I used to be an atheist up to my early twenties but as a grew older I had some personal experiences which swayed me rather than scripture which I never found convincing to begin with. — kindred

Fair enough. The issue with personal revelation and experience is that, for others, it’s just hearsay. (Is that Hume?) Whoever it is, it sounds fair. I’ve heard many first-hand accounts of experiences: Indian girls who say they encountered Krishna, Muslim cab drivers who report seeing Muhammad and the angel Gabriel, Christians who say they saw Mary or ‘felt’ the Holy Spirit. I’d be more convinced if the Hindu girl encountered Jesus and the Muslim cab driver saw Krishna. It seems to me these experiences are primed by culture and expectation.

I’m inclined to think that people’s behavior has little bearing on the truth of their beliefs. We can do good things for bad reasons, and we can follow the moral code of fictional characters from novels, yet still perform righteous acts.

The fact that so much evil has been done in the name of Christianity has no bearing on whether there's a god or not.

Are the philosophical arguments much better? Are any of those cartoonish in your view? — DingoJones

I’ve never heard any that are convincing to me personally, but there’s nothing cartoonish about Leibniz’s argument from contingency or Plantinga’s evolutionary argument against naturalism.

Wouldn't the behaviour of believers reflect whether god exists depend on how one is defining god and specifically some of the wisdom or rules he lays down? — DingoJones

I wouldn’t think so. If you believe in divine command then killing apostates is good.

What if there is a god and he’s a thug? Like the one described in the Old Testament. We can perhaps disprove that god is good as humans understand him, but perhaps he’s more Trump than Lincoln…

I’m not sure the behaviour of believers has much bearing upon the existence of a god. Can you say more?

Well there ARE bible literalists, so some people do believe a cartoonish thing. Of course it is also low hanging fruit as you say, the easiest attack vector against religion. — DingoJones

I think that’s right. And given this is a philosophy site I’d expect less focus on this type of god and more on philosophical arguments.

:up:

I tend to view Biblical literalism as a cartoonish account of God. I started a thread on this. If atheists confine themselves to attacking literalists, they’re just going after low-hanging fruit. So it’s a general point, and it’s also clear that the behavior of Christians, or Muslims, for that matter, has no bearing on whether a God exists. Plenty of theists, like Spong, think religions are often primitive and terrible.

I wonder if Nietzsche is the most misread of popular philosophers.

That's very interesting and certainly resonated with some of my thinking.

Have you ever reflected on Nietzsche’s initial identification of Wagner as a kind of “great hope,” followed later by his disillusionment and condemnation? You can almost see the need for an Übermensch as a kind of antidote for the sorts of transformative cultural heroes who promise renewal but will eventually will let you down.

The person who might find this interesting is a Christian who is troubled with some of the consequences of Christianity, so he's doing like most religious people do who are otherwise devout believers: they modify the doctrine in a personally palatable way and often convince themselves that they have uncovered the truer form of the religion lost somewhere in time. — Hanover

I think this is right.

I think the glorification of crime is a very real phenomenon, particularly among young men. In my experience, the posters hanging on the walls of college dorms will generally be of either famous musicians (the poet archetype) or various Hollywood villains (e.g., Tony Montana of Scarface seems to have enduring popularity, Tyler Durden of Fight Club and Heath Ledger or Joaquin Phoenix's Joker as well). A Batman poster is the sort of thing you have your parents buy for you as a kid. As a teenager or young adult, you get a poster of the Joker. — Count Timothy von Icarus

Sure. Although those film references are more Gen X than current.

But I’ve always suspected that the antihero would eventually morph into a fully antisocial hero at some point.

I can’t comment on Nietzsche, but is the anti-hero, and the glorification of crime and anti-social pretentions part of the West’s apparent self-loathing and deconstruction, where (for many) only forms of subversion are deemed worthy of veneration?

