Who is 'we'? — Wayfarer

Who are you?

I have become boring and repetitive, I think i need to move on from this issue until there are some new ideas to respond to.

But Tom Storms response doesn't recognise the argument it's responding to. What I am calling out with reference to the quote by Richard Lewontin, — Wayfarer

Lewontin is just one of many people who have proposed this kind of response and I think I responded to it fine.

And an even more important point, is that the materialist view is not more 'proven' than any other worldview. It can't be proven, because it is not a specific, testable claim about a specific thing, or class of things, but a claim about the nature of the world. — Wayfarer

This is a disingenuous line of reasoning. I have repeatedly said we don't have capital T truth. We don't have access to ultimate reality. We don't even know if there is an ultimate reality. There's no doubt that ideas about materialism may come to be more complex and interesting than we currently understand it to be. But if it can be identified and measured, it is still materialism.

Worldviews are not all alike they are not equally valid, which is what your comments might lead some people to think. We currently do have access to propositions and approaches and models which provide consistent and reliable results and knowledge in the only world we can claim to know. Outside of methodological materialism and the scientific method, no one else has been able to do this.

Look at the Templeton Foundation's study on the effect of prayer on patient outcomes in the mid naughties. This particular worldview (Christianity) failed to provide any results and in fact some people fared worse when prayed for. Naturally enough, the worldview of scientific medicine saves lives every day and this can approach can be demonstrated empirically and repeatedly.

There are lots of games we can play about what we really know. As people boringly point out, you can't disprove that you are a brain in a vat and everything is an illusion. The problem of hard solipsism cannot be readily overcome. But is anyone here going to walk into the path of traffic on the basis that everything is an illusion?

If someone can provide good evidence of just one robust example of a supernatural claim being true, let's hear it. I'd love to be wrong.

IMO, there redundant and/or tautological and/or 'grammatical' in some Wittgensteinian sense — norm

Early or late Wittgenstein?

You may be right. I would like to hear a solid academic account of this. We know the axioms are tautologies. They are also called that by some.

I only commented on your response, which was disrespectful to Wayfarer and anyone with religious beliefs. I responded snippily. — T Clark

We are having a debate about complex and personal things. Look out someone might get hurt! That's how it works and I was only responding to something Wayfarer said about views like mine which was an equally robust jibe. Wayfarer and I get on just fine - I like him a great deal and we are simply talking shop.

You may notice that people who do not accept supernatural beliefs and assert methodological naturalism as the only reliable tool for knowledge tend to fall victim to a lot of pretty demeaning feedback about being narrow minded, unimaginative, blind, short sighted, judgmental, fundamentalist and dogmatic.

Smug and self-satisfied, but wrong, — T Clark

T Clark - have some respect and do not resort to name calling. If you think what I said about science destroying the fantasy life of many people isn't true or 'smug' then listen to the stories of people who attend Recovering from Religion a large world-wide peer support group who document precisely this phenomenon. That's where I heard this expression. Surviving religion is a very hard struggle for many people and to call this insight self-satisfied is quite wrong.

As a start, there are a number of single celled creatures which do show crude awareness and possibly even a small degree of intelligence without a brain. The single celled amoeba – Didinium swims around and preys on other cells – paralysing them with darts that it fires before it eats them… implying intent, targeting, and recognition. — Gary Enfield

When I said no consciousness without a brain I was not referring to simple celled creatures which may or may not have awareness or brains. Given I believe in evolution, there would no doubt have been a point when nascent 'not quite' consciousness went with nascent 'not quite' brains. Not really a useful distinction in my mind. Maybe I should have said where is consciousness without a material host?

And this single-mindedness is because scientific materialism is a direct descendant of the belief in the 'jealous God'. — Wayfarer

There's an awful lot of work put in by theists and other spear carriers for the supernatural to try to show that atheism is just bad religion. But this is no argument, it is just simple name calling. It's understandable, there's a lot of anger towards science because it has destroyed the fantasy life of many people.

The problem is no one has yet provided any evidence that there is a God or any kind of supernatural realm. And no one has found a pathway to any reliable knowledge other than though methodological realism. I would never say that science is 100% certain or that humans can have access to capital T truth. But we know what works and what is merely speculation or fantasy.

I hear you, Brother.

