Author Topic: Atheism  (Read 14494 times)

Burning Zeppelin

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Re: Atheism
« Reply #30 on: January 06, 2008, 03:00:57 am »
Since he made tangible, big contributions to the Chrono fan community!
I should spend more time outside of the General Discussion board I guess.
Unfrotunately, I don't understand what the table means exactly. Why is one better than none? And Faustwolf, where did the creator come from, as it would have had to have had a creator itself (that's one "have had" too many for me)?
If you look at the table (I know it is a bit hard to understand) you realize that if you believe in No God, and there is a god, you lose. If you believe in a god, and there is no God, no harm done.

Also, if you believe something has to have a creator, you fail outright at atheism. But in the religion side of things, God does not need a creator. You have to understand that something needs to be created only in this universe. You have not yet comprehended the incomprehensible nature of the possible world, or void, outside the Universe. Augustine of Hippo shares the same view as me, in that he and I both believe that because Time only existed after the universe was created, it explains why God does not have to have a beginning or an end, and because Space also existed only after the universe was created (of course, both may exist outside the universe but not in the same way we see it here), God does not need a shape, mass or physical form.

MsBlack

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Re: Atheism
« Reply #31 on: January 06, 2008, 03:10:51 am »
Well, I think we've reached somewhat of an agreement. I guess I'll finally go to sleep... or keep refreshing the baord index.

Kebrel

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Re: Atheism
« Reply #32 on: January 06, 2008, 03:22:33 am »
okay I have found where most of my "disbelief", in that this being god dose not fallow physical laws of the world. But it is not beyond me to admit that we could be wrong about something. So I'm stuck at the "can't prove it one way or another" kinda like strings.

FaustWolf

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Re: Atheism
« Reply #33 on: January 06, 2008, 03:28:30 am »
The Creator, for me, is the "end of the line," so to speak -- the unknowable source from whence everything knowable sprung. The universe paradoxically defies itself if all the matter in the cosmos sprung out of nowhere. Therefore, the source of the universe must lie in something that does not operate according to the laws of physics. Gah, now I'm just confusing myself. Basically, I guess the Creator doesn't need a Creator because the Creator operates according to different laws than the universe we interact with physically. Something not bound by physics had to create all the matter that occupies the universe, because matter can't be created in the first place. EDIT: Yeah, what Burning Zeppelin said.  :mrgreen:

Ooh, I see Burning Zeppelin has introduced reincarnation in the religiosity table. I'm actually quite fond of the idea of reincarnation -- if there's some greater purpose to our lives, that purpose must have something to do with the experiences we go through. And since I can't possibly have the same experiences as someone in a concentration camp or, say, a camel jockey in nineteenth century Saudi Arabia, it sort of makes sense that we'd all have to go through these experiences to get an equal "education." But what implications would reincarnation have for ethics, I wonder? Any at all?

Yeah, Burning Zeppelin, this is one of those rare occasions where I poke around outside the hacking and game modification areas of the forum. But discussions like these are also an integral part of what makes the Compendium so awesome. It's not just a fansite, it's a Free Intellectual Environment!

Burning Zeppelin

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Re: Atheism
« Reply #34 on: January 06, 2008, 03:37:34 am »
Maybe if everyone spent their time discussing why everyone else was wrong, there'd be less war. Or if we just followed the meritocracy system of Chrono Compendium.

okay I have found where most of my "disbelief", in that this being god dose not fallow physical laws of the world. But it is not beyond me to admit that we could be wrong about something. So I'm stuck at the "can't prove it one way or another" kinda like strings.

If God had to follow the physical laws of this world, there would be no world.


Daniel Krispin

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Re: Atheism
« Reply #35 on: January 06, 2008, 03:46:13 am »
And Z doesn't really sound too much like a Nietzchian. The first thing I think about when I hear Nietzche is his disgusting notion of power over the weak and might is right. He is more like his opposite, Kant.

Really? Well I'm a Kantian, or at least I think that philosophically speaking Kant is the closest we've ever gotten to knowing the truth of the world. Eh, most of the view I propounded in the introductory post was Kantian.

Meh, my thread's been corrupted anyway. I didn't mean this to be an argument about the merits of religion. I meant it as a serious analysis about the logical possibility of being an atheist. So, since it's been destroyed... well, too late in the day to reply properly, but I'll reply. Apologies for any inherent incoherence.

And to ZeaLitY, you've made a few errors, I think. For one, the oppression to free thought really isn't as much present in the private religious schools as it is in the public. In the university my dad's president of, for example, which is entirely Lutheran (but welcomes people of other faiths, and has them actually as a majority) that sort of free speech is entirely alright. In fact, we're having a public debate over the rationale of believing in God. Try that at a public university and you'll just be labelled intolerant. And no, funding doesn't go to the private, at least not hereabouts. The UofA gets all the funding; the Lutheran university gets nothing public. And the irony is that while this private school is entirely tolerant of other faiths, the secular universities will have very little or nothing of religion. Hmph. Fact is, religion is part of our history and what makes us human. To remove that is to remove part of our essence.

I'll respond in more detail at some other point, but ZeaLitY, I'd really challenge your view that religion holds back humanity. Most of the great artists and thinkers have been religious. Aeschylus, Sophokles, Sokrates, Plato... these guys were all religious. In the Christian era, well, Aquinas (as much as I might disagree), Da Vinci, Milton, Shakespeare, Descartes, Kant, Berkeley, Newton, etc... these were all religious (and I'm sure Zeppelin can name some eminent Islamic scholars of the middle ages.) Scientists like Einstein were agnostics or theists. Most of the artists that did the most equisite work were religious, some very deeply so. Now, it's true, atheistis do have Hume and Marx and some others, but the point is, it doesn't really pan out that religion holds back human achievement and beauty. Quite the opposite, really... it seems that religion has enlivened art, and if not propelled learning at least kept it safe (like I said, universities begin in the religious institutions of the Christians and Islamic peoples.) And as for what it has caused... well, here too you're amiss.

See, a lot of people think 'the church held things back.' Held us back in the dark ages. No. Look, dark ages are not a religious occurance, they are a socio-political one. After all, how then do you explain the Greek Dark age of 1200BC? The world upheavals of that era, which plunged the literate Mycenaean culture into a dark age that didn't end for four hundred and fifty years? That wasn't religion. That was war, and people movements. Did the church cause the dark age after Rome? Certainly not, and to think so is rather naive. Rome was falling long before Constantine or anything like that. Look at the incoming peoples, the political fragmentation of the empire... that's what caused it's fall. As for prolonging the dark age... did the Church rule Charlagmagne, or was it the other way about? As I recall, it was he that forced the Pope to bless his rule. Where is the control there? ZeaLitY, it was the volatile and fragmentary nature of Europe in that era that held it in darkness, and afterward the feudal system which turned the common people into slaves. That was nothing religious... that was social. And tell me, what could the church of done, hm? Given the learning of the ancients (which they preserved in their monostaries) to the common people? Tell me, how in the world were illiterate people supposed to read it, works that at the time were not yet translated out of Greek and Latin? Teach them? Tell me, what kind of logistics would that have taken? The fact is, anyone that wanted to learn could join the monastaries... that was the social order of the time. Did the church keep knowledge 'secret'... only because the rest of the people didn't care for it! ZeaLitY, most people now don't care for schooling or for the ancients... do you think they would have THEN? Was it the Church, or was it people themselves, that kept things back?

Really, I'm just tired of hearing how the Church holds things back when it's never, ever been so. What, because they questioned a few people bringing forward radical ideas? You don't think you'd be wary if someone came to you and said they'd found proof the world was only a few thousand years old? Okay, there was some censoring, but there always is. Fact is, the Church didn't do it as badly as we're taught. Think about this reasonably, think apart from the herd of our western teaching... if it was so bad, why did the Enlightentment begin in Italy, nearest the centre of Papal power? Why did some of the first philosophers of the Enlightenment come from the Byzantine city of Mystras, which was a very religious culture? It just doesn't jive, ZeaLitY. Historically speaking, the Church has been an aid to advance most often. True, a few times it's held some things back, but hey, what system employed by humanity has ever been flawless?