Tom, if believing in a mystical version of a god helps you to sleep better, why would I challenge you? However, I would invite you to consider that you've kept only one piece of the puzzle as your soother. I've been there and done that.
Why not simply enjoy what quantum physics is revealing - that all is energy, connected, and coherent? — Paula Tozer

I’m an atheist, Paula. But I prefer to have an informed view of religions than the simple cartoon accounts of many atheists. I was brought up in the Baptist tradition but found the notion of a god incoherent from an early age. I was never a believer.

The Baptists don’t have a central hierarchy and allow a range of views. The governance is congregational. There are also Literalists here. But fearful literalists have never been big in Australia.

Please provide examples of your claim - of a Christian religion that does not, at its core, rely on original sin and the sinfulness of "mankind." — Paula Tozer

I grew up in the Baptist tradition which did not accept this doctrine and took issue with it. It also rejected the notion of hell. You'll find this in Protestant and Anglican/Episcopal traditions. And in some Eastern Orthodox and some Methodist.

If you are a modern Christian who understands the Bible as allegories and you believe in evolution, then the story of Adam and Eve is a creation myth and original sin is impossible. Not all Christians are primitive literalists.

To borrow a quote from one of the prominent Episcopal Bishops in America, Bishop Shelby Spong (who died a few years ago) -

Atonement theology assumes that we were created in some kind of original perfection. We now know that life has emerged from a single cell that evolved into self-conscious complexity over billions of years. There was no original perfection. If there was no original perfection, then there could never have been a fall from perfection. If there was no fall, then there is no such thing as “original sin” and thus no need for the waters of baptism to wash our sins away. If there was no fall into sin, then there is also no need to be rescued. How can one be rescued from a fall that never happened? How can one be restored to a status of perfection that he or she never possessed? So most of our Christology today is bankrupt. Many popular titles that we have applied to Jesus, such as “savior,” “redeemer,” and “rescuer,” no longer make sense...
Bishop John Shelby Spong Biblical Literalism: A Gentile Heresy

Is it just a corollary of the runaway principle of capitalism?

Can we compare the superficial West to other societies which do not see youth and beauty as the be all and end all?

Just look at how old people are mainly ignored in society. Not even old-old but after 20s people are generally removed from the main stage to accept smaller and smaller roles. — unimportant

I can only provide a dull quotidian rant. Beauty and youth have never been something I’ve thought much about or focused on. But the frame you’ve presented is one I’ve heard for decades. When I was young, I was more interested in older people because they had experience and knew things I didn’t. I’ve always been more drawn to character, originality, and texture than to beauty, and most of my friends are similar. So I struggle to relate to the kind of picture you’ve presented, though I do recognize that advertising (often appealing to the lowest common denominator) manufactures trends and shapes interests by targeting certain insecurities around perceptions of beauty, etc. But should we give a fuck, and how many of us actually do?

Cosmetic surgery, exercise regimens, dieting, and fashion are all long-standing practices, driven more by people’s lack of confidence than anything else. We confuse physical appearance with success (just as we confuse wealth with success) only because we may not be nuanced enough to recognize that most of us already look fine, and that if we simply relaxed, we’d likely be both happier and more successful. In this sense, I don’t think we care that much beauty itself, only about the apparent currency or leverage it might hold.

Atheism is the belief that there are no gods. — Bob Ross

Of course, many atheists today don’t formulate it like that, even if it’s a traditional account. For me, an atheist is simply someone who doesn’t believe there are gods. It’s not a knowledge claim; it’s a belief claim. As an atheist I simply say I am unconvinced by any god claims, including the arguments I have encountered, from CS Lewis to Aquinas.

All Christian religions must agree on this point, and that is, fundamentally, where our paths diverge. I got tired of being a sinner, I didn't put Jesus on a cross...so I changed my mind. — Paula Tozer

Christians don’t all agree on this. Many are taught that the Bible is metaphorical rather than literally true, and that God is not a “magic man in the sky.” Theistic personalism is only one way of construing God. For many Christians, God is understood as the ground of being: mysterious, unknowable, and certainly not a person. Closer to mysticism. Your argument is really directed at a very particular account of Christianity and God.

