Temperament is very important. In my case I think experience does play a role, - I have been around too much suffering and death. But I am grateful for my own good health and fortune. Can't say I have ever felt like I belong anywhere, except maybe some jazz bar somewhere with a Sazerac and a freshly lit Lucky Strike... those day are long gone. If god stories involved booze and jazz clubs, I might have been a theist.

Someone, something, somewhere deserves thanks for this wonderful world. — T Clark

I can't imagine thinking this. To me the world seems an amoral and dangerous place (at best). But there are some people I would thank for their sacrifices on behalf of others.

It seems to me that Earth’s person Gods are childish creations of human imagination. On the other hand, the absolute, ultimate ground of existence God seems credible to me. — Art48

I think it's just that ideas of gods evolve with changes in human knowledge. Also in my experience, conservative people seem to still like the stern father model of a deity. More liberal types seem to like 'the force' style theisms. God depictions seem to reflect education, culture and politics - which is hardly surprising. Theism has never stuck me as coherent or necessary and I think belief in god might just come down to personal taste, not all that much different to whether you like garlic or Beethoven.

So which are type are you, Tom? — 180 Proof

Fool mostly and wannabe thinker.

Many people are asking really big questions and exploring the world’s philosophical heritage. — Wayfarer

That's really important. The internet gets a lot of flack, but access to decent thinkers and communities has never been easier. Of course, we get the DK crowd and the bluffers too, but at least they are mostly wanking about matters of importance.

Interesting. Until this site, I had no idea people outside of an institution actually read academic philosophy and took it seriously. I'm delighted that they do as it suggests hard thinking is not entirely a forgotten past time.

I did a similar exercise in the first few months of being here and I identified four types: thinkers, theorists, monomaniacs and fools. Naturally there's often a blur between types. The monomaniacs tend to hawke an obsession, which everything keeps coming back to. The theorists are those who suck up and spout scholarship like it's a form of redemptive catechism. The thinkers include anyone seriously engaged in ideas, with or without a philosophical education. The fool are those who... you can guess. I value all of it, but sometimes the answers to OPs read like a series of satirical depictions of personality types and their flaws. When I feel that way, I go back to music.

The concept of God is too complex and too multifaceted to be reduced to a single logical argument or observation. Instead, the pursuit of God is a deeply personal and meaningful journey that is often based on faith and intuition rather than logic. — gevgala

Everything you've argued could also lead to 'so who cares?' I guess the next part of this is establishing what faith and intuition actually mean. There's pretty much no belief going that can't be held by faith and intuition, from alien abduction to Bigfoot.

The problem I have with the "designer" idea is that it is definitely unfalsifiable, and it involves an entity, which is not observable, and processes of which we can have no idea, so it would appear to be of little or no use to the speculative understanding. — Janus

Yes, and it involves an entity for which we have no actual evidence in the first place - or a series of entities, or an advance alien species. Even if one accepts a designer it is impossible to say what or who that might be.

The design argument resembles the 'something from nothing' argument or pre-suppositionalist justifications for reason - it's an attempt to prove a god figure without actual evidence of that god. This is done by avoiding the pesky question of evidence for a deity and pointing instead to debatable interpretations of phenomena as evidence of their works. 'You see, there is a god, I can't imagine how else we could explain the origin of life/design/reason, etc.' A fallacy from incredulity.

Well, at the very least, "the onus is on the design advocate to" demonstrate scientifically that both the universe and life are "designed" in the first place. — 180 Proof

:up:

The fallacy of incredulity includes what I said, but it also includes other things. — Sam26

And includes what I said. :wink:

There seems to be an equivocation in the use of the word 'purpose' between #1 and #2. — Fooloso4

Indeed.

My argument is not simply based on, "Well, it's just common sense, or it must be true because it's easy to understand," — Sam26

I never said it was. I said you were making a fallacy from incredulity. Might I say, a textbook example.

(1) Human artifacts that have a structure such that the parts fit together to accomplish a purpose which is higher than any part alone, such as a watch, car, or computer, are the result of intelligent design.

