:clap: Excellent post!

I agree with you about opposing injustices that are religiously motivated (or not religiously motivated for that matter). I don't view religious beliefs in terms of being right or wrong, though. And I don't think that injustices would be justifiable even if it could somehow be proven that they were the will of God.

:up: :cool:

I may have misunderstood you as having something relevant to say with regards to the debate I was pursuing with Hanover as that's where you interjected. — Baden

I did have something relevant to say which was to disagree with this:

And to call it an "atheistic belief system" is misleading because it suggests that this element is the primary ideological force behind it when its not as it's a socioeconomic theory. — Baden

Despite your protestations I still think it is justifiable to say that communism (Marxism) is an atheistic belief system, even an anti-theistic belief system, which is clearly attested by Marx's statement you quoted above.

It would not be justifiable to refer to it as an atheistic belief system if the sole criterion for counting as such was that it was predominately concerned, and spent most of its discourse, with arguing against theism; that much I would agree with.

Also, I'm not entirely happy with your characterization of my response as an "interjection"; this is an open forum, man.

Again, I don't object to pointing out the evils carried out against the religious by those who were nominally atheist or communist. But I do object to the fuzzy thinking, misrepresentation, and caricature going on here. — Baden

Religious suffering is, at one and the same time, the expression of real suffering and a protest against real suffering. Religion is the sigh of the oppressed creature, the heart of a heartless world, and the soul of soulless conditions. It is the opium of the people.

The abolition of religion as the illusory happiness of the people is the demand for their real happiness. To call on them to give up their illusions about their condition is to call on them to give up a condition that requires illusions. The criticism of religion is, therefore, in embryo, the criticism of that vale of tears of which religion is the halo. — Marx

I read what you have quoted as a statement that religion is a poor substitute for "real happiness" and that people must be called upon "to give up a condition that requires illusions" (theism) so that they can "give up their illusions about their condition".

It seems clear that Marx thought that religion entailed illusions that would keep the masses slumbering. He may have felt sympathy for people's illusions, but that does not mean that he did not want them to give them up. It seems clear to me that this is central to his project. If you disagree, fine, but you have offered nothing that brings me to be less certain of my interpretation.

The suggestion that my thinking on this is "fuzzy" a "misrepresentation" or a "caricature" needs some actual argument to support it.

Yes, as I said, that is an element of Marxist theory. One that he spends a tiny proportion of his writings on and that one line is all many people know of Marx, which is a pity. — Baden

Although a tiny proportion of Marx's writings may treat of theism, atheism seems obviously to be a central plank of his theory. The masses need to be mobilized and how are the masses to be awakened if they are mesmerized by theism?

I grant that orthodox Marxism, which I think Marxism-Leninism is the canonical case of (with an incredible amount of records to boot), is atheistic. But I want people to know there really are other variants. — Moliere

Yes, I agree and was only addressing orthodox Marxism. Theism, insofar as it promotes the idea of loving thy neighbour as thyself is more at odds with capitalism than with socialism per se.

:cool:

Sure, but it's a socioeconomic theory that does not merely not require God, but one which cannot tolerate God, since "religion is the opiate of the masses", and the masses must be awakened from their slumber.

The motivation is self defense. When theism wants to teach creationism in schools or prevent gay people from getting married then we must argue. — DingoJones

Right, but there are no doubt many theists that agree that the state should not have policy dictated by religion, and this doesn't happen much nowadays in the West in any case.

I don’t know if antitheism is an ideology — DingoJones

I think it is because it proclaims that humanity would be better off without theism.

I don’t think you need to be an ideologue to argue against theism, as mentioned above theists give you plenty of reason to argue without the need to be an ideologue. — DingoJones

Yes, in a context like this forum where people are here to express their views, and should be prepared to have them critiqued, I agree that those arguing on either side are not necessarily ideologues.

But if those on either side are heavily invested in the idea that humanity would be better off with or without God, then those people would count as ideologues.