There is another hurdle for the theists: what is god's nature, and what attributes does it have? Nothing can be hung on him (no pun intended) that is not purely belief, or unsupported superstition. Nobody knows anything about the real god, if one exists, so how can some pretend to assume god is this way or the other way. This applies to all scriptures: fiction. Not substantiated, and therefore they contain less believability by empirical, speculative or a priori considerations, than conspiracy theories. — god must be atheist

I think this is a common view but not sure it has much impact on the debate. There are many people who believe they have access to knowledge about God and see evidence of God's works. All you are saying is you disagree. And there are many others who say God is meant to be a mystery. Read some sophisticated theology (if you can bear it) the debate is far more complex and nuanced.

Meaning and logic are human's tools to explain things. In and by themselves they don't exist. If there were no human minds, logic would not exist, nor would meaning. Meaning, in and by itself, is nothing but a process or else part of the process or else else a convention to recreate reality as models of reality in the humans' minds. — god must be atheist

So what? The point - they would argue - is that logic was created by God for humans. Of course it has no application for a rock. But neither has morality. And can you prove the axioms don't exist in heaven in some neo-Platonist realm? I have seen philosophers really struggle to manage this.

"Who is the absolute reactionary? The person who joins the Communist Party, and immediately upon acceptance for membership commits suicide, only in order to have one less communist party member." — god must be atheist

Nice joke. :up:

If there were a god, it would be overwhelmingly obvious that there is a god. — Banno

Problem is you are choosing your version of 'overwhelmingly obvious'. The believer sees God in all things. Feels God inside them. Says that God deliberately remains elusive for X reasons. Hence the problem. The fact that you and I require an actual God to show up and say, 'Here I am kids, I can clear this up in a second' has no impact on many arguments, like the notion of divine hiddenness. Or Deism wherein God created the world and then went away.

For me a hidden God is functionally exactly the same as no God. There would still be no good reason to believe.

Still, I'm not fond of the 'law' metaphor. — norm

I don't like it because it sets up the idea that if there are laws there must be a lawmaker. I prefer the term logical axioms. But as far as we can tell, they are absolute. You cannot have any discourse without them. As soon as you argue against them you are using them to do this.

To me this is a strange thought. Why should our logic be perfectly correct? — norm

It's not strange, it is a venerable academic argument. He may not know it but he is referring to the Logical Absolutes (I think Aristotle first articulated these) which it is argued are true, above and beyond human minds.

These are the laws of identity, non-contradiction and excluded middle which allow us to have reason, maths, science. They are necessary presuppositions to have any kind of communication or thought.

There is a vast scholarship that addresses this notion and these axioms are used by some Christians and Islamic apologists to show that atheism is delusional (hence the title from the OP) because to them it is clear that only the mind of God can make these laws true. Kant expresses similar ideas in his Transcendental Argument, ripped off by many to make the point that God is a necessary precondition for our world to be intelligible.

In other words, we have the presuppositions of the laws of logic (which we all need to make) but it is said we need a 4th presupposition - that a God exists - for the first three to work.

My response above is that things that do not exist cannot be the cause of other things. If you want to show that God is the cause of something (logical absolutes or creation) you need to demonstrate that God is real. I doubt it can ever be done - a Nobel and Templeton prize, a fortune and everlasting fame awaits anyone who can do this.

So if God explains logic or meaning, you need to demonstrate 2 things. 1 that God exists and 2 how exactly God is responsible for them.

How do we know that meaning or logic are not a product of the natural universe? This would also need to be demonstrated.

As an atheist myself since the age of about 7, I simply do not understand how theists can trust in a God given this argument. — scientia de summis

The problem of God and evil is significant and even the most sophisticated religious thinkers like David Bentley Hart find this argument has impact on their faith. So you are onto something.

How is it that a good God seemingly built a creation that is chaotic, bloodthirsty, ugly, dangerous and predicated on disease, pain and violence? Where animals eat each other alive and go extinct and children perish in their millions every year from starvation, cancer and other preventable diseases? Not to mention wildfires, floods, earthquakes, famines, plagues.

Where was God during the Holocaust or during Pol Pot's or Stalin's murderous reigns -as families and children were slaughtered? And yet some fellow from a small town in the midwest will say that God intervened and helped him to pass his exams....