(2) Artifacts of nature have a structure where the parts fit together to accomplish a purpose which is higher than any part alone, such as the human body. — Sam26

That's an example of a false equivalence fallacy - based on some resemblance. I think you need stronger premises.

There's much more to the argument, but I'm going to leave it here. — Sam26

Perhaps better we leave this discussion to people with actual philosophy and science expertise.

Thanks for the response though. — Sam26

You're welcome. I enjoyed the discussion.

The key difference is in how secure the person is in those beliefs – an agnostic will recognize a realistic possibility that their beliefs are incorrect, whereas a theist or atheist generally will not. — Gnomon

Most atheists I've encountered these days say they are agnostic atheists - for reasons I described earlier. I think this makes sense. One claim goes to knowledge, the other goes to belief. It is entirely possible not to know if god exists but also to not hold a belief in any god/s.

As Kant pointed out, personal experiences are the only evidence of ding an sich Reality that we humans have, from which to construct our worldviews and belief systems. Everything else is hearsay. — Gnomon

I know the argument, but such hearsay actually runs the world and our belief systems. How would governments, a military, corporations, social groups function without their articles of faith - documentations, texts, constitutions, preambles, amendments, treaties, books... ? Personal experience is never just a value free experience - in most cases people are primed by culture and the weight of conventions to see and experience in very particular ways.

Can you identify this reality that we all share that hasn't already been mediated, parsed and shaped by society and family expectations and cultural values?

There are just too many similarities between human artifacts and artifacts of nature that point to ID, they're innumerable. — Sam26

Your points are interesting to me, I think it 's certainly possible to see similarities in things if you choose too.

The only thing that I can see that you have going for you is that most philosophers and scientists don't believe in ID, although many do. — Sam26

I'm neither a philosopher or scientist nor know those worlds, so they don't really impact upon my views other than indirectly.

the human brain is probably the most complex thing in the universe, if it's not, it's certainly among the most complex; and to think it happened by chance (which maybe logically possible, although probably not metaphysically possible) is to strain credulity. — Sam26

That seems a classic fallacy from incredulity - you even used the word credulity. I don't know the universe well enough to make any totalising claims about human brains. But I do know it is us making value judgments like this and we're a bit biased. 'Complexity' is an idea defined by us and who knows what counts as complex outside of the human imagination.

I don't think there is any way to explain, how for example, the human body happened without some intelligence behind its structure, other than to appeal to ID. — Sam26

There's another fallacy from incredulity. 'I can't imagine how else it could have happened..."

I have no illusions that this will be convincing to many of you, but I think it's an important point to be made. — Sam26

It's not convincing because we still lack a demonstration of how nature is the product of design. It still seems a wonky inference to make, but it's easy to see why people might make it.

Of course many consider the hallmark of good design to be simplicity. Something being complex is just something being complex. One would need a demonstration of how complexity would be impossible without a designer. Not just an argument from personal incredulity.

I think the architecture of ant colonies is instructive because it involves many ants doing specialized tasks. If it is intelligent design then which ant or ants is the designer? — Fooloso4

There must be a university educated chief engineer ant who directs it all. It's impossible to imagine how else they could do it. Of course we know the answer here - god directs it all - the ants are entirely incidental...

:up:

:up:

The point is that we do have objects that don't fit your criteria, and yet we know they're intelligently designed. — Sam26

I was simply responding spontaneously to your question about what is evidence of intelligent design. I think my answer is pretty sound, but I never pretended that it would determine with 100% accuracy all cases. No doubt there are elaborate things crafted from metal, stone and wood that are mysteries. Nevertheless, the fact that we can all tell they are crafted suggests design isn't entirely elusive.

What we come back to is the notion that we have yet to demonstrate that the world or universe is designed. I am not convinced by any of the arguments in support of the proposition, as I've stated earlier, just as I am unconvinced there are gods. It's a judgement I make and others will make different judgements.

Okay. So, none of the stories are true? What is this "broader truth"? For that matter, what is it broader than? Who are these allegorical stories really about? — Vera Mont

Plenty of books on this by people like Paul Tillich, David Bentley Hart and Shelby Spong and the like. I'm not a progressive Christian, so I'm not involved. I never had the interest to go look for subtext and interpretative value.

