I will post, just below this post, my (lengthy) conclusion derived from the points I've posted here so far.
So, universeness, it being your job to demolish my conclusion, proceed — ucarr

I will respond to your points, as best I can, not with the intention of 'demolishing your conclusion,' but with the intention of attempting to scrutinise the logic you employ.

My work entails establishing a connection between atheism & solipsism, plus their two modes: monism & idealism. — ucarr

I don't see much connection between atheism and monism. Atheism is not an expression of monism, it's simply a non-belief in god. I can be atheist and believe in the multiverse, such a belief is not monist.
I see the connection between solipsism and monism from the argument that only 'self' is real. But I think solipsism is nonsense as each of us experiences self. Why would my claim of self be more valuable than yours? Solipsism, to me, is just a 'silly idea.'

I do not see atheism as an ideal, there is no perfection that is the source of atheism. To me, such thinking is just flowery tosh. again I state that an atheist does not believe that god(s) exist. I am not in search of any 'ideal atheism.'
If you are suggesting that atheism is merely a construct of the human mind and therefore not real then by that same logic, so is god and so are all constructs/concepts of the 'ideal.' For me, the metaphysical does not exist.

I do not see solipsism as an ideal, it's just an idea and a bad one in my view.

Simple counter-argument to knowing, authoritatively, with certain knowledge, God doesn’t exist.
If I say I am a swimmer, then I can prove what I am, by taking a dip in the pool.
Grammatically speaking, I am a swimmer is a verbal equation. I (subject) + (linking verb) am + (subject complement) a swimmer condenses down to I = a swimmer.
God, by definition, comprehends all existence. This is a well-defined property of God. — ucarr

Are you seriously saying that someone displaying an ability to swim, is evidence for the existence of god? God, by definition, comprehends all existence. This is a well-defined property of God
This is a claim, made by theists in their construction of god. That does not give it any credence whatsoever! This provides no evidence of the existence of god and is mere sophestry. It is not even clever sophistry.

According to the unrestricted comprehension principle of set theory, for any sufficiently well-defined property, there is a set of all and only the objects that have that property.
If I say, God is not, then I can prove what I know by revealing to you all existence.
This is the unrestricted comprehension principle in application.
Grammatically speaking, God is not is a verbal equation. God (subject) + (linking verb) is + (subject complement) extant not condenses down to God = extant not or
God ≠ extant.
If I know all existence, a power unique to God, then knowing there is no God means I am God.
If two things comprehend all existence, how can they be different? — ucarr

I always find amusement when a theistic argument is placed in an academic frame in an attempt to give it scientific credibility. Such attempts are so transparent.
Your god properties are not well-defined, as if god was omnipotent, omniscient and omnipresent then it would have appeared in the center of London, New York, Paris and Washington D.C, simultaneously by now. It has never demonstrated any of the properties you assign to it except within folklore and fairytale.
You are just engaging in meaningless rhetoric and boring wordplay. Let's cut through it. Get your god to show up and do stuff. I have challenged it many times in my own ways. No results, at all, because it does not exist.

I read through the rest of the points you made and got more and more bored.
I suggest that all theists in existence communicate with each other, and make one big prayer/demand of your superhero to appear and show us, inferior humans, what it can do.
Your god has no power as it does not exist. It is a simple scapegoat for the bad behavior of some humans. Many humans use the god fable to commit heinous acts and then claim god is working through them to enact its will. A very convenient way of demonstrating why it is always absent.
The claim is: "God works in mysterious ways. god is in me, I act in gods name, etc, etc."
Humans have to become grown-ups and get rid of god. When the majority of us have achieved this, perhaps we will be ready to leave the nest and start to inhabit more of this vast Universe.
Let the movie industry be the place where gods/superhero's exist. That's their most useful purpose, as an entertainment.