:up:

Kant scholars are divided between a 'dual worlds' interpretation where there is the phenomenal (empirical) world and the noumenal world and a 'dual aspect' interpretation where there is one world with both a phenomenal and a noumenal aspect. — Janus

Sounds like the Kantian conundrum equivalent to the Many-Worlds or Copenhagen Interpretations in QM. :razz:

:up:

If one were to put it this way: instead of consciousness arising from matter, matter arises within consciousness. In other words, reality is pure consciousness. It strikes me that, in a sense, Kant is a kind of dualist with his phenomena/noumena distinction. The “thing-in-itself,” however elusive, still functions as a foundational guarantee for our experience of phenomena. That seems less elegant than simply arguing that all is consciousness, with no independent “real world” needed that gives our experience of consciousness its shape. Thoughts?

My understanding is that Fichte had a similar issue and replaced noumenon with the notion of the “I.” He seems to avoid solipsism by positing the “I” as a transcendental consciousness that makes shared experience and intersubjectivity possible. This strikes me as wholly, or at least partly, compatible with Kastrup’s idea of Mind-at-Large, which he describes as non-metacognitive and the source of all consciousness.

Anyway…..light is always good. — Mww

Light is all I've got. :wink:

Yep, I got the gist from 'checkboxes'.

:up: fair points well made.

I think the conversation should be about something deeper than surface appearances like diversity and visible inclusion. We need to include people in our hearts, not just on paper with ethnic frouonandnsecualnorietstiin checkboxes. — Fire Ologist

Yes, that's reasonable.

The meaning of the expression 'everything is in consciousness' is elusive. It is often taken to mean that its adherents say the world is all in the mind of the perceiver - everything is in my consciousness. But that leads to problems of solipsism. — Wayfarer

Yes, unless you have Kastrup's Mind-at-Large or Berkeley's God grouding all things. Although Mind-at-Large might be seen as almost solipsistic by some, in as much as you and I, and all members here are dissociated alters of M.a.L. We are all one.

This process of world-creation is actually going on, all the time - it is what consciousness is doing every second. Becoming directly aware of that world-making process is key. As I've mentioned, I learned about Kant from a scholarly book comparing Buddhist and Kantian philosophy (ref). — Wayfarer

I find this view plausible. And phenomenology seems to take similar positions.

So if someone says 'there is nothing except consciousness" what is your view of this?

The general, rather than the exact, difference reduces to an investigation of the faculty, thus the role of, and limitations imposed on, pure reason, as that which provides the principles for proper thinking, re: in accordance with logical laws, hence the name “transcendental” as a modified doctrinal idealism. — Mww

Difficult to understand exactly but I can see some light. The mind structures experience.

I’m still not entirely clear on the exact difference between Kant’s transcendental idealism and classical idealism. Kant isn’t really saying that everything is consciousness, is he? He’s saying that there is something out there (we can't apprehend), and we shape our experience of it through our cognitive apparatus and this we experience as phenomena/reality. Which sounds similar to some of the perspectives you have offered. Thoughts?

It’s such a powerful tool when the right phrase or description is found to illustrate something complex like this.

Now you mention it, I don’t recall Kastrup saying much about Kant, but I think Kant, Schopenhauer, and Kastrup could comfortably fit under one umbrella, so to speak. — Wayfarer

Interesting. I think Kastrup’s notion that materialism is how consciousness appears when viewed across the dissociative divide, if that's the precise wording, (or does he call it the external appearance of inner experiences?) seems compatible with phenomena.

Nicely put. I wonder what Kant would have made of Bernardo Kastrup’s formulation of idealism.

:up: No worries. You have no idea what oceans I have already crossed.