Marxism, if not all forms of communism, is certainly fundamentally atheistic, in that it posits that the prime mover in human affairs is not God, but control of the means of production. The attempt to realize its aims, to put control of the means and enjoyment of the fruits of production back into the hands of the actual producers, cannot tolerate an "opiate" such as theism that would confuse and distract the people from claiming their rightful heritage.

Atheism has no ideology. Thats why you always have to mention communism and marxism etc along with the atheism. Atheism alone has no edicts, no rules, no goals…its merely a position on theism. — DingoJones

If atheism consisted merely in a lack of theism; I wonder where the motivation to argue for it would derive.

It seems to me that atheism would in many cases consist merely in lack of theism, and it seems likely that we don't get any argument coming from those people; we probably don't hear their voices, just as we don't hear from probably the vast majority of theists, who just live and let live.

There seems to be no doubt that in many cases atheism is actually anti-theism; and in those cases it would certainly count as an ideology. Likewise theism may or may not be anti-atheism.

On both sides, I would argue, we find the ideologues; one side arguing that everyone ought to believe in God and the other side arguing that everyone ought not believe in God.

Of course you do. Because the alternative would require you to entertain the possibility that you might actually be mistaken. — Isaac

I accept the idea that I might be mistaken, but you have given me no good reason to think that I am. Do you accept that you might be mistaken?

:up:

It bears repeating: good people will be good and bad people will be bas but for a good person to be bad you need religion. — DingoJones

Or some other ideology.

:up:

I was actually highlighting the fact that your text had "atheist" instead of "theist", not correcting you on the spelling of proselytize. :smile:

Not unequivocal proofs:


There are genuine conceptual difficulties implicit in this question. The transition from the rational numbers to the real numbers is a difficult one, and it took a long time and a lot of thought to make it truly rigorous. It has been pointed out in other answers that the notation 0.999999…
is just a shorthand notation for the infinite geometric series ∑n=1∞9(110)n, which has sum 1. This is factually correct, but still sweeps some of the conceptual questions under the carpet. There are questions to be addressed about what we mean when we write down (or pretend to) an infinite decimal, or an infinite series. Either of those devices is just a shorthand notation which mathematicians agree will represent some numbers, given a set of ground rules. Let me try to present an argument to suggest that if the notation 0.99999… is to meaningfully represent any real number, then that number could be nothing other than the real number 1, if we can agree that some truths are "self-evident".

Surely we can agree that the real number it represents can't be strictly greater than 1
, if it does indeed represent a real number. Let's now convince ourselves that it can't be a real number strictly less than 1, if it makes any sense at all. Well, if it was a real number r<1, that real number would be greater than or equal to ∑n=1k9(110)n for any finite integer k. This last number is the decimal 0.99…9 which terminates after k occurrences of 9, and differs from 1 by 110k. Since 0<r<1, there is a value of k such that 110k<1−r, so 1−110k>r. Hence ∑n=1k9(110)n>r. But this can't be, because we agreed that r should be greater than or equal to each of those truncated sums.

Have I proved that the recurring decimal is equal to 1? Not really- what I have proved is that if we allow that recurring decimal to meaningfully represent any real number, that real number has to be 1, since it can't be strictly less than 1 and can't be strictly greater than 1. At this point, it becomes a matter of convention to agree that the real number 1 can be represented in that form, and that convention will be consistent with our usual operations with real numbers and ordering of the real numbers, and equating the expression with any other real number would not maintain that consistency.

From here

But that's what the example of the Incas disproves. No one wants to be left on a hillside to die. Yet it was not proscribed. — Isaac

Such acts are only performed in a ritual context when what is seen as some overarching context trumps what individuals want. Besides I am speaking broadly, an exception or a few exceptions, even if they were not religious exceptions, would not disprove the general rule.

On what grounds do you claim this. It could just as easily be that the killings which are prohibited will be those which most harm the powerful. — Isaac

Then why are rape, murder, theft and lying generally prohibited in most societies? Sure it may be the case that those who have entrenched themselves in power can transgress such prohibitions, or make a special exception from the rule for themselves, without completely undermining social harmony, but so what?

