God in nature as nature: so I find it to be a false dilemma to say that either (1) God exists and there are supernatural events or (2) we can explain everything naturally.
Again, this doesnt entail God doesnt exist. If someone were to argue that God exists because they were taught that traditionally by their family, then that is a bad argument for Gods existence.
One can believe in souls without being a theist, and theists can believe that we dont have souls (albeit less mainstream and stereotypical).
Also, as a neo-schopenhauerian, I reject the notion that our representations of the world exhaust it, and metaphysically the other side is mind: so I quite literally accept that from the side of the physical (which is our representations of the world) we should find no evidence of a soul, but that, from introspection, we realize that the representations are of the soul (of mental events). So kind of a false dilemma again for me.
Its a metaphysical claim, so one should never expect to study it empirically within our representations: it is (usually) meant to give the best account of the mind-body problem in philosophy of mind.
Sure. But why does this convince one that God doesnt exist, as opposed to people believing false things?
I get the feeling that the title should have been why I am not religious in any mainstream way and not why I dont believe in God. Religion, as a mainstream institution, is not a science nor is necessarily a means of refining our knowledge of God (if God exists).
This is entirely dependent on what one constitutes as solid evidence. If they are expecting to scientifically observe God, then I think I have more of a problem with their criteria for knowledge.
Quoting Bob Ross
I didn't read those as deductive, but as evidence in support of the case. Though, I could of course have misread Christina.
That being said, these observations (evidence) can draw attention to the point in the opening post regarding elaborate versus idealized. God/god and religious faith can mean any number of things [sup](link, link, link, IEP, SEP)[/sup], with varying responses. Regarding the elaborate, prevalent category:
Quoting Theism and Atheism: Opposing Arguments In Philosophy (2019), Joseph Koterski, Graham Oppy
Quoting Bob Ross
I find "supernatural magic" and "G did it" to be non-explanations [sup](previously ... Nov 9, 2022 ... Jun 4, 2022)[/sup]. They could (literally) be raised to explain anything, and therefore explain nothing. When did such an explanation ever do away with ignorance/errors? Not themselves explicable, cannot readily be exemplified (verified), do not derive anything differentiable in particular, ... Replacing with "don't know" does not incur informative loss; not replacing is a termination along such lines of inquiry, a proliferation of ignorance.
Why can't we know there are no gods? :chin:
I think this statement is disingenuous. The reason Cristina doesn't believe in God is that she doesn't believe. I went through a similar process when I was about 15. Before that I volunteered at our local church and acted as an acolyte. I folded programs, lit the candles at the beginning of the service and snuffed them at the end, and helped collect money. At that point we moved to another town and I just dropped my participation and never really thought about it again. There was never any outright rejection, I just stopped. I think most young people who leave the church are probably like that. As long as there isn't any pressure, they never really need to reject belief.
I can think of two reasons why someone would provide the kinds of rationalizations that are included in the OP. 1) Looking back, people look for some reason need to justify their actions or 2) They want to proselytize their disbelief to others because of resentment or anger. Perhaps there is a third 3) Self-aggrandizement - they can feel superior to people who still believe.
Or, better yet: Is anything we say or claim about "god" (any deity) that is demonstrably true and therefore consistent with the world (existence) as we know it?
I assume you mean where is the evidence of god ?
There isnt much, though you might see it in a pretty flower.
Most atheists I have known would not say there is no god. They are more likely to say that they are unconvinced that there is. As an atheist, I am unconvinced that there are gods. I have yet to hear an account of theism that I find convincing. It may be as Calvin says that some people don't have a sensus divinitatis. Perhaps it is like sexual preferences, some people are attracted to the god narrative and others are not.
For me the most convincing argument I suppose you could call it, is intelligent design combined with aesthetics. Why is our vision hard wired to like beauty ? Is it universal?
:up:
Hello Jorndoe,
I am not saying they are deductive arguments: even if they are inductive arguments they are still non sequiturs (viz., if the arguments premises are accepted as true, the conclusion does not clearly follow at all from them, no different than me saying Ive seen a banana before, therefore unicorns dont exist).
By idealized, it seems to me that you are referring to formal theological arguments for God, is that correct?
By elaborate, it seems (from your OP) that you are referring to laymens beliefs about God.
This is a fine generic and imprecise distinction (for not all laymen beliefs are distinct from formal arguments) for practical purposes, but I would say that your distinction just turns into the elaborate being the bad, vague arguments for God and the idealized being the good, clear arguments for Godso I think elaborate probably not a good term to express the former (nor idealized, as formal arguments are not in the business [necessarily] of idealism nor arguing for ideals).
I would say that when I refer to good arguments I have heard (although I am not convinced of them), I am referring to your idealized category (if I am understanding you correctly)--i.e., cosmological, ontological, teleological, etc. The best arguments for God that I find appealing are the ones predicated off of idealism.
I love Graham Oppy, and I havent read the whole article, but he/they are personifying God, which obviously makes no sense. A theist should not be arguing for the existence of a being when one could immediately experience, as God is posited in order to explain the underlying structure of reality itself. Secondly, yes, people use arguments to become acquainted with other people. I may not have met my cousin, rose, but I have ample evidence to support that she does, indeed exist: so a theist would say they can provide evidence of Gods existence without directly experiencing God.
Sort of. Bad arguments for God, or simply ill-thought out metaphysical explanations of the world, can fall prey to this sort of God-of-the-gaps sort of explanation; but contemporary theists in theology do not do this at all.
Also, I can parody this argument with naturalism: someone could explain a phenomena by presupposing it as natural without actually explaining anything. So what? This just reflects a particularly bad argument, and not that all naturalism is bad argumentation.
When we practice metaphysics correctly, it provides a useful theory of what we think reality is, and, of course, metaphysics is always speculative (so there is always, just like anything else, a degree of possible error).
But, hey, if you dont like metaphysics, then thats fine; but just remember you cant coherently nor consistently hold naturalism, physicalism, etc. as well: it goes both ways.
There are plenty of ways to verify or illegitimize arguments for God: they just arent scientific.
Surely, you agree that there is some legitimate evidence which is not public (e.g., introspective knowledge, self-reflective knowledge, etc.)? Otherwise, I don't know why you think you have evidence that you have thoughts or emotions then, or any qualitative experience whatsoever since, of course, they are private knowledge.
1. The idea that Christianity or religion in general is incompatible with naturalism, or requires belief in superstitions. I don't believe this is true, but it is a common conviction among both atheists and the faithful alike.