So I'd really ask... how the heck does religion really hold people back? Alright, there are a few fanatics in the bunch. But ZeaLitY, there are some 'scientists', too, who hold that we have aliens watching us and that there were empires in Antarctica. For the most of us, our religion either doesn't interfere with our 'worldly' lives (and before Ms Black jumps on me, that's not hypocritical, that's the distinction between the Two Kingdoms, which is an entirely valid thing), or else it serves to empower us by giving us glimpses of things beyond our knowing, which impells us to think more. Science has the danger that when we know everything, what joy will remain. And here I'll quote myself, from my writing, 'This mystery I leave to you, Muses, to hold forever secret. Must one probe all the ways of heaven? Would I ask whence came the world, and when its ending is decreed? Wonder is the great fire of men’s hearts: when all is known, what then? Our flame will thus be spent and impelled no longer, weighted by sloth to join our golden brethren. But I will still forestall the day, and not ask that such things be revealed, and let mankind still remain amazed by heaven. Nor stars nor planets fear, your secrets are secure!'

See... we need those mysteries, in part. And in part... I probably should get some sleep now, but I really mean to say more on this. But I suppose you've just really got to consider this one thing, ZeaLitY. You know me. You've seen how I argue, how I think. You know I can be open-minded (heck, in the first post I admitted that a pure atheistic stance is entirely reasonable), and most of my friends who are philosophers aren't religious. Am I irrational? Am I held back in art or in desire to learn? But in religious terms I am probably the most dogmatic person you could come across. I'm not evangelical like you have in the SE US, of course, whose religion lies upon emotion, but I have a very serious and very strict view of my faith. Good grief, religiously I believe the creeds and the Augsburg Confession and all such other things which are the precepts. I am not someone who is just an occassional churchgoer, I go every Sunday... and I'll not say willfullly, for I believe most heartily that such a decision is not something I can ascribe to myself. My religious view would be, I think, described as rather devout. But this doesn't stop me from keeping an open mind and learning. I suppose I'm trying to set myself up as proof that religion doesn't poison our human spirit nor weigh us down. How does knowing God exists and that He cares for me keep me from learning? It's my bloody duty to learn. That's my calling, you know. To think, to question. You know what it means when it says that God made people in his own image? Creatures with reason and with free will. That is how we are alike with God. But why do we need God, you may ask? Because there is still death. And, contrary to what you would assert, it doesn't keep me from trying to live my life to its fullest. It is our responsability to do so, to not just sit back and let God do things for us. Because guess what? He won't. God's actions are the actions of salvation, and if He interferes directly in our affairs it's by overreaching Fate. And sometimes He destroys us. It's just the way things are.

Meh, I guess I'm too tired to bring things across properly, but I'm just tired of having religion knocked down as irrational and weighing us down and all that sort of thing. Take religion out of Shakespeare; take it out of Aeschylus; take it out of Tolkien. It is the heart and soul of art, ZeaLitY. And in progress, well, let's not be too high and mighty about that, shall we? We all know how the progress of, oh, the Industrial Revolution went. And Global Warming. Of course we've got some religious idiots that think we can use our resources as we want, but the fact is we can't: it's ours to use properly and moderately. That's our mandate. We're not meant to be wastrels, we're meant to be stewards. Anyway, that's my rant. Just... don't be too hard on religion. It's track record isn't spotless, but neither is that of Democracy. Remember Melos. Remember Sokrates... it was the democracy that killed him, you know.

And remember this, ZeaLitY, freedom is not the freedom of choice. That is the basest of freedoms. True freedom lies in knowing right and doing it. After all, what is better, ability or no ablity? Ability, right? And what is better, knowledge or ignorance? Knowledge, right? So it is far better to know what is right and be able to do it than blindly just have a choice. I think you would advocate having freedom of a myriad choices, but that's problematic, because true freedom doesn't allow you choice. It constrains you to the right one. And in some sense, religion is trying to find that right one.

(By the way, Ms Black, what makes you think Aesop's fables don't give you truth, eh? What, did you think that literal actual occurance is the only truth? Let's throw out all of Shakespeare then. Look, we can heed the advice of things that never happened, because truth does not only rest in 'facts'. That is how literature works, and the Bible and Koran and all that is literature.)

Oh, and Faust Wolf, yeah, well, though it can be problematic to just reject certain parts, there's something for knowing context. I mean, a lot of the laws of the OT were purity laws that really helped in cleanliness in an unclean age. It must be looked at in that way. A lot of NT things speak about things from a decidedly Greek or Roman social viewpoint. Just like when reading anything from an earlier age, context is important, and my Classical training has made me aware of that. Unfortunately, too few people are aware of this. Oh, and one other thing we must be aware of is that the Bible as we have it is the product of editing. The books we have were chosen as the most fitting with the overall theme. Certain books are more valid than others (for example, some of us Lutherans have a distinct aversion to James when it talkes about being vindicated through good works, which is entirely against doctrine, and what we believe to be the message of the NT.)

Kebrel

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Re: Atheism
« Reply #36 on: January 06, 2008, 03:53:02 am »
A planet could be created with out the laws of physics being broke, in fact so could life, minerals. The only thing that right now doesn't make sense to me is how something could create ALL matter and energy. I have nothing against belief but I use it vary sparingly. I do not "believe" in science, I believe in my judgment and that is it, I also realize that I can be and often am wrong. Did that make sense?

Daniel Krispin

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Re: Atheism
« Reply #37 on: January 06, 2008, 04:18:37 am »
Religion is against reason and inhibits the progress of humanity.

Reason is why humanity awoke on the plains of Africa and came to dominate the world. We developed tools, agriculture, and civilization all by observing that this plow in that ground produces these sustaining plants. Reason is why we decided that living in a cohesive system of cities was better than starving alone. Reason is why we, borne from the most basic atoms of this universe, have come to a position to understand it by adding to human knowledge with an open mind. Reason is not the sole enabler or beauty of humanity; there is passion, emotion, love, and other virtues and vices. But reason and understanding is why we can throw a rock over a cliff and expect it to fall to the ground rather than take flight, and that is how we've eked out with blood, effort, and mistakes over thousands of years an establishment on this earth.

Actually, no, reason can't tell us that ZeaLitY. All we can say is that when we throw a rock off a cliff, it happens to fall down. That there's a connection... well, can't be proven. 'Causality' is merely a category of understanding. So reason tells us we really can't know, for certain. We're just taking that on faith. And on that it's not disproven. But here's something interesting. With all that reason, um, how do you explain things like, oh, remote viewers? The police use those guys, and they work. How does that happen? Some 'reasonable' explanation you assume? What qualifies you to make that assumption? You're clinging then to reason and evidence all too like a faith. 'There are more things in heaven and earth, Horatio, than are dreamt of in our philosophy.' Or what of this, a story my brother told me, which he'd read in the Motley Crue biography. One of the band members was into magic stuff, eh? The other guys wanted him to stop, but he wouldn't. Well, one day the manager walked in and found knives and forks stuck in the ceiling. He assumed the guy had been high and had done it himself, but he goes 'it wasn't me'... and as the manager watches a fork leaps off the table and gets stuck in the ceiling. Now, tell me, where is the reasonable explanation in THAT? Reason can't tell you, and if you go 'well, I'm sure there's some explanation', you've made the mistake of putting FAITH into something. See?

Religion, and the concept of faith, are inherently against reason. Water is blue and fluid; rock is hard and rigid; fire consumes fuel. Human understanding started with basic concepts like these and moved forward. And thousands of years ago, when a native clothed in a simple skin stood on a cliff and quivered with fear when thunder split open the sky, he surmised that a great power occupied that space. Further on, perhaps a need for justice, order, and cause for phenomena such as this formed the idea that a sentient being, like us, occupied that space. This belief evolved into a deity or pantheon of gods explaining why the sun rose and fell, or why family could suffer untimely deaths. As humanity spread and populated the earth, these belief systems differed and became unique. This is reasonable.

