Contrasting "faith in god" with "faith in the truth" already seems to embody an implicit claim that "god" isn't "truth" (or that a proposition asserting God's existence isn't T) or something. — yazata

That god isn't truth demands that someone claims that god is truth. To claim that god is truth demands that the claim that god exists is true. The line of claims ends up at the theist claim that is unsupported by facts, which means that you cannot end up with god being or not being truth if you haven't solved the validity of god in the first place.

Except that oftentimes we can't be sure that our evidence and our arguments will produce a particular conclusion, at least not without introducing a bunch of poorly justified auxiliary assumptions. It only gets more circular when we start questioning the foundations of logic and logical inference. So oftentimes, even when the subject has nothing to do with religion, there's still to be a bit of a 'leap of faith', however small we think it is. — yazata

Yet, even that is not any argument against atheists, since atheists follows the truth were it may lead. What you speak of is close to agnosticism, but agnosticism is sometimes a non-argument in favour of an existing god, meaning they us the lack of knowledge to support the possibility of the existence of god being true, which is still a kind of cop-out. Atheism will accept the existence of god if it's proven, atheists will never claim that god doesn't exist if the proof is presented. That kind of malleable viewpoint seems to only exist within atheism and that standpoint itself shows it's vastly different from theism.

That's a strong assertion, if you want to insist that atheists make no claims. — yazata

If you can show what isn't logical about that, go ahead. Atheists claim things that have proof or logic, if you can show what isn't logic I will change the claim. This is the key difference between theists and atheists. Atheists does not claim anything that doesn't have logic or evidence and will change if challenge with better logic or evidence.

P3 - God is - is supported by reason — Rank Amateur

How is this a valid premiss?

traditional Atheist conclusion - There is no God — Rank Amateur

...is not a claim since such a claim demands that the previous claim had proof supporting it. There is not a teapot in space is a nonsense claim, since no one supported such nonsense. Same goes for god. Theists claim there is a god, atheists ask for evidence for it, theists don't give a shit.

Atheists do not make claims since claims demand a previous claim. Claiming god doesn't exist demands that we have agreed there is a god before claiming it isn't. If theists can't prove their claim true, there's nothing to argue against. Atheists do not claim anything if they do not have facts to support it and so far burden of proof is on theists to start the argument, which they can't. Atheists do not have any burden of proof, because demanding that is as nonsense as demanding proof there isn't a teapot between us and the sun.

Ok I will amend the argument:

P1 - God is, is not a fact
P2 - God is not - is not a fact
P3 - Theism - a claim that God is - is supported by reason
P4 - Chrisoffer is not making any claim about anything

Conclusion - neither God is or whatever Chrisoffer believes is a superior position

Tell me which proposition is false and why , or how the conclusion does not follow. — Rank Amateur

I laughed at this, it was very funny, truly :smile:
But you are mixing together claims and facts. A claim demands facts, the claim itself isn't a fact. Claiming there's a teapot in space needs support by evidence, claiming there isn't a teapot in space is a nonsense claim since there's no proof of any teapot in space. Therefor you can't say that atheists claim there isn't a teapot in space since they haven't even gotten to the point of hearing a reasonable argument for a teapot in space. Atheists does not make claims that aren't proved by facts, if they see a claim, they want proof of that claims, that is what burden of proof is about.

If I claimed there's a rabbit under your bed and you said to me that I need to prove it, if I were a theist I would not care to give any proof. If I were an atheists I would not claim there to be or not be a rabbit under your bed because any claim would be ridiculous without evidence of there being one. If you look under your bed and say I was lying about there being a rabbit under your bed, an atheist would say that they didn't even make the claim, since they didn't make any claim about neither, but a theist would say; "well you don't know if it ran away", "you don't know if it's an invisible one", "you cannot prove that it wasn't there".

Atheists demand proof of claims that doesn't have proof. They do not make claims. Theists makes claims that doesn't have proof and demand proof of the opposite and without any, they accept their claim as truth. This is a fundamental fallacy in how to reach a rational conclusion in any form under any situation. Atheists are still waiting for the argument to start, given the lack of evidence from theists, atheists are really asking the question, why bother with religion? The argument that atheists cannot value emotion and beautify because of this, is in any sense of the matter, bullshit (referring to earlier posts on this)

Depends wether you work under a jury system or not. A jury system might not grasp many things, since philosophers tend to be very esoteric. However, if you are a defense lawyer and there is little hope of defense for the defendant, then a philosopher on hard determinism would be a good last resort. Someone that would talk about how no choice is acted out of nothing, that the choices made are always made because of causes, that the effects, the consequence is the result of many things; that they may not be in the control of their actions based on the situation they were given. In todays legal system, it's a very slim chance for defense, but it's a valid viewpoint and if that viewpoint is combined with the idea that if the defendant were given the chance to reprogram the reasons crimes are committed by them, they will function much better in the future, not just be doomed criminals. Only those who were given a chance to view their actions as the result of superficial causes they learned through life, tend to turn their backs to crime. Many view it as the hand they were given, but if given hope, they would rebuild the deterministic reasons to crimes that they've acted on their entire life.

Hope of changing our lives comes from seeing the reasons for our actions in a new light, comes from an open door to an alternative. If the defendant has this door closed, they will continue doing crimes and any punishment will be a waste of time.

I made no such proposition - — Rank Amateur

Then

if you disagree and believe the atheist claim is superior — Rank Amateur

This is why it's confusing. You say "atheist's claim" then saying that your proposition about atheists making claims isn't something you do.

If atheists doesn't make a claim, then there is no claim to be superior. You are balancing theists making claims to atheists making claims. Making a claim demands a statement. Atheist do not claim anything since there is nothing to claim against. The teapot flying around the sun is an example of this. Anyone could claim anything and then demand proof that it isn't, but that is not how burden of proof works. Atheists claims are always based on facts, meaning if an atheist claims anything that isn't supporting by facts, then they aren't really atheists anymore. This is key to understanding the position atheists are in. And even if an atheist makes a claim with supported proof and new proof prove that claim to be wrong, the atheist won't argue against, they would accept the newly proven claim to be the truth. Atheism never makes claims against facts this way and do not stand by a certain dogma or viewpoint outside of facts. Therefor you cannot pit theist claims against atheist claims since there are no claims from atheists. Atheists only demand to prove the claims given, that is not a claim, that is a demand for truth, which theists does not provide yet. When they do, then atheists either have counter-proofs with counter arguments or if the evidence is clearly pointing to the existence of god, atheists will accept it.

Difference here is that theists do not work under facts and proof, only belief. If atheists, or rather scientists provide a claim with proof, many theists still deny it. Proof does not matter for theists when presented. The difference between the two are fundamentally so different that you can't really put them in an argument against each other. Atheists haven't made any claims, at. all.

By the mere reason that you are in a philosophy forum shows that you have an open mind to philosophical dialectics about ethics, which means you are above most practitioners of law. That is in any sense of things, a very good thing :smile:

The proposition that atheism makes a claim is false, that is what the problem is. If atheists makes a claim, then theism and atheism is in opposition, but a claim needs to be supported. Theists claim the existence of god, provides proof. Proof is accepted and the general truth is that god exist, atheists claim that god doesn't exist, cannot provide proof, then atheists are wrong in their claim. Problem is that theists claims aren't proved, so the argument haven't even gotten to the point of arguments for or against, so atheism cannot be blamed for making any claim since theists claims demand the burden of proof before a counter-claim can be made.

Atheists however, do not make such claims. If theists prove the existence of god with the same level of truth as Einsteins theories, then no atheist would claim otherwise, since atheism is built upon following the truth where it is. If theists prove the existence of god, all atheists would say, "ok" then this is the truth then.

So there is no claims made from atheists, this is the truth that theists ignore in their arguments.

God does not exist is not a claim since it demands that God exist.
God exist, is a claim, which demands proof to be valid.
Atheists does not claim god does not exist since they cannot claim something that isn't a valid claim.
Atheists does not claim anything, they demand proof of the claim.

Conclusion, atheists does not claim anything and any argument that criticise atheists making claims is based on a false premiss.