2. That there is no explanation for religious pluralism within religious traditions themselves. There is only "well they are all wrong/lacked the Holy Spirit, we are right." Actually, the Catechism of the Catholic Church has a suprisingly ecumenical section on other sects, Ill try to find it. But polysemy was very big with the Church Fathers and such pluralism is not surprising if one assumes that God works, unfolds in God's immanent form, through world history.
The dialectical churn of faith and reason seems to be what is needed to drive humanity towards goals like freedom, contemplation of the Absolute, self-development, etc. And indeed the Bible is an example where God starts off commanding from on high, then teaches laterally through fellow men in the Gospels and Acts, and then moves towards an indwelling, internal mode of self-development with the advent of Pentecost.
The main barrier re naturalism I feel is that people have a fairly inaccurate view of what science says the world "must be like," the limits on speculation, where empirical fact begins to cull possibilities. While in the upper reaches of the sciences and philosophy it has long been accepted that 19th century corpuscular, reductive materialism has major problems, and I don't think modified versions even remain one of the more popular conceptions, it remains popular writ large. This is by far and away the most popular layman's interpretation of what science says "the world is like." Thus, even more sophisticated presentations of faith for the curious tend to result in people talking past each other, because you need vast detours into other areas to set up the ground work on which such arguments are made.
Over time, people simplify and crystalize metaphysical views of the world, but this process has stagnated due to the fact that no one paradigm has come to replace that popular 140 years ago or so. Thus, you have a bit of an idiosyncratic grab bag floating out there.
:100: There is no objective or scientific test that can be done to conclusively prove that god does or does not exist. The belief that there is a god (or no god) is subjective. A question of belief and faith.
A similar argument applies to the question of whether Satan exists or not.
If god exists then she could make it appear as if she doesn't exist. :grin:
What is beauty is subjective. What you find beautiful I might find ugly. Is a pack of wolves hunting and killing a bison beautiful or not beautiful?
I think @simplyG is referring to aesthetics, and not subjectiveness.
How does that work? Worship of God is idolatry because people are actually worshiping their conception of God (a created thing)?
I think this is partly the idea behind apophatic theology at least. All conception is limiting, and thus insufficient, only the "cloud of unknowing," "divine darkness," at which point even worship has ceased, represents the ultimate goal that cataphatic theology aspires to.
Yes, that has been a popular "argument" since antiquity: "I don't understand physically how this or that came to be, must have been a metaphysical entity". Obviously in ancient times just about everything observable was capable of being part of this narrative. Now since the advent of science, it is a much smaller (and shrinking) subset.
As a former believer, it seems like the question "Do the gods exist?" is a function of the effectiveness of institutions.
"God" is a product and a service of religious institutions which purvey god-belief, rituals, theology, communal gatherings, and so on. Many individuals and families participate and support religious institutions everywhere. The viability and vitality of belief in the gods is a result of the viability and vitality of the institutions that purvey god-products and services.
Christian institutions in Europe and the Americas have lost a great deal of viability and vitality. Membership and participation losses have been extraordinarily large (over the last century -- not just since 2000).
Before the modern era (whatever date you like) there was good reason to believe in God/s because there were few other especially good explanations for a lot of fortunate and unfortunate natural phenomena. Crops failed? Wife died? A dicey investment paid off? God did it! As science and industry have progressed with ever deeper inquiries into nature there has been less need of God/s to explain bad -- and good -- fortune.
Religious institutions have run up against considerable resistance to the old idea that God (in the 'received religions') causes good and bad things to happen in response to our supplications. Even very conservative believers who consistently and earnestly pray to God go to the doctor when they feel ill. They may pray, but they also take their medicines and sign up for surgeries.
Conclusion: We do not believe because God obviously exists; we believe in God because we have been so taught. Were God-teaching to eventually end, God/god would fade and end as well.
Yes, but I think the point being made in response is that aesthetic appreciation is subjective. We don't all appreciate or like the same things and notions of the beautiful seem to vary across time and culture.
If God teaching ended then I think that God/god would not fade. The human mind "wants" explanations for the unknown, and meaning for events, and god provides these.
Also I think that the idea of a god originates in the experience of a child with a parent. The parent is "all powerful". When the child finds out that the parent is not "all powerful" then they look for an entity that is "all powerful".
But god doesn't explain anything. When we say god created the world, it's equivalent to saying, 'the magic man did it.' God as a (pseudo) explanation does not tell us how or why, it answers nothing. But you are right to say that people are drawn to magical answers - we often attribute phenomena to ghosts, demons, spirits, the evil eye, gods and no doubt this will continue even if Yahweh and Allah join the ranks of defunct gods like Thoth, Xipe Totec and Aegir.
What basis do you have to think that it is possible for a mind to exist, sans an information processing substrate for the mind to supervene upon?
We're free to speculate and fantasize, why not? For me, atheism doesn't seek to explain anything. While it might posit that there are better explanations available than the god theory, atheism really only addresses one thing - whether you believe in gods or not. I am quite happy with 'I don't know' being the main go to answer for our complex questions like consciousness. The nature of consciousness is a subject for experts and perhaps only time will tell. Or maybe the mysterians are right and we'll never know the answer.
Yes. That's my story, too.
True! For the most part, we don't just shrug our shoulders and move on after seeing something remarkable and previously unknown. Unfamiliar bird, an explosion, odd new weed in the lawn, objects falling from the sky, strange weather -- no matter what, we want some sort of explanation. And we want to know what it means. The explanation may be plausible but wrong, and we will be reasonably happy with it. The meaning may be spurious, but if it meshes with other meanings we will accept it -- at least until holes begin appearing.
Quoting Agree-to-Disagree
"God" has explanatory power for a rather narrow set (or sect) of people. Some people distrust scientific knowledge (or know little of it). If, for theological reasons one requires divine action in all events, then "God willed it", "God wanted that to happen" whether it was a nice rain or a devastating flash flood. "God is in charge of the world."
The threshold for assigning divine responsibility can be pretty low. A flat tire might be divine intervention. That the tire was worn out would have nothing to do with it, of course. God willed it.
God still might work as an explanation for existence, if one doesn't find the Big Bang grand enough on its own merits. It isn't that we now understand EVERYTHING; but rather, we live in a model where physical events have physical causes of some sort (well, most of us, anyway).
I think illness and injury are critical tests: When the devout believers in divine rule get sick, do they resort to prayer as their only option (Christian Scientists, for example) or do they pray they will get well while they are sitting in the doctors exam room? For most people, even fundamentalists who think God is all in all, get their oil changed, check their tires, get an annual physical, insure their property, and so on. God may rule, but God isn't going to fill the gas tank.
Blessed are they who just stopped.
I progressed through a long complicated withdrawal from religious belief. I'll spare everyone the tedious details. Better a quick chippy choppy on a big black block. Get it over with. Move on.