No, they are not. Water is not blue and not fluid, or needn't be so. Berkeley might maintain this, but Descarte would say it's not truly blue, but that the water has elements that appear bluish to us. Kant takes this all further. The way we perceive things might or might not be truth, but we cannot help but perceive things as they are. There is the nouminal thing in itself, and then there is the way we see it, filtered through the categories of our understanding. Blue, fluid... these things are all just ways the human mind sees things. They might not be how they really are. Take care in saying this. These things are not reasonable, they are but one theory. How do you know we were not monotheistic in origin, having knowledge of a single God, but one remote and intangible and only known through revelation, so that we began worshipping things nearer and near to ourselves: first the sky, then the trees, and finally ourselves. Is this not, too, a reasonable progression? Nothing you can say could actually disprove that, either. Fact is, there's always been a concept of an 'original' God... people have always understood that, even amidst the pantheons. Tell me, where does THAT come from?

We have grown beyond the need for religion, or God. In its place is an expansive, wild universe in which anything is possible; whose very nature continues to fascinate and provoke inquisitive minds to learn more about it. Ancient reason spoke of flat earths (judging from a flat horizon), and modern reason and exploration revised this definition. Four elements of the Greeks became over a hundred. Thunder and lightning went from something to inspire fear to weather phenomena to be respected and beheld with understanding.

Ah, anything possible. Like, oh, destroying our Earth in the name of progress? Four elements of Greek became a hundred... but ZeaLitY! Those were Aristotles elements... well before him Deomocritus already understood the idea of atoms, a concept that remains sound, even if the indivisible elements have become smaller than an atom. And let's not dismiss the old thinkers as yet. They thought reasonably about things, and certain things in their era are still unmatched. Tell me, could you or anyone these days carve a statue like Phideas? And we can't fashion bronze the way they could. Interesting, eh? Actually, I pity your view of the ancients, somehow... they weren't so backward as you think. The Egyptians, still in the bronze age, raised the pyramids. I challenge any Engineer to perform such a feat nowadays. They might have not known as much as we do, knowledge wise, but they thought clearer thoughts. I'm willing to respect them. And no, not everything is possible. We must first understand ourselves before we can understand the world, and we are limited. That we must know.

But religion escapes this enlightenment, because faith perpetuates its own correctness and itself. Faith demands that the very Promethean fire of open minded reason be quenched to believe in things that defy reason. Faith responds to ever-growing evidence of its falsehood and inadequacies by exempting itself from human scrutiny. And when something as fundamentally illogical like faith pervades humankind, disaster strikes. People are persecuted; groups are formed; wars are started; life is interrupted. But worse of all, faith completely subdues that original human spirit by ordering it to lay prostrate in worship before a god which does not exist. It is the height of folly, and it is dangerous.

Really. Like with me? Tell me, am I the worse for my belief? I believe in something that goes beyond reason (but doesn't defy it, note... you made a slip with that.) But I'm not worse for it. Sure I rely on God, but I'm not expecting that he'll necessarially bail me out. Truth be told, He might have in mind to destroy me. Meh. Worse has happened to people. Long story short, no, faith does not demand reason be quenched, not unless you misapply them. They are entirely different parts of humanity. To deny that which gives you faith is to deny a part of your humanity. But they needn't collide. Reason tells us how to apply to the world as we perceive it. Faith has to do with nouminal things. And they collide... how? By prostrating our human spirit? What human spirit? The one that drives us to kill each other and to hurt each other? Maybe you think differently, but I'm willing to prostrate that spirit. Especially before a God that is perfect... because, of course, 'perfect' is the very defenition of a monotheistic God. Forget all the other religious trappings you think go along with it. In the end, God is the thorough determination of all disjuncts... the possibility of everything being perfect.

We know it caused skin to be ripped from flesh in the Middle Ages and condemned millions to their deaths in other conflicted periods, but let's examine what faith does today. Faith precipitates hatred towards other people. Faith denies alternative biological dispositions for sexuality so that it can persecute those who have it. Faith motivates irrational actions based on the promise of ethereal reward with no scientific basis. Faith squelches basic sexuality and knowledge to reinforce doctrine borne in eras of prearranged marriages. Faith maintains mutilation of newborn children, male and female, based on erroneous concepts of cleanliness. Faith polarizes, divides, and conflagrates humanity based on differences over fantasy.

No, Faith doesn't. Human nature which seeks to obtain mastery over each other does. That human spirit you vant does. Tell me, then, when no religious factor is present, say when it's just racial, why do we act just the same? You can't make Faith a scapegoat. It is the human spirit that's at fault, not Faith. We're just maligning it and using it to our ends. If what you said were true, we'd have no divisions and do none of that stuff apart from religion. But seeing as we do, I can safely say, reasonably and logically and by evidence, that it's not the fault of faith, and not of religion, but of our own nature. Slice it any way you like, but remove religion, and we'll find another excuse to act the same way. Hey, what, 'mutilation of newborn children.' Yeah, like faith is the only reason we've done that. Ever heard of racial eugenics? Seriously, faith polarizes? People polarize, constantly. Rich and poor; black and white; young and old. It is in the way we think. To pin it on religion is grossly erroneous.

Faith's time on this earth is obviously limited; now that its proponents understand this, faith's ultimate, natural sin against humanity is entrenched in open warfare with society. Faith no longer asks its own members to suspend belief in human intelligence, but now vies for the power to force this belief on others. Faith is ingrained in political systems; the current American administration has helped it to become further ingrained. Taxpayer money is given to religious schools. Religious monuments decorate federal buildings. Appeals to God are engraved upon our currency. And the entire assault has the odious effect of arguing that humanity is inadequate. Humanity cannot stand on its own two feet; its reason is ill-equipped to define God, its civilizations are doomed to fail, and its very world is going to be consumed in fire. So it is written in major religions; so it is forced upon indoctrinated children and held as truth by adults.

Heh, obviously limited. No. Obviously not all understand this. I don't. I know it'll always be around. You're speaking from a... hm... American view. You have more of a theocracy there, but look, here in Canada we don't, and guess what? It's no better. And yes, humanity is inadequate in its current form. If you think it's adequate, or can make itself adequate... isn't that delusion, when all the evidence of five thousand years of human history speaks against it? But meh, I know you have hopes otherwise, but if Christianity has withstood the persecution of Rome, it'll sure survive this persecution. The irony is... you know, you're actually not new in saying all this. Think you're speaking enlightened, out of some new human viewpoint? Well, Tacitus says, when the Christians were burned alive for supposedly setting the fire of Rome, that it wasn't their fault, but they got what they deserved because they hated humanity. So, I'm not sure if you know this, but your viewpoint is the exact same as a Roman two thousand years ago. Sorry to say this ZeaLitY, but the more that changes, the more remains the same.

Religion is anti-human. It is poison to the human mind, and adverse to human advancement. Faith cannot be reasoned with, for believers openly defy reason. The evolution and evidence of belief systems in human history is irrelevant to each faith; each faith holds itself to be correct. Inaccuracies and motive-based declarations of inequality are irrelevant to faiths; they ignore internal disagreement and continue to hold prejudice. The validity of other human beliefs and lives are irrelevant to faiths; they believe that other faiths are largely condemned to hell with the rest of the world. But faith is as evil now as it ever was before because it is on the offensive. Faith demands that reason die in public schools and forums; faith demands that its believers die and kill others because of their infidelity; faith demands that some humans are inferior to others and must be subservient; faith demands that human sexuality is inherently wrong despite being natural to human biology; faith demands that biology be rendered fiction in total.

Nope. Don't know where you get that from, but nope.