The word 'faith' seems to me to be ambiguous. — yazata

Yes, there's a huge difference between faith in god and faith in the truth. Faith in the truth only means faith in what is a coming conclusion, whatever it might be, faith in god is faith in a claim that has no direct correlation with any facts or logic, only the claim itself. Therefor, because faith is so connected to the ideas of religion I am careful to use the term as "faith in the truth". It confuses the argument. Faith in this dialectic is for me meant to represent faith in god, faith int he supernatural, the unexplained without the need for reason or valid evidence. I have faith in the truth, but I do not know the truth of something I do not have the evidence for. The difference is night and day.

if both the theist, or the atheist can make valid claims that their beliefs are reasonable — Rank Amateur

Atheism isn't about belief or faith, this is a fundamental misunderstanding of atheism that needs to be abandoned before any argument is done about atheism. Atheism doesn't believe in anything, it is a process of thinking and reasoning about the world, it is not a claim.

I do not think there is a teapot between us and the sun until someone has proven there to be. Theists say that atheists need to disprove that there isn't a teapot. Atheists does not claim or assert anything without evidence, it is therefor and cannot be anything other than the process of reaching truth, not a claim or belief in anything. Until theists understand this simple concept, the arguments against atheism will continue to be founded on a flawed foundational premiss.

Theism vs. atheism is just a contest between two competing authorities, neither of which has been proven qualified to usefully address the questions of vast scale being considered. — Jake

This is just untrue and you are totally ignoring history here. Religion has never explained anything that comes close to anything true about the universe. Atheism has not done that either since it has never claimed anything at all, it's just a process. You are thinking about science vs religion and within that, science has a pretty solid track record of providing answers to questions earlier defined as "too vast to be explained". The very reason you are able to write on your computer or phone and talk about these things is a result of scientific discovery and theories proven. Name one thing that religion has ever done in this regard? Both science and atheism also works under the principle of them being a process and line of thinking, they themselves does not claim a single thing. Theists on the other hand claim things that are then asked to be proved, which they don't... because "faith reasons".

Your entire line of criticism against atheism relies on the premiss that it claims specific things, same goes for science. They do not do this, they act under a process of thinking and testing the world around us and ourselves in order to find truths that we can build upon. If none of those things that this process produced were true you would for instance not be able to use GPS since Einsteins theories was crucial in order to even have satellites working with it. Atheism and science has no authority behind them and therefor your argument falls flat as a comparison to theism, which all it does is making claims that doesn't need to be proved because of "faith". I think you have a fundamental misunderstanding of what atheism is and what science does and that misunderstanding is the foundation of the argument. The premisses of your argument cannot be based on an misunderstanding. You cannot demand that atheism is governed by authority or that it makes claims, it simply doesn't, so the argument falls flat.

Why do you have faith in the ability of reason to meaningfully analyze the largest of questions (scope of god claims), when there is no proof of such an ability? — Jake

I don't, I am looking at the process of reasoning and with facts proving hypotheses into theories and using facts to deduct into logical conclusions as a process that has been going on and there is nothing that says it will not continue going forward. If you frame progress within the framework that we have reached the final conclusions, you are missing the point that this isn't about faith, it's a prediction of probability about the process. Faith is believing something without any rational thing pointing to it, the process points in a certain direction, the end is unclear and not something I have any faith about, but claiming to know the end point is what religion does, therefor religion is about faith, atheism and science is not.

All I'm asking you to do is apply the very same challenge procedure you reasonably apply to theism to atheism as well. — Jake

That demands a claim to be said in order for me to question as I question claims by theists. Atheism does not have a claim, it's a process of reasoning, not a claim that can be analyzed, since the process is what it is, i.e facts determine what we know, it's not much more strange than that. Any scientific method that do not adhere to facts cannot determine anything, i.e the process is true. I claim the process to be true in pursuit of knowledge and truth within the framework we exist in, the process so far has determined this to be a true claim. Does the process of facts proving claims into truth not exist you mean? In absolute objectivity, sure, but we cannot exist in that state and the fact that humans have conquered forming the world as we have done is based on the process being true within our concept of reality, within practical objectivity. Does the process atheism is based on, not exist? Is that what you mean?

Is the infinite ability of reason proven? No, atheism declined. — Jake

You are turning the burden of proof into nonsense here. You are ignoring the basics of the process, i.e facts defining truth. Is the red apple in the white room? The process predicts probability, the process does not equal infinite ability of reason, it predicts that the process will answer more complex questions. Atheism does not say it knows the truth, atheism points out that you can only know what can be proven, god isn't proven. It's the same process that we used to understand the world as we know it, the process itself is proof that it's true in understanding the universe within itself. The process does predict things outside of human perception. Is the red apple in the white room? Yes, probability demands it, low probability denies it. A cosmic scale entity cannot exist under low probability, because low probability is random and random isn't proof of existence.

Do not simplify things into nonsense. The quote above is a straw man of what I've been saying.

A person who walks away from theism is not automatically an atheist, for they may reject the chosen authority of the atheist as well. — Jake

Atheism is not authority, the process of thinking about life, the world and universe is not a claim, is not authority or solid, it's a malleable process of truth-seeking, do not mix atheism with dogma, that is a theist invention about atheism. A person who walks away from theism is an atheist if he/she is using the process to form knowledge. If that person use unproven claims or any kind of faith, they are not, it's simple as that. There are no claims in atheism, atheism is a process of thinking about knowledge that forms knowledge, ever evolving. Theism is static, atheism is even changing, that is the key difference and the process itself cannot be analyzed and "disproven", since it's a process of truth seeking by questioning what is. It doesn't make sense to question atheism as if it were acting out of the same principles as theism, since it doesn't.

Please prove the qualifications of human reason to credibly analyze the very largest of questions about all of reality, a realm we can't define in even the most basic manner (size, shape etc).

If we apply atheist principles to atheism itself, atheism collapses. Reason is of course still proven useful in countless cases on human scale — Jake

This is nonsense. You are trying to disprove a method that has been giving results by it's reasoning and logic since it was first ever used. Theists claim something without proof, atheist doesn't claim anything without proof. You cannot ask for proof about how our reasoning is valid without first claiming that proof we have right now about the world is false and that all the things we have proven isn't existing. The process and the results of that process has already given results that prove the process works. And without claiming anything without proof you can't apply anything against atheism the way you propose, it makes no sense. What you are doing is an argument that propose a premise that theism works under the same principles as atheism when they are nothing alike.

Faith is understanding something spiritually, when one cannot explain, and precisely delineate how they know it. Reason is the process by which we make sense of things, or attempt delineation. It could be said that nearly everything is known in a faith way, and we are always attempting to picture, or capture it with reason. This is what philosophy has always been about, in my view, but this got complicated with the rise of reason, and distrust. Things needed to be public, physical, repeatable, or don't bother me with it. Things taken on faith are things we have no clear definitions of, or explanations for, but still accept as true, and worthy of attempting to do that. Like consciousness, health, justice, beauty.

Reason is the process of framing faith. Or making explicit the implicit... but if I just adopt and repeat popular framings, so that you cannot even tell the difference between me, and a million others, because we just present the precise same model, explanation, reason, as everyone else, then I don't think that one is demonstrating faith or reason, just memory, and allegiance. — All sight

Like how our evolution of images representing reality has been evolving. Starting out as cave paintings, we have evolved our ability to capture truth right down to capturing the light of the world onto frames of photography. But even then we've continued evolving it. 3D virtual reality captures of the world starts to chop of the framed nature of images and soon we will be standing within the captured world as if we were perfectly there, only difference is the perception forming the experience. Reasoning is much like that, faith is the abstract concept of something that we can never claim to be true, like an abstract image in our mind of something we saw. The more we reason, the more clear it becomes, the more tools, like deductive reasoning, facts, mathematical logic, physical experiments in the world and so on, the easier it becomes to frame those abstractions into truths, like all the tools we started using to capture images; paintings, sculptures, photochemistry, light field technology, VR technology and so on. The more we work on it, the less abstract it gets, the less faith it becomes and more true it becomes. At some point, we will not see the difference between the abstraction and the truth because we have then found the tools to explain the abstraction as objective truth without contamination of the abstraction.