I think the theories that involve mind emerging from a substrate are unconvincing-bordering-on-absurd. Do you think that if you wire a bunch of electric switches together and turn them off and on in some way the pain of stubbing a toe will emerge? Or the taste of of orange? Or the experience of seeing red?
How about answering my question? Do you have something more than incredulity for an argument?
I think science's continued failure to explain consciousness is evidence that incredulity is the right response to the idea that minds and consciousness emerge from mindless unconscious stuff. Philosophers will continue to win bets against neuroscientists.
Not enough of a reasoned basis to mention?
In some ways God explains everything. Believing in God lets people accept the good and the bad things that happen without the need to agonize excessively about them. God knows the reasons for things even if people don't understand them. The belief can help people accept things. For example, how does a person cope with the death of their child? It is probably of some comfort to think that the child is now in heaven with God. God knows why the child died and people have faith that there was a good reason. It was God's will.
MATTHEW 10:29 - Yet not a single sparrow falls to the ground without your Fathers knowledge.
Exactly.
:up:
Do you think mind/consciousness can emerge from electronic switches being turned on and off in a certain way? From moving abacus beads? Would a system of valves, pumps, and water that's functionally identical to a working brain have a mind?
If you come up with something other than fallacious reasoning, get back to me. Just as a reminder, the question is, "What basis do you have to think that it is possible for a mind to exist, sans an information processing substrate for the mind to supervene upon?"
It seems it'd be possible to deny this is the right question though, or even a meaningful one. If information is primarily process (good arguments for this exist) and if the pancomputationalist physicists are correct and information is our core ontological primitive, then superveniance itself is a mistaken concept.
Information does not require an "information processing substrate," in this case. The appearance of substance is simply the result of stabilities in process. Substance (substrates) emerge from the underlying process, not the other way around. Flux is
fundemental.
And I'm inclined towards this view because:
-Consciousness and other natural phenomena appear to require strong emergence.
- Jaegeon Kim's argument that strong emergence cannot exist given a substance metaphysics is convincing.
- Paul Davies' proof that the entire information carrying capacity of the visible universe is not enough to compute even basic lifeforms' causal history is less convincing (maybe I don't understand it) but still tips the scales towards strong emergence existing.
Thus, if it seems like we need strong emergence. Since substance superveniance rules this out, then it seems like superveniance isn't the right concept. Plus it has other unresolved problems.
So then the question becomes: what process causes consciousness to emerge?
But this doesn't really support the idea of consciousness as some sort of sui generis special thing that can't be explained by science either. If anything, I'd think it gives us less of an incentive to look for dualist explanations because it we no longer have the problem of explaining consciousness without strong emergence.
I also think the process view makes the physicalism/objective idealism divide sort of irrelevant. If substance emerges from process, what would claims like Katsrupt's that the world is made up of "mental substance," even mean vis-á-vis competing claims that is is "physical substance." I think the issue sort of dissolves and becomes a red herring.
Universal consciousness conceptually doesn't have those trappings. If you reject religion for similar reasons, a lot of atheists are going to consider you a like mind
I think Kastrup would say the primary difference is that in his ontology there is no mind-independent stuff. If all minds disappeared, so would the universe. Materialism/physicalism claims the universe would still exist, even if there were no minds.
Until you start talking about the cosmic one mind. Then you're considered a dupe who believes in "woo".
But if it's just an idea you think is compelling, and you're not just refusing to look at any scientific evidence that might conflict with your point of view (like astrologists for example), then... I mean, I don't speak for all atheists, but I'm an atheist and I don't consider the concept you've brought up to be inherently woo, stupid, or religious. I see why others might but I am at least sympathetic to weird ideas of consciousness. Consciousness is the hard problem, right?
Right, but all the "stuff" is just mentation, mental stuff. We're all part of one disassociated cosmic mind for him, right? So, of course if all minds disappear there is nothing, because there is nothing but mind. Saying "all minds cease to exist," is equivalent with saying "the universe ceases to exist."
But if the undergirding framework is a process, then the process explains how it is that we, as "disassociated minds," emerge from the universe, and all the traits the universe has from our perspective. The "substance" of the world that emerges from the process being mental instead of physical doesn't seem to make much of a difference.
To be sure, if the entire universe is mental, we might be tempted to say "then the universe is conscious, or could be /become conscious." But he denies panpsychism if I recall. In any event, with strong emergence nothing precludes a physical universe from becoming conscious either. The mental/physical substance issue seems irrelevant to global psychism (as opposed to panpsychism).
The universes' being conscious or not in a process view simply becomes an empirical question. Knowing what we know about the processes at work in the universe, should/could it produce an umbrella awareness?
The other neat thing about the process view is that it explains how multiple minds can be nested, how split brained individuals can seem to have "two minds in one," multiple personality disorder, the ant hive as a whole and the individual ants both being thought of as minds, states/organizations as mind-like entities with their own goals and desired distinct from their member, etc. The problem of group minds presents no metaphysical problems, unlike in superveniance views.
This is good since there is good psychological evidence for group mind-like properties within our minds and for group minds in human social institutions. These have normally been rejected for metaphysical reasons based on superveniance, despite being empirically predictive in models. However, in the process view there is no reason to say multiple "functions" can't be nested so as to generate novel functions. So multiple functions that generate consciousnesses can be nested so as to create a larger consciousness.
That is very interesting, as I am more sure that I have thoughts then that the world exists, and it seems kind of backwards to me to think otherwise.
... are examples of deduction.
Quoting Bob Ross
Not exactly, no. We're talking what the Pope, priests, gurus, imams, pujas, etc promote (be it simple complex sophisticated renditions), the Avestan Ahura Mazda, the Vedic Shiva, the Biblical Yahweh, the Quranic Allah, etc, the currently prevalent, elaborate religious faiths, often mutually incompatible (as mentioned), what people out there actually believe and sometimes practise:
Quoting jorndoe
Quoting jorndoe
Quoting Bob Ross
Maybe. I'd call them definitions, e.g. G is defined as a supposed 1[sup]st[/sup] cause (like Aquinas did), or "super-designer", or ... As to the mentioned gap, the kalam/cosmological argument, for example, does not derive the Biblical Yahweh, cannot particularly differentiate those "historicized" deities or "the unknown" for that matter (incidentally admitted by one of the foremost promoters of that argument). I suppose that's a characteristic of the "idealized" category, though "definitions" is a better word. (How would one go about practising religious faith in a supposed 1[sup]st[/sup] cause or "super-designer" anyway? Those apologetics don't derive the 10 commandments or Sun-prayer or much of anything.)