If reason, passion, and enterprise mark the upward spiral of humankind, faith marks the lion's share of its greatest atrocities. The pervasive evil of religion now threatens to vigorously impede human progress, as it is finally feeling the threat of its demise. The evidence transcends speculative philosophy concocted by those still assuming they lived in a clockwork world; it lies unabashedly apparent in our human makeup, the behavior of our world, and the fixture of earth in the universe. But this doesn't matter to faith: God is exempt, and will return to eviscerate and torture every human whoever dared to look upon the stars and feel their beauty without acknowledging one out of several hundred proposed phantasmagorical creators dating from the earliest days of humankind. For some believers, God is taking too long, and faith must now openly oppress and hate those outside its flock on its own schedule and terms, in violation of the very "peaceful" beliefs they allege to hold. The casualty toll of "deviants", "infidels", "nonbelievers", and even women will rise until God is dead.

God help us in a world of religion.

Uh... what kind of propoganda have you been reading? Really, don't trust the media on this. Really, don't. Don't you see?

You know what I heard once? Something said by some eminent Jew. He said 'Christians are the new Jews.' ZeaLitY, these things you're saying... aren't actually true about us. It's what the media says, but it's not true, or at least not about all of us. Seriously, you know you sound like you're ready to make a movie called 'The Eternal Christian' or something. Haven't we learned those lessons from history already? And do not, do not trust the media in this. Do not jump on the bandwagon. Being a religious sort, I can tell you you've got things entirely wrong about us.

Burning Zeppelin

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Re: Atheism
« Reply #38 on: January 06, 2008, 06:01:27 am »
@Kebrel: Some things are beyond our understanding. In fact, all things are. We can only believe the things we know are right, we can not fundamentally prove them. A planet can be made without the laws of physics being broken, but how can the laws of physics be created? What would they be created with? How did the properties of matter and energy come about?

@Krispin: Yeah, there are many Islamic philosophers and scientists. This year (or last) was the year of Rumi's 800th Birthyear, one of the world's greatest poets. Here's an excerpt of one I found on Wikipedia:

What can I do, Muslims (Submitters to God/truth)? I do not know myself.
I am neither Christian nor Jew, neither Magian nor Muslim,
I am not from east or west, not from land or sea,
not from the shafts of nature nor from the spheres of the firmament,
not of the earth, not of water, not of air, not of fire.
I am not from the highest heaven, not from this world,
not from existence, not from being.
I am not from India, not from China, not from Bulgar, not from Saqsin,
not from the realm of the two Iraqs, not from the land of Khurasan
I am not from the world, not from beyond,
not from heaven and not from hell.
I am not from Adam, not from Eve, not from paradise and not from Ridwan.
My place is placeless, my trace is traceless,
no body, no soul, I am from the soul of souls.
I have chased out duality, lived the two worlds as one.
One I seek, one I know, one I see, one I call.
He is the first, he is the last, he is the outer, he is the inner.
Beyond "He" and "He is" I know no other.
I am drunk from the cup of love, the two worlds have escaped me.
I have no concern but carouse and rapture.
If one day in my life I spend a moment without you
from that hour and that time I would repent my life.
If one day I am given a moment in solitude with you
I will trample the two worlds underfoot and dance forever.
O Sun of Tabriz (Shams Tabrizi), I am so tipsy here in this world,
I have no tale to tell but tipsiness and rapture


Arts all well and good, but what about science? May I remind you that the fathers of optics (Alhacen), chemistry (Geber), algebra (Algoritmi), modern surgery (Abulcasis), pediatrics (Rhazes), anthropology (Biruni), a few fundamental concepts in physics and modern medicine (Avicenna), modern engineering and robotics (Aljazari) and aviation (Armen Firman) were all Muslims?

Also, may I remind you that the scientific method of experimentation was first used by the Muslims, directly influenced by the Quran? The father of optics Alhacen used the scientific method to develop his theory that light travels only in straight lines and only through transparent bodies.

Islamic philosophy was perhaps some of the most important in the world, only after the Greeks which influenced the Muslims greatly. It'd take me ages to go through all of it, but Islamic philosophy dabbled in evolution, metaphysics, the value of reason. The guys created the science of citation, and  I mean, you have heaps of philosophers, some of the more recent being Syed Muhammad Naquib al-Attas and Muhammad Iqbal.

It'd take me a similar amount of time trying to name all the other great thinkers of medicine (an incredibly important field in the history of Islam - their hospitals, ethics and doctors were the best in the world), art (again, damn important field), science, economics, sociology and other important studies.

There are many apparent scientific discoveries in the Quran, many about the development of a child in the womb, geology and cosmology, but I'll leave you with only a couple of lines from the Qu'ran and Hadith:

"Don't those who reject faith see that the heavens and the earth were a single entity then We ripped them apart?"

"Read... in the name of God Who made man from a drop of blood... God is Most Rewarding... He Who taught man to write with pen... and taught man what he knew not."

“Seek knowledge even in China"


I do not know what has happened to Islam in the past century. It went from a propagator of reason and beauty to one of ruthless violence. Maybe it was the destruction of an Islamic state, the rise of Wahabism and Sauid Arabia, the oppression of Muslims in Asia, the rise of capitalism and the West, the growing influence of Western Media, the rise of the Soviets, the spread of American democracy polycracy, or maybe just a bunch of pissed off guys.

Whatever it is, I don't like it.
« Last Edit: January 06, 2008, 06:05:22 am by Burning Zeppelin »

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Re: Atheism
« Reply #39 on: January 06, 2008, 03:40:24 pm »
I think that this whole conversation is stemmed from the  idea of weather or not human observation is flawed. Zeppelin and Krispin agree with the idea that it is not perfect thats Kant I assume? mean while myself and I think ZeaLitY are objectivist thinkers in that we can trust are perception to be correct. Ms Black is leaning towards Kant if I understand this correctly.

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Re: Atheism
« Reply #40 on: January 06, 2008, 03:53:28 pm »
ZeaLitY asked me to make a contribution to this thread. Here it is:

Is atheism a valid position to hold?

Before getting to that, we must first establish what atheism itself is. It is not a self-contained concept. Nobody can take an atheistic position without first considering a divine premise of some kind—i.e., a god or other force whose existence transcends natural law. The divine premise itself must come first because otherwise there would be nothing to evaluate, and thus nothing to accept or reject. Consequently, the default logical position of any intelligent being, on the question of the divine, is one of unconsidered agnosticism.

Therefore, before declaring a position of theism or atheism, we need the premise. We need to know what definition of “God” we are working with. In this case, Krispin premises a singular, unknowable, supreme entity, unlimited in its facility, who is both the source and mechanism of the universe, who exists beyond human evaluation, and whose nature is all-perfect, inscrutable, and unquestionable, at least from any natural perspective.

With a specific divine premise now in hand, the evaluation can proceed. If the premise is discredited, then it must be rejected. Voila! Atheism.

(Here is an interesting epistemological footnote: A position of atheism, or theism, is only in regard to the underlying divine premise itself—not to the divine entity of that premise. Thus, a person’s atheism, or theism, is only as good as their definition of what “God” actually is. Get the definition wrong, and the conclusions are gibberish. Diligent observers will note that, for this reason, the evaluation of a divine premise is curiously irrelevant to the objective existence or nonexistence of “the divine.” This is an inherent quality of all knowledge: Intelligent beings are never able to evaluate phenomena directly. They must instead produce a conceptualization—a mental picture—and evaluate that. Whenever the mental picture deviates from the physical reality (and it almost always does), it is possible for a divergence to occur between truth and comprehension, no matter how accurate or precise the evaluation.)

The awesome entity that Krispin describes is certainly imaginative, but the claim that such an entity exists is extraordinary. The true workings of our universe have shown themselves to be knowable through the scientific method, and describable through the language of math. These realities have, in their day, discredited countless human superstitions, beliefs, and ideas generally. Logic dictates that our process of understanding of the universe inherently acknowledge the means by which we have attained that understanding, which is to affirm that empirical evidence is the only currency of the objective truth. No amount of emotional intuition, casual speculation, philosophical postulation, or blind faith can provide us with access to the truth. At best, these can exist parallel to it, but empirical evidence alone is the arbiter of all facts.

