:up:

:lol:

When all concerned know ahead of time it is a futile exercise and an utter waste of time. — boagie

I've met many atheists who used to be fundamentalist Muslims and Christians. People do respond to arguments and do find their way out of religion. It takes time and exposure to free-thought, but it happens. Atheist organisations are packed with former literalist religious folk who gradually deconverted from Christianity or Islam after exposure to new ideas. So much so that the international organisation Recovering from Religion is dedicated to supporting people to reassess their worldview and recover from facile faiths.

:ok:

The problem with an allegorical interpretation is that it can mean anything given a clever enough interpretation. — Art48

The problem with scripture is interpretation full stop - allegorical or literalist. Just look at the confusions amongst Christians about matters of doctrine and subjects like abortion, capital punishment, gay rights, witchcraft, women's rights, euthanasia, etc. The faithful can't agree on anything and they all think they have god's word sorted.

I just stopped believing the Christian story, and once I had a little bit of distance, it became obvious that the holy book is just a collection of stories. — Vera Mont

I understand. Many Christians reject the Bible stories as engaging fictions but still mange to believe in god. The great American model for this was the best selling Episcopalian Bishop John Shelby Spong. Literal interpretations of the Bible are fairly recent. The book is often understood as allegorical. Certainly that's what I was taught in the Baptist tradition here in Australia.

Whether the Bible has anything to offer us has very little impact on whether there is a god I would have thought, but I get it.

Seems to me that Hoffman's recent work might be an edifice built on top of Searle's 'the bad argument.'

I'll have more to say when I finish Hoffman. — Banno

I'm looking forward to this.

. There is currently no empirical evidence for the non-existence of a deity. — gevgala

The burden of proof on is on anyone who makes an extraordinary positive claim. There's no empirical evidence for the non-existence of Bigfoot or fairies either.

While neither theists nor atheists can provide conclusive empirical evidence for their positions, — gevgala

Atheists like myself don't make claims about the non-existence of god. Our claim is that we have no good reason to accept the proposition - the arguments and evidence being unconvincing.

Bruce taught me short story writing back in the 1980's.

The question should really be: why should life HAVE a meaning to a hairless ape? — invicta

I would argue that the question might also be why should life NOT have meaning to people? Humans seem to be machines for making meaning - drawing connections and telling stories. Hence, culture, art, entertainment, religion, literature, philosophy, science, etc, etc. We can't help ourselves. It's our thing. Some of us like our stories to be metanarratives - foundational and transcendent. Some of us are happy with tentative accounts, subject to constant revision.

"a person who disbelieves or lacks belief in the existence of God or gods"
BECAUSE, there is no evidence. — universeness

My atheism has slightly different foundations - I don't argue there is no evidence. There's plenty of evidence (personal experience, the existence of the universe, consciousness, scripture, etc) it's just that this evidence is incomplete and or unconvincing (to most atheists) and can be readily argued against.

those who refuse to believe without evidence. — boagie

I don't like 'refuse to believe' this sounds like an act of choice and something a Christian or Muslim would say about atheism as a willful denial of truth.

An atheist is unconvinced there is a god. They don't find any of the arguments made on behalf of theism to be convincing. A hard atheist might make a positive claim and say there is no god. While I think this claim is accurate, I personally don't make claims about knowledge I don't believe I have.

I suspect that underpinning a lot of atheism is a lack of sensus divinitatis (to use Calvin's words) and, perhaps, an aesthetic view wherein a god figure adds no meaning to the picture they hold of the world. This might be because the notion of a god seems incoherent.

I don't really consider evil to be a human attribute. Perhaps disfunction is a better word and it removes the quasi-religious nonsense. For me if there is an 'evil' it is nature. The reality of predator and prey and all the requisite savageries and cruelties which are the hallmark of the lives of most living creatures - built right into the model of survival and which cannot be overcome. But this is only evil if it was designed this way by some monomaniac god who also kindly threw in cancer, MS and psoriasis, and wonky appendixes and a myriad of other design flaws and fuck ups for no apparent reason. If god were a car manufacturer he'd be shut down and the subject of some spectacular litigation.