Quoting Bob Ross
There's been realism versus idealism threads before. Maybe it's time for another. Hit it, if you have something good, it's one of those things the forum is about. Roughly 4/5 contemporary philosophers go with realism. [sup]2009, 2020[/sup] A topic in its own right, all the way back to Plato ... (Descartes) ... Berkeley ...
Quoting Bob Ross
I guess your take is more or less at odds with the entire elaborate category above? If my bare guess holds up, you'd have something in common with a few atheists:
Quoting jorndoe
Quoting Bob Ross
Those mentioned above aren't arguments, just poor explanations. Some reasons were listed.
That's a lot of highly speculative ifs.
Quoting Count Timothy von Icarus
Kim doesn't seem to think that consciousness requires strong emergence. He ends his book Physicalism, or Something Near Enough with:
Quoting Count Timothy von Icarus
As I think the Kim quote shows, Kim doesn't seem to think that we need strong emergence.
Scientists and belief in God
Quoting Pew Research
How does superveniance substance metaphysics require any less speculative ifs? Superveniance became dominant at a time when physics looked completely different than it does now and has stuck around in philosophy, I'd argue, largely through inertia and the fact that no one replacement has become a rallying point for opposition.
If anything, the raison d'etre for substance metaphysics seems to be dying. The original goal was that different types of substances, Embedoclean elements for example, would explain why things have the properties do, why we see stabilities in the world (i.e. the different types of substance are ontologically basic) and change (different types of substance interacting).
The march of scientific progress has given us a long list of "substances" that turned out to be better defined as processes. Heat as average movement versus as a substance, caloric. Fire as a process reaction versus the substance phlogiston. How can particles supervene on a flame when different particles are involved in each moment?
We previously had life as composed of a sort of vital substance, elan vital, versus the now dominant view of life as process. Atoms turn out not be be basic substances. Fundemental particles have beginnings and ends and are not ontologically basic either. When we clear out space by slamming two gold nuclei into each other at 99% of the speed of light, quarks spontaneously form from the instability of the void.
Matter turned out to be able to be defined in terms of energy. Fundemental particles appear to be necessarily described in terms of fields (granted there are some work arounds to save the particle as the fundemental unit). Space-time seems like the best candidate for a remaining "substance," but that view is under critique from diverse areas, for Wilzek with space-time as a "metric field," to pancomputationalism.
Even within energy itself, we've seen the unification of the electromagnetic and weak force and the hope is to unify all the forces.
But if we unify our understanding of gravity, space-time as a metric field, and all the other fields into one thing, one substance, then substance does absolutely no explanatory lifting at all. It turns out there isn't multiple substances responsible for the way the world is, there is one type of "stuff" and the changes, process, in it account for all entities.
A world of process also fits with a reality where the being of the present is continually flowing into the non-being of the past, re local becoming. On that front though, the widespread sway of eternalism is probably the biggest barrier to any sort of shift. If you take it that all events exist at once, its more intuitive to think of the universe as an object, and thus as anything within it being "parts." I personally think eternalism has deep problems with coherence though. Events don't exist without beginning or end or "at all times," they seem to exist at just those times that they occur.
Well, yes. The idealist would say that if there are no minds, nothing exists. The materialist would object to that. I don't see how bringing process into the discussion removes that point of disagreement. The idealist and materialist are still going to disagree on what would exist if there are no minds. Even if consciousness/mind are processes, the (non-panpsychist) materialist is still going to claim mindless stuff exists and would continue to exist if all minds disappeared. The modern-day materialist is going claim Jupiter still exists in a mindless universe, right? Or has materialism undergone a radical change?
If I recall correctly, Kastrup allows that there was a period in the universe where there were no dissociated minds. He claims that only life produces minds, although I remember thinking that this is the weak point in his whole system because he doesn't really explain why this is the case; he just points to the fact that only living things appear to have these disassociated minds. Thus, we can have a universe that exists, with no life in it, but it still exists because the universe itself is a mind and all the objects we see are "made of mentation."
Mind is coextensive with the universe and preceding life and existing after it.
My point though is that differentiation between "universe as mentation" versus "universe as physical stuff" seems somewhat pointless in a process view because they're empirically, and arguably conceptually identical. Kastrup agrees with the methods of science, agrees with using empirical techniques to discover the processes at work that give rise to phenomena. Physicalists, by in large agree on these points too. The disagreement centers around whether the phenomena of empirical inquiry are essentially "what there is," because mentation is all there is, or if phenomena are representations of a lower level physical reality that is causally responsible for the phenomenal.
But if we think of being as something like a cellular automata running on a lattice, what is the difference? In Kastrup's view there is some sort of process that occurs, consistent with the theory of evolution and animal development, such that processes in the "universal mental field" give rise to the "dissociated consciousness" of living things. So it's the causal process that creates us and unique minds within the mental field, and all cause can be traced back to processes within that field. Likewise, process physicalism says the same sort of thing. There is a universal field and processes occur such that minds emerge from them. The process is doing all the heavy lifting explaining consciousness and causation as a whole here. What exactly does the adjective "mental" or "physical" field add? In both there is just one kind of "stuff" and processes in it do all the explanation.
It's like your object of study were arithmetic and being hung up on if 6 * 3 was written in pencil or pen.
Likewise, there is some speculation I recall in his book about the mental field having its own self-awareness/sentience, objects are essentially the thoughts of this field, but I don't recall it being central, more speculative. But even this speculation fails to differentiate it. A physical universe defined by process can have a self-aware universe, or a universe that becomes sentient over its development; it just depends on what type of process generates consciousness and if the universe is one of them.
Pragmatically, recognizing that there are abstract levels of stuff supervening on other stuff is how humanity has been able to achieve the scientific advancements we have. The instrumentation physicists use to test theories is designed with such understanding in mind. People having an understanding of supervenience seems to play a rather critical role in us having the basis we have, for thinking about nature with the degree of accuracy that we do.
If this forum is any indication some philosophers seem to get obsessed with defining supervenience in a rigorous way. (Or tearing down attempts to do so.) It seems to me, that a person who recognizes supervenience has no need, or even use, for a rigorous definition. I see understanding things in terms of supervenience as an epistemic tool that it is important to know how to use. It's a matter of being able to zoom one's limited cognitive faculties in and out to look at things at different levels of abstraction. It's a matter of cognitive skill or talent.
,Quoting Count Timothy von Icarus
I'm not sure what your point is. My view is not based on that being false. My view is based on observed regularities. Including of course, sciences other than physics.
Is this related to my question, "What basis do you have to think that it is possible for a mind to exist, sans an information processing substrate for the mind to supervene upon?"