Sorry, I appreciate your efforts and good luck to you, but if I’m going to attempt something complex, it’ll be Heidegger. I have absolutely no idea what most of your sentences mean.

How could you say that?

You know what humility is.

You said above that you “support diversity”. — Fire Ologist

Diversity and tolerance and acceptance of those who are different are made possible by humility.

Humility is being grateful. And thankful. It is thanking someone else for what they do for you. It is acknowledging others, before yourself, above yourself at times. It is not taking credit for the good you might do, and even giving credit to others for the good you do.

We all do these things. That is humility. — Fire Ologist

Sorry, I don’t relate to this frame. I’m not saying it isn’t right in its own way but it just doesn’t come up in my framing of this matter. I tend to go more with a rights approach (I don't ground rights in humility or any brand of ultimate truth, just pragmatically), but I am not a theorist.

(Added later) I guess we would hope for a form of humility: or at least a lack of dogmatism and arrogance, in all interlocutors when we are in discussion about an apparent clash of values.

Here is where we have to be careful. We just said we value conversation with people who think differently. So isn’t binary thinking just another different way of thinking that we should humbly respect (at least once in a while)? Is binary thinking nothing but a stumbling block? What is really wrong with a little binary simplification, once in a while? We should tolerate that too, at times. — Fire Ologist

Dividing people into “us” and “them” is so often the nub of the problem: binary. In fact, this is how you appeared to frame the discourse when you wrote this:

I think progressives need to understand that being conservative doesn’t mean having no heart or empathy or feelings.
And conservatives need to understand that being liberal doesn’t mean having no common sense. — Fire Ologist

But I didn’t say that some binary thinking isn’t useful. We didn’t get into parsing the notion of binary or dualistic thinking more broadly; I was just pointing to the tribalism and dualistic frames that seems to be at the heart of our culture wars.

Can you square tolerance, acceptance, support for diversity, with people who don’t share our values? — Fire Ologist

I have no problem with this. All we can do is have a conversation advocating for our values and present some reasons. I tend to value solidarity over division. But I'm not interested in getting into a conversation about my 'worldview', there have been enough monomaniacs flogging brittle worldviews on this site already.

I focus on solidarity, because for me all we really have are conversations with others, not the exchange of ultimate truths. Talking about values this way helps me understand others and build empathy. The aim is finding ways to live together respectfully, not proving anyone right.

Are you both equating the values we happen to choose with our feelings, or saying we make our choices out of gut feelings, and random “cultural influences” and “innate traits” that we don’t choose? — Fire Ologist

I have no advanced theory about this. What I experience is people settling on what appeals to them aesthetically and culturally (often through upbringing ) so it’s contingent. Reasoning often seems post hoc.

An obvious response is: ‘If all is contingent, then there’s no right or wrong, and how can one view (mine for instance) be superior to another?’ But contingency only describes how values arise, not whether we can evaluate them. We can still judge perspectives based on consequences, coherence, or social effects ‘no absolute truth’ doesn’t mean ‘no basis for judgment.’ This process will always be a bit loose and jagged.

If people’s opinions are a bundle of randomly developed value choices not even really in their control (influenced and innate) then a real, open conversation Tom mentioned above is hardly ever going to happen. Only by shaping society first can we even open people up to those conversations. And to want to reshape society we can’t be tolerant, we can’t respect diversity, we can’t humbly include those who think things that should not be valued. We have to reshape the diverse to conform. — Fire Ologist

Even if our values are influenced by factors beyond our control, conversation is still the main way we learn from each other and reconsider what we care about. I’ve had many useful conversations with fundamentalist Christians in the atheism space—no arguments, no antipathy.

If you’re asking how we change the opinions of people who hold firm beliefs opposite our own, I think it happens slowly, through time and exposure and boredom. And conversation. I suspect, for instance, in 50-100 years transpeople will be commonplace and mostly accepted. Which is how we come to no longer jail gay people or force treatment upon them (except, perhaps, in a small subset of fundamentalist communities).