That's exactly the kind of fallacious argument I would expect from someone so utterly uninformed of what Objectivism is as to have issued your original statement on the subject, of which I called you out on. You have no idea to what degree Rand and I differ in our deliberations, just as you don't know how much I differ in conclusions with Nietzsche, or Kant. Yet, only Rand maintains this position in your mind among philsoophers. I already explained why that is. I recommend reading Intro to Objectivist Epistemology, you will not have the same opinion when you're done.

Come now. What do you think "Ayn Rand is to philosophy what L. Ron Hubbard is to religion" means? Plainly, it asserts a similarity between them and how they're interpreted, the one in relation to philosophy, the one in relation to religion. That's what I address. This similarity need not relate to the quality or coherence of their beliefs; it may refer to their status, their impact, their characters, the character of their followers, their biographical data, their reception by others.

You'll find Rand has been discussed in quite a few threads in this forum. There may be those who would be interested in her philosophy. I'm not one of them.

Right, but you seem to be missing something rather important. It isn't about your interest in the philosophy, which, if you regard yourself as a philosopher, isn't something that is acceptable. However, do your thing. You're missing that when people who study philosophy hear something like "Rand is to philosophy what Hubard is to religion," it sounds as ridiculous and bizarre are saying "Nietzsche is to philosophy what Hubbard is to religion." That's becuase Rand is every bit the philosopher as her peers were. Many of whom she is clearly superior to, qualitatively. But, for some reason, people keep repeating this whole, "she's not taken seriously" mantra. Which I remind you again, we study her right next to Kant and Descartes in ethics courses.

However, do your thing. — Garrett Travers

Oh, I will. It's true I'm not fond of Rand. I'm not particularly fond of Frantic Freddie (as I like to call him) either, by the way. I read a good deal of both Rand and Nietzsche years ago. I think the Sturm und Drang movement continues, and they're both representatives of it in their own way. It had an appeal to me for a time, but no more. But we venture too far beyond this thread.

Lol, Frantic Freddie, good one. I'm not too fond of him either; however, his intellect was clearly towering. Fondness for Rand is something acquired. Took me a long time to see the angle, and there is still much I disagree with. But, what really drives it home is her epistemology, it's absolutely brilliant. Tell me, have you read it?

I haven't read the work you referred to earlier. I read her fiction, and The Virtue of Selfishness, and some other odds and ends. My understanding and my recollection is she was very fond of Aristotle, and also, it seems, his great imitator, Aquinas. I prefer Aristotle to Plato, but think Aristotle's perspective on most things to be narrow.

I think Nietzsche could be brilliant and insightful, but whether due to a lack of patience or an excess of emotion he was disinclined to provide reasons for his insights. He was declarative, even imperious. He was a preacher, I think.

Nietzsche was overcome with hatred, I do believe. Which is what he generated, a philosophy of human negation, relegating morality to that of master and slave. Not good. Brilliant, but damaging to the tradition. Rand was certainly an admirer of Aristotle, but I believe she placed herself on much greater a level; which I would second- mainly because of what you said of his views being narrow; no doubt the result of being so primitive. With Intro to Obj. Epis. she fundamentally makes the case, in a very, very sophisticated manner, that the senses are reliable, knowledge is obtainable, and that our nature dictates the directions in which our behaviors should be focused at a base level. I'm of a mind that such a foundation is compatible with most legitimate philosophical framework, even those that seem impossibly opposed. I implore you to at least sample the first 3 chapters, I'll be flabergasted if you do so and still regard her as of no interest philosophically.

I suppose I shouldn't reject that work out of hand, never having read it, much though I find her objectionable. But if I do so some here may demand that I read Heidegger (whom I've repeatedly deplored here and elsewhere) more than I have--a frightening prospect.

I mean, read all philosophy as a base rule, I would say. Heidegger is good for learning what you are up against in the world, and how seductive such sentiments are to the people ones like Heidegger seek to influence and dominate. However, Objectivism is far more sophisticated than any Heideggerian musing. Rand should never be compared to Heidegger, or any other collectivist epistemologist. Intro is the essential work, in my opinion. Many people can't dig her literature all that much, stale characters and such.