Looked at critically, creation itself is a miserable, poorly designed place riddled with horrors and weaknesses. If God had been a car maker he would have been prosecuted for negligence and substandard practice and sued for all the flaws he left in his products - MS, Alzheimer's, ALS, leukaemia, Addisons, diabetes, tooth decay, Huntington's, schizophrenia, polio - we could fill pages with the inherent weaknesses in human design.

Really only medicine has allowed women to stop dying in childbirth in vast numbers and tooth decay was a significant cause of disease and early death until dentistry came along.

Only a bunch of language games, fast talking and tap dancing from religious apologists can try to explain this away. Not that they can. This is really only a problem for beliefs that stress God's goodness and the providential order of creation, so Eastern faiths avoid this one.

Is it any wonder that some early forms of Christianity accepted that the material world was evil and created by a demiurge?

This creation is incompatible the common iteration of the Christian God. But apart from what some men wrote in ancient scriptures, who said God cares? Deism is perfectly compatible with our horror show on Earth.

need to stop freaking out about religion and start being more considerate of others, and you have my permission to remind me of that. — Athena

Don't be afraid to call out and oppose supernatural appeals to bigotry where they happen. It is best understood this way: 'I don't hate you, I hate your beliefs.'

faith has wonderful psychological effects, but it can also be the worse source of evil we have. — Athena

No point in setting up faith as a magical word. It is just belief without evidence and works no differently than in the case of those people who thought Hitler was delivering them a magnificent world based on blood magic and race. Faith is the excuse people give for believing in something when they have no good reasons.

The Christians I know attempt to resolve every problem with prayers and they have complete faith that God/Jesus will answer their prayers. Obviously, if that is what one believes, God, will take care of everyone and all we need do is pray. Those who survive the hurricane, flood, landslide, or whatever, will be reassured God takes care of them — Athena

This is true but what of it? All religions commit atrocities and justify it with appeals to truth or faith. There is no necessary correlation between religious belief and moral behaviour. The history of our world is one of religions energetically basing their actions on choreographed bigotry and human rights violations. Hardly surprising when the only shaky evidence for God is in ancient books and outrageous claims.

We cannot have infinite regression, so it’s more logical to say that we were designed by a all truthful [thing?]. — Franz Liszt

You fail to demonstrate a couple of key things and address none of my points. Until you can demonstrate god or that the world can't have been the product of natural processes, you can't really proceed. It sounds more like you are making an assumption based on the fallacy from incredulity - that it can't possibly be any other way than you think.

The reasons it cannot be aliens is because we would have to know they are all truthful too, but then they would need something all truthful. — Franz Liszt

Demonstrate how you come to this conclusion. For Aliens how can you demonstrate that all of life and with it all illusions of causality and meaning as we know it are not just the product of an advanced laboratory?

In any case, what I presented above does not point to Christianity in the slightest, let alone ‘God’. — Franz Liszt

Actually the argument you presented is known as a presuppositional argument for God and is used by apologists almost word for word. I just polished it up for you. I don't mind if you are an apologist or an atheist. I just thought it was amusing.

am beginning to think that I took too far a assumption based off of some other responses I have received. If we need our logic to be true, is there another explanation you can think of? — Franz Liszt

There are so many responses possible, I simply don't have the energy to go through them. A few brief comments are as follows.

Firstly, the idea of God has no explanatory power. When someone says 'God did it' this is exactly the same as saying the Magic Man did it or Aliens did it. Aliens are probably more plausible since thousands of people claim abduction experiences and we know there are other planets. (BTW I do not have reason to believe in aliens).

Incidentally, if someone says - "I can't think of any other explanation other than God did it" - that is a logical fallacy called the fallacy of incredulity. There are lots of things we can't explain, running to the supernatural - whether it be Brahman or Osiris - is lazy and retrograde. When humans couldn't explain diseases (not all that long ago and still the case in some countries) we thought sicknesses were caused by evil magic, witches and demons.

Secondly, the believer in God has to demonstrate that reason or meaning is impossible without a God or Magic Man as a starting premise. This can't be done. It's just a claim made.

The big one is this. You need to establish God exists before it can be a candidate explanation for anything. You can’t just say the only reason logic makes since is because God exits. This is no more meaningful than saying the only reason meaning exists is because the Hindu creator Brahma exists. Or the Flying Spaghetti Monster.

Additionally, there is no explanation of just how God or Brahma might be responsible for the existence of meaning. This unsatisfying argument, like most uses of God has, as I already stated above, no explanatory power. In almost every instance where God is offered as an explanation you could swap God for the word magic and it would serve the same function in any argument.