Now along comes Krispin, bearing in hand a new message: God, the supreme being whose powers are beyond imagining, whose very existence renders all other truth arbitrary, has revealed itself (ahem, “Himself”) to us. This god is so fundamental to the nature of our existence that to not know him, is to know nothing.

That by itself is extraordinary, but what catapults Krispin’s claim beyond all reason is the final stroke: Faith. As Krispin himself put it, the road to this most heavenly and supreme truth of truths is completely, altogether opposite to the system of scientific inquiry by which we have attained all other factual understanding of our universe.

This is no merely counter-intuition, my friends. This is spite. I look at such a claim and see only the desperation of a pious wretch who lives in an enlightened age where scientific discoveries have pushed his religious worldview into the realm of fantasy. In the past, the power of Heaven (or Hell) has always been the easy answer to explain anything outside of the most obvious human control. If a surgery went well, it was said to be “God’s” mercy to the patient, or “God’s” strength to the surgeon. If a tornado knocked down one’s home, it was said to be “God’s” wrath, or “God’s” unknowable plan, or perhaps the machinations of demons. If a composer wrote a particularly fine piece of music, that was “God’s” grace shining through.

Some people still believe those things, but today we know that successful surgery depends upon precise work and hygienic conditions, that tornadoes are the result of unstable, shifting air masses, and that human ingenuity in recognizing and creating patterns is biologically advantageous. So it is in all of our arts and sciences. Bit by bit, we have shone light on the world and discovered no god. No divine. No supernatural. Only the physical world, in all its wonder, glows back at us. In the face of this damning refutation of his divine claim, all that remains for the committed monotheist Daniel Krispin is to declare that his god exists outside all scientific inquiry. Inscrutable. Unquestionable. Beyond proof. Yet we must believe in him, worship him, and live according to his rules as written in some book, for any existence we might lead without almighty god is weaker, fundamentally inferior, and, some would say, deserving of eternal torture.

The scientist Carl Sagan said that extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence, and now we see why. In any land where that principle is not upheld, people can establish whatever ethics they like, whatever customs they like, on any rationale, and call it religion. In the name of righteousness, they can make war or insurrection so as to force these customs on everybody else, constraining or subjugating entire societies under the specter of a deity whose supremacy allows its followers to commit any action. God is not a majestic force in the sky. God is the ultimate weapon humanity has ever conceived. God is an idea, so powerful and so corruptive that it brings people by the billions to condemn themselves to lives of ignorance, to spurn their neighbors and friends, to enslave, oppress, or destroy other humans, to antagonize all life on this world…and to feel good about it.

Is atheism a valid position to hold? What do you think? Krispin’s divine premise offers no evidence in support of itself, and instead declares itself beyond evidence entirely. It tacks a supernatural force onto the natural workings of the world. It claims to exist beyond your rational comprehension, yet refuses to take your questions or your scrutiny. It insults you, calls you filthy with sin, and says you are incapable of acting virtuously on your own, but will deign to lift you up from your pitiful squalor and fill you with proper ideas. It craves your obedience, your eternal obedience, and it wants you to sign on the dotted line.

Would you accept any other premise, on these same terms?

We are a species that has only known civilization for a few thousand years. We ourselves have not changed at all, biologically. Each of us is born with the genes of a wild human, yet the structured world in which we are raised has been around long enough as to be governed by particular laws and customs, very constraining, to which we have little choice but to adapt. In essence, in our childhood years we are domesticated. Trained. Yet society is imperfect, and our animal passions are strong. We lash out at authority and seek to establish our own influence. We often neglect our high-minded principles and behave with raw emotion. We seldom think things through rationally, when given the choice. We are suspicious, greedy, and often cruel to others, in stark contrast to our laws but in suspicious concordance with our social mores. We are egotistical, and we fancy ourselves to be more than perhaps we are. We seek acceptance, accomplishment, and fulfillment, but rarely determine how to achieve even one of these at a time. We are intensely curious, which drives us to ask fine questions, but also to accept even the most notorious answers. And, as we are domesticated, sometimes our passions get deformed in terrible ways. So many of us become superficial, others neurotic, and still others turn to destruction.

In the end, we barbarize society as much as society civilizes us. Our weaknesses manifest themselves culturally. Some bad ideas get set in stone and last for a very long time. And, with every generation, wild humans are again born into the world and must be brought up through millennia of cultural evolution in a few short years, by imperfect people who themselves never really figured it all out. It repeats over and over again; change is so slow.

Religion arose because of what we are. People want values to live by and a sense of fulfillment. Religion provides that handily, eliminating the work of developing these things for oneself. People need a way to adapt their tribal instincts to the larger world of modern times, so that they can know who is with them and who is against them. Religion provides that common identity. And, of course, the unscrupulous elite always need a way to control others. Religion lays out a system of rewards and punishments used to structure people’s energy so as to control their behavior, often very effectively.

Which do you suppose is more likely? Is there actually a supreme deity among us who is all-powerful yet invisible and unknowable, until we believe we know him? Or are we humans quite alone here, and prone to using our imaginations as a way of explaining what we don’t know for sure?

In the end, the god of Daniel Krispin is a contradiction. He is an almighty deity who has no power beyond those actions we take in his name. He is an ineffable supernatural force sustaining a universe whose entire contents are describable and natural. He is an all-perfect father, yet failed to prevent the fall of his children and doomed them to live wretched lives until the Judgment. He is loving and compassionate, yet routinely inflicts eternal torture on his own creations. He is supreme, yet was thwarted in his intentions at Eden by the Devil. He is merciful, yet allowed his progeny to be caught up in a struggle far beyond their means to fight. He entrusted his holy message to a book overrun by factual errors and ancient politics.

It doesn’t make much sense.

Just about the only kind of atheism with regard to this god that isn’t logically valid is the faith-based kind: Some atheists have faith that God does not exist, similar to the theistic and deistic faiths that God really does exist, based on life experiences and personal interpretations of the world. That is an illegitimate position. But every other argument has a lot of support.

The only concession I can offer to Krispin is that his divine premise cannot be unequivocally disproved. To put it the other way: The atheistic position on his divine premise cannot be unequivocally proved.

This might sound important, as far as concessions go, but really it is not: Just because something is not impossible does not make it true. Krispin’s god is a possibility with near-zero probability, suffering from internal contradictions, no supporting evidence, and considerable refuting evidence. The only reason it cannot be disproved unequivocally is that, by postulating a god beyond our scrutiny, the premise asserts an unverifiable claim. Untestable claims are both logically and scientifically invalid, but, strictly speaking, they are not inherently false. It’s a technicality. A good example would be that no one can disprove the claim that there is some alternate universe where Chrono Trigger actually happened. There is no proof for such a thing, but there are no means available for us to disprove it, either.

In contrast to the binary idea that a premise is either true or false, the scientific world allows for judgments of approximation. When taking this into account, the scales tip decisively (albeit not totally) in favor of the atheistic position.

For all these many reasons thus far outlined, I propose that atheism toward Krispin’s divine premise is a perfectly valid position to hold. In fact, if I may, it seems very nearly a sure deal.