Your points seem so trivial and carping that sometimes I think you just like to argue for the sake of it.

Right, but I'm not convinced it is something which has evolved by natural selection, at least in human societies, so much as something which is simply chosen for pragmatic reasons.

Of course I could be wrong, especially if humans have evolved from earlier anthropoid species which acted more on instinct than rational choice, like other social animals presumably do. I also don't want to diminish the role of empathy, fellow feeling, in moral choices.

The point is that all societies will prohibit anything which is detrimental to their harmonious functioning. I haven't claimed that all societies would have exactly the same conceptions of murder, rape, lying and stealing. I believe that broadly speaking all societies would prohibit acts that they interpreted to be of those four kinds because broadly speaking no one wants to be raped, murdered, stolen from or lied to.

It's the definition of the word - 'those killings which we prohibit' — Isaac

The killings which will be prohibited are the ones that will cause social disharmony or at least unmanageable social disharmony; it's just pragmatism at work.

This is true for how the in group is treated in different societies. But many societies that thrived had no problem murdering, stealing and raping their outsiders. — PhilosophyRunner

Yes, we are no different, on the group level, from animals in that regard.

It is much more posiible now to develop a global notion of humanity than it has bee in the padt. It is arguable that our survival depends on it.

Here is an excerpt from wikipedia about a society that was very successful, and yet murdered their children: — PhilosophyRunner

That's an anachronistic and tendentious way of framing it; they would not have thought of it as murder

fundamentalist
noun [ C ]
religion
uk
/ˌfʌn.dəˈmen.təl.ɪst/ us
/ˌfʌn.dəˈmen.t̬əl.ɪst/
someone who believes in traditional forms of a religion, or believes that what is written in a holy book, such as the Christian Bible, is completely true:
Muslim/Christian fundamentalists
The organization had been taken over by religious fundamentalists.

From here:

Also see Fundamentalism.

Apparently I thought I was in a different thread; so I was addressing what I thought was a claim that science can never investigate the first person nature of consciousness. I should have looked more closely before responding.

That said, I think the MWI is just another speculative attempt to address the apparently paradoxical character of the collapse of the wave-function. The Copenhagen interpretation, decoherence and hidden variables are others, as far as I know, and what counts as an "observer" seems to be the crux of the issue, but admittedly I don't know much about the subject.

If I am right and they are all just interpretations, then it would seem there could be no decidable resolution as to which is the "correct" one. In any case which interpretation is the correct one, even if it were possible to decide, really has no bearing on the practice of QM. Scientific theories are never provably true; we just know they work or don't work as predictive tools.

Right now the presuppostionalists (via Kant's TAG) are huge in evangelical Christianity, as are the Lane Craig neophyte apologists who are all about Aquinas 5 ways arguments. Curiously many are better on reason than they are on the Bible which most appear not to have read. The internet is bursting with Christians and Muslims proving god via reason. — Tom Storm

Would you say they qualify as fundamentalists? My idea of fundamentalists is that they believe the bible is literally the word of God and thus is infallible.

Much debate to me seems to be emotion dressed up in rationalist clothing. — Tom Storm

I agree. What I wanted to highlight there, though, is the idea that if you experience God speaking to you, then you have direct knowledge that God exists.

I think the same goes for claims that karma or rebirth is real; if someone who has permanently attained a state of non-dual awareness says that they are real, then they must be real because the claim that they are real comes from the direct knowing that is believed to characterize enlightenment.

I disagree with that because I don't believe anything discursive (dualistic) can be known non-dually. All such experiences are subject to subsequent dualistic interpretations, usually in terms of the metaphysical beliefs embedded in the cultural context the enlightened one or non-dual experiencer find themselves within.

I don't see how atheists can be partial to non-fundamentalist religions. Unless, of course, they practice patience, and the atheists do not try to proselyze. — god must be atheist

Did you mean to write "and the theists do not try to proselytize"? Otherwise I can't make sense of your statement.