Nicely put.

Is Universal Mind merely another name for God? Not necessarily. Universal Mind need not be all-knowing, as in knowing the future. Or all-good. Or all-powerful; maybe there are some things Universal Mind just cannot do. — Art48

The character of Universal Mind or Mind at Large (Kastrup) is different to god/s, in as much as it might be less personal and not be metacognitive and, perhaps, more of a blind and instinctive will, as per Schopenhauer. In other words, not an entity one has a relationship with.

But Universal Mind still plays a god-like role in granting us a foundational guarantee of a shared reality and object permanence (even if these are the product of mentation). If, says Kastrup, your car is still in the garage after you have parked and walked off, it is because Mind at Large holds our shared reality together - K maintains we are like 'dissociated alters' of the one great mind.

Whether you believe this will probably come down to personal taste and how poetic your imagination might be.

After all, would anyone posit that it would be bad for things to get better? — Banno

News Limited? Catastrophe is their daily bread. But I get your point.

The kids who took it as a given that things would get worse had little motivation to try to make things better. It will be the kids who think things can improve who make a positive difference to what happens. So the myth of progress is methodological.

There is an obvious parallel here to virtue ethics, in that it's folk who think they can improve on their actions as are the ones who work to improve themselves. Those who think they cannot improve their standing will not make an effort. — Banno

I am reminded of a couplet Goethe wrote to a young Schopenhauer.

Willst du dich des Lebens freuen, So musst der Welt du Werth verleihen.

"If you wish to draw pleasure out of life, You must attach value to the world."

Or as a friend of mine used to say - "Pessimism is a self-fulfilling prophesy."

I love it.

Ok. I guess we can make all sorts of claims about gods being the necessary grounding for reason or morality or whatever it might be (these arguments are common in Muslim and Christian presuppositional apologetics), but unless it can be demonstrated, it is just a claim amongst the many made by some believers.

That does not demonstrate god/s, nor can you establish what you say about thought to be true. Do you have anything more?

The power of reason in our minds is God. All mind is ultimately God's Mind. — EnPassant

That's the claim, what's the evidence? Which make of god are you referring to, if any?

Did your answer disappear? :wink:

But for our purposes here, it might be useful for folk to contemplate what it means to tell children that things can get better. — Banno

That's a powerful point.

Cultural problem solving is not about accurately representing an independent world. It is about construing and reconstruing our relation to the social and natural world from our own perspective in ways that allow us to see the behavior and thinking of other people in increasingly integral ways. Progress in cultural
problem solving is about anticipating the actions and motives of others (and ourselves) in ways that transcend concepts like evil or selfish intent. It is not that we become more
moral or more rational over time (Pinker’s claim is that the formation of the scientific method made us more rational). We were always moral and rational in the sense that we have always been motivated to solve puzzles. What progress in puzzle solving allows us to do is to see others as like ourselves on more and more dimensions of similarity. — Joshs

This is fascinating. Big question: what does the following look like in action -
Progress in cultural problem solving is about anticipating the actions and motives of others (and ourselves) in ways that transcend concepts like evil or selfish intent.

From what I know about you, I take this at face value, yes? Sorry, there are so many sarcastic posters here, myself very much included, that I have to do a double take — Noble Dust

I generally don't do sarcasm on line. I was sincerely referring to my completely missing an obvious aspect to this discussion about Enlightenment. I do wear a felt hat - it's fuckin' Australia, Mate!

It's something we should probably explore further in other threads, given the courage. — Noble Dust

Good idea. George Lakoff's notion of framing is interesting in this space too.

That's very helpful. Thanks. I totally forgot about notions of the evolving consciousness of human beings.