I'm asking the most superficial, obvious question - not necessarily of you, but of any or all apologists:
If not from the Bible, where does the character of God come from? — Vera Mont

I grew up in the Baptist tradition. We were taught that the Bible stories were allegories to tell a broader truth about the nature of god and man. Literalist interpretations are more of a recent phenomenon within Protestant traditions - according to people like Karen Armstrong and David Bentley Hart (two theist writers of note).

God it would be argued comes first. Stories which capture the deity come second. Hence the evolving nature of theology over time. Most theists I grew up in the 1970's-80's with would argue that all religions are human attempts to capture the same truth about the transcendent or 'oneness' using a language that belongs to a particular time and place. This is known as the perennial tradition.

One of the odd consequences of the argument against design is that the only creatures that we know of that are capable of designing is h. sapiens. — Wayfarer

I would say a beaver dam, spider web or a bird's nest are designed too. Maybe not in the same manner as a car but certainly planned and contrived for a purpose.

I generally agree, but there are things that we've found that defy this, and yet we know they've been intelligently designed — Sam26

I'd be interested to here more what are a couple of examples?

I'll ask you the same question I asked ↪180 Proof, what would count as evidence of intelligent design in the universe? What things are lacking? — Sam26

I'm not the one making the claim, so I can't provide an answer. Usually the reason we know something is designed in life is because we already know it is designed - it's manufactured and distributed by channels and makers we can go to and meet and we can understand (almost fully) how and why it was made.

But anything can appear to be designed if we cast a wide enough net. I think the quest to identify this is pretty fraught, if not pointless when it comes to the natural world.

I'm really only interested in Muslims and evangelical Christians who make this argument and nail it down with some specificity.

That is what I call ‘hotel manager theodicy’. ‘Hey, who’s in charge here! Can’t you see people are SUFFERING! There are earthquakes, and nasty diseases. I could do a lot better, myself.’ — Wayfarer

I think that should be Yahweh, the Hotel Manager theodicy.

Maybe the designer/s wanted these things as part of the design, i.e., to create a challenging place to experience. — Sam26

If you are desperate to make intelligent design fit, then sure - chaos and misery might be part of the plan. But in debates with intelligent design proponents it is generally order and beauty they elevate, not the predation and disease component, which are usually glossed over. But the argument that if there is a god he is a cunt is workable, based on how the world seems.

The 'appearance of there being a design' is an argument that Richard Dawkins and Daniel Dennett make - that living things appear to be designed, but that each of the components of the overall organism arises without a designer, purely as a result of chance and necessity - that some things just happen on the molecular level that then give rise to necessary outcomes due to physical laws. — Wayfarer

Nicely summarized. I'd probably remove the 'just' from before 'happen.' An issue for me is it is humans deciding upon what is order and what is chaos. How do we know? It's not like we are not coming to this judgment from some Archimedean point.

It looks to me as if the universe is more about chaos and entropy than order - black holes being so bountiful and an entire creation on earth predicated on needless suffering in the wilderness, not to mention the cruelties of almost universal predation and the bountiful range of poorly designed features of what we know as corporeal life - innumerable diseases, cancer, MS, Parkinson's, leprosy, etc...

Also, the question "Who designed the designer?" is invalid because it's like asking "Who taught Helio Gracie jiu-jitsu?" - — gevgala

Not a great analogy given that prior or jiu-jitsu there were other marital arts that Helio knew of and unarmed combat had had a long, long tradition which had evolved over time. It's not like Helio created something from nothing, the way gods are supposed to. If there were no physical combat or fighting ever in the history of human beings then maybe this would be a better analogy.

Taking your analogy then we might say that the god or gods who made this world might have been influence by gods which made other worlds they had encountered. Just as Helio was influenced by other fighting techniques.

Maybe you believe that there are many gods who specialize in designing different parts of 'creation'? Some gods excel at skys perhaps? Some are brilliant at apes and other gods are good at landscape?

Well, in any case, if a designer doesn't need a cause, then we have established that some things do not require a cause. These things are often called brute facts. Could it be a paucity of human imagination to suggest that what we call the universe must have a cause? It might just be a brute fact.