Atheism's link to solipsism & monism, as presented in my argument, is simple.

To deny omniscience authoritatively means to be omniscience. By common sense, the self, outside of direct experience & possession of omniscience, has no basis for claiming omniscience non-existent.

Thus, refutation = verification. As with the unrestricted comprehension principle examined in Russell's Paradox, wherein inclusion = exclusion, we have an interesting paradox.

Frege's mission to reduce arithmetic operations to logic was thwarted by a deformation of non-contradiction.

I'm hopeful Godel's Incompleteness Theorem - any first-order math system will generate true statements not provable within the boundaries of that system - has something to say about the limit of Divine Solipsism, to the effect that Divine Omniscience generated human because The One is inadequate. Eternal solitude won't do.

As we all know, Christian Theology has something to say about the relationship between knowing & being - In the beginning, the word was with God, and the word was God.

Now we have solipsism & monism shaking hands, with cognition & phenomenon as one. God's thoughts are the real states of being that populate the universe. But this oneness is destined, by design, to break apart. This is where human slips into the creation.

The Sartrean exam of the relationship of knowing & being has human immersed within absurdity, thereby forced to make decisions that must be treated as axiomatic in the absence of enduring logic.

My take on this is that paradoxes have to be admitted into scientific orthodoxy. Of course I'm arrogantly stealing from Bohr, Planck & Einstein.

Since the digital age rests upon the platform of QM, and QM computing takes a categorical leap upwards in info processing, thus promising to reveal cognitive constructs previously unimaginable, I suppose internal contradictions aren't always the death knell for a theory.

I say the flaw in atheism as omniscient refuter of omniscience is its failure to embrace the paradox that verifies what it denies. This is to say that atheism should recognize its support of theism by the fact of its existence. Under this construction, paradox does NOT equal invalidation. Instead, we're right back to the stalemate: God, neither provable nor refutable.

On the other side of the paradox, theists should accept their Godly utterances as a spotlight throwing human as God-defier into relief, to everyone's advantage, a testified to in Milton's Paradise Lost.

Oh, yes. There's a cosmically mandated deformation of the monism of cognition & phenomenon. Human, Jesus included, drags problematical materialism into the mix.

The deformation of God's monist, Let there be light, echoed down here on earth by Descartes as, I think, therefore I am, let's in our monetized world of commodities, which QM has perplexed back towards the ying-yangish paradox of refutation equals verification.

Much of the above is gibberish. It does contain a few bits of what I want to say. I'm working on it. I need brutal excoriation from harsh critics. That's why I doing this in public.

Right. And at least traditionally, atheism has been akin to/friendly towards materialism/realism/physicalism, whereas idealism/anti-realism has been aligned with theism, and it is idealism, not materialism, which is always in danger of slipping off into solipsism.

(after all, the core epistemological argument for idealism that calls into question the material/physical world, similarly calls into question the existence of other minds by the very same token)

:up:

There's no indication the mother is insane in the film. Also, she already had money, and clearly wasn't trading him in to obtain more. Thatcher was a hired man. I thought the scene made it apparent that Charles was being sent away because the mother feared what the father (or step-father, perhaps) would do to him. — Ciceronianus

Late to this party but absolutely correct. The shot of Anges Moorehead at the end of that exchange is highly charged. What a scene!

I always find amusement when a theistic argument is placed in an academic frame in an attempt to give it scientific credibility. Such attempts are so transparent. — universeness

Do you think I'm a theist? If so, why? I've been examining some details of atheism. Does my exam imply pro-Theism? If so, please cite examples.

Your god properties are not well-defined, as if god was omnipotent, omniscient and omnipresent then it would have appeared in the center of London, New York, Paris and Washington D.C, simultaneously by now. — universeness

I think you're confusing abstract conceptualization with empirical verification.