Meanwhile, there are other divine premises out there, which is why I am an agnostic rather than an atheist in the cosmic sense, even if I am atheistic toward the gods of the world’s religions.

~~~
Now, since I am here, I might as well address some quotes from the topic.

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God lies entirely out of our both apriori and aposteriori understanding.

You cannot say that an unknowable being might exist, because you cannot prove that an unknowable being can exist. Such a proof would require retracting the a priori qualification, but to do so would mean that the being is no longer unknowable.

To put it a bit more simply, your statement is false because you cannot define “God,” and your use of the word “God” is gibberish. You might as well replace it with a question mark.

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So my first statement wishes to annul a common atheistic position that belief in God is irrational.

But it is irrational. Belief is inherently irrational, because it requires the acceptance of premises that have not been verified.

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I'll hold my stance that for atheism to be in any way a reasonable belief it must allow for the possibility of God…

Notwithstanding your use of the “belief” terminology, what you are referring to is called agnosticism.

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…but can nonetheless by faith claim that there is no God.

That happens to be the only form of atheism under discussion here that is not valid.

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After all, since both the statements that God exists and God doesn't exists are statements made without proof, then shall we dismiss them both. But what are we left then with? A paradox, wherein we cannot say if God exists or not.

“Without proof” is a red herring. As I said earlier, the atheistic position on your divine premise enjoys considerable proof, even if it cannot be proved unequivocally. However, if you will settle for nothing less than absolute certainty, then we come to your above quote, at which I would point out that what you are talking about is not a paradox. It is an unanswerable dilemma. A question with no resolution, if you will.

That is well and good, but if we were to accept it, it would nullify the theistic position along with the atheistic one. A lot of good that does you, eh? However, we needn’t come to that point at all. The two statements (e.g., “god exists”; “god does not exist”) do not have equal priority, and thus cannot be evaluated at the same time. The positive claim always has the burden of proof. In this case, the positive claim is the theistic one. The evaluation of that claim turns out inconclusive, owing to the unverifiable qualification inherent in your divine premise. Therefore, the theistic position cannot be taken with certainly.

That’s the end of the story. Since we cannot say that god exists, we do not need to consider the atheistic position.

A practical way of understanding it is this:

A theist must base his or her behavior upon the stipulations of the divine premise to which he or she subscribes. Therefore, a theist cannot (logically) effect his or her behavioral modification until the divine premise is proved.

An atheist, meanwhile, has no such restriction on his or her behavior, and thus does not require the divine premise to be disproved in order to proceed.

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Why can this not be dismissed, saying 'even as you do not have proof for saying it is so, I needn't have proof for saying it is not'? Simply because asserting something does not require full knowledge, whereas dismissing does.

You are right. ZeaLitY’s quote is mistaken. It would do better to read, “What can be asserted without proof, can be dismissed without evaluation.”

That which is asserted without proof may or may not be true, and it may or may not be important, but it is in violation of the tenets of philosophical discourse. Specifically, all logical statements must be reasonable, and those which are asserted without proof are not reasonable—excepting a priori statements and “given” statements—and can therefore be dismissed without due consideration.

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All that one CAN do is raise a contrary assertion, which is something altogether different than having dismissed it. So Atheism is not the dismissing of Theism, but instead a contrary faith claim.

You are correct that atheism is not the rejection of the (theistic) acceptance of a divine premise. It is a rejection of the divine premise itself.

However, you seem to be confused about that means. As I said at the beginning, nobody can take an atheistic position without first considering a divine premise of some kind. The premise has to come first. Atheism is a rejection of the premise; it is in opposition to the theistic position, which accepts the premise. Comparatively, there is no opposite to the underlying divine premise itself. Divinity is a special concept, and it has no “anti-divine” counterpart. Nobody sits around postulating the nonexistence of non-deities, and certainly nobody builds a worldview around that. Yet you seem to be confusing atheism with this premise. Incorrect.

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Simone de Beauvoire wrote that, since the ethical atheist believes that no God exists, then the ethical atheist must be on his or her best behavior because there's no God to forgive him or her. It might seem like a copout explanation (if there's no God to forgive sin, then there's no God to define sin), but if "sin" can be defined objectively, then it could work

Interesting, but a faulty premise. Unless you are operating from within the confines of specific religious worldviews, god is not the only one who can dispense forgiveness. In fact, contrary to the old maxim, to forgive is human.

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(Beauvoire got around the definition issue by adopting the promotion of freedom as the rubric by which to judge good versus evil behavior).

Freedom is a disaster whenever people do not have the means to utilize it to their benefit. Would you grant your children sovereignty to behave however they liked within your house? How would that possibly be a good idea?

Just because a person crosses a certain age threshold does not mean that they are suddenly competent to wield the unruly power of freedom. That is why we have laws. “Freedom” for freedom’s sake is pointless, and dangerous. Ask not, “Freedom from what?” but “Freedom for what?” Then you’re in business.

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As for why I'm personally religious, I take a bizarre Occam's razor approach: it's so much easier to explain the origins of the universe if an unknowable Being gave birth to it.

I agree with you that it is “easier” to explain the universe by resorting to the involvement of a supernatural entity. However, it is not more sensible. Invoking the supernatural never is. Occam’s Razor states not that the simplest solution is usually the best one, as is commonly believed, but that variables ought not to be multiplied needlessly. (In other words, the simplified form of something is better than the complicated form of it.) If it could be applied at all here, it would suggest to us that the universe works fine on its own and does not require a supernatural factor to explain its origin or function.

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Now, whether religion is "evil" is a lot harder to state. The root of this is in the definition and/or interpretation of the word evil.

My definition of evil is this: “Ignorance, or willful ignorance.”

It has never let me down.

Religion, with its predication upon faith, is an institution of willful ignorance, which qualifies it as an evil. You may evaluate that for yourself.

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Though I can not refute the evils that have occurred under the name of God, how can we trust that the same won't happen under atheism?

There is no such thing as “under atheism.” Atheism is a non-religious condition, not an anti-religious one. In other words, atheism does not require that the atheist be hostile to religion; only that she or he reject the underlying divine premise of the given religion. Any atheist who acts against a religion is not doing so because they are an atheist, but because of some other aspect of their personality; possible examples include feminism, as liberated females and their allies have every reason to oppose religious influence over society, and secularism, which advocates for the excision of religious influence from the public parts of our society, i.e., beyond private homes and places of worship (or their proxies).

Atheism, in comparison, provides no anti-religious impetus of any sort. How can this be? Think of it this way: Atheism is a kind of like a hole—defined by what it is not. The label of “atheist” tells you one thing that a given person is not; it tells you nothing about who they are. This is in contrast to the “theist” label, which, by researching the specific religion to which the theist subscribes, can tell you a great deal about that person—or at least give you a place to start looking.

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Atheism does wish to destroy religion, just like religions wish to destroy every other faith.

Simply untrue, for the reasons above. Perhaps some anti-religious people style their anti-religious behavior as “atheism,” but in a strictly logical sense, this is incorrect. Atheism is limited to the rejection of a divine premise. It can prevent some human behavior (as relates to the observance of religion), but it cannot cause behavior.

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On ethics, and we'll use the Islamic god in this example. He says violence is acceptable under certain conditions. Now, you may say this is wrong, and evil, and that violence is never acceptable. Fair enough. However, this can only be said if the God doesn't exist, and that can not be proven. What if you die, and you wake up, and you're standing in front of this God.

Just as I remember, Zeppy: You are limited in your ability to participate in the discussion by your chronic difficulty conceiving of scenarios where your god is not real and his law is not in effect.

Logically, nobody is required to disclaim their statements with “provided this does not contradict Islamic law.” Such a requirement would not be limited to Islam, and we would all be stuck disclaiming our actions on behalf of every deity in human mythology. Such requirements are not justifiable, and so the opposite case remains in effect by default: Religious claims need not be taken into consideration in our everyday lives unless they are proven true.

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Well, what I am basically saying is that until God is without a doubt, proved or disproved, the question of ethics is up in the air.