Placing God as that scaffolding is just another way of saying that don't know what accounts for our confidence. — frank

Yep, and it is a great example of the fallacy from incredulity in action. Which is - "I can't think of any other explanation for the world therefore God. Or Aliens... or...."

f we are just loads of chemicals grouped together through a random procces, then everything we experience may well be wrong. How do we know that our logical thoughts would actually show any truth in this universe? The answer, if we are just a bunch of chemicals, is that we can’t. Using this logic, science is just an illusion, so is logic. However, we have used science and logic to come to these conclusions, which becomes a paradox. — Franz Liszt

If your thinking is so loose then no wonder you are confused. But having said that - I don't know who you are but what you have done here is build a standard Christian apologist argument as per William Lane Craig. This what a cunning apologist might do if he or she were to blunder onto this site.

Why not try this to steel man the effort - atheism is self-refuting because if all we are is matter behaving to random forces, then logic can't make sense because it has no foundation for making meaning. Logical argument falls down if we don't have God and a guarantor for all meaning, goodness and truth.

My point is that hardship will be easier to overcome if the person is prepared for it. And that without such a preparation in advance, a person is less likely to overcome hardship. — baker

That could useful if I were talking about how hardship is overcome but I'm not.

That's deeply interesting Wayfarer. I had a long interest in Krishnamurti - I think it was his exceptional clarity on some matters and his no nonsense approach that for me, anyway, cut through most of the other teachers I heard back then. He was the thinker I needed. And his story was extraordinary.

I started with Alan Watts, I always wondered what he would be like to know, but I suspected he had strong hedonistic impulses that might have taken him off course. I studied philosophy at university briefly but had an argument with the Head of Department when he said, 'You are not here to learn, you are to give us what we want and parrot back to us everything we say.' I quit, went out and bought Joseph Campbell's Hero with a Thousand Faces and read for several years. Those were the days...

I accept there are other ways of knowing and being, that Niikolas and others are referring to - that it's not just made up, but refers to something real. Real, but off the beaten track of mainstream culture. — Wayfarer

I understand that - I was immersed in Jung and theosophy amongst others in the 1980's. I would need someone to demonstrate that this is justifiable before accepting it. Just because there are impressive cross cultural snippets about it doesn't make it true. The same thing could be said about human sacrifice (not that I am comparing the two).

It's easy to read about them or imagine that you might realise them, but in practice it's very difficult. — Wayfarer

Who did it successfully in your view?

to experiencing the wholeness of human being in relation to its origin or what Plotinus called the ONE? — Nikolas

Sorry - This kind of model isn't my thing; if it is exoteric - I don't get it :smile: For me human beings are clever animals with language and an ability to develop conceptual frameworks. For me there is no pathway or oneness available to us - there are only good and bad ideas.

Do you believe that all the ancient traditions initiating with a conscious source exist at the exoteric level and devolve into opposing opinions. — Nikolas

I couldn't say for certain. I think people are similar so their ideas are often similar. But people are also tribal, so approaches develop and split off and often expand in deliberate contrast.

We speak of different things. — Nikolas

I think we speak of the same things differently.

My question is if anyone can explain why they would believe this, and how it’s okay for morality to be subjective. — Franz Liszt

You forget that religious morality is subjective. All morality is subjective, but, as you say, we can choose to agree on a presupposition like, for instance, human flourishing being the goal for human behavior.

Remember that religious believers don't agree on moral positions even within their own tiny slither of religious dogma. Just take the Protestant faith in the Christian tradition.

Believers hold contradictory and often mutually hostile views on: the role of women in church and culture, gay marriage, capital punishment, euthanasia, human rights - to name a few hot issues. I have met Christians, even within the same church who hold views that gay people are morally wrong and will go to hell and by contrast, others for whom sexual preferences are of no interest to god. What does god think?

Herein lies the problem. Religious people base their morality on their subjective preferences of what they think god wants. Be very careful around people who think they know what a god wants.

the shadows on the wall? — Nikolas

Forget Plato's Cave. If you want to chasing after shadows, try spirituality.

There have been a zillion attempts to distill the elements of the true spirituality underpinning all religion from Theosophical syncretism to Jung.