One belief of mine that's probably pretty important is that there's a sense in which each of us lives in our own world. That just means that our thoughts and beliefs shape the world we see around us. — Noble Dust

Yes. I hold to this too.

Yes, it is a bit and perhaps a digression. I guess your approach to evaluating beliefs is different to mine, I was curious about your approach and whether you identify progress as a tangible phenomenon and to what extent you see secularism as being a barrier to or carrier of progress.

Out of interest, what framework do you use to determine if someone holds acceptable or unacceptable beliefs? Do you hold to notions of progress?

TC, thanks, you're being kind. I do sometimes say terrible things. Often I find that trying to shoehorn complex ideas into a few sentences here ends up distorting what I want to say, sometimes eccentuating the wrong parts.

I'm not sure I have much to offer any discussions about theism or religion. I get involved when I hear the odd clanger from someone and then almost immediately regret what I said in response. This stuff is personal and for it to matter, I think it has to be.

When it comes to the crux, the attribute I dislike most in any field (politics or faith) is the gatekeeper who thinks they can tell ordinary people how they should live their lives and judges others for making different choices. The problem is, we all have to make calls on what we think is reasonable and we can't accept every possible position going - so where and how do we draw the line between acceptable and unacceptable? I think this is my key problem in critical thinking.

My point was that it's a problem of large institutions, not religion. Atheism is a lack of belief in God, not an antipathy to large institutions in general. — T Clark

I have problems with many practices in politics, atheism, religion, science - any belief system that causes harm (as I see it). Now I happen to think religions are experts in causing harm (based largely upon personal experience and familiarity with their works) but religions are by no means alone in this. I don't just think it's a question of being large. I think there are plenty of small organisations that commit abuse upon their adherents/members. I do hold antipathy towards institutions. I don't think this comes out of atheism, more out of skepticism and perhaps nascent or inchoate anarchism. But that's for a different thread.

Do you think that conditions in Iran or Saudi Arabia today are worse than those in China during the cultural revolution, the USSR during Stalinism, or Cambodia during the rule of the Khmer Rouge? — T Clark

That's a classic equivocation fallacy. Who is saying religion is the only source of evil shit on earth? I'm saying it's one of the main players. I have no more love for politics than I have for religion. I am a political bigot too. :wink:

Now it feels like postmodernism, with its scepticism towards both Enlightenment universalism and the individual subject of experience, is precisely the kind of philosophy that suits modern society, with its fragmented public sphere and atomized populace. That is, it doesn’t seem like much of a challenge to the status quo, not significantly critical at all, despite sometimes seeming to be. — Jamal

Postmodernism passé? I often wonder to what extent it ever emerged from academe, other than through a few slogans and misunderstood terms. I think you're right that its tendencies broadly seem to match those of mainstream Western culture. But what drove what?

EDIT: I just realized: in fact, self-critical Enlightenment has not only led to postmodernist anti-humanism and anti-universalism; it has also led to philosophers like Zizek, who (I think) has made it his mission to rehabilitate both universalism and the subject. So all is not lost! — Jamal

Sounds like this could be its own OP. Deliverance by Zizek. I note that in a 2004 interview, Zizek observed-

Often, the worst way to become prisoner of a system is to have a dream that things may turn better, there is always the possibility of change. Because it is precisely this secret dream that keeps you enslaved to the system.

Could Enlightenment be that dream?

The motives of both the atheist and theist to spouse their different world views remain alien to me. What concern is it to either if one believes or not ? — invicta

Perhaps think bigger. Religions actively shape world politics and nationalism and supports legislative change which impact on millions of people - everything from gay rights, the rights of women, capital punishment, euthanasia, contraception, abortion, what books which can be read, etc, etc. It's not just America and stacking the Supreme Court. Pernicious social policies and practices are rife in places like Modi's Hindu nationalist India and Saudi Arabia through the impact of Wahhabi Islam.