Help me make the connection between what I said about philosophy and your response.

My arguments are based on the (conditional) truth of the existence of physical things - the valid Pole of Existence (on my Geodesic of Knowledge). — Pieter R van Wyk

Perhaps you could sketch out in a few dot points how this relates to the point that philosophy should have solved all the world's problems. If it's too hard to adapt your complicated ideas to this request, we can move on.

I think progressives need to understand that being conservative doesn’t mean having no heart or empathy or feelings.
And conservatives need to understand that being liberal doesn’t mean having no common sense. — Fire Ologist

Yes, that's a point I often make too.

I hold progressive and conservative positions, depending on the issue. Conservatives have almost never concerned me - reactionaries and hard right people I'm less optimistic about.

What is humility? — Fire Ologist

Not sure.

If humility and respect really were our personal goals, there wouldn’t be so much outrage involved. People don’t seem to really want to be tolerant or appreciate true diversity, or think of themselves as all equal - people would rather hate the deplorables, hate maga, hate liberal elites, hate wokeist whiners. — Fire Ologist

I tend to come from a starting point that people do the best with what they have or with what that can understand and all we can do is have a conversation with those who think differently and maybe something positive can come from that. The stumbling block to me seems to be tribalism and binary thinking. And when it comes to public discourse, the inflammatory approach of media tends to promote extreme, black and white.

Being offended is its own genus and arena of thought, to my mind. I recently wrote a short essay on this topic with focus on slurs if you have any interest. It is incomplete as I was too ambitious - but i still got a 92 lol — AmadeusD

I'd be interested if it isn't too theoretical.

I'm curious about this idea, but I feel uneasy about it. While it seems true that how we react is our responsibility, it also seems clear that if someone is persistently described by others as less than human, inferior, dumb, or inadequate and is verbally abused, they will inevitably be affected. This is simply how people are. We respond to and internalize our interactions, conversations, and even name-calling, just as we respond positively to constructive feedback.

There may well be a case for teaching people to change their reactions, to emotionally detach from other's judgments and ill will, but that, to me, seems to require an enormous change management process. We appear to be dealing with an embedded intersubjective history of human interaction that may not simply be set aside with some rationalism.

I do. I didn't see a "poor me" in the OP. I saw this:

God is dead. God remains dead. And we have killed him. How shall we comfort ourselves, the murderers of all murderers? What was holiest and mightiest of all that the world has yet owned has bled to death under our knives: who will wipe this blood off us? What water is there for us to clean ourselves? What festivals of atonement, what sacred games shall we have to invent? Is not the greatness of this deed too great for us? Must we ourselves not become gods simply to appear worthy of it?
— Nietzsche — frank

What do you take to be the meaning of that often proffered quote?

I agree, there are a number of factors that are involved, but everyone believes that their version of god is on their side. — Paula Tozer

Everyone believes their version of 'truth' is on their side.

The problem isn't so much religion as it is tribalism and dogma.

I don't think "philosophy" has been to blame for mass murders, etc so much as dogmas have — 180 Proof

I agree. A critical point abotu human behaviours and tribalisms.

These represent only a fraction of the religious conflicts throughout history. The total number of people killed in the name of a god is likely in the hundreds of millions, if not more. — Paula Tozer

Lists are easy here, thanks to ChatGPT, are some of the non-religious wars and no doubt people will debate the finer points:

20th & 21st Century
Wars & Armed Conflicts

World War I (1914–1918) — Rooted in nationalism, imperial rivalries, alliances, and militarism.

World War II (1939–1945) — Driven by fascism, militarism, expansionism, and racial ideologies (e.g., Nazi doctrine) rather than religion.

Korean War (1950–1953) — Cold War proxy conflict over competing political systems (communism vs. capitalism).