Hello Jorndoe,
A nonsequitur is not itself a deduction: the former is a hypothetical that has a false implication, and the latter is an argument wherein its premises necessitate its conclusion.
Ah, I see. However, there are plenty of sophisticated theological arguments (which are formal) for these religions, such as Christianity; of which many of its mainstream followers are unaware of. I just think this idealized vs. elaborate distinction doesnt really hold very well.
But they arent definitions, they are arguments. Aquinas defines and argues for God being a first-cause, and, thusly, his argument for that property of God is distinct from Gods definition.
The kalam cosmological argument is not supposed to prove the Christian God as existing, it simply proves (or attempts to prove) that there is a necessary being by positing the universe as contingent itself.
If one holds that the representations they have are of mentality and that alive beings are immaterial minds; then the only manner of maintaining an objective reality, which has many explanatory benefits, is to posit a universal mind, of which can be labelled as God. Thusly, God and reality become one. I find this compelling only insofar as I find objective idealism compelling, which, in turn, is predicated off of philosophy of mind (and, more specifically, giving an account of conscious experience).
I am at odds, of course, with mainstream, ill-thought out, religious views; but I wouldnt say that atheism itself is only or primarily concerned with those kinds of views: they dont focus on the bad arguments for the Gods existence. Graham Oppy, for example, which you quoted before, certainly is not concerned with mainstream religious views and bad arguments: he concerned with rebutting his theist colleagues and defending his naturalism against them.
Oh, got it. Well, I just didnt find them convincing for the reasons already stated.
My point is that people should be most confident in their private, mental life existing then anything else; which you are implying they should be confident in the abstractions of 'physical' and public knowledge and you are going so far as to say you don't know if have the mental inner life. That's backwards to me.
Sure, from that we get atomic theory, cell theory, etc. However, note my examples above. Superveniance has also led science astray, particularly, it seems, at the more fundemental levels of inquiry (physics). The idea was that there must be a substance that supervened on phenomena to explain them. This is an intuition based in metaphysics, a philosophical position driving theory. It has turned out to be very wrong in key areas, e.g., heat, fire, life, and arguably the entire concept of "fundemental particles."
Many basic phenomena have been thought of in terms of sui generis substances and turned out to be process. I am at a loss for an example where something appeared to be a process and is better explained as substance.
[Quote]
If this forum is any indication some philosophers seem to get obsessed with defining supervenience in a rigorous way. (Or tearing down attempts to do so.) It seems to me, that a person who recognizes supervenience has no need, or even use, for a rigorous definition. I see understanding things in terms of supervenience as an epistemic tool that it is important to know how to use. It's a matter of being able to zoom one's limited cognitive faculties in and out to look at things at different levels of abstraction. It's a matter of cognitive skill or talent.[/quote]
I don't deny that such a view is useful. Even in a process metaphysics, it makes sense to think of long term stabilities in process as substances in some cases. Superveniance being a practical explanatory expedient is not what I am arguing against. It is the metaphysical claim that phenomena such as consciousness must be explained primarily in terms of superveniance because substances are essential. If our grand ambition to unify the fundemental forces is ever successful, we will have reached a point where such substance no longer does any explaining because there is only one base substance. All higher level varieties of substance will then be emergent from lower processes.
Yes, directly. The view that consciousness must be explained in terms of "information processing," itself suggests that it is essentially process. Information is best thought of as a process, and "processing," is obviously a process. One of the key findings in the study of information is that it is "substrate [substance] independent." This is why conceptions of physics in which information is ontologically basic are best thought of in terms of process metaphysics. Digital physics, where "bits" are individual objects face insurmountable problems. Paul Davies covers this in "Immaterialism to Materialism and Back Again."
What exactly is going to supervene on conciousness? Throw a brain onto a table and it produces no conciousness, it requires a body, and indeed feedback from the body, input from the nervous system, the work of the endocrine system, metabolism, are all essential to explaining conciousness. Put a body in a void and you get no conciousness.
In fact, bodies can only produce conciousness in an extremely narrow range of environments. Change the composition of the surrounding atmosphere and conciousness comes to an abrupt end. Subject a body to all but a narrow range of temperatures and conciousness ceases.
How is this best explained? I would argue in the context of life being a far from thermodynamic equilibrium dynamical system. Many processes must be allowed to take place, based on a narrow set of conditions, for the process to continue.
This is the insight of embodied conciousness. It is a mistake to think "brains generate minds," because they demonstrably cannot, not alone. Minds disappear even if the structure of brains remains largely intact because it is the process that is essential. And this jives completely with computational and information theoretic theories of consciousness, because such process is substrate independent.
But then the question of superveniance is the wrong question. It reduced to "some nested processes must be in place for the process of conciousness to exist." Which is true, but trivial. Obviously if you remove some sub processes from a process it is no longer the same process.
Wouldn't these be theories of mind as emerging from a process? In your examples the substance/substrate is irrelevant.
I think the intuition that abacus beads can't form a mind is correct. However, the problem it targets merely comes from a mistaken reductive tendency to try to study conciousness as merely "what neurons do." But metabolism and feedback throughout the body are essential to conciousness. There are whole books on how the endocrine system effects conciousness that can make it seem like it is the main driver, the neurons ancillary dependants. This is obviously wrong too, the system is complex and there is a circular causality at work. "The Other Brain," is a great book on the massive amount of "work" that glial cells do in the brain. The neurons only take center stage, alone, because we have placed them there in our abstractions.
We have looked at action potentials firing because they are easy to measure and easy to model. But it's worth noting that neural networks based solely on Hebbian "fire together wire together," actually act nothing like real brains unless we force an amazing number of unnatural constraints on them. Neurotransmitters don't work through depolarization alone, they modify neuronal metabolism short to long term, change the shapes of binding sites for ligands, etc.
Then consider the evidence for quantum effects in the brain that's come out. Particle spin causing disparate psychological and physiological effects for inhaled gas, etc. Quantum activity in the brain has been argued against largely because it has become intertwined in philosophical issues over free will and goofy mysticism, and because specialists on conciousness tend to still operate under the received wisdom that there is a hard divide between a classical and quantum world, with quantum effects only occuring in very specific environments. We now know this classical/quantum hard divide to be absolutely false, but the door on criticizing this divide didn't really open up in physics until the 1990s, and so the legacy of the divide is strong.
Since quantum effects show up in photosynthesis and undergird all chemical reactions, it would be shocking if conciousness didn't involve quantum effects in some ways. I think people just conflate this with all sorts of woo that gets tagged on to anything quantum.