If you can't prove that human reason is binding upon all of reality (and thus any gods within), there's no reason to think reason is so qualified. — Jake

Now we are going into the epistemological territory of what we can know and what we cannot know. An important part of this is defining objective and subjective truths and this is a vast philosophical topic that I don't think there's enough space in here to write about. But in another thread I presented the idea of defining objective truth in two different divisions. Practical objectivity and absolute objectivity. Practical objectivity is based around defining what is objective through the limits of our perception of the world and universe, i.e the limits of our understanding and to this day, the best way has been the way of the scientific method, falsifiable methods etc. Take a group of ten people, each person goes individually into a white room with only a white table and a red apple. Then they go out and they describe all the details of what they saw. The individual accounts aren't contaminated by each others observations and all accounts gets summarized down to a conclusion about what is in the room: there's white room, with a white table, with a red apple on it. The more people who observe and describe the rooms content, the less probable of errors it gets to define the truth of what's in that room. This is practical objectivity and if you add mathematical logic to it, you start defining the closest humans get to objective truth we can get through our reasoning. Absolute objectivity is questioning everything to such a degree that it gets impossible to define anything. If questioning if there even is a room, an apple, if the people exist etc. we cannot conclude anything and everything gets impractical even on a cosmic scale.

My point is that we can only answer through our human perception, but we have no other reality. The scientific method also doesn't conclude something and then change it's mind. Newtons discoveries didn't get erased because of Einstein. Every conclusion in science works like Hegel's dialectical synthesis, it builds upon, melds together.

The key here is that our reason, methods of knowledge etc. has been tools to form the world around us. If we didn't have reasoning correct we would never be able to form the world as we do. Therefor, practical objective truths about the world works within the reality that is known to us, the things we prove in science works in symbios with the results of this reality we get. In absolute objectivity we could say that there might be god, but without proof it cannot be a practical objectivity and therefor it does not relate to us as a concept of reality we live under.

What we prove has relation to the consequences of that conclusion. To say that we can't prove something because of absolute objectivity ignores the concepts of practical objectivity's result outside of direct human perception and that what we prove has direct consequences within this reality we exist under.

Absolute objectivity is irrelevant in this regard and the inability to prove a god through this concept is irrelevant for us. The non-proof of infinite lack of knowledge is not proof of any existence. As we are proving things within the reality we exist in and practical objective truths we prove and disprove as a process in science, it concludes that there is no proof of a god and therefor the existence of god is not something worth believing in when we have no evidence for it. Any absolute objectivity claims about it is irrelevant for human beings, especially since it doesn't apply to us.

In terms of atheism, the divide between speculation and fact is strict and facts are based on objective truth in the form of the practical definition and based on what can be proved within the reality of existence we exist in. An atheist can speculate that there might be an apple in the white room, but do not claim there to be, not until they have been in there and seen it, but even then they do not accept it to be true since they question their subjective experience; they wait for the result of all the people who went into that room and then conclude it to be a fact. To say that it isn't a fact based on absolute objectivity claiming we cannot be sure of anything is ignoring the probability math of the probability that if I go in there and eat the apple, it will indeed be the apple proven to be in there by the conclusion of people's observations. If our reality is governed by probability of truth and we measure the world by this probability, then practical objectivity is what has the most probable truth to it. We can only exist within this practical objective reality and within this, the probability of a god has never been proved to be high, therefor there is no reason to say that any god exist and therefor believing in a god is not a reasonable way of approaching the reality and practical objective truths that we are governed by.

I can assure you that atheists also often react emotionally when their faith is challenged. — Jake

If their faith is challenged, they have faith without any rational or reason behind it, therefor they aren't acting as atheists anymore. If you have faith in something you are acting out of a religious point of view. I am very strict on this definition, since it seems to be the key reason for theists to be confused about atheism. I can understand why theists act out aggressively against atheism when atheists start behaving with the same kind of behaviour of faith, it should not be there to represent atheism, since faith isn't what atheism is about.

Most of the time, it's probably just because many atheists, like most people, aren't capable of proper dialectic and argumentation, so they start using emotions instead, and there's wild emotions on both sides to say the least.

Do the atheists you describe actively assert the non-existence of God? — Pattern-chaser

No, if god is proven, god exist. Atheism is a process of understanding everything through facts, what can be proven. Atheists accept what is proven and change viewpoint if it's disproven. Claiming the non-existence of god, is not an option, not because that's a statement, but because it's not proven. The burden of proof is on proving the existence of a god, which is why atheism is closer to the process of science than any kind of faith or belief. Faith is about claiming something without proof, atheism doesn't claim anything without proof, but claiming the non-existence of something is not under burden of proof if the existence hasn't yet been proven. If the existence of something is proven, then the burden of proof is on the side claiming it doesn't exist. So far, no proof of existence has been presented for a god, therefor the burden of proof lies on the side claiming the existence. Let's say atheists are still waiting for the argument to start before claiming anything about the existence of god. As soon as an atheist claims something that makes them act under the burden of proof and they don't prove it, they cease to be atheists or live under that way of life.

Point is that atheism is purely the process of thinking about the world, life and universe in the way of facts, in the way of not giving up a pursuit for truth and knowledge and never give in to irrational faith whenever something is unexplained. Atheism is more of a process in life, not a statement. Religion however is closer to a statement without proper facts, a statement looking like a statue that when challenged starts to crumble and over the course of time, by people trying to keep it together, ends up a frankensteined version in which the true meaning is lost and the original statue doesn't exist anymore, only incoherent parts and irrational substitutes. Atheism on the other hand does not build a statue, since it's not a statement, it's a process of discussing the idea of a statue, it's more like a painting where you can paint over the original, over and over, the more knowledge and experience you get. You don't try to uphold something or keep the original, you learn something and rework the entire thing.

This is the fundamental misinterpretation of atheism. Theists view it as an ideology, as a statement, as something solid as a statue, when it's instead a concept of thought, a process and a method to understand the world, understand complexities around us, not based on a pre-build statement, but out of the malleable form our knowledge of the world is.

Just as our brain is malleable by the knowledge and experience we have, should our concepts of life, the world and universe be based on the knowledge and experience we share as humanity.

Why put science into this? Anybody thinking that science can prove or disprove this question is in my view either naive or simply doesn't understand science. It would be like assuming science can prove what is moral or ethical. What with the scientific method you can only answer is that x amount people believe that something is morally or ethically good or bad. Science can make accurate models of how we think, but not answer the questions themselves as there isn't an objective answer. — ssu

I am comparing the scientific method to that of how atheists view the world, i.e through facts and what is proven, not belief. This is a premiss countering the idea that atheism is based on faith or ideology, when it isn't.

It's as delirious to get science into this as it is for some religious person even to think that he might prove the existence of God. Not only would this be basically idolatry in the Abrahamic religions as if there would be a true proof of God, why need the Bible, Koran or whatever anymore? And this is true also for attempts to disprove God by science. — ssu

As said, if you read the argument, it's not about science disproving god or proving god, but the process being the same as the foundation of what atheism is. If you can't prove god exists, there's no reason thinking there is a god. That is not faith, that is reason and reason is closer to atheism than it is to religion, reason is also closer to science than religion. Point being, scientific methods and atheistic thinking has much in common, and none in common with faith.

Yet this doesn't mean that one that has no religion would be then making the moral and ethical decisions (that basically religion has given us) on reason or based on science. This is a fallacy: moral ethics are subjective even if you don't use any religious viewpoints or answers. — ssu

Moral and ethics was not given to us through religion, religion gathered the basic morals and ethics that was invented by the necessity of survival by the group that evolved from apes. Society and religion tried to gather those morals and ethics into a usable form during the time when society started to become much bigger and much more complex than simple packs of hunter/gatherer people.