"Atheism" : only nature :: "solipsism" : only me.
Nothing to do with one another. — 180 Proof

↪180 Proof Right. And at least traditionally, atheism has been akin to/friendly towards materialism/realism/physicalism, whereas idealism/anti-realism has been aligned with theism, and it is idealism, not materialism, which is always in danger of slipping off into solipsism.

(after all, the core epistemological argument for idealism that calls into question the material/physical world, similarly calls into question the existence of other minds by the very same token) — Seppo

180 Proof & Seppo make useful points here. They are succinct & clarifying examples of compare & contrast pertaining to theism/atheism.

Seppo,
Regarding the atheist who knows there's no all-present, all-powerful, all-effectual & transcendent sentience, does not such an atheist exemplify an ideal?

I ask this question because: a) within the epistemological discipline, there's no consensus about the possibility of certain knowledge; b) qualification for judging a sentient being of divine status implies divine status on the part of the judge.

Do you think I'm a theist? If so, why? I've been examining some details of atheism. Does my exam imply pro-Theism? If so, please cite examples — ucarr

I won't bother speculating. I am sure that if you wish to state your religious status, then you will do so.
You were trying to put forward bad evidence(in my opinion) that god exists, hence my use of 'theistic argument.'

I think you're confusing abstract conceptualization with empirical verification. — ucarr

No, I am suggesting that abstract conceptualisation is just mental athletics and without empirical verification, it remains mental athletics and nothing more than pure conjecture and can often reach the status of pure nonsense.

Regarding the atheist who knows there's no all-present, all-powerful, all-effectual & transcendent sentience, does not such an atheist exemplify an ideal — ucarr

No, an atheist does not believe god exists. It's not an ideal, it's an opinion. I am an atheist but I cannot prove there is no god, no-one can, but I am personally convinced as near to 100% as you can get.
I am not being idealistic, I am not aiming for perfection, I just refuse to be as duped as a theist.

I want the generations to come to be freed from religious lies. I am not too bothered about current believers. I want the next generation to be told what we KNOW or are SCIENTIFICALLY most convinced of. That is all we should teach about truth. Let them speculate further or allow their imagination to take whatever flight of fancy it may but teach them not to make policies or build civilisations based on speculation and flights of fancy. Build on what we know!

No, an atheist does not believe god exists. It's not an ideal, it's an opinion. I am an atheist but I cannot prove there is no god, no-one can, but I am personally convinced as near to 100% as you can get. — universeness

The theist, like me, is convinced almost 100% he does exist. I don't give a damn about their eventual intentions for the creation of the universe and I don't preach in their name to direct life. I derive no morals from them or whatever. I still regret it that I signed an entrance paper for university. I had to sign to prove my Christian belief (for a physics study...)! Someone (I'm sure you would have liked him!) told me I should have protested. And he is right! The university is the closest by of the two in town. So I signed. What would have happened if I refused to sign?

I am not being idealistic, I am not aiming for perfection, I just refuse to be as duped as a theist. — universeness

I refuse to be duped as an atheist.

I want the generations to come to be freed from religious lies. I am not too bothered about current believers. I want the next generation to be told what we KNOW or are SCIENTIFICALLY most convinced of. That is all we should teach about truth. Let them speculate further or allow their imagination to take whatever flight of fancy it may but teach them not to make policies or build civilisations based on speculation and flights of fancy. Build on what we know! — universeness

I tend to agree with this, but doesn't building society up by politics based on science mean giving the same power to Science as giving power to God?

What would have happened if I refused to sign? — Cornwell1

You could have started a campaign. You may have been surprised by how many in the University would have supported you. One snowflake can start an avalanche. You would perhaps have gained a lot of outside support as well. I support such campaigns if I hear of them. Just like the schools in the deep South of the USA who were forced to accept black students. This pathetic excuse for the word 'University' (the name suggests 'for all, not for theists only!) would have or indeed will have to accept atheists as well or else it should be shut down and replaced.
I would have loved to see the day when you entered that university without having to sign something you perhaps didn't agree with, on principle at the time and those who insisted you did sign, got removed from their jobs.