Why bring this up? Because it means that models based on neurons alone are likely gross simplifications. The idea that we could make brains out of water pipes rests on the assumption that if you model neuronal action potentials you model the CNS. This is very likely false in quite meaningful ways. If it is, then our intuition that abacus beads and pipes can't model conciousness might be easily vindicated. These substrates can't model brains because they are incapable of instantiating the same processes. A set of pipes replicating neuronal action potentials won't generate a mind because it isn't instantiating the same process at all, it is rather isomorphic to just a small, course grained part of the process that generates conciousness.
I personally think it's a mistake to think you could remove all the glial cells of a brain and still have conciousness, etc. This seems like a combination of looking for the keys where they light is because action potentials are easier to study and the problems of smallism, since global effects likely matter too.
:rofl:
I had forgotten how much I dislike Camus. De Beauvoir and Richard Wright (when he moved to France) were definitely the stars of that set for me.
"Everyone who disagrees with how I see the world commits a form of mental suicide. They are looking for myths to make themselves feel better. We Overmen, on the other hand, we are clear-eyed and hard. We stare into the Void and laugh, such is our great strength."
"BTW, this conception of ourselves as Overmen is totally not the sort of self-aggrandizing fantasy myth of purpose that we are critiquing. No it's totally different."
Stace, Camus, etc. crack me up. I think they did a real number on the sociology of religion too, since the idea of "religion as escapist fantasy," remains incredibly popular. This seems to require a profound lack of experience with world religions though. Most aren't comforting. The Egyptian slave remains a slave in the same unchanging order forever; how is this not absurd? The Sumerian is at the mercy of recalcitrant gods and faces a dismal afterlife. [B]What is more absurd than being raped by a swan and having that define one's identity? [/B]
The God of Calvinism is almost demonic in his desire to punish and human life is every bit as absurd as in existentialist atheism. Man is absolutely depraved and has no part in saving himself. He can do nothing and, on average, exists only to be tormented with no meaning attached to that existence save as his being an atomic instantiation of the process of divine justice a process he cannot even fathom if he is not among the elect.
IMHO Nagel's comic stance is far more endearing and he asks better questions about what could make life not absurd.
If living for 40,000 years and being the ruler of a galaxy spanning empire is still absurd due to cosmic scales, what could not be? [B]The existences of God(s) in no way seems to overcome absurdity, although this is often taken as axiomatic for some reason.[/b]. So which God, if any, overcomes absurdity? If Marxism is absurd because any progress in human history is absurd due to cosmic scales, in what sort of universe is progress not absurd? If only Earth existed would Marxism be not absurd?
It seems like there is something psychologically and philosophically deeper to the concept of absurdity and meaning here than meets the eye.
It seems to me like an atheist or theist face the same basic set of problems re absurdity; that all choice becomes meaningless from the viewpoint of absolute freedom.
https://www.google.com/url?sa=t&source=web&rct=j&opi=89978449&url=https://philosophy.as.uky.edu/sites/default/files/The%2520Absurd%2520-%2520Thomas%2520Nagel.pdf&ved=2ahUKEwiuv-Ljqr6BAxWSIUQIHbswB_gQFnoECBIQAQ&usg=AOvVaw1CdbUWlHJRrzwgiaCWZH1N
But there is still the same explanatory problem: brain states XYZ + body + quantum effects = the pain of stubbing a toe, but brain states ABC + body + quantum effects = the experience of seeing red, while brain states DEF + body + quantum effects = nothing. What is it about these brain states that leads to different experiences (or no experiences)?
Also, are you claiming it's impossible to create a mechanical analogue of a working brain + body + quantum effects? If we did, how would we know it's conscious? What if we simulated a working brain and body and quantum effects? Would the simulation be conscious?
Right, that's proven a very difficult question. If I knew the answer I'd be collecting my Nobel Prize. My point is simply that process allows for strong emergence, totally new properties. Conciousness seems to fit the bill here. Thus, it's a strong incentive to move away from a metaphysics that denies the possibility of strong emergence. But note above that there are very many other findings in the sciences that suggest this shift as well. It's an abductive move I believe.
By no means. I'm saying that the "substrate independence," of the processes that give rise to conciousness violate our intuitions because they are generally framed in terms of gross simplifications of the processes that give rise to conciousness.
"If you made a model of all the neurons in the brain from steam pipes, it would have the same experiences as the brain being modeled," sounds ridiculous, and I'd argue that it this intuition probably holds for two reasons.
1. Conciousness probably doesn't just arise from neurons.
2. More importantly, if there is only one substance/thing underlying all of reality, then process is fundemental in explaining all things. If this is true, then you simply cannot make a brain out of steam pipes or any other materials and have it actually be the same process. Different materials = different process, by definition, because "materials" emerge from lower level processes.
This is tricky because we are used to the substance view, but recall that the atoms that the brain is made of is not eternal. These emerge from process, the line between matter and energy is not absolute. Atoms are long term energy well stabilities in process, but at they are still processes with beginnings and ends. So a brain "made from steam pipes," cannot be the exact same process as an organic brain, period. [B]By making the thing out of different materials you are necessarily forming a different process, and in process more is different and different is different.[/b] Example: atoms are formed from a process that can be decomposed into field values for charge, etc., but adding more values doesn't give you more of the same basic output, instead you might get Chlorine instead of Helium.
"Information is substrate independent," is actually a misnomer in process metaphysics because substrate itself IS process. So, in pancomputationalism, the organic brain and the steam pipe brain are obviously not the same "computation," all the way down. They are instead isomorphic down to some arbitrary course grained level.
But I think it IS entirely possible that conciousness could arise from different types of materials. It's an open question. The question we have, reformated is: "at what level can we course grain the underlying process such that it doesn't effect the emergence of conciousness?"
However, I don't think MOST materials can be used to recreate a brain. A brain made of q tips and rubber bands might be simply unable to replicate the process at work in brains, particularly quantum processes.
What trips us up is that the same information can be encoded, and the same computation can be instantiated, in a variety of materials. But the different substrates do indeed make the systems different at some scale. There are simply isomorphisms between them, such that we can say they are the same at the right, arbitrary level of scale. With conciousness, the question becomes, "which isomorphisms are essential?" It's possible that almost all of the process is, in which case artificial life may need to be "grown" from cell-like structures. Hard to say since so little is known about it.
You might be right, I haven't read The Myth of Sisyphus in a while and might be conflating it with the rest of the genre. I'll maintain that it rings true to me for Man Against Darkness though, which I've read recently. Also a bit for very late Nietzsche, but I've always figured his illness played a role in the self-aggrandizement in Ecce Homo.
You know, he starts with Hamlet being nauseous because choice is absurd in The Birth of Tragedy and ends at "I am dynamite," always felt like he was getting high on his own supply.