I don't seem to have stirred up any disagreement. — praxis

Disagreement with your statement or with your justification for making it? I don't pretend to know whether there are many theists who act as though they believe in everlasting life, since I have met so vanishingly few of them in relation to how many there presumably are in the world.

I think they can come to mirror each other more because to a great extent atheism's chief fight is with fundamentalism, which, for all the claims of faith, is founded on argumentation - proofs of god, etc, which has shoehorned a lot of freethinking into contesting these arguments. And fair enough. — Tom Storm

Yes, I share atheism's anti-fundamentalism, but when this becomes itself a fundamentalist crusade against all forms and shades of theism, I part company with atheists.

I don't think fundamentalists are really concerned with any rational arguments for the existence of God; I think they generally take scripture as being the literal word of God, and believe that God speaks to them through the Book.

I have a personal bias against "proofs" of God; I think they, like any deductive arguments, are only as good as their premises, and the premises come down to faith, even if many claim to directly know via personal experience.

I think that such claims ignore the fact that experience doesn't directly tell us anything propositional at all about the nature of reality, about God, immortality or freedom.

As Kant pointed out practical reason is always the handmaid to faith and conviction.

The more important moral norms are, in my view, pretty much universal for merely pragmatic reasons and this ties in with Kant's deontology (which is a kind of non-particular consequentialism writ large). Any society that condoned lying, theft, rape and murder could not survive, let alone thrive.

I sometimes reflect on the asymmetry between atheism and theism. As far as believers are concerned, God is not a social theory or internet talking point, but the most important fact about life. For them, 'life everlasting' is real, and so the lack of it is a real loss, an inestimable tragedy. Whereas for atheism, it's only a matter of a false belief, which can't have any significance beyond the sociological or affective, because it doesn't stand for anything real in the first place. And I can't see any way to square that circle. — Wayfarer

Yes, there is an asymmetry, one might even say a fundamental misunderstanding, there between atheism and (at least some forms of) theism. I'm referring to the non-propositional aspect of religion; religion as praxis; atheism would seem to entail no particular praxis.

Atheism and theism do mirror one another in their guises as fundamentalisms; as counterarguments about "what is the case". They also mirror one another in their guises as ideology; purporting to know what it is right or best to believe for everyone in general.

I think the perceived sociological, and even affective, implications of theistic belief or lack of it, are not insignificant concerns for either atheists or theists, or at least not for the serious ones.

and they rarely behave as though they actually believe it. — praxis

That's a rather sweeping statement!

I'm not aware of any book or article addressing atheist views on Spinoza's God, for example. — Ciceronianus

Nor am I.

How then will it be determined whether that turns out to be the case?

A more interesting question would be whether atheists generally are intent on refuting belief in any and all forms of deity or transcendence. And if so, what motivates them to concern themselves with the beliefs of others. Are atheists commonly also atheologists? Antitheists, antitheologists and antimetaphysicians perhaps?

It would be better to simply recognise there are things science is unable to ascertain and leave it at that. As a general rule, knowing you don’t know something is preferable to thinking you know something that you don’t. — Wayfarer

The irony in this statement is that it seems to be based on you thinking that you know what science can and cannot ascertain, rather than leaving it as an open question to be determined by further inquiry.

That said, I agree that when it comes to first person experience; there seems to be no imaginable way that science could study it apart from accepting first person reports as to what it is, or what it seems to be, since it is not an inter-subjectively observable phenomenon. Because their veracity does not seem to be independently checkable, accepting first person reports would seem to be outside the scope of the scientific method as generally conceived.

But does it follow that no one should try to come up with some approach that has not been previously thought of or tried? It seems that Dennett has proposed something along these lines with his heterophenomenology. I don't know enough about current neuroscientific work to say whether this kind of approach is actually being practiced, or practiced widely. Another approach which I think is being practiced, possibly more widely, is neurophenomenology

I don't get upset when someone presents a reasoned argument against something I've said. Sometimes the point tells against mine, and other times the underlying assumptions are so different that we talk past one another, which can certainly be annoying from the point of view of wasting time and energy.