Religion has moral and ethics based on these and therefor a lot of obvious morals and ethics stems from it into a society even if it's in the end an atheistic one; but the key difference is that many religious societies tend to keep moral and ethics that has been proven irrational, like the irrationality behind making homosexuality illegal. That kind of moral is based on emotions about disgust and the science behind disgust tells us it's about keeping the group intact from functions that seemingly would destroy it from the inside, i.e the morals from our hunter/gatherer times when the group was small. But it's irrational in the context of society today and it's irrational since it's based on the well-being of only the subject making that law, not the well-being of homosexuals. Meaning, if atheists are more commonly using deductive reasoning in everyday life and in establishing moral ethics, they are more likely to not use old teachings of religion to govern their ethics and morals, they would look at the world as it is and form the best possible morals and ethics based on it. Religion has basic morals that are obvious to us, but we shouldn't give religion credit for those morals, since they stem from older concepts than our current religions. Our current religions also has ideas about slavery (christianity) that aren't morals that we should keep using. What opposed those morals of the times? Rational and reasonable deductive thinking, the type of reasoning that are more common with atheists questioning religion. Is there then unreasonable to see a pattern in which atheistic thinking has more things in common with scientific reasoning and rational thinking than any religious way of thinking which adhears to it's authorities viewpoints, rather then reasoning by the facts at hand?

History does not give religion validity in morals and ethics, it only speaks on how we ended up with the moral system and ethics of today. How we evolve morals and ethics from here is based not on religion but on how we reason and use arguments about these morals and ethics. Atheists seem far more likely to actually be doing dialectics based on facts rather than any kind of preprogrammed beliefs and authorities who set the rules before the arguments.

Other than that I think you missed the point I was giving; that atheism and the scientific process has more in common with each other and that faith cannot be a part of an atheistic way of life.

I think it's a serious error to conflate law with morality. — Ciceronianus the White

But laws and morality didn't appear out of nothing. We invented morality through the need for the group to survive. Killing other people to take their belongings in order for yourself to survive was destroying the group and then the group dies from within. Morals were invented based on the well-being of the group and the self, but as society grew more complex, morals grew more complex. When society grew so large it needed a government, that it needed a system to keep society in order, it invented moral guidelines that formed into laws. Those laws has for thousands of years evolved to what we have today. Philosophy has always been there to form what laws we have, what rights people have in a society and what limits of power the authorities have. Nothing of this exists independent of each other. Philosophical ethics are not law, morals aren't law, but they exist in conjunction with each other. Ethics play a major role in forming what laws we have, how we view morality and morality forms what laws we have. Some nations have laws against homosexuals, does that mean those laws didn't come from the moral teachings of religion that governs the ideas about homosexuality? Does that not mean that 19th and 20th century philosophy, which opposed religious moral ethics and formed new ideas about how to view the morals that governs the laws that are formed, keep evolving which laws that we use in our legal system of our current society?

The laws we have today did not appear out of nothing. Centuries, thousands of years of philosophy on morals and ethics have formed the laws we have today and it is still being formed by the philosophy of ethics. Laws aren't formed by the legal system, they are formed by the ideologies and ideas of the society in which they exist. How else do our legal system evolve? How else does laws change? The dialectic of ethics forms the laws we have, the legal system only represent the result of reasonable arguments. Unreasonable arguments form societies not worth living in.

Crime and punishment are functions of the law, and the law is one of the things we do.. And what we do, outside of philosophy classrooms and forums and other such places, has nothing to do with free will or determinism. We ignore them by living. We do things, with no consideration to determinism. — Ciceronianus the White

True in the sense that we live without consideration of the argument, but crime and punishment are not functions of the law, since the law is based on the ideas found in philosophy. The entire section of ethics is the reason we even have the laws we have. Philosophy outside of classrooms is the only place in which philosophy has any meaning. The deterministic perspective is important when looking at the reason crimes exist. Most of the time I see people unable to see past their own emotions. There's some famous quote I can't find right now about a politician who tried to apply much more effective methods to handle crime and the question he got was "but what if it was your child, wouldn't you want to punish the offender" and he replied that if it was his child, he would like to kill the offender, but that it's the very reason we need methods outside of our emotional need for punishment and that it's therefor the point that it's not up to him.

Crime and punishment as it is now, is flawed and based on emotional reactions to crimes, we want punishment, we want an eye for an eye, because it's based on the instincts we have. But through determinism we can see how crimes do not exist in a vacuum, that there are reasons for every such choice and that those reasons need to be understood in order to prevent crime. The ethics of this world right now is not based on preventing crime, it's based on punishment, it's based on us silently accepting that crimes exist in order to punish.

If we had methods to prevent crimes in the first place, would we want to use them? Everyone would say yes, but no one is acting according to that agreement. This is because people still believe in the idea of free will, that a choice is made and we have no control over the choices people make. But if a person is through deterministic cause and effects, put on a path to make a criminal choice and we could interrupt that deterministic line of events to steer that person away from the consequences of it, we should. If arguments points out that the world and us humans are puppets of determinism and that any argument in favour of free will seem to fail, I think the answer is quite clear of what we actually need to do about crimes and punishment.

Right now, people doesn't even seem to care for improvements to how we handle crime and punishment. They seem to subconsciously want crimes to continue, because punishment is satisfying emotionally. It's like we handle characters in a story, they follow their wants but in the end they get what they need. Most such characters are blind to what they need, they only see their wants, in a tragedy, they get what they want and loose what they need, in a good ending, they get what they need and give up what they want. That's an important lesson for most things about the human condition, which is why stories are told like this and has been for thousands of years. Yet, the power of stories doesn't seem to change people's wants into needs. Society needs a better handling of crime and punishment, but we want to continue punishing criminals. It's an addiction and we live in a tragedy.

Atheism is not reason, but just another ideology built upon faith. If one is going to adopt an ideology built upon faith, one might as well just stick with the ideology one already has. — Jake

I think this is a misinterpretation of what atheism is, since it's not about faith, but about rejecting faith as a means to explain the world. In a sense, everything you do in science is in a form, atheistic or agnostic, but agnostics use the unknown factor as a way to accept the existence of a god by that fact, which means it's closer to cognitive bias. Atheistic viewpoints just deny anything that isn't proven, it's not about faith, it's about the process of proving. An atheist will never believe in a god, but they will accept that there is a god if the existence of one is proven to them. Therefor it's not based on faith. I don't think reason and religion can co-exist. Of course they overlap in the sense that a religious person can be reasonable, but a truly reasonable person cannot give up reason whenever the subject at hand crosses their faith or belief. When that happens, that person is no longer working with reason. An atheist would never reject reason, even if it's about proving the existence of a god, but no one has proven the existence of a god and all arguments for a god or pantheons fail to connect the argument to that kind of a deity or deities. If atheists change their perspective on the world, universe and life based on what is proved and what is not, then that's not faith, it's external objective knowledge that guides what is accepted as truth. Atheism is never about faith, it's about facts.

2) While religion is not necessarily realistic in it's cosmic claims it is realistic about the human condition which is why it continues to exist in every time and place. The human condition is primarily emotional, and atheist ideologues tend to be nerds like us, typically superficially clever at working with abstract concepts, but emotionally unsophisticated. Thus, atheist ideologues do a poor job of opening the door to atheism because they're working the wrong door, as your quoted words above suggest. — Jake

Agreed, that's what I basically meant with atheism being a bit cold in it's approach to life. Because, as I stated above, atheism being focused on facts, there is no emotion connected to the knowledge it's about. So it's like staring into the unknown when you open the door to atheism and that is scary, which is why most people react emotionally when their faith is challenged. However, that doesn't mean atheists are cold or that life as an atheist isn't emotionally rich, on the opposite, atheists fill their life with other things that gives them that emotionally rich life; art, causes, knowledge etc. The search for knowledge and knowing more than you did yesterday is as emotionally charged as subjective religious quests. Emotion doesn't cease to exist because one is an atheist.

But atheists aren't ideologues either, it's not an ideology. Rejecting faith as a means to explain the world, universe and life; working with facts and living with knowledge, isn't an ideology and atheists aren't gathered within one. That's also a misinterpretation of what atheism is.

What is our relationship with falling in love with reality? Is one of our goals that we fall to our knees weeping tears of joy at the glorious beauty of a sunrise? These kind of ideas are foreign to atheist ideology culture, generally speaking. Look through the threads on theism/atheism on the forum. How many of them explore such topics in earnest? — Jake

Is this foreign because you haven't seen it or foreign because you have knowledge that this is the truth about atheists? Do you mean to say that atheists cannot feel a rush of emotions when confronted with something truly beautiful? That they cannot fall to their knees because of that rush of emotions? Weeping tears of joy by that sunrise? The problem here is that you have a prejudice about atheists inner life. Just because you don't see atheists in a forum about knowledge and philosophy, showing any signs of tears of joy and emotion does not correlate to them not having a rich emotional inner life. The only difference between an atheist and a religious person looking into the sunrise with tears of joy is that the religious person claims it's the beauty of god and externalise themselves into an almost cosmic horror point of view in fornt of that fact. An atheist falls in love with the fact that all the entropy and chaos the universe went through led to such beautiful outcomes, despite it's simplicity. An atheist wouldn't abandon reason about why this sunrise looks the way it does just because it's beautiful and it gives them this emotional rush, they can actually get emotional by the fact that it's a simple scientific explanation behind it and it still looks that beautiful, a celebration of nature as it is.

