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  • The Dialectic of Atheism and Theism: An Agnostic's Perspective
    There is something because there is nothing to prevent it??? — EnPassant
    ... and because "nothing" causes it to be.

    Existence/God contains all possibilities.
    Actuality consists of every possible way the world could have been and can be described. Actuality is the immanent, unbounded space of possibilities within which each instantiation of a possibility (i.e. each possible version of the world) is necessarily contingent. Actuality is necessary contingency.

    The power of reason in our minds is God. All mind is ultimately God's Mind.
    Mind-ing is what human brains do. Some mind-ing also reasons, occasionally exhibiting sufficient power to create knowledge. However, some mind-ing unreasons instead, dreaming "God creates human brains." (Buridan's Ass?)

    I guess we can make all sorts of claims about gods... — Tom Storm
    :up:
  • Arguments for why an afterlife would be hidden?
    ↪TiredThinker
    We matter to ourselves and one another because all those who came before us mattered to themselves and one another had existed. We will matter implicitly to all those who will exist long after we are gone and forgotten just as all who came before us and now are forgotten implicitly matter to us insofar they ineluctably had bequeathed to us our existence.

    Anyway. If you reflect on your mortality, Thinker, and it seems to you that ultimately nothing matters, consider that this nihilism – idea-feeling – also entails that "ultimate nothing matters" also ultimately doesn't matter, that is, nihilism is self-refuting nonsense. And this too: how would 'immortality' make your life feel any less "equally pointless and possibly random" than it feels to you here and now? :chin:
  • The Politics of Philosophy
    This task I hope to accomplish in the present chapter, and also to separate faith from philosophy, which is the chief aim of the whole treatise. (Theological Political Treatise, 14 - P02)

    The treatise is not simply theological or political, it is called theological political. But the chief aim [is] to free philosophy from the tyranny of both.     — Fooloso4
    :100:

    In all these cases there is on the one hand the attempt to protect philosophical inquiry, and on the other, to give those not well suited to philosophy a salutary teaching, something to stand on or hold on to that instructs but at the same time hides from them what is not suited to them by ability or temperament.
    This vaguely reminds me of arch-elitist Leo Strauss' advocacy of indispensible "political myths" & "noble lies".

    Far from a simple pursuit of the truth for the sake of truth, philosophy is politics by other means.
    Yes, in fact, philosophy, as the pursuit of wisdom (aretē, phronesis, eudaimonia), reduced to philosophy as "a simple pursuit of truth" (calculi) is, no doubt, "politics by other means".

    Philosophy does not serve the State or the Church, who have other concerns. It serves no established power. The use of philosophy is to sadden. A philosophy that saddens no one, that annoys no one, is not a philosophy. It is useful for harming stupidity, for turning stupidity into something shameful. — Gilles Deleuze
  • Is the future real?
    Does the future exist? — invicta
    Yes, it's the horizon of the present.
  • The “Supernatural”
    ↪Art48
    :ok:
  • Arguments for why an afterlife would be hidden?
    ↪TiredThinker
    Okay. If so, so what? Why isn't this brief interval enough for you? We spend about one-third of our lives asleep, and oblivious, without any assurance that we will awaken again and yet knowing one day soon we will not awaken. Nonetheless, without anxiety, don't you welcome deep sleep? You might not be "familiar with the omega point, etc", Thinker, but, like everyone else, you are familiar with this nightly flicker of eternal oblivion...
  • The “Supernatural”
    The point of the OP is that we do not know what "could not be caused, even in principle, by any natural event, force, or agent". — Art48
    If that's the OP's point, then, IMO, then it's based on a profound misunderstanding of how nature must be in order for natural sciences to work. Given that contemporary natural sciences, in fact, do work as intelligible, reliable practices for learning about, experimentally modeling and adapting to aspects (at all scales) of nature, it is self-inconsistent (i.e. impossible) for any natural event, force or agent to cause any fundamental constant of nature to change because the causal efficacy of every natural event, force and agent is dependent on – both enabled and constrained by – the fundamental constants of nature.

    So my point is, in sum, that we know enough today about what is the case in order for us to have known and, even if only in principle, what can and cannot be known (though not, of course, what we will learn). To my mind, a fundamentally inexplicable occurance deemed "supernatural" would invalidate knowledge itself just as inferring from contradictions invalidate arguments (via the principle of explosion). If "the supernatural", then nature is unintelligible and its regularities (i.e. order, law-likeness) are nothing but cognitive illusions or a metacognitive bias.
  • What exemplifies Philosophy?
    ↪Jamal
    :up:
  • The “Supernatural”
    ↪bert1
    Okay. Edited for typos. @ItIsWhatItIs

    https://thephilosophyforum.com/discussion/comment/787051
  • How Atheism Supports Religion
    ↪universeness
    :100: :fire:

    Our species creates, or assigns, value on the basis of scarcity. "The chosen" of religion, and especially "the one god", not only polarizes "us and them" but also separates the "sacred" from the profane" within and between groups. Zerosum games & dominance hierarchies! Thus, "the divine right" of Kings, Brahmins, Pharoahs, Caesars, Popes, Fuhrers ... and Capital.