For me the most annoying thing is when others claim to be addressing what you've said and yet it is impossible to find anything of relevance there. And then when you bring it to their attention they double down by claiming they've already addressed your point and refuse to offer any explanation for how what they've said could be relevant. Then it's time to walk away.

All I've been presenting here are my opinions, you don't have to agree with them, but if you want to argue against them you need to pick something I've actually said and say what you think is wrong with it. Or if you want to claim I've said "different" things which contradict each other, then quote them. If you don't want to respond I don't care, but if you respond with irrelevancies I'm going to call you out on it.

.

Looks interesting Edmund, thanks for the recommendation.

One of the more interesting themes that I find recurring in Proust is the way in which an experience is thought to be enhanced through the benefit of some predisposing information as to its supposed sublimity. Often, however, the actual experience comes up wanting, as the trivialities of the moment intrude upon the "merely real." And if reality can be merely real, can something else can be more than real? — Pantagruel

I think it's just a matter of a shift in consciousness. The "merely real" is the sublime, when "the trivialities of the moment" do not intrude upon it, or in other words, are not seen as trivial.

William Blake:

To see a World in a Grain of Sand
And a Heaven in a Wild Flower
Hold Infinity in the palm of your hand
And Eternity in an hour

1. God is that than which nothing greater can be conceived.
2. If god is not real then God is not that than which nothing greater can be conceived.
Ergo,
3. God is (merely) real. — Agent Smith

Defusion:

The idea of God is the idea of that than which nothing greater can be conceived. I'll leave the rest for you to fill in.

The rules are not unproven. — Banno

Neither proven nor unproven.

The point, as small one, is that there is a distinction between stipulating a rule and taking it as self-evident. — Banno

I think the same can be said for at least some of the supposed principles of metaphysics - things such as the identity of indiscernibles, the principle of non-contradiction, the principle of causality and so on - just ways of playing the game. The rules are not unproven. — Banno

Self-evident does not strictly equate to proven. The three principles you mentioned above certainly seem self-evident, axiomatic, in ways that the rules of poker do not.

↪Janus


That's not true. You can see it. You may or may not understand or agree with it, but you can definitely see that I addressed something you said. I quoted it verbatim.

In fact, I quoted you twice and complimented the clarity of the second quote. — creativesoul

Here's the "compliment:

If I say "This car is made of steel" this assertion can be publicly checked and confirmed or disconfirmed. If I say " This thought I'm having is about a car made of steel" this assertion is not publicly checkable and cannot be confirmed or disconfirmed. — Janus


If that's all you meant, it's much more helpful - to me anyway - to understand you by saying that rather than the other stuff you said leading up to it. The above is easily understood.

That's one reason why I disagree with the position you're arguing for. — creativesoul

You haven't identified what "other stuff" I said and precisely what parts you disagree with. And then in this I've quoted above you say "it's much more helpful" and then go on to say "that's one reason why I disagree with the position you're arguing for" but it's not clear what you disagree with or what your reason for disagreement is. Murky!

A tree does not consist of sense. — creativesoul

This is the one clear disagreement, and it's not with anything I said. I referred to objects of sense, meaning publicly available objects which may be seen, examined and their characteristics described by anyone. A tree is an example of such an object, but I nowhere said or implied that such objects "consist of sense".

Since I can't see how any of you have addressed anything I've actually said, I have no response to make.

I feel the same as you Manuel; not enough time to do justice to being the thread creator. As I said already, I think it is a paradigmatically murky topic, and discussions of it never seem to get anywhere anyway, so perhaps best to leave it.

Of course, I'm not going to say that there is something red-like on top of the colour red, that statement has no meaning. — Manuel

So, you agree there are no red quales?

That's not how my intuition of experience feels at all. I don't think of an inner world of qualia, I think of objects having colours. — Manuel

Then I'm not seeing where you disagree with Dennett. If you want to make another thread I'll participate.