You’re mistaking ethics with morals. In fact, I think everybody in this thread so far has mistaken ethics with morals. Understandable, since nobody outside of academia ever seems to bother to distinguish between the two, but it is important to me because ethics are something I embrace closely, whereas morality is a convention that I reject on principle.

Ethics in the singular is a code of conduct that derives from one’s character. The word itself derives from the Greek word for “character.” (“Professional” ethics reflect the character of the institution, rather than the professionals themselves.) We don’t use “ethic” in the singular much anymore, but the concept is retained in the phrase “work ethic,” to describe one’s attitude toward how industriously he or she ought to work. As expressions of character, ethics are based in personal judgment, and, while they have come to imply virtue, they are not necessarily virtuous.

Morality, in comparison, is a code of conduct consisting of specific statements of good and evil that that, together, prescribe behavior. The key difference between ethics and morality is that, whereas ethics derive naturally from one’s personality and are an expression of self, morals are brought in from an external authority—usually religious, otherwise social—and are used to constrain one’s self-expression. The word “moral” derives from an older word meaning “custom.” Morals are not statements of character, but displays of obedience.

Oddly enough, in popular usage the two concepts are so confused as to have nearly switched places. Ethics are often seen as restraining guidelines, and morals as statements of character. (Not surprisingly, this is exacerbated by the Southern expression “That person has morals,” an illiterate construction resulting from overexposure to church rhetoric in an uncritical society where people seem to have forsaken the human brain.) If you value articulate expression, you will eschew this misuse of the concepts of ethics and morality, as I did when I pointed out your mistaken use of “ethics” when you mean “morality.”

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But in the end, for me, it boils down to this: am I willing to risk an eternity after death for a single question born out of curiosity?

Ah. Pascal’s Wager. And coupled with an attack on curiosity, no less. Let me address the curiosity part first.

Curiosity is the beginning of all human excellence. It is the first of the Five Great Virtues. Without our curiosity we would simply not be human. Our civilization would never have been born. We would not be able to see the world. Of all the destruction that religion causes to the human personality, the snuffing out of a person’s curiosity is probably the hardest to watch.

Any religion that spurns curiosity is at odds with the very heart of the human condition. This is why I find it so preposterous whenever religious doctrine dismisses curiosity as impudent or destructive. Any god who sentences a person to eternal torture for being curious is not a god, but a fool—and a coward.

As for Pascal’s Wager…

The beauty of Pascal’s wager is that it is an entirely probabilistic argument in favor of faith, thus sidestepping the thorny question of whether god exists. As it goes: “If you believe in God and turn out to be incorrect, you have lost nothing—but if you don’t believe in God and turn out to be incorrect, you will go to Hell. Therefore it is foolish to be an atheist.”

Of course, Pascal’s Wager was debunked centuries ago. In fact, I remember writing my own refutation of it for my philosophy of religion class in college. That Pascal’s Wager survives to this day is a testament to its deceptive simplicity more than its theological effectiveness. My argument against it is simple as well, but manages to be completely effective. I use the reductio ad absurdum:

1) Pascal’s Wager presumes the subject is a skeptic and does not already have definite knowledge of god.

2) Pascal’s Wager does not say which god to believe in.

3) To avoid Hell, one must determine which is the correct god without having definite knowledge.

4) There are an infinite number of possible gods to choose from.

5) Therefore, one’s odds of choosing the correct one without definite knowledge are zero.

6) Therefore, if god exists, everybody who applies Pascal’s Wager is going to Hell.

The reason Pascal’s Wager results in an absurd outcome, is because Pascal’s Wager itself is absurd. No specific god is mentioned. Heaven and Hell are thrown in arbitrarily as rewards and punishments for believing or not believing in some god. No mention is made of the possibility of god bestowing Heaven and Hell for reasons other than belief in god. No consideration is given to the mutual exclusivity of an infinite subset of possible religions, or the mutual inclusivity of another infinite subset of religions, or the partial exclusivity of another infinite subset of possible religions. It’s a mess.

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Also, your criticism of religion, that it is illogical because it calls itself illogical, is illogical in itself. Just because you do not understand something, does not make it illogical.

No, she is spot on. What she said is that “Religion protects itself from logical criticism by being illogical.” She is talking specifically about faith, and, in formal logic, faith is illogical and inadmissible. No philosophical discussion can employ articles of faith without forfeiting its validity.

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Yes, when you look at your religion and you say "I believe because I believe", yes, that may be illogical. However, what else can you say when you are arguing against an equally bullheaded and stubborn foe? Someone who has put their faith in other matters, such as their faith in science, the word of men, the structure of experimentation.

This is a logical fallacy. Whether or not one’s opponent in debate employs illogical arguments, has no bearing on whether one’s own arguments are illogical.

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Quantum mechanics was born out of metaphysical bullshit, and yet it is becoming more and more accepted, even though it proves theories with more theories, and so on.

You do not understand quantum mechanics. At best, you have had a preliminary introduction to the subject. You are not qualified to say that the field was born out of “metaphysical bullshit,” or that “it is becoming more and more accepted,” or that “it proves theories with more theories.”

In my book, abusing science by speaking as though you are an expert of it, but are in fact ignorant of it, is one of the worst breaches of etiquette.

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I believe in science.

To make such a statement is to reveal a lack of understanding of science at the most basic level. Science is not about faith. It is a process for gathering and interpreting facts.

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You are forgetting many of the evils religion extinguished.

The interesting thing about religion is it has never achieved an act of good that could not also have come from outside any religion, but in comparison has caused a great many evils that are truly unique to religion. This is because religion justifies customs that otherwise might be unjustifiable, and of these customs which have no justification outside religion, all are evil. This goes back to the tenet that religious faith is a form of willful ignorance, from which all manner of wrongs can derive.

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What God wants you to do is beyond that, believe so much that you feel as though you can see God, and that god is as close to you as, quote, "your jugular vein".

In other words, god wants to be as undetectable as possible so that the amount of delusion it takes to believe in him is maximal. Uh huh…

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Now, say there is no God in the end. No one loses.

Not true. Those who followed a religion lived a lie, constraining their behavior, sacrificing their intellectual integrity, and quite probably influencing other people to similarly demean their own lives. That’s another flaw in Pascal’s Wager: It completely ignores the penalties that one pays in this life for being religious.

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The Creator, for me, is the "end of the line," so to speak -- the unknowable source from whence everything knowable sprung. The universe paradoxically defies itself if all the matter in the cosmos sprung out of nowhere. Therefore, the source of the universe must lie in something that does not operate according to the laws of physics. Gah, now I'm just confusing myself.

What you are talking about is the unknown…the earliest history of our universe, and whatever process began our universe. It is perfectly wise to admit ignorance in this case, because I don’t think anybody yet knows the exact nature of the beginning of the universe.

But to take that humongous question mark and call it “God” is one hell of a leap. First of all, it seems unnecessary. The universe has shown itself to work just fine without a holy puppeteer. Why would the beginning of the universe be any different?

Indeed, the fact that the universe and we humans are here at all suggests that, unless god exists, it all happened naturally. Since we do not know that god exists, the natural explanation bears consideration.

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The UofA gets all the funding; the Lutheran university gets nothing public.

Nice to see that the institution of learning is getting the public education money. Why would we want it any other way?

Religious universities are only as good as their religiosity is limited. Why fund academic misbehavior?

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Fact is, religion is part of our history and what makes us human.

Ah…almost right. Religion is not what makes us human. Our humanity is what led to the development of religion.

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I'd really challenge your view that religion holds back humanity. Most of the great artists and thinkers have been religious.

Yes. Do you know why this is? It is not because religion improves the artistic or intellectual fiber of a person. Religion, if anything, limits one’s ability to achieve artistically or intellectually, because it inhibits human creativity, and also causes no end of trouble with its many conventions of how people should or should not behave.

Nay, it is because most of the world has been thickly religious since the ancient times, that so many of our greatest historical figures were themselves religious. Even those people who were not religious might never have admitted it for fear of the problems it would bring them. Straying from the local religion often meant punishment or death, and most people didn’t have the knowledge, perspective, or experience to question their religion anyway, let alone refute it. Non-religiosity did not exist in the modern sense; humanity’s growth beyond the limitations of religion took time, from the Dark Ages, to the Enlightenment, to the present day…theism to deism to agnosticism (or atheism).