Vietnam War (1955–1975) — Anti-colonial struggle evolving into a Cold War ideological battle.

Falklands War (1982) — Argentina vs. UK over territorial claims.

Iran–Iraq War (1980–1988) — Although both sides were Muslim, the main cause was territorial and political rivalry, not theological difference.

Russia–Ukraine Conflict (2014–present) — Geopolitical, territorial, and national identity disputes.

Ethiopia–Eritrea Border War (1998–2000) — Primarily about border demarcation.

State-led Atrocities & Mass Killings

Holodomor (1932–1933) — Soviet-engineered famine in Ukraine under Stalin; political/economic repression.

Great Purge (1936–1938) — Stalin’s political purges in the USSR.

The Holocaust — Although Jews were targeted partly on religious identity, Nazi ideology was racial/ethno-nationalist, not religious.

Mao’s Great Leap Forward (1958–1962) — Economic policies leading to famine and tens of millions of deaths.

Cultural Revolution (1966–1976) — Political and ideological purging under Mao.

Khmer Rouge Regime in Cambodia (1975–1979) — Pol Pot’s agrarian communist vision, ~1.7 million killed.

North Korean purges and gulags — Political control and suppression of dissent.

Rwandan Genocide (1994) — Ethnic conflict between Hutu and Tutsi.

Bosnian War Massacres (1992–1995) — Mainly ethnic nationalism, though with some cultural identity overlap.

Earlier History

Mongol Conquests (13th–14th centuries) — Expansionist empire building, not religious conversion campaigns.

Taiping Rebellion (1850–1864) — This one had a pseudo-Christian ideology, so not fully non-religious — but many other Chinese civil wars (e.g., An Lushan Rebellion, 8th century) were political/territorial.

Napoleonic Wars (1803–1815) — French expansionism, nationalism, and power politics.

American Civil War (1861–1865) — Primarily about slavery and state rights, not theology.

Franco-Prussian War (1870–1871) — Territorial and political rivalry.

Key Points

Many of the deadliest conflicts in history — World War II, Mao’s campaigns, Stalin’s purges, the Khmer Rouge — were entirely non-religious in origin.

Even when ethnic groups with religious identities are involved, the core cause can be political, nationalist, or economic.

Political ideologies like fascism, communism, and nationalism have caused as many or more deaths than explicitly religious wars.

Philosophy is all about recognizing the forces that shaped you and trying to peep beyond them.
— frank

But is it really? If one is aware, truly, of what shapes not only one's self but the entire world, is it not something perhaps a bit more internal? :chin: — Outlander

It would seem to me that a key role of philosophy is to transcend one’s limitations - cultural and self-created. To ask better questions and move beyond the quotidian. I suspect there are many ways this could be done.

More people have been killed in the name of a diety than any other way. — Paula Tozer

Can you demonstrate that? I doubt it’s accurate.

I’m an atheist, but I don’t blame religion for everything that’s wrong or bad. Just look at Pol Pot, an atheist whose regime murdered millions of men, women, and children for a political agenda. Mao, another atheist, killed 30–40 million for his political vision. Stalin? Same story. One might even argue that philosophy (if we include political ideologies) may have been been responsible for more deaths than any other pathway.

Sounds like you've had a tough time of things, but perhaps it's important not to assume that one’s own experience is the whole reality of the world.

the Dialogues show Plato testing every proposition from multiple angles, leaving many questions unresolved. They’re not a compendium of answers so much as of questions. In that sense, philosophy has always been “critical” — not just of others’ views, but reflexively aware of its own assumptions. — Wayfarer

This is a critical point so often overlooked,

:up: The cartoon is nice.

Clever dick... Out of interest, who do you prefer, Sartre or Camus. I was never able to get through Being and Nothingness.

Put seeds for celery, cauliflower, cabbage and silverbeet in the heated tray. Hope to start lines for carrot, beetroot and parsnip in a bit. — Banno

The essence of good gardening.