    Btw, Stanley Kubrick got it so right with that opening scene of two groups of proto-hominids fighting over a muddy pool (climaxing with a triumphal toss of that killing bone and the most famous jump-cut in cinema a million years to a satellite orbiting the Earth).

    The empire of scarcity continues, and I think only if and when our species attains a sustainable post-scarcity civilization will we have a real opportunity to outgrow this atavistic commodity-fetishization (i.e. religiosity) of human existence.
  • Arguments for why an afterlife would be hidden?
    ↪TiredThinker
    If I understand you correctly, why does 'eternal life in the omni-memory of the ultimate being/omega point' seem to you "equally pointless and possibly random ..."?
  • How Atheism Supports Religion
    Nuff said — T Clark
    QED. :victory: :sweat:
  • How Atheism Supports Religion
    ↪T Clark
    There's no shame, TC, in admitting you were mistaken (i) comparing QM to religion and (ii) suggesting that QM is the kind of thing a great scientist like Einstein could believe in or not believe in.
  • The Dialectic of Atheism and Theism: An Agnostic's Perspective
    ↪Hanover
    EnPassant's description suggests acosmism even more than theism.
  • How Atheism Supports Religion
    Making a response to an argument that ignores the argument and substitutes your own irrelevant ideas is bad philosophy. — T Clark
    Actually, projection is "bad philosophy".
  • New Atheism
    all that which fulfill the social functions of church seem to be the most lasting thing? — Moliere
    "Lasting things" like sanctifying marital rape? holy wars? homophobia? patriarchy? witch hunts/trials? pogroms?censorship? blasphemy laws? :brow:
  • New Atheism
    I think it's fair to say that a goal of New Atheism was to make the, in your terms, the secular state into a strictly atheist state — Moliere
    No, not at all. They have two goals: (A) in America, to advocate the deliberate transition of the US into a much more secular state and civil society more like Western Europe (esp. Scandanavia), and other developed nations in East Asia, Australia & New Zealand and (B) to keep ringing the alarm bells about the clear and present danger of theofascistic JCI & Hindu fundamentalisms so that complacency and lack vigilance doesn't return to either developed or developing countries. The faults of "New Atheism" are conspicuous enough that you don't have to caricature it, Moliere.
  • Our relation to Eternity
    ↪invicta
    Well, if that's the story you tell yourself, invicta, why the angst expressed in your OP about "death" versus "eternal life"?
  • The Dialectic of Atheism and Theism: An Agnostic's Perspective
    ↪EnPassant
    I cover this same ground on my TPF profile but conclude everything is self-organizing, evolving, dissipating and not "created".
  • Our relation to Eternity
    ↪invicta
    And what does invoking "God" have to do with this? I'm guessing "the invocation of God" is some sort of mneumonic trick (mantra/mandala/koan-like trigger) to "remind"ourselves that being an individual, separate consciousness is an "illusion" ... is that it? Tat Tvam Asi–each consciousness is just one pixel (i.e. imago dei) in the infinite hologram of Cosmic/God Consciousness?
  • Our relation to Eternity
    ↪invicta
    So you find "ghosts" (i.e. disembodied awareness / consciousness) credible? If so, why?
  • Spinoza’s Philosophy
    "Clowns to the left of me ;
    Jokers to the right
    [Here I am]
    Stuck in the middle with you"
    Stealer's Wheel, 1972     — Gnomon
    :cool:
  • Our relation to Eternity
    ↪invicta
    And how does "the invocation of god help (anyone) regain awareness and consciousness"?
  • How Atheism Supports Religion
    What concern is it to either if one believes or not ? — invicta
    The theist proselytizes as his religious tenets require and the atheist objects on the grounds that she rejects being preached at or persecuted for disbelief and lack of the sufficient reasons she requires in order to believe in the proselytizer's g/G.

    Also philosophically, the question of g/G is a central metaphysical topic with implications for epistemology (at least), and so discussions, even debates, on this question are legitimate for many of us. No doubt, many others are not motivated to or interested in this question and therefore they / you should ignore those / us for whom 'g/G questions' are both fascinating and intractable.
  • Our relation to Eternity
    ↪invicta
    You've lost me. I don't see how "the invocation of God" (which one?) "helps regain ... awareness and consciousness".
  • Our relation to Eternity
    ↪universeness
    ↪invicta
    Why not just believe in "eternal life" and leave g/G out of it? Eternalism rather than theism (i.e. "higher power"-ism)? :chin:
  • How Atheism Supports Religion
    I don't value the term new atheists — universeness
    I prefer to call Harris, Dawkins, Hitchens,et al mere "anti-religionists".