How could we possibly know that everything must have a cause, based on the small amount humans know of the entire universe? From a philosophical position, we are not sure what causation even is. Personally I don't think we can build a robust view of the supposed 'ultimate nature of reality' based on how human perceptions and value judgements work.

The problem is that they're all strawmen. — praxis

Then Aquinas and Christopher Hitchens are not so different. :joke:

They don't question what is beyond the boxes when questioning theistic claims. — praxis

Beyond the boxes? Sounds like an old movie of the week title. If you are referring to god as 'god is in itself' then I would suggest most atheists do question this too. Perhaps you mean something else?

Basically that God is ineffable so any dumb atheist that comes along with their boxy reason will be invariably off the mark — praxis

Indeed. I include that in what I said earlier. Perhaps an unintentional straw man argument.

Incidentally, does any version of the Christian god stack neatly? — Vera Mont

Depends who you talk to. I'm not in the worship business so I can't help with that.

I am ruling that out. A corporeal god creates all sorts of theological problems. I think when we start getting into literal interpretations of scripture and anthropomorphic descriptions of God, the atheist ridicule properly applies. — Hanover

I find this very interesting. Do you think this comes from a Jewish perspective?

A theist who can't recognize that his beliefs are likely as they are due to his parent's beliefs is hard to take seriously. — Hanover

Fair.

I was being less generous in that regard and I would insist, for example, that if someone's account violates physical laws, then I would discount their account as unreliable. — Hanover

Also interesting. I know Christians who hold this and think all the miracle stories in the Bible are nonsense.

If God is somewhere specific, I have the right to ask for his address, put him on a scale and weigh him, take a biopsy, and kick him in the shins. That's what physical means. — Hanover

I would have though that if god wants to be encountered in a physical realm then god can do this. But perhaps not for a biopsy or a stool sample.

Non-dualism - not two or non-divided - is not necessarily monistic in outlook. — Wayfarer

That's an important point I wasn't aware of.

What did you by atheist-made boxes? — Vera Mont

Atheism forces God into little boxes and then complains when the boxes don't stack neatly. — T Clark

I think this works - TC seems to be saying that atheists twist ideas of god into distortions and then use those distortions as evidence that God is a problematic idea. In other words, it's a variation on a straw man argument.

I'm suggesting that the way you're going about it is in terms of trying to assume a perspective or point of view outside both perceiver and perceived. You're trying to imagine the issue in objective terms. — Wayfarer

Given how often we come back to this key conceptual frame there really ought to be a simple 'sticky' on it here. Many people find it hard to conceptualize. I got there through French thinker Michel Bitbol. It takes repetition and a speculative imagination.

The way I'm approaching it is through nondualism. — Wayfarer

Which is a non-physicalist monism. Do you have a useful definition of reality that comes out of this model or do you think 'reality' is a vexed term?

I've seen it. Not sure how sound he is on philosophy but I know he draws from Susan Haack and David Hume. But as an autodidact, he can be a bit cocksure.

I agree with that. But then, an answer that is correct, job done, doesn't generate new questions. — Ludwig V

Does this mean that you think answers are unhelpful? I guess one might ask, about what matter?

I agree that questions are important but do we need to take from this that answers are always anathema?

What exactly is an answer to a philosophical question - is it a solution or dissolution? Or the best available, but tentative hypothesis?

I'm not a philosopher, I'm wondering is there a single philosophical question that has been 'answered' definitively for eternity?

Makes sense. Cheers.

— Robert Frost - The Black Cottage — T Clark

That's good! Thanks.

Just interested on your attraction to the labels agnostic atheist, as an accurate combination — universeness

I completely failed to answer this. Sorry.

This definition is important to me because of the endless confusion people have about agnosticism vis-à-vis atheism. I think if you can incorporate both and explain the context of knowledge versus belief, you have a better persuasive platform. In discussing atheism with theists, I try to avoid introducing new terms.

Such a model is predicated on there being actual external states, but not on them being of any fixed form. — Isaac

Really interesting. Do you believe that from this position there is a 'reality as it is in itself' or do you consider such a term incoherent - 'reality' being a constructivist process, dependent on a point of view for its meaning?