From what you say, you sound more deist to me than theist but I could be dead wrong.

The theist, like me, is convinced almost 100% he does exist — Cornwell1

I refuse to be duped as an atheist — Cornwell1

I always enjoy a bit of pantomime based exchange, 'Oh no you don't!,' 'Oh yes you do!,'
Oh sh** not that whole 'multiple personality stuff again....aaaaarrrggghhhhh'
Don't worry, normal service will resume soon.

I tend to agree with this, but doesn't building society up by politics based on science mean giving the same power to Science as giving power to God? — Cornwell1

No, I am a democratic socialist. Checks and balances, scrutiny of intent....always and forever.

I am reminded of an old story from the early days of the Roman senate.
Anytime a conquering general came back to Rome to receive his big glorious parade.
The senate insisted that a slave be placed behind him on his horse or stood beside him in his chariot and regularly spoke the words 'remember you are just a man.' into his ear. I like that.
We must always seek out those with nefarious intent and stop them.
Unlike god, science is real but it has no power. Power comes from those who wield and control the technologies produced from the activity called science. Look to the well-used phrase.
Bombs don't kill people, people kill people.
We always had the tendency to become destroyers of worlds but that does not mean we have to.

Oh sh** not that whole 'multiple personality stuff again....aaaaarrrggghhhhh'
Don't worry, normal service will resume soon. — universeness

:lol:

Though I don't fully understand...Multiple personalities?
In everyday life I never think about gods. Does it really matter if they exist? Do they offer a moral for our relationship with nature? Do they prevent us from doing harm to others? Can we say it's blasphemy if we curse "goddamned"?
Sometimes, when late at night I walk outside and see moon-lightened clouds float by, in shapes of gigantic creatures, it seems as if the gods are watching the Earth, for whatever reason. You will call it a fantasy, and of course it is. I believe the gods are real existent though. How else can you explain the presence of the universe?
P

No, an atheist does not believe god exists. It's not an ideal, it's an opinion. I am an atheist but I cannot prove there is no god, no-one can, but I am personally convinced as near to 100% as you can get.
I am not being idealistic, I am not aiming for perfection, I just refuse to be as duped as a theist. — universeness

Do you advocate for social justice through personal empowerment? Do you believe it's achieved through universal access to personal development in the form of housing, education & employment? Do you think that, where appropriate, businesses should be owned & operated by the public? Do you advocate for pluralism with respect to a person's metaphysical commitments, or lack thereof?

If any of the above is true for you, then you live by certain ideals you work to make realities to the best of your ability. This is a type of socialist idealism, which is not say it's tainted or fallacious thinking. Our mental constructions guide us. Empirical experience keeps forcing us to check, adjust and rethink our ideas & ideals on a daily basis. No one gets it right 24/7.

Many of us agree that deity is idealism. Well, anti-deity is also idealism. John Lennon's Imagine describes a well-defined society worth striving for in earnest.

Practical use of ideals doesn't always place a believer within the realm of fundamentalist naivete.

I'm not sure why that should follow. We judge things best as we can, in light of our limitations. What else could we do?

And in any case, the atheist isn't judging a being (divine or otherwise), but a concept or proposition: the concept of God/proposition that he exists.

And I'm not sure what exactly you mean when you ask whether "such an atheist exemplifies an ideal". Certainly, rational/critical atheism is based on/informed by certain norms/values ("ideals"), especially epistemological ones... but I'm not sure if that's all you're asking.

And in any case, the atheist isn't judging a being (divine or otherwise), but a concept or proposition: the concept of God/proposition that he exists — Seppo

You don't exist. But I'm not judging you, as a being...

To deny omniscience authoritatively means to be omniscience — ucarr

This seems like a magical leap and makes no sense.

To deny omniscience authoritatively from an atheistic perspective is to deny that the claims of theism are true. It makes no direct claim to "knowing there isn't a god," but instead knowing that based off available information, we know that this specific god does not exist.