But objective idealism doesn't reduce ontology to epistemology.
So, if I am understanding you correctly, you think that you do have compelling grounds to question that your have thoughts?
Oh, that's what I thought you were saying, since you replied "exactly" to my response saying how do you know you have thoughts if only accept public knowledge.
Whether a thought is more than what we can introspectively access does not negate the fact that we can know certain things from private knowledge, such as that we have thoughts.
... negation of "follow". (¬(p ? q))
Quoting Bob Ross
As already mentioned (except, incidentally point 2 above, again):
Quoting jorndoe
Quoting Bob Ross
Whether supposed to or not, it can't, hence mentioned gap (+ admission). [sup](Aquinas, notes)[/sup] There's been threads on the (kalam) cosmological argument before. The veracity/relevance thereof might be a topic in its own right. Feel free to fire one up, if you have something worthwhile.
Quoting Bob Ross
So far, it's just an observation (not an argument as such) that you've not really given much reason to dismiss.
Quoting Bob Ross
You define God = "a universal mind" due to Levine's explanatory gap / Chalmers' mind conundrum...? :brow: Either way, I suggest you make a realism versus idealism case in a thread of its own; it's not specifically related to theism. Seems like some comments in the thread are going that way.
Quoting Bob Ross
You find "supernatural magic" a fine explanation...? :confused:
Quoting On the Sacred Disease (Wikipedia)
Yep, Christina did bring some good evidence/points to the table.
This is an informal, inductive fallacy known as a faulty generalization. We can't conclude that because certain explanations from theists have proven to have been wrong in the past that they are therefore wrong in all of their explanations. For example, if we have natural explanations for lightning and rain now, that doesn't mean the theist's explanations that God created the universe and life are incorrect.
This is another informal inductive fallacy of faulty generalization. All the inconsistency of religions proves is that they can't all be true, not that they all are false. From the point of view of the Christian, only one religion needs to be true for their beliefs to be valid. And in fact, this is exactly what they teach -- that Christianity is the one, true religion.
This is a subjective assessment and an opinion only. Many theists find religious arguments, explanations and apologetics to be quite compelling.
No theist is likely to grant that God has diminished in any way. Going back to point 1, less supernatural explanations may be offered to explain things as our understanding of the world improves and we replace them with natural explanations, but that that doesn't mean God is rendered smaller or lesser in any way that is relevant to a Christian's beliefs, i.e. that what is really important is the personal relationship between man and God, salvation and the hope of an afterlife.
Another informal inductive fallacy since this doesn't prove the religion is false. If someone believes something to be true, of course they are going to pass it down through their family.
A theist may concede that there are mysteries on this topic that neither side can currently explain. For the theist, there is the problem of how the immaterial soul interacts with the material body. For the naturalist, there is the hard problem of consciousness. Neither of them, however, will concede that their lack of a current explanation disproves their own position.
The theist can argue that supernatural phenomena are qualitatively different than natural phenomena and therefore we can't hold testing of such to the same standards or expect the same results. For example, if natural phenomena are regulated by natural laws, we can expect to be able replicate our tests with the same or similar results. But if supernatural phenomena are agency driven by a supernatural being acting of its own free will (God, an angel, a demon, etc.), then we have no reason to expect them to display the same regularity as phenomena governed by natural laws.
This is a subjective opinion. Many theists will assert they are remarkably consistent about their religious and spiritual beliefs, and may point out of the list of the attributes of God has stayed consistent for hundreds or even thousands of years (omniscience, omnipotence, omnibenevolence, omnipresence, eternality, etc.). In any case, a theist who alters or modifies his beliefs in response to objections or recognition of inconsistencies doesn't prove all of his beliefs are incorrect. As an example, a theist may give up a particular doctrine yet still retain his core religious beliefs about God.
Theists could argue that this doesn't disprove a religion, as a religion doesn't need to improve or clarify in order to be true. One could even argue that a religion that is static could be a good thing if it means its teachings are true and unchanging. Alternately, theists may argue that theology is the study of God and has improved and clarified humanity's understanding of God over time, and that in some cases additional revelations have improved or clarified religion (e. g. the New Testament being about new revelations from God, the doctrine of the Trinity being discovered or revealed, etc.).
Again, this is a subjective opinion, since many theists will point out what they consider to be solid evidence which may be citations of medical miracles of naturally unexplained healing, group miracles like the Miracle of Fatima, out of body experiences, near death experiences, etc. Additionally, they may point to arguments like the Cosmological, Fine-Tuning, and others related to physical reality as being solid evidence for God's existence. If the theist is using facts about physical reality to prove God's existence, what is more solid than that?
Most of Christinas points rely on a comparison of religious modes of inquiry and scientific method. But her assumptions about how science proceeds amounts to scientism, which confuses itself with science. Scientism assumes a single scientific method which offers a mode of access to truth that is superior to all other modes. Im a dyed-in-the-wool atheist but I believe that neither a religious belief nor a scientific paradigm can be proved true or false. In other words, evidence does not enable us to choose between rival paradigms, because change in science assumptions is neither deductive nor inductive. Instead, it involves shifts in metaphysical presuppositions, just as does change in religious belief. If religious belief doesnt evolve then neither does scientific theory.
Im an atheist not because religion lacks evidence or is untrue but because I find my worldview allows the world to make sense to me in a more elegant and harmonious way.
:up:
Which atheists claim it does? I am also an atheist and I don't claim that the fact that lightening is a natural phenomena and not a product of angry gods, proves gods do not exist, it just provides further evidence against god posits. You are claiming that atheism and atheists are making claims, neither is making.
Quoting GRWelsh
This offers no new insight. The odds of the Christian faith being the only true one, out of thousands of other, equally valid theistic proposals, remains probabilistically, very low indeed, despite the conviction of Christians.
Quoting GRWelsh
Many flat Earthers believe the Earth is flat. In 1 and 2 you tried to use fallacy as an argument and then in 3, you attempt an ad populum fallacy yourself.
Quoting GRWelsh
How about deconstructing theists?
Quoting GRWelsh
Yes it does, as they are then forced to alter their already bad apologetics, that they have previously used.
At this point I became bored, making the effort to respond to an atheist, playing a devil's advocate role for theists. I am not against trying to steelman the opposition, but only if the arguments used are valuable. So, I will leave it there.
The only difference is, and where God has no place in the scientific community is when asking well what came before the Big Bang? to which the scientist can simply say we dont know or propose various theories whereas the theist could just simply say God created it, which is as equally valid a theory as any proposed by science as the theory itself is unprovable.
But it does baffle the mind that when looking at various scientific phenomena such as lighting one can not but be in awe of its power though we know the explanation behind it.
