Comments
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Our relation to Eternity
Yes, so our expectation is met and I, like most other nonbelievers, don't see only this one life as a problem. In fact, the low, or mininal, existential expectations of rational nonbelief cannot be disappointed, and only surprised if we're wrong. I like surprises. :wink:Becauseatheists believe that it is only for a limited time. — Hallucinogen
Because all they have is a 'hope for more than this life' without any factual basis, just wishful thinking. Whatever seems too good to be true (e.g. "eternal life") is almost certainly not true. The believer's problem is (as always) s/he can't shake fearing what s/he undeniably knows: reality withstands faith. :pray: :eyes:Why is it a problem for believers? -
Our relation to EternityWhy would this topic of "being given existence but only for a limited time" "only a problem for ... atheists"? It seems only a problem for the believer who expects there to be more to life and nature than this life, which is generally not the outlook or hope of a nonbeliever .
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Meditation, Monkey Brain and Mind ChatterGood old "monkey brain", we wouldn't be here now to navel gaze or "let go" without its incessant monkeying around. After all, primates chanting mantras are just relaxed primates. :sparkle: :monkey:
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Is the future real?
Like the horizon, which is real (i.e. ineluctable)? :chin:The future is not real because it never arrives — boagie -
How do you give a definition to "everything"?:blush:
We continue putting one foot in front of the other through the darkness while providing our own light.Now, how do we proceed as humanity with that in mind? — Benj96
Tell ourselves more probative stories which also challenge us to go on in spite of the not-All.If we cannot approach any clear grasp of the whole, if our reasoning capacity innately falls short of the true nature of things due to being a subset of it, what ought we do?
Maybe. I'd be happier just understanding better all that we already know.Do we persist in understanding more?
On the proverbial death bed. :death: :flower:Where is the cut-off of futility where there little point in trying to delve deeper, know more? -
How do you give a definition to "everything"?
We philosophizers don't, wrong question. Rather "the whole" – universe – might be described as (the) observable, expanding, unbounded debris-field of exploding or colliding stars, galaxies-devouring super-massive black holes, extreme radiations, gravity waves, nebulae, micro-meteorites, dust, percolating vacua & intergalactic voids wherein all observers are part(icipant)s. Possibly there is no defined, or defineable, "whole", just an encompassing expanse infinite in all directions, and what's quaintly called "universe", or kosmos, is just an ocean-wave on the ocean of xaos (Hesiod) (or an infinite mode of attributes of eternal substance ~Spinoza). How do deep sea fish "define" the whole of the sea? :zip:How do you define the "whole" when the act of defining is intrinsically restrictive/reductive? — Benj96
Anyway, Benj, to quote a snippet of my own confusion on "the whole" (the real) itself:
the real (e.g. existence) encompasses reasoning (e.g. naturalism); therefore, reasoning cannot encompass (i.e. causally explain) the real — 180 Proof, excerpt from profile -
The Dialectic of Atheism and Theism: An Agnostic's Perspective
... and because "nothing" causes it to be.There is something because there is nothing to prevent it??? — EnPassant
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.Existence/God contains all possibilities.
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?)The power of reason in our minds is God. All mind is ultimately God's Mind.
:up:I guess we can make all sorts of claims about gods... — Tom Storm -
Arguments for why an afterlife would be hidden?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
:100: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
This vaguely reminds me of arch-elitist Leo Strauss' advocacy of indispensible "political myths" & "noble lies".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.
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".Far from a simple pursuit of the truth for the sake of truth, philosophy is 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 -
Arguments for why an afterlife would be hidden?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...
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The “Supernatural”
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.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
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. -
The “Supernatural”
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How Atheism Supports Religion: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?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 ..."?
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How Atheism Supports ReligionThere'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.
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The Dialectic of Atheism and Theism: An Agnostic's PerspectiveEnPassant's description suggests acosmism even more than theism.
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How Atheism Supports Religion
Actually, projection is "bad philosophy".Making a response to an argument that ignores the argument and substitutes your own irrelevant ideas is bad philosophy. — T Clark -
New Atheism
"Lasting things" like sanctifying marital rape? holy wars? homophobia? patriarchy? witch hunts/trials? pogroms?censorship? blasphemy laws? :brow:all that which fulfill the social functions of church seem to be the most lasting thing? — Moliere -
New Atheism
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.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 -
Our relation to EternityWell, if that's the story you tell yourself, invicta, why the angst expressed in your OP about "death" versus "eternal life"?
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The Dialectic of Atheism and Theism: An Agnostic's PerspectiveI cover this same ground on my TPF profile but conclude everything is self-organizing, evolving, dissipating and not "created".
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Our relation to EternityAnd 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?
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Our relation to EternitySo you find "ghosts" (i.e. disembodied awareness / consciousness) credible? If so, why?
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Spinoza’s Philosophy
:cool:"Clowns to the left of me ;
Jokers to the right
[Here I am]
Stuck in the middle with you"
Stealer's Wheel, 1972 — Gnomon -
Our relation to EternityAnd how does "the invocation of god help (anyone) regain awareness and consciousness"?
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How Atheism Supports Religion
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.What concern is it to either if one believes or not ? — invicta
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 EternityYou've lost me. I don't see how "the invocation of God" (which one?) "helps regain ... awareness and consciousness".
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Our relation to EternityWhy not just believe in "eternal life" and leave g/G out of it? Eternalism rather than theism (i.e. "higher power"-ism)? :chin:
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How Atheism Supports Religion
I prefer to call Harris, Dawkins, Hitchens,et al mere "anti-religionists".I don't value the term new atheists — universeness
:up:I merely think QM and religion are not analogous. — Ciceronianus -
How Atheism Supports ReligionI'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.
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).A real atheist would be indifferent to god. — TheMadMan
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:lol: I remember this fiasco well. "Let him who is without sin ..." but those pimps for Jesus cast stones anyway. :naughty:
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How Atheism Supports ReligionYeah, but QM is the kind of "preposterousness" that works whether or not anybody "believes in" it, unlike any religion.
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Progress: an insufferable enthusiasm
From the posts I've skimmed I'm not sure what this discussion is about now.This discussion is not about the book. — Jamal
180 Proof
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