Right, you're not. Or, at best, that would be a highly unusual and awkward way of speaking, bordering on self-contradiction. And in any case this is an apples/oranges comparison since, unlike the atheist, you are judging the existence of an individual, and are not judging the existence of the entire class or category (i.e. to which I belong/of which I'm merely one individual instance) let alone an entire ontological/metaphysical category (i.e. deities)... nor is there a considerable intellectual/social tradition consisting in the belief or teaching that I exist.

I think the word "authoritatively" is doing a lot of work there. The only way this even remotely follows is if we're supposing that one can only know something "authoritatively" if one is omniscient. But that's dubious to say the least. I know its January 29th quite authoritatively, and am most decidedly not omniscient.

I think the word "authoritatively" is doing a lot of work there. The only way this even remotely follows is if we're supposing that one can only know something "authoritatively" if one is omniscient. But that's dubious to say the least. I know its January 29th quite authoritatively, and am most decidedly not omniscient. — Seppo

I think it's just a buzzword to throw everyone off like "omniscence" having any correlation to the position of atheism. I do not care about the word in specific, because it's just put there in spite of it's irrelevancy.

What OP is really saying is that to "to deny God exists is to make a claim of knowledge that no God exists, and if this is the case, then you must be 'self-absorbed thinking you know everything because that is just your opinion, not a scientific fact' ... or whatever variation which is an obvious strawman stemming from lack of understanding.

The same talking points reworded differently. I won't even get into the solipisism aspect, because as my point just demonstrates it already started fallacious and not worth the blabber.

And in any case, the atheist isn't judging a being (divine or otherwise), but a concept or proposition: the concept of God/proposition that he exists. — Seppo

You imply that a proposition can be analyzed & judged apart from its referent within the empirical world.

You therefore imply that language has existence & meaning independent of the empirical world it describes.

Your implications, because they imply cognitive constructions in language that are existentially real apart from their referents, possess a strong flavor of idealism.

I'm speculating that your implications are, given your commentary upon my Atheism & Solipsism argument, for you, untenable.

Could it be, considering my main theme - that atheism is no less an idealism than theism - that you are, unwittingly, providing corroborating evidence?

Perhaps I misread your above quote. Can you show me some errors in my logic?

To deny omniscience authoritatively from an atheistic perspective is to deny that the claims of theism are true. It makes no direct claim to "knowing there isn't a god," but instead knowing that based off available information, we know that this specific god does not exist. — Cobra

There's some incoherence between your first sentence and your second sentence.

The first sentence presents strong atheism, an extreme epistemological position that denies objective omniscience. You cannot authoritatively deny the objectivity of something without knowing it objectively (you can theorize the objective non-existence of something, with each successive moment offering possibility of refutation, or not>theories are not authoritative, but rather speculative ), a position that automatically culminates in the embodiment of what's denied. This paradox, as I've already said, resembles Russell's Paradox, wherein a set includes itself/doesn't include itself. The problem, as Russell pointed out to Cantor, is unrestricted inclusion. The same thing applies to refutation. There's a problem when refutation is unrestricted, as with the denial of omniscience.

Seppo tried to restrict the refutation of omniscience, but in the effort, nose-dived himself into deep idealism, a position, I suspect, he abhors.

In your second sentence, you too attempt to restrict the scope of atheistic refutation, knowing or sensing Russell's Paradox for unrestricted refutation looms large in the not-too-distant background. In the effort, you too make a sharp turn into idealism, characterizing - I suppose unwittingly - restricted atheism in a way that sounds more like agnosticism. This is the incoherence between the two sentences. The turn into idealism is your implication that restricted atheism is reaffirmed on a case-by-case basis. This renders the hard atheism of the first sentence as a speculation or theory. In consequence of this, the extreme epistemology of the first sentence becomes an ideal, a mental construction you treat as an existential reality of the mind, which you reaffirm, empirically, case-by-case.