The more extreme indirect realist would want to say that the perceived object is entirely a dynamic and continually 'being formed' construct created as a collaboration between us and it (we interact with it, form ideas about it, impose those ideas on it etc).

In none of these cases (that I know of), is it claimed that the actual object about which the perception is the subject resides in the head. — Isaac

Interesting. The latter would be idealism, wouldn't it?

Whatever data is gathered from the external system is passed through several internal stages at each of which data other than from the (current) external state is allowed to modify the prediction of the external state used in, for example, speech about it, or interaction with it.

The process is not direct. — Isaac

It seems that the issue is where do we draw the line between indirect and the idea that 'materialism' is an illusion created by perception?

Perceptual psychologists tell us that most of what we see when we recognize objects is filled in from memory. What we actually take in though our sense receptors is very informationally impoverished. — Joshs

That seems to match my experience. How many times have I seen something and realized a second later that it was not the thing I thought I saw? Heaps. Anticipation and memory seemed to co-create what is in front of me.

Empirical evidence for the supernatural is a contradictory notion because that which is sensed must be by definition natural. — Hanover

My point isn't to identify what is supernatural or not (or even what counts as evidence) just that you can find seemingly reliable people who claim to have had all sorts of bizarre experiences, so there's not much the rest of us can take from a personal experience argument.

The only way I could see empirical evidence as being evidence of God's existence would be in the indirect sense, as is the fact that existence exists points to something creating that existence. — Hanover

Is this right? Surely you are not ruling out the possibility that god could appear empirically to all of us as they have done in stories/scripture?

Much time is spent psychoanalyzing the theist, perhaps because he seems so obviously wrong to the atheist that an explanation must be arrived at for why an otherwise intellgent person would take it seriously. But this is me psychoanalyzing the atheist. My guess is that we're both part right and part wrong here. — Hanover

I'm not psychoanalyzing anyone, I hope. Psychoanalysis is just another faith based belief system. :wink: I was simply making the common sense observation that most people believe in god because they are brought up that way - groomed by parents, family, culture. But as an atheist I don't hold to the view that belief in god is obviously wrong. My atheism is probably derived by aesthetic considerations and the simple lack of an ability to believe. Reasoning is post hoc.

What is interesting to me is how seriously the atheists take these conversations. You can't seem to have a thread about theism without the atheists being sure to enter the conversation and passionately objecting, some more respectfully than others — Hanover

It's a serious subject, right? Especially when you consider that for atheists, many of the world's key problems are either created by or intensified by a fiction people call God. (Let's not list all those countries with appalling expressions of religion again.) If theists did not want to influence abortion laws, women's rights, gay rights, access to contraception, environmental protections, what book we can read, etc, I don't think the matter would interest many atheists.

It's probably also worth mentioning that most atheists, myself included, rarely have reason to talk about theism/atheism. I know in America it isn't very safe to be openly atheist. Especially outside of urban cosmopolitanism. This is the only place where I have spoken of atheism in many years, so it's not really a part of my daily life (except as my implicit or enacted worldview). Much of my critique of religion actually comes from Christian religious writers like Bentley Hart and Shelby Spong.

Often the conversation turns toward a discussion of childhood trauma dealing with religion, prior episodes of social ostracism arising from religious institutions, and other bad acts of religion. — Hanover

Survivors of fundamentalist creeds tend to fall into this category. I consider myself fortunate to have been brought up within a liberal tradition of Christianity which saw the Bible as a series of myths designed to make a broader point.

In general I think what you have said about religion on this forum is reasonable and laudable.

Thanks, yes I did look it up and I have encountered it before but promptly forgotten it. Yes, I have often stated that the idea of god to me isn't coherent or clear enough to be engaged with in a meaningful way. God is like a Rorschach inkblot over which cultures and individuals seem to 'see' what they like. Now there are some theists (perhaps from apophatic traditions) who would not resent this description and be quite content with the notion that god is unknowable and incomprehensible to mortals.

Why are you not more attracted to Ignostic atheist? — universeness

Mainly because the term is new to me.

Meh, failure to commit. — Banno

But that's my entire philosophy, Banno.