Christ promises everlasting life in the Gospels, not eternal life. — Count Timothy von Icarus

Huh? Is there a difference? Eternal life was the term we used in our Baptist Church. Probably from John 12:25 Anyone who loves their life will lose it, while anyone who hates their life in this world will keep it for eternal life. From Luke 18:18- 30. Teacher what must I do to inherit eternal life? My Dad who grew up in the Protestant Reformed church was taught that the ordinary life was for 'toil and suffering' the only life which matters being your reward in the next realm. That was much Christianity in the 20th Century, the cult of worldly suffering which Nietzsche so despised. But no doubt expressions of Christian doctrine vary. :wink:

:up:

Nice work.

Enlightenment cannot stop questioning the way things are, or it’s not Enlightenment any more — Jamal

Can this process eventually transcend Enlightenment? Is post-modern thinking an inevitable outcome of such an Enlightenment process? Isn't the eventual trajectory of questioning and more questioning anti-foundationalism?

If eternal life was offered not by God but by the universe (let’s say you stumbled upon some sort of secret) would you refuse ? — invicta

Yes.

I find it odd if not bizarre that every conceivable human emotion, memory all but disappear entailing that your life really meant nothing despite its ups and downs, moments of joy sorrow and everything in between.

It all meant nothing …every struggle … without any meaning. — invicta

That's a choice. You could equally say how much more precious is an experience which is evanescent. Where does it say an experience is only valuable if it endures? What has chronology got to do with anything? Sounds like a Christian value system at work here. E.g., the only life which matters is eternal life not the filthy, degraded thing we have here on earth.

Pinker is good at making things sound simple. His rhetorical style and approach reminds me of Sam Harris in The Moral Landscape.

What is progress? You might think that the question is so subjective and culturally relative as to be forever unanswerable. In fact, it’s one of the easier questions to answer. Most people agree that life is better than death. Health is better than sickness. Sustenance is better than hunger. Abundance is better than poverty. Peace is better than war. Safety is better than danger. Freedom is better than tyranny. Equal rights are better than bigotry and discrimination. Literacy is better than illiteracy. Knowledge is better than ignorance. Intelligence is better than dull-wittedness. Happiness is better than misery. Opportunities to enjoy family, friends, culture, and nature are better than drudgery and monotony. All these things can be measured. If they have increased over time, that is progress.

― Steven Pinker, Enlightenment Now: The Case for Reason, Science, Humanism, and Progress

I can't help but feel Pinker is an old fashioned figure, the kind of public educator with faith in progress I grew up with. My question for you is could his position be enhanced by more rigorous philosophical knowledge? Is he essentially just another nostalgic modernist liberal?

I was struck by this:

Don't confuse pessimism with profundity: problems are inevitable, but problems are solvable, and diagnosing every setback as a symptom of a sick society is a cheap grab for gravitas. Finally, drop the Nietzsche. His ideas may seem edgy, authentic, baad, while humanism seems sappy, unhip, uncool But what's so funny about peace, love, and understanding?

In short, given the choice of belief in God versus non-belief, believers often stick with God. But a believer may be much more receptive to arguments that label silly religious beliefs as lies about God. When the atheist ask a believer to give up belief in God, the result is that the believer often rejects the atheist’s argument and, if anything, believes more strongly. Thus, atheism, in some cases, helps reinforce religious belief. — Art48

Depending upon the type of believer/atheist, I would have thought that atheists and believers generally talk past each other and don't comprehend each other's language or frames of reference.

But it is also the case that many atheists were once believers, often fundamentalist believers. People do find their way out of religion and the old arguments seem to lose their traction and believability, perhaps more so than atheist arguments gain appeal. Many atheists I have met from fundamentalist backgrounds take similar journey's from fundamentalist Christianity to progressive Christianity, to deism, to Wicca/Eastern mysticism, to skepticism and eventually to atheism. The sustaining strand is transcendence and eventually this too is forsaken.