What you are suggesting here, really says that atheists cannot enjoy art, cannot find it emotionally satisfying, when the opposite is more true and there are plenty of artists who are atheists. I think that this idea that atheists don't see or care for the beautify of the world is rather bonkers and based on another misinterpretation of atheism, based on external observation and prejudice. Just because atheists tend to talk in terms of hard facts on a philosophy forum doesn't mean they don't shut off their computer and have tears of joy in front of a sunrise, I see no correlation in your argument here other than wild guesses about atheists.

Want to convert theists? Teach them how to fall in love with reality, with a handful of dirt, without the supernatural middleman. And in order to do that, you'll first have to learn how to do it yourself. — Jake

I already have, it's based on being in harmony with the chaos of the world and universe. Accepting the cold simple truth that science have shown us and accepting that we are part of the deterministic universe we live in. That we can care for what is here, what we know, instead of caring for a made up entity. By addressing god or gods and spend time seeking them, people waste time that can be given to something closer to reality. Something for other people, something for themselves, without filters. Giving themselves over to the idea of a higher power is the comforting feeling of having a parent, an authority figure that governs them, but takes up time that could be given to the short life we have.

People don't need to fall in love with reality, they need to become the masters of their own life, they need to grow beyond being a child to a parent. It's a true sadness that many religious people live to their death without ever being more than a child looking up to a parent figure. It's the nature of being a flock animal, most of us feel panic when we do not have an authority watching over us, but with the expanse of civilisation, we needed gods and pantheons to replace that group leader, otherwise we were in control of our own life. Only through the renaissance to the enlightenment period did we begin to understand that the faith we had was a lie to tell ourselves in front of a chaotic world. This is what Nietzsche was talking about when he said "God is dead". It was about how we had begun to enlighten ourselves to know that there is no god to govern us and that we need to govern life ourselves, which haven't been done on a massive scale before. He was fearing the chaos that will emerge when the "parent" of our lives disappear. He was speaking mostly out of the ethics, but the concept is supporting the idea of gods and pantheons being parent figures and that our need for authority tend to blind us from simple truths and facts about the world in favour of emotional satisfaction.

But that's why you're stuck here talking to yourselves, having no effect on theism at all, enjoying the fantasy that your fantastic logic dancing calculations have meaning or value to anyone but yourselves. — Jake

I sense a desperation in this tone of words. You're doing a straw man out of atheists by ridiculing that they only exist through logic and calculation, which is a massive simplification. You ridicule atheists of not having a rich emotional inner life and misinterpret atheism into being an ideology based on faith, which it isn't. This is prejudice, nothing more.

The reason why I think it's important to open a door to atheism is that it's about giving the option to love life for what it is, without supernatural distractions that distract up until the time of death. It's an open door to the pursuit of knowledge instead of comforting ignorance, an open door to the harmony of being free of external controlling mechanisms, free to feel and be what you are, not what a religion tells you to. Free to think what you want instead of punishing yourself with the hand of god. Free to enjoy life as it is and valuing people's lives when they live, not that they are something when they died. There are so many shackles to religious people's lives that they don't see; the blindfold that is comforting, the illusion, "ignorance is bliss" so to speak. It's like an addiction, faith is like an addiction, a substance that comforts them from the real world. They use this substance of faith in order to hide themselves from the complexities, from the chaos they feel the world has, but only when this addiction is broken, when they start to see beyond it do they realize that there actually is harmony there. Most people who went from being religious to being atheists does not show any sign of downfall, most of them feel free, that they can breathe, that a heavy burdon is gone from their chest. It should be the opposite, that they would feel the pressure of the complexity of the world as it is, but it's not, because it's not superficial anymore, it is what it is, it is real.

The most common prejudice from religious people against atheists is that atheists doesn't have appreciation for beauty, nature and emotions. I would say that the opposite is more true, that religion filters all emotions and holds them back as an authority over believers lives. They do not appreciate the sunrise because of it's actual beauty, but because of what religion has teached them. Atheists do not accept anything more than what something actually is and a sunrise's beauty is through that much more rich since it's basic simplicity makes the impact of it's beauty so much more. It shouldn't be more, but it is for us humans and that is appreciated.

I recommend not to have these prejudices about atheists, since that blinds you from understanding what atheism is really about. You're doing a straw man out of atheism in order to more easily attack it's foundation, but a misinterpretation, a straw man, simplifying about what atheism is does nothing to prove a point, only that you want to fend yourself from the truth of what atheism is. See past your own frustration, since I think it's in the way of making you able to actually balance the different ways on how we look at life, the universe and the world.

What you choose is your own choice, but ignoring the truth about atheism in order to distance yourself from it is not the way to a reasonable viewpoint. Atheists do not ignore the viewpoints of religion, atheists need knowledge and information in order to know what path to take, atheists do not choose paths because authorities chose a path for them. If you want a reasonable dialectic about atheism and theism, do not have prejudice about what atheism is.

What do you think religion's purpose is & how does one interact with it? — MountainDwarf

Religion has no purpose in of itself. The invention of religion is as natural as our human psyche, since we always attribute abstract explanations when there are no obvious answers found. We are a pattern seeking species that fill in blanks where there's nothing in between the known. This is how religion starts to grow and the less knowledge we have about how the world and us as humans work, the more prone to inventing religious patterns and answers we are. Over the course of history, those ideas gets corrupted by the power hunger of people of power and converted into hierarchical power structures to steer the population in a certain direction, bad or otherwise.

Essentially, religion is a form of control, that has roots in our pattern seeking way of thinking about the things we lack knowledge of.

On top of that, the spiritual part has to do with comfort, we get comfort in having a "higher power" that watches over us, we get comfort in the idea of authority guiding us. It comes out of the deep rooted comfort in our relation to our parents, all appeal to authority comes from this dynamic between parent and children and it demands a strong mind to turn away from that comfort. This comfort also exist in the moral teachings of religion, we also find comfort in having a list of rules to follow in a world seemingly without rules.

There has also been research into IQ and religious belief. Now I hope that in this forum, people will understand that this is not about being condescending, but there's a pattern of low intelligence connected to religious belief and when looking at how we act out in the world, as said, it demands a strong mind to be free of the comfort and the driving forces that pushes us out towards religious belief and patterns. People with lower IQ tend to follow authority more, they do not question the world around them and therefor are more easily manipulated into religious belief. Standing in front of the total chaos of knowledge, conflicting ideas, the unknowns of the world and universe is a very scary thing to do and it demands that people have the mental capacity and strength to actually think in new ways, to combine many conflicting perspectives to find a more rational truth etc.

Religion is comfort, it's a sense of guidance, but through that a tool of power for many different types of people.

The other aspect is the emotional aspect. There are people who have reasonably high IQ who are still believers in a certain religion. I can only argue that this is because of the comfort as an emotional aspect. They have two parts of themselves; the scared comfort seeking emotional self and the rational and thinking self, separerad. Whenever they think and feel about their own personal and subjective morals and feelings they act out and think through that inner comfort-seeking self while when working on complex things and ideas they project an external self to handle that separately. It becomes a shield of their inner self. A person who has a strong sense of how their inner self works, who understands themselves deeply, who find comfort in themselves, are rarely religious.

Now I know that all of this sounds condescending, but there are so much research pointing in a very specific direction for these questions that it's not rational to ignore them. Apologetics usually turn to arguments that's about the importance of religion in people's life, that for some it's essential for their mental well-being and that's hard to argue against, but my opinion is that because we do not have a replacement for that comfort in atheism, we do not yet have a way to open the door to atheism in a comforting way. For religious people who seek comfort, seek answers to life, the world and universe; the void in atheism is pure darkness for them. Many atheists see light in the process of learning new knowledge, in the process of asking questions and the search for true answers, but for those who find that to be a mental burden, it's pure terror for them to open that door.