What is fascinating always is the underpinning of status seeking and elitism inherent in the proposition. Only special people have capacity to see the truth. Or in words like this:

humanity as a whole lacks the conscious ability to understand and instead become enchanted with the shadows on the wall? — Nikolas

The only people I know who were in favor of separating children from their families at the border were Christians. — Athena

That's true. But there are questions that come out of this. Why is it that Christianity - and let's face it, so many religions worldwide - so effortlessly undertake evil actions?

Is it just a matter of believe oneself to be God's favourite? Might it not also be what happens when you think you have access to special knowledge that comes from an uncountable, extramundane source that is the origin of all morality.

I don't mind paying taxes. I live in a community.

“I like to pay taxes. With them, I buy civilization.” Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes

And secular culture has no way of differentiating the two! — Wayfarer

Well I just did, so that can't be right. Even the secular world has access to the homily: 'Ye shall know them by their fruits.'

First - not really comfortable with the word 'truth'. How do you understand it ? Is it about getting things right or the reaching of a specific goal, a solution to a problem or knowledge of how the world is ? — Amity

A sign of the times. Postmodernism has 'taught' us that we live in a relativist world and for at least 40 years many people have been afraid to call anything truth or a fact for fear of offending or being wrong. And there's the whole post-truth, alternative facts, science denying caper. As the man said to his doctor when told to quit smoking for health reasons, "That's just your opinion, Man."

Truth to me is small t not big T. As I wrote before - we were able to send men to the moon and back and yet some wonder if reality really exists or if it is really possible to make secure predictions using inductive reasoning.

When it comes to making choices in life we can determine what ideas are helpful or even probable based upon evidence. It's a fact that if you swallow certain poisons you die. It's a fact that people with type 1 diabetes require insulin. If you are going to cross a busy road, do you use faith and close your eyes as you step into the traffic or do you use careful observation with experience and then cross?

And sure, we can all make mistakes or get things wrong and there is no such thing as 100% certainty. And not everything may be knowable and just because it isn't knowable right now doesn't mean we are at liberty to insert a fallacy from incredulity and determine that the only explanation we can think of is the spirit world or magic.

So, a different pathway - things that inspire geniuses from the subconscious. — Amity

There are a plethora of stories about dreams and coincidence and happy magical accidents impacting on the arts or discoveries or life altering events. Jung was fond of synchronicity. I generally say, so what? Can we actually test if such whimsical stories are true? And even if they are, do they really offer us a method for determining what actions to take and what to believe? I say no. The problem with thinking you are inspired by visions is, firstly this can't be tested, and secondly this could make you either Gandhi or Charles Manson.

It's an unspoken truth that Karl Marx is one of the most influential philosopher in my view of modernity. — Shawn

I think you could also say that Marx is one of the most widely coopted and least read thinkers of modernity.

Anecdotal I know but I have yet to meet a Marxist that has actually read Marx and I have met many. On asking around at University, this seemed to be a common thing. There ought to be an award going for the most referenced unread books - Das Kapital would be in there along with The Bible and A Brief History of Time.

Very much appreciate your courtesy and interest. — Wayfarer

You too, Sir. I appreciate your patience and knowledge.

What evidence is there for that? — Wayfarer

I don't know,I am not a biologist. But here's the thing. If we discover that something is true we accept it.

I've known a few seriously wealthy individuals. They were pretty ordinary or miserable folk and it never made me imagine that money (past having enough for reasonable comfort) was worth pursuing.

Young earth creationists have no evidence, obviously — Wayfarer

The point is there's a lot of stuff being called scientific that isn't.

what would it take to convince Richard Dawkins that it’s real? — Wayfarer

You need to put that to Dawkins. It's not my subject. But generally science is open to revision and new information. If It Is Proven. The time to believe something is when there is evidence.

The respected researcher making 120K might feel greatly superior to the billionaire. — norm

I would think that would be justifiable. Behind every fortune is a terrible crime (Balzac).

Are you familiar with the replication crisis? How do you reckon that would play out in respect of this question? — Wayfarer

It plays out just fine. I don't accept claims unless there is evidence. If claims can't be reproduced they need to be shelved. Bad science exists, especially when tied to commercial stakeholders, esp drug companies. Or Young Earth Creationists. But the beauty of the method is that scientists are continually trying to falsify other scientist's results and their own. This makes it harder to justify nonsense because it will generally be exposed.