No, we should most certainly not be surprised that many of history’s greatest figures were religious. We should also not be surprised that, as religion has waned over the past century, that share has changed—now a great many of our finest people are nonreligious, or belong to alternative religions.

Lastly, as has always been the case, I find it deeply disturbing that such a religiously involved man as yourself, whose father is supposedly a religious figure of high intellect, so ardently denies the religious nature of the untold atrocities both great and small that history so well documents.

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See, a lot of people think 'the church held things back.' Held us back in the dark ages. No. Look, dark ages are not a religious occurance, they are a socio-political one. (…) That wasn't religion. That was war, and people movements. Did the church cause the dark age after Rome? Certainly not, and to think so is rather naive. Rome was falling long before Constantine or anything like that. Look at the incoming peoples, the political fragmentation of the empire... that's what caused it's fall. As for prolonging the dark age... did the Church rule Charlagmagne, or was it the other way about? As I recall, it was he that forced the Pope to bless his rule. Where is the control there? ZeaLitY, it was the volatile and fragmentary nature of Europe in that era that held it in darkness, and afterward the feudal system which turned the common people into slaves.

Oh boy, this is the kind of blatant historical revisionism that can only be refuted through exhaustive documentation. Fortunately, I would fall back to that earlier quotation we discussed: That which is asserted without proof can be dismissed without evaluation.

I will say, simply, that “naïve” is to speak of the war, famine, mass migrations, pestilence political fragmentation, feudalism, economic stagnation, and technological decay that gripped Europe for a thousand years, and suggest that the mighty Christian religion had no part in any of it, that Christianity somehow existed separately from all the miseries of the era (while still managing to be the major cause of whatever few advances were made). That, my dear Krispin, is wishful thinking of the most egregious caliber, and more than a little naïve.

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My religious view would be, I think, described as rather devout. But this doesn't stop me from keeping an open mind and learning. I suppose I'm trying to set myself up as proof that religion doesn't poison our human spirit nor weigh us down. How does knowing God exists and that He cares for me keep me from learning? It's my bloody duty to learn. That's my calling, you know. To think, to question.

Charming, and quite true, for all the ill I might speak of you. (I’ve been writing for a long time at this point, and as fatigue grows, so does the desire to be a prickly pear.)

You yourself are by all appearances an intelligent, inquisitive person. I wonder sometimes how much further you would go if you weren’t limited in your beliefs.

Yet your own case is proof only that religion is not a total stopper on human curiosity and intelligence—proof that we already had in the form of some of those historical figures you mentioned, who were also religious.

The problem with religion is not the great minds that it produces but the weak minds, and the social terrors that perpetuate them. You may have it better, as a Canadian, than we do in America, where conservative Christian fundamentalism shapes our national policy and influences the lives of hundreds of millions of people directly. And as a strict Lutheran you may be apt to simply dismiss all these other denominations as silly, but you have to understand that from my point of view, it’s all the same. The same god who is responsible for your denial of Christianity’s role in the Middle Ages is also responsible for the firebombing of abortion clinics and the boycotting of children’s books. All the same.

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You know what it means when it says that God made people in his own image? Creatures with reason and with free will.

I don’t accept the line that we are created in god’s image, obviously, but if there were a god, it would be comforting to think of it as an entity of reason.

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And sometimes He destroys us. It's just the way things are.

Never. I will never accept that. Remember that, from the nonreligious point of view, god is the creation of humankind, and not vice versa, which means that statements like that one are creepy and deeply unsettling. We all know the horrors of which people are capable, and when religious faith brings some people to postulate divine ambivalence with such fatalistic resignation, all I can see are the religious genocides that have enveloped our world since the beginning, from the Old Testament to Darfur.

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I'm just tired of having religion knocked down as irrational and weighing us down and all that sort of thing. Take religion out of Shakespeare; take it out of Aeschylus; take it out of Tolkien. It is the heart and soul of art, ZeaLitY.

Human creativity, and human passion, that is the heart and soul of art. Your god, nor any other, can ever lay claim to that honor.

And if you are tired of religion being knocked down, then consider yourself in good company. We non-Christians have to put up with a good deal of ridicule, marginalization, harassment, and other forms of prejudice, all the time. I bet your scabs and bruises at the hands of a cunning anti-religious minority are nothing compared to the stumps and gaping wounds your god and his minions have inflicted on society at large.

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Actually, no, reason can't tell us that ZeaLitY. All we can say is that when we throw a rock off a cliff, it happens to fall down. That there's a connection... well, can't be proven. 'Causality' is merely a category of understanding. So reason tells us we really can't know, for certain. We're just taking that on faith.

Before I am depleted I wish to make one, last, great argument: It is the unending folly of the believer to interpret all things through that insidious lens of religious devotion. You, and many like you, have never truly understood the elegant simplicity of science. You are forever bound to an absolutist mentality that closes your mind to the understanding of the real working of things.

In science, there is no such thing as absolute certainty. The evidence always has the last word, and so no theory can be as conceptually secure as even the weakest article of faith. All of science is, instead, a game of close estimations. By observation, experimentation, and theorization, and with a dollop of serendipity, we continually move toward a more perfect understanding of the world. When we drop a rock, it falls, by the same principles, every time. It is theoretically possible but statistically impossible that there is not a connection there. We know of this connection not a priori but through the benefit of experience. The action is consistent. The rock always falls. It always falls in the same way. If we are in another place, such as underwater, or an in special circumstances, such as in a strong wind, it falls differently or not at all…but in a measurable, predictable way, every time.

You say reason tells us we cannot derive knowledge from the recognition of patterns. Reason tells us no such thing. Reason tells us the opposite! Brace yourself while I come to an opinion here: You are many things, Krispin, but a scientist at heart is not one of them, and I don’t care what your degree says. If you came out of college without understanding the beautiful, simple power of scientific inquiry, then you should demand your money back, for they have failed to teach you the most important thing there is to learn: Facts speak the truth.

The scientific method is the very opposite of faith. There is no starker difference than the one between that which is learned empirically and that which is taken on belief. History is a witness to the power of scientific application to amplify human power beyond the imagination of earlier generations, and history is a witness too to the power of religious faith to unhinge all that is good, and throw down the ambitions of tomorrow.

What are you getting at, when you call the description of rocks falling off cliffs an act of faith? When these physical phenomena occur all around us, and we measure and test them so as to deduce the common principles that in turn allow us to predict the behavior of any rocks falling from any cliffs, we are not creating threads of belief. We are not weaving articles of faith. We are deciphering the universe, and that is an impressive boast.

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With all that reason, um, how do you explain things like, oh, remote viewers? The police use those guys, and they work. How does that happen? Some 'reasonable' explanation you assume? What qualifies you to make that assumption? You're clinging then to reason and evidence all too like a faith.

Surely you are not suggesting that there will be unreasonable explanations. Do you know what qualifies ZeaLitY to claim that everything has a reasonable explanation? It is the fact that everything actually does have a reasonable explanation. A reasonable explanation has only one requirement: That it accurately describe, in physical terms, the phenomenon it claims to describe. That is all.

Do not for a minute think you can fool anybody by confusing the state of one’s understanding of a phenomenon, with the physical description of that phenomenon. Just because ZeaLitY doesn’t understand how something works, does not mean that god is giving law enforcement technology to the police. That is precisely the kind of errant fundamentalism that gives religion such a bad name.

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Well, one day the manager walked in and found knives and forks stuck in the ceiling. He assumed the guy had been high and had done it himself, but he goes 'it wasn't me'... and as the manager watches a fork leaps off the table and gets stuck in the ceiling. Now, tell me, where is the reasonable explanation in THAT? Reason can't tell you, and if you go 'well, I'm sure there's some explanation', you've made the mistake of putting FAITH into something.

It is not a statement of faith, but of expectation, that there is a reasonable explanation for everything. Again, this is because all phenomena have a reasonable explanation, a priori.

As to the “miracle