This is why most arguments for atheism fail when trying to open the eyes of someone religious; they do not look at the core of why religious belief exist, only the irrationality of that belief. The irrational is only the surface level of a cognitive process that demands respect because we respect people and even if I don't think religion demands respect, the people needs to be respected. Their need for comfort is essential for their well being and respecting that is essential in order to give well being to people in a world without religion.

I think I'm fated to believe, always, that there is not now, has never been, and never will be, any purpose in discussing "free will" or "determinism." — Ciceronianus the White

For two reasons; most likely hard determinism is true and second, it doesn't matter since it won't really change the human condition.

However, I think that that the most important aspects of hard determinism is how it affects ideas in ethics. If our actions are a sum of conditions and causes, then crimes does not come out of any abstract concepts of evil, but a quantifiable sum of causes. Crime and punishment then becomes quite absurd and the punishment part very obvious in an eye for an eye concept rather than actually preventing or changing that crime happens in the first place.

Free will and determinism has the most impact on these ethical questions and personally I'm in on the side that tries to convince about how determinism is true and why we need to move away from primal abstract ideas about crime and punishment that only focus on our desire to hurt the one's who hurt others, not prevent or reduce crime in society.

In other words, discussions of free will are determined by the limited capacities of our minds? — Bitter Crank

We are limited by what we know in science about the world and universe. The essential problem is at it's core about quantum mechanics and how it's seemingly randomizing a core foundation of the universe. Until we have a unification theory, it's a problem not just in philosophy but in science.

However I think there are a few key premisses that needs to be taken into account. First, the universe, even though we don't know everything yet, seems to act out of probability. The smaller the scale, the more probabilities are possible, the larger things get, the more determined the probability gets. Humans, while seemingly small compared to the universe, are in fact quite large things in the universe in comparison to the scale in which probability gets hard to determine. If we exist on a scale where we could, with enough data on our hand, determine the full consequences of the a number of causes, meaning, with enough data to predict choices taken by an individual, we can see down a deterministic path and predict every choice. Even though it's possible that things gets deviant from that path, the probability is so low that it would only be an academic footnote that a free choice would be possible, even on paper. That free choice is as possible as us using seemingly impossible quantum physics on a larger scale, like for example, walk through a wall. Walking through a wall is indeed possible in quantum physics, but the improbability of it is so high on larger scales, that it's not even a calculable measurement of probability. It's like the different definitions of "infinite" in physics, they do not really apply to the real world.

In conclusion, the probability to have free will is so low that it's pretty much unable to be a calculated as a viable point of measure. We are therefor slaves under determinism and do not have free will.

There are plenty of scientists who agree that we do not have free will, both in psychology and neuroscience. The data we have, points to all decisions being formed by other things, genetics, experience, direct causes, chemistry etc. The combined consequence of all of these creates an illusion of free will, but they are all part of determining the exact choice that's being made. The best example is the traditional one about you wanting something, like ice-cream. Did you choose to eat chocolate ice-cream because you chose to by free will, or because it was a hot day, combined with you establishing a taste for chocolate ice-cream at the age of 4, combined with someone mentioning chocolate, a commercial showing someone eating ice-cream, a temporary dehydration that made you feel warmer than usual, a convenient distance to an ice-cream bar, the right exchange in your pocket and so on. It's easy to say that you chose to eat chocolate ice-cream, or maybe you chose not to. But none of those choices are free of deterministic causes, even the choice to not eat chocolate ice-cream.

Another example is how our gut bacteria adjust our psychology. How if you transplant gut bacteria between two people, a noticeable shift in their psychology can be observed. So, are your gut bacteria part of your free will or another source that helps create the illusion of free will? Most would not give credit to bacteria for being part of their free will, yet it affects many of our choices.

I think that by most accounts, it's already pretty much proven by deductive methods and science that humans do not have free will. But I think the discourse continues on the subject because there are philosophers who A) mix in spiritualism and abandon deductive arguments and rational thinking processes and B) Have problems distancing their own sense of self to that of the rational argument.

In the sense of B, you are right, that our mental process is in our way of actually experiencing the conclusion of determinism as the truth. But just as with quantum mechanics, gravity, electro-magnetism, we do not experience or see any of these things, yet, we know they exist. Same goes for determinism, we pretty much know it's the truth, yet I think it's in a way the same kind of denial as with those back with Newton who couldn't accept his ideas about gravity or those who didn't accept the conclusions by Einstein because it didn't fit their narrative or something they could "see". The ones who argue for free will seems to either not know all the facts, lack in their deductive reasoning around the subject and be generally too bound to their subjective sense of self, without the ability to detach from their humanity when doing the argument.

I have been pondering this subject ever since I started my interest in philosophy, but I have yet to see any viable arguments in favor of free will and the more I've discussed this subject, the less reasonable the arguments in favor of free will gets.

That's the same kind of argument, for which I mean that the attributes of such a first uncaused cause cannot be described as God in any terms of definitions based on how humans describe a God. The uncaused might just be a negative balance of matter and energy, which would mean that it just is, not that it is a beginning. Like a kind of hypothesis of circular entropy. But my argument aims to either way prove the cosmological argument problematic, since if the scientific progress going into the future ends up explaning everything at some point and that would mean we will eventually explain the first cause. When that happens, we have a higher understanding than such a god, meaning that according to our measurements it would not be a god since we know more, or if it's just a process and not with any agency over the causality it set in motion then any description of it as God would be like describing gravity to be God. It would be as ridiculous as when people thousands of years ago worshiped the sun which we now know is just a bunch of fusion in space. When taking in the progress of science over time, any argument for God and religion becomes problematic or false. Science has a flawless track record of explaning the universe and life compared to religion and nothing points it to be in any other way going forward. So the probability of science in the end explaning and answering every question we can think of is statistically overkilling the idea of religion explaning things or an existence of God as an explanation. It also means that when the answers are there, no God can be present at the same time since it requires it to be higher in knowledge than us. If we answer everything of the universe, if we in the end know every detail about how the universe is like it is and even what is beyond, then by the possibility of that knowledge alone it would make a God impossible.

It is more logical that we would, after a long enough time frame, have answered every question about how the universe is like it is, than that there are any answers in religion or that there exists a God.

That there's a world outside of our perception that we perceive through our senses isn't anything new in her objectivism compared to other philosophers, however I think the only good thing she put forward is putting objectivism on the spectrum so that the extreme Laissez-faire capitalism and pure egoistic values has a place that we can measure against. On the other end we have collectivism and relativism. It's easier to draw up a political map with objectivism included. It's simplified I know, but anyway...

However, as a small step forward, we may be able to do some things.

I'm not sure how it's done in US, but in Sweden every citizen gets a voting card to have with you while you vote. This card is attached to your identity so that you can't vote more than once. Once used, it's used. Instead of it just being an identifier, it could be changed to a questionnaire in which you need every answer correct in order to be allowed to vote. This questionnaire focus on basic political questions and you are allowed to use whatever resource you have to be able to answer. So it's not a questionnaire out of knowledge but out of commitment. It would push away the lazy voters, the uneducated who can't even understand basic texts and those who never seek information and only gets spoon-fed propaganda. The process in itself would create a situation in which the dedicated and committed are the ones who gets to vote. In my prediction, it would function as a half step towards epistocracy but not be so strict that it might undermine democracy as we know it. It would erase pure incompetence and pure inability of political understanding.

Maybe called Dedicracy? Dedication in democracy.

5. We ought to, if we can, experiment or find ways to test epistocracy to see how outcomes go. — Chany

I prefer epistocracy over democracy but I find there are too many socioeconomic problems that might exclude people that didn't have the chance to educate themselves. All while sudies have shown that high intelligent people often argue for their personal opinion to such extent that they adjust facts to fit their narrative. Epistocracy might then become a ruling class political system by the process and progress alone, which isn't good.

Epistocracy needs more framework to function, it needs protection of society from the risk of a ruling class. It needs to have a political system after election that review and govern the government based on the facts that the election was built upon. Otherwise it will just be a more advanced form of propaganda in which facts are adjusted or misrepresented in order to steer the educated into a certain vote.