The op is also a bit disingenuous and dismissive of some great Christian scientists such as Newton to name one of the heavyweights to prove such attention seeking point by a pretty much minor and unknown scientist such as Greta Christina,
Strawman. If not, then cite an atheist who is also a scientist (i.e. astrophysicist / cosmologist) who makes this claim.
Erm, how about Stephen Hawking?
https://www.theguardian.com/science/2010/sep/02/stephen-hawking-big-bang-creator
Admittedly I havent read his book a brief history of time, tried to a long time in my teens but was beyond me at the time so I dont know exactly his views then regarding creation theory of universe but as far as the article Ive linked is concerned he mostly says science did it rather than God by invoking laws of gravity in its creation rather than god. Perhaps Im misreading him and your comprehension is better
Thanks for defining what science is. And its not meaningless at all as science tries to supplant god in explanatory power of what created the universe which is what the article Ive linked is proposing so I dont know how Ive misread it.
The more persistent proxy or synonym for "magic" or "fantasy" or "the impossible" is that three-letter word for ego: "God" because "God did it" doesn't explain anything just as "God said it" does not justify anything either. Science is a discipline for collaboratively striving to explain by best approximations which are more efficacious, publicly testable and reliably corroborable than (fact-free, faith-based) non-explanations such as "God". The results of natural sciences work regardless of what we believe or do not believe, and teaches its students and practicioners to say, and explore, I Do Not Know :fire: instead of infantilizing themselves as adults by sucking on cosmic lollipops.
I would argue that science is in fact an agent or a method for discovering about the natural world and invention but by calling it an agent rather than a method we would be arguing about the definition of science which seems the direction you want to take this discussion towards. Science did it was me being literal but you get the gist. You could replace science for gravity in this instance which is a scientific term instead. So now weve changed propositions from the magical God to the magical Gravity as gravitons elude science as much as god does to an atheist.
To me the question is simpler than that and even Aristotle considered in his proposal of a first cause which is what this discussion of God ultimately boils down to.
This article elaborates it better, read at your convenience the implications of detecting gravitons and how they relate to the Big Bang. You might learn something.
https://www.nature.com/articles/nature.2013.13834
And this for context of how science tries to get rid of God in favour of a theory of everything:
https://www.sciencefocus.com/science/what-are-gravitons-and-do-they-really-exist
Hello jorndoe,
I am failing to understand what you are contending with here: it seems you just re-stated what I told you. My point was that those arguments were not deductions, and a non-sequitur is not a deductive argument.
If a conclusion is outside of the scope of the intended consequences of an argument, then it is not a gap.
No I dont.
To be precise, science explains nothing either. Science describes the physical world: Hydrogen + Oxygen = water. But what is hydrogen? Well, a proton and an electron. What is an electron? No explanation. Nobody knows what an electron is. Science tells us what electrons do but does not explain what they are. All of science is in this situation so nothing is explained.
Religion: God did it. Fair enough.
Science: It is happening. Fair enough.
But what is an electron?
Well, to be even more precise, scientific theories cannot explain everything and whatever they explain they can only do so approximately.
Philosophy, as Wittgenstein points out, only describes how we use concepts (by which to interpretively frame 'experience') whereas unfalsified theories in science are used to explain model the conditional causal relations of transformations from one physical state-of-affairs to another. AFAIK, (fundamental) sciences are hypothetico-deductive (i.e. experimental) and not merely inductive (i.e. experiential) as per Popper vs Hume, et al. It's philosophy, in fact, that "explains nothing" about the world (i.e. existence & reality) but instead non-trivially interprets whatever we think we know about the world, etc.
"The big questions" are, at best, conceptual lenses (prisms) through which we orient our lives, loves & livelihoods. IMO, you make a category mistake, EnPassant, when you criticise science for not doing philosophy and/or employ philosophy to undertake scientific tasks.
I'm not criticizing science. I'm simply saying it is not an improvement on 'God did it'.
:roll: I guess you do not understand the point I'm making ...
Quoting 180 Proof
I do. I was responding to this-
Quoting jorndoe
I'm simply saying that science is no improvement on philosophy/religion when it comes to the big questions. I'm not criticizing science or saying it should be anything other than what it is.
And I'm saying your statement is nonsense because science is not used to address "the big questions" so it can't be even "no improvement" on them. That 's like saying: "Well finally that bachelor has stopped beating his wife." :roll:
Well that's just semantics. In common parlance 'science' has a broader meaning and the word is used loosely.
Here's a headline: "Security Council meeting called to discuss Moscow's recent devastating attacks on the key port of Odesa immediately following its refusal to ..."
Now, we are not going to split hairs over what 'Moscow' means in this context.
It is moot whether these natural explanations are such. Each case would have to be discussed individually.
Often 'supernatural explanations' are very secondary to essential religious teaching.
2. inconsistency of world religions
Religion is a language that is meant to express spiritual truths.
As such it is subject to all kinds of distortions and mistranslations (not just literal).
But essential religious teaching is concerned with The Way or The Tao. There is a right way of being
and a wrong way.
3. weakness of religious arguments, explanations, and apologetics
Debatable.
4. increasing diminishment of god
Unclear what this means. Human knowledge does not diminish God.
5. fact that religion runs in families
That can be true of atheism. Also, consider a spirit that desires to be born into a religious family (birds of the feather...)...
6. physical causes of everything we think of as the soul
Physical systems are associate with mind. Correlation is not necessarily causation.
7. complete failure of any sort of supernatural phenomenon to stand up to rigorous testing
Many would disagree. Besides, why would God submit to this?
8. slipperiness of religious and spiritual beliefs
Vague.
9. failure of religion to improve or clarify over time
True to an extent but that tells you more about human failure than anything else.
Even religion can become neglected, distorted.
10. complete lack of solid evidence for god's existence
Debatable. In fact that is the debate.
Buddhism
Catholic
Hindu
Islam
Judaism
Protestant
They all seem to have different God for their own religion. So there are too many Gods, and I don't know which God is the real God.
If you believed in Buddhism, you could become a God yourself, if you get the full nirvana and enlightenment after so many years of studies, meditations and prayers. I am not quite sure if you are upgraded to a Buddhist God, you could expect to get any divine privileges such as immortality, omnipotency , omnipresence, omniscience, or resurrection after death etc. If not, what's the point?
In the case of Hindu, there are many different Gods for different areas of work they do just like the Greek Gods in the Homeric times.
The rest has their own God and the holy scriptures, traditions and beliefs. So which God do you have to believe? Or do you have to believe them all, if one is religious?
Other options are, of course, don't believe them all (atheist), or keep open minded as an agnostic.