    I merely think QM and religion are not analogous. — Ciceronianus
    :up:
  • How Atheism Supports Religion
    ↪universeness
    I'm not a Sam Harris fan. As far as I'm concerned, "New Atheists" like him tend to traffic in irreligious polemics and pop-philosophizing (or patent sophistries) to sell books. I think the "fad" has (mostly due to Youtube) outlived it's usefulness.

    A real atheist would be indifferent to god. — TheMadMan
    Yes, but s/he cannot be "indifferent" to "the parties of God" at home and abroad (i.e. proselytizing theists and anti-secular political movements like right-wing Evangelicals, fundamentalists and other wanna be theocrats, theofascists, et al).

    ↪T Clark
    I don't see how we "agree". Einstein was one of the founders of quantum physics and argued that its theoretical formulation was incomplete. AFAIK, Einstein never disputed its findings, only their interpretations. Again, QM is a matter of knowledge, not (make)belief like religion.
  • How Atheism Supports Religion
    ↪universeness
    :lol: I remember this fiasco well. "Let him who is without sin ..." but those pimps for Jesus cast stones anyway. :naughty:
  • How Atheism Supports Religion
    ↪T Clark
    Yeah, but QM is the kind of "preposterousness" that works whether or not anybody "believes in" it, unlike any religion.
  • Progress: an insufferable enthusiasm
    This discussion is not about the book. — Jamal
    From the posts I've skimmed I'm not sure what this discussion is about now.
  • Arguments for why an afterlife would be hidden?
    I'd be happy to hear any interpretations of why an afterlife if it exists is so well hidden. I recently had a close relative pass away and have been in a bit of an existential crisis. I appreciate any concepts on this subject — TiredThinker
    My condolences, TiredThinker.

    I have speculated on a number of other threads about 'reincarnation', 'immortality', 'life extension' (e.g. immorbidity tech), 'transhumanism', etc but as a thorough-going naturalist, "spiritual after-life" (i.e. super-naturalism (e.g. ghost-without-the-machine)) makes absolutely no sense to me. That said, however, I've speculated about a 'concept of divinity – understand, I'm completely agnostic about this – wherein "eternal life", so to speak, is to live on (somehow) in the omni-memory of (the) deity-to-come at the end of all things (à la Frank Tipler's "Omega Point"). This concept, as I've interpreted it, is pandeism. Austere and remote, even cold, as it seems, I hope you can get something from it you may need in order to get through your crisis.

    :death: :flower:
  • How Atheism Supports Religion
    Atheism supports religion? — Art48
    Only insofar as many, maybe most, of the organizers, fundraisers & high officials of many, or most, religions tend to not practice what they preach as if 'g/G doesn't exist' to punish them for their frauds and other abuses. After all, what's a "religion" anyway? IMO, a conspiracy cult-driven pyramid scheme that feeds on an inexhaustible supply of earnestly gullible dupes &their brats.

    :pray: :eyes: :mask:
  • Progress: an insufferable enthusiasm
    ↪Tom Storm
    :up:

    I’d recommend Graeber and Wengrow’s Dawn of Everything. It is a critique of Darwinist progressive accounts of anthropological change as seen in Pinker, Diamond and Harari. — Joshs
    :100:

    In 2018 Steven Pinker published his book Enlightenment Now: The Case for Reason, Science, Humanism, and Progress. — Jamal
    "Progress" towards what? and for whom (and not for whom)?

    Btw, I haven't read this book. Also, like Nietzsche, I think h. sapiens is merely a means and not an end; thus, I'm pessimistic about the future of our species yet optimistic about the future of intelligence. "Scarcity" seems the fundamental driver of dominance hierarchies and imperialism that no amount of "progress" has put an end to or significantly diminished, so the title of Pinker's book doesn't recommend itself to me. That said, Jamal, why do you think I should read it?
  • Time and Boundaries
    ↪jgill
    :up:
  • Spinoza’s Philosophy
    ↪Gnomon
    That's you: Bart Simpson, The Great Enformer. :rofl:
  • The “Supernatural”
    ↪ItIsWhatItIs
    Given that the premise of your question does not convey what I've stated, I have no idea how to answer.
  • Donald Trump (All General Trump Conversations Here)
    ↪NOS4A2
    :lol: Denial is a helluva drug!
    It’s easier to fool people than to convince them that they have been fooled. — Mark Twain
  • Wonder why I've been staying away?
    How can you guys stand it? — god must be atheist
    Sometimes, for some of us, boredom with ourselves is worse. Also, thc gummy bears & pots of Darjeeling.
  • Arguments for why an afterlife would be hidden?
    They say dark matter exists despite not interacting with light, but it does interact with gravity? — TiredThinker
    True, and that's because 'dark matter' is physical.

    Can't something be hidden even if it doesn't leave obvious clues of its possible existence?
    If it's a physical phenomenon, then sure. I don't understand how a "nonphysical afterlife" can be physically "hidden" from direct or indirect physical observation.
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