I have some ideas for this. First, the epistocratic election includes a section that's for those not able to vote in the primary and their result will guide the elected with a popular need that the entire population have voted for. This need is a statistic that needs to be adressed in the coming government. Second, the government need to be more socialistic in nature, in order to counter the corruption that can arrise from a ruling class elite. I would say, that a more proper name would be "social epistocrat", like with "social democracy". The elected government must also adress their politics with transparency of the supporting facts. A governing agency would review policies and decisions based on the facts and if the facts are manipulated or wrong, the policy would not be able to be implemented in society.

It's possible to continue fine-tuning epistocracy to be a more functioning political system, it's easy to spot problems when something is in it's infancy.

But what is important? I can discuss something in order to feel intellectually overpowered and try to win the argument for my own pleasure, but what is actually important?

I think it's important to oppose illogical arguments, especially the ones destructive for people and within that, when you see that a win in an argument is more than just personal gain and instead is a statement of importance beyond yourself, that's not something you can or should move on from. That's my personal ideal, since everything else is letting stupidity grow freely.

By replying with objective and unemotional perspective that the other person can understand. — Lif3r

In theory I'm in totally agreement with you, however, after many discussions I know that objective, unemotional, fact-based and logical arguments does not matter to the ones who do not have the cognitive mind or intellectual knowledge to process that argument. I've been involved with too many discussions in which I've presented perfectly logical and pretty much fool proof deductive reasoning and the person I discussed with didn't care a bit. So what to do in that situation?

If someone isn't even able to take in an argument before presenting their opinion, then it doesn't even matter if you have a perfect argument anymore.

In that situations, what do you do? Imagine that you really need to convince the other, not just turn your back on them.

It is satisfying when doing it to a person that is as stupid as you point out that person to be. However, it's only satisfying emotionally, intellectually it goes nowhere.

I actually think this subject is much deeper than people seems to realize. I've been involved with a lot of discussions with populists and in lack of better terms, low educated or stupid people who doesn't seem to see logic or rationality even if you pushed it into their faces. My lack of direction within this is about how to tackle that kind of dialogue?

How do we talk to people who lack the ability to reason and think logically? Who act out stupidity on such a level that we actually only have the option to call them stupid, since all else challenge a sense of logic that they seem not capable of understanding?

It's frustrating to talk to people that doesn't seem to have the ability to understand their own level of understanding, their own level of intellect.

I understand that it seems that I'm putting myself higher intellectually than other people, but there's no question that there are people with higher intellect than others, so how do they communicate with those with lower intellect, without them feeling like they have lesser status?

The essential question is... how do we communicate across different levels of intellect without it becoming a question of status based on intellect or knowledge?

I think this question is at the basis for why we see a rise in anti-intellectualism and in lack of better terms, a new kind of stupidity.

Is this topic a philosophical one? — Marchesk

Of course, science and philosophy overlap, now more than any time in our history. The question of our existence but from the evolution of another line of genetics is really down to; would any form of trial and error system through an evolutionary process result in intelligence? And will the result of that process all come to the same conclusion that incorporate how fundamental psychological values of sex, death, well-being, ego, community etc. define what we perceive as the realm of human intelligence? Maybe community and our role in a group together with our sense of distance from the group through our ego manifested itself in form of intelligence. Our pattern seeking abilities made us perceive the world through an analytical mind and the only way to survive as a group was to communicate what we analyzed about our surrounding. If the evolutionary process had the initial steps that we went through being the same, maybe the being at the end of this evolutionary process would function in the same way as we do.

However, there are so many parameters that decide on the end result that it's impossible to say if the being would be like us or totally different. Remember that most of our perception of intelligence is based around cultural interpretations of fundamental values. How we perceive death, love, sex, group, ego etc. define how we view what intelligence is. If another line of evolution had communication through pheromones and smell rather than words and language and if they lived 400 years instead of 100, it would radically change how they act as intelligent beings and would form their society around other values and ideas.

Contact the one who sold you the model railroad is the obvious choice.

But consider; are you wealthy enough that you can have a good life without the worth of the ring. Are the seller wealthy enough to have a good life without the worth of the ring? Does the ring have emotional value to you? Does the ring have emotional value to the seller?

If you were poor and the seller wealthy, it's in some ways morally wrong to keep the ring, but it's also not. If you were poor and kept the ring and the seller doesn't need it's worth but it has an emotional value, it's in my view more morally wrong to keep it.

The basic question is about our value of owning things and the emotional attachment to our things.
But because you don't know if the seller is wealthy enough and you do not know if the ring has emotional value, there is only one rational and decent choice and that is to contact the previous owner.

You cannot make a subjective and personal choice on what the truth is in order to make a moral judgement, you need the truth in order to make it. Sometimes that demands you to sacrifice something for the good of how humanity as a whole should function morally, like if the seller didn't even know that there was a ring there and didn't own it to begin with, it's your loss and the sellers gain, but such an outcome puts the moral choice on the seller while you have done what should be considered the better moral choice.

however there are numerous quite easy ways to drasticly lower intelligence. — Tomseltje

If talking about physical brain damage, then yes. But it's hard to not use the brain to such a level that your IQ drops so low that you almost simulate brain damage.

Most people who do so seem to have forgotten that our intrinsic worth is not determined by our intelligence or monetary wealth, but rather by how we choose to use the intelligence and monetary wealth we posess. — Tomseltje

My point as well. But my comparison between money and intelligence has more to do with how people talk and reason around IQ. It's a value of the person rather than value of the optimal function of the person. The optimal function of a person does not equal value of that person, but works as a guideline to what that person can function optimally around. To function optimally is to find tranquility in our existence, if we push ourself beyond what we are capable of, or if we are capable of more and limit ourselves, it's downhill into mental health problems.

However, the actual worth of a person is another philosophical question entirely, but I agree to some degree that the worth has much to do with how we use what we have and how we act according to it against other people and ourselves.

Can one know what it is like to be a man? Or what it is like to be a woman? How, if one can have no more than one's own experiences? — Banno

Our sense of experience of being a certain gender is based on how we view societies definition of the genders. If we feel that we are woman trapped in a man's body, we are feeling that our concept of experience is based around the experience we learned to be that of a man in our society. If the said person who feel trapped, were stranded on a remote island and hasn't had any contact with society and our values of gender, that person wouldn't feel trapped, they would just be themselves. People who have this view about themselves have this view because of their relationship with society and social norms, not because of their subjective experience. So feeling trapped is not out of knowing how the experience of being a man is, but by feeling more comfort in how they would be treated and act out according to what society has decided that the experience of a man should be, external and internal.

This is why gender has more to do with social norms than subjective identity. Most people are just who they are, but we are something else when we clash with what society has decided what people is. Whatever value we have on this subject matter, it's hard to deny that most of our sense of identity would be non-existent if we didn't have a society and norms around us to value and define them against.

Why is a religion so good at commanding people to behave a certain way and philosophy, which relishes in how people ought to behave. Is this simply an is-ought problem, and why so? — Posty McPostface

Because it adheres to simple solutions for complex questions, while philosophy use complex solutions to simple questions, not by will, but by necessity of the complexity of life and the universe. Questions never have simple answers, but simple minds can only function with simple answers. Humans always see the most simple solution first, they are pattern seeking and they often find truth were there are none.

Religion makes use of this simplicity to govern what we ought to do. It's easier to follow an authority that says "this is how you should act" than figuring out the complex answer that is rational and closer to truth by yourself. It demands that we value knowledge and most people value other aspects of life than knowledge. They rather have people with knowledge rule them as authority, as parent figures, but this solution has opened up the door for the power hungry, the one's who value power over knowledge. This has been the essence of religious power for thousands of years. Most people want to be governed by a higher power, they feel panic in face of the reality to have responsibility over their own life. People want comfort, religion is comfort, philosophy is truth. Very few find comfort in truth.

Does measured intelligence predict behaviour, abilities at certain tasks and how well someone function under certain set of parameters? Yes, numerous tests have shown correlation.

Has placements of people, with different IQs, to areas of work that doesn't fit the required intelligence level or being far under their level shown a negative effect on their well being, their ability to function well in that line of work and social interaction? Yes.

Can intelligence be trained to increase? Or if not trained, fall? Yes, but studies show that only within a a small range around the baseline you exist under. The base IQ range level is pretty much set for each person.

Is there a lot of stigma around intelligence based on the fact, as the OP posted, that intelligence is talked about in the same way as money? People that do not have a lot of money often despise those who are rich, while those who are rich look down upon those who are poor.

Does the stigma affect how we view and value IQ for it's purpose as a measurement? Do we either view it as a measurement of the value of people or on the other end do we see it as as measurement that is too morally cold and doesn't care about other aspects of human nature that should be taken into account more than IQ for the evaluation of a person? Yes.

What is the value of IQ without the stigma attached to it?

I see these points and I try to deduct the value of IQ. If we take away the stigma in which we value people's worth according to IQ or ignore IQ in order to not do it, then we can get closer to what IQ can be used for as a measurement. If researchers have found both that IQ is predicting how we behave and function in face of the world around us and if we function best in places that fit the level of IQ we have, also with respect to how much we can increase our IQ within our range, then it's a measurement of the optimal function of our mental well being. Someone who is too intelligent for the tasks they do get depressed by it, isolate themselves compared to colleges that are better matched, while those with less intelligence than what is required gets stressed and suffers health issues connected to that stress, while socially ends up isolated as well.

Now, this is a bit coldly calculated, since it's also not a good thing to just divide people into different levels of intelligence as well-being is also generally linked to diversity within the social group. But the stigma gets in the way of what IQ can guide us to when it comes to what we are best fit to be doing. It's a value that shows us a starting point for what we will be best at doing. Aiming for anything else will probably lead to health issues, both mentally and physically.

If we could let go of the stigma, let go of valuing worth of a person based on the IQ and instead value the well being of that person according to IQ, we have a good function for IQ as a measurement. IQ is not a measurement of a persons value, but a measurement of a persons optimal functionality. Put a Ferrari engine inside a small car and the entire thing will collapse under those horsepowers and wind pressure; put a small car engine in a Ferrari and it will slowly roll down the street without utilizing any of the the streamline design for wind pressure at high speeds. But both have a purpose if they utilize their purpose and not what purpose they don't have.

We have an ideology popularized today about how the individual can become whatever they want. It's Sartre's "essence after existence" on crack in which anyone believe they can do anything with their life. It's also why we see increases of mental health issues as the pressure on people not fit for what they do, try all their efforts to do them anyway. There are other aspects of course, like how introverts and extroverts do not fit in each others line of work very well but try to do the tasks anyway. This delusion of how people can be molded into the perfection of their decided essence, has little to no basis in psychology and sociology. While I agree that our essence comes after existence, we have a basic set of stats that we are born with and only those with dark agendas use the stigmatic aspects of our relationship with concepts like IQ to fit their world view and decisions. However, if we see the true value of IQ, it can be utilized for the good of humanity if people who understands it and who are free of the personal emotional evaluation of a person's IQ, decide on it's use for humanity.

(This is more a response to the topic and original post than the pages of debate that followed)

The problem with this argument is that the Bible is a collection of writings, not one single writing by one single person. When we collect together a number of different accounts of the same event, and they corroborate each other, it may be argued that they prove the validity of each other. Such proof can never be absolutely conclusive though, as is evident from conspiracy. — Metaphysician Undercover

Since the bible has been revised many times, even in it's entirety, as well as changed according to the norms of the times in which it was changed, it cannot validate itself since it's corrupted by the process. There are no facts to back up the claims, like when we read about historical events that are documented and that can actually be backed up. Claims of somethings existence cannot be validated by merely saying that a lot of people wrote the same book and that proves that it's true.

It's too corruptible and there's not enough evidence beside it to be able to confirm anything. It also becomes a fallacy in that it presents premises that's assumed true in order to conclude that itself is true.

It is an internal negation of subjectivity for the collective.
These conclusions of science, for instance, that an atom exists or that a color exists or whatever... These conclusions do not make objectivity any different. They are still transpersonal abstractions. — Blue Lux

It's an internal negation of subjectivity for the individual, but an objective fact filtered through human perception demands more observers than one and that all those individual observers try and disregard their own subjectivity. The conclusions of science has consequences for physical objects behaving in a certain way. If an objective fact about atoms has been concluded, it predicts behaviour of physical matter in certain situations and if the behaviour acts according to predictions based on objective facts, then they cannot be subjective and is not related to any subjective perception. The physical world is what it is, with or without us, but in order for us to understand it we need objective conclusions that relate to the physical world and can predict it. Those conclusions can never be subjective, therefore objectivity is something outside of our perception. This is what I call absolute objectivity and practical objectivity is the understanding of this through human perception that comes as close to the absolute as possible. If you can predict how matter is going to behave, you are acting on facts about the world that exists outside of your subjective perception.

The fact is that there are no facts, only interpretations. And I agree with Socrates that the only true knowing is knowing that you know nothing. — Blue Lux

And this is what absolute objectivity is about. Why I'm doing the distinction between absolute and practical is that if you cannot accept a measurement of objectivity that is practical for humans and you only have subjectivity on one hand and the absolutely unreachable for our perception and knowledge-absolute objectivity on the other, then we can only exist within subjectivity. But in order for science and communication to work practically for us, we need a measurement that balance our subjectivity with what we perceive as objectivity. Without practical objectivity, everyone could dismiss everyone else's argument for being subjective, regardless of how close to facts about the world the are.

If you prove, through proper research and with others checking and replicating your research, a fact about the universe and the consequence is that this fact predicts how things behave, you have reached a practical objectivity. You cannot ever be sure that anything is real, however, that fact, that conclusions is not subjectivity by the definition and general understanding of the word. We call it objective since it predicts and behaves according to the world that exists outside of our perception and will long after the subjective viewpoint has died.

It does not matter that science can objectively define Mercury or wax... When I melt the wax and it is still wax... No objective explanation can ever give me that experience and that continuity. — Blue Lux

Experiences of how we perceive something cannot always be used to further our understanding of why it is or how it can be used. How you perceive wax and experience wax cannot be used for when you invent a new material using facts about the molecular structure of wax in combination with another substance. So it does matter if science can explain it, since all the technology, all the quality of life that we have around objects that humans have invented is based on the understanding of how these objects work. The practical objective understanding of the world, makes people able to form it. Your experience of wax is irrelevant for the definition of objectivity in that regard. If you were a molecular chemist, you would still experience wax through your subjective emotions and opinions, but you wouldn't use that for molecular chemistry with that wax, you would use what we objectively know about the molecular structure of wax.

The objective says nothing about truth. It merely acts as truth. It is a transpersonal truth, which is absolutely meaningless. Would you die for these supposed objective truths? — Blue Lux

You are still talking about absolute objectivity, not the definition of practical objectivity that I'm trying to argue for here. Practical objectivity isn't meaningless since it's a form of definition that makes us balance our concept of subjectivity with something that has reduced or erased subjectivity. To die for objective truths is irrelevant since it has nothing to do with the definition of it. That gravity pulls objects of great mass closer to each other does not care for me or my experience and my experience or subjective emotions cannot dismiss that gravity exists within practical objective understanding of it. I cannot die for something that just is, regardless of my existence or not. Gravity will not end when I die and will not care for if I die, it will still be there and it's an objective truth through the lens of practical objectivity. Absolute objectivity states that we cannot know that gravity is real, because we cannot know if this world is truly real, or the universe or anything. This form of absolutes is meaningless and that is why I'm measuring objectivity in two forms, one is practical for our understanding and progression as humans, the other is academic and meaningless for most arguments.

Objectivity is an illusion... As is subjectivity. There is no world of truth that we are incapable of ascertaining alone... Furthermore, there is no truth that can only be ascertained by means of an objectivity. There is no subjectivity trying to find the truth OUT THERE SOMEWHERE. The perception of something is not just a mere perception. The experiencing of the world is the world revealing itself in truth. The experiencing of the world is the experiencing of the essence of the world... The essence of the world is no longer to be understood as hidden. — Blue Lux

And this is absolute objectivity, which I do not dispute, I'm arguing for a measurement of objectivity that is practical for us as humans, since absolute objectivity is in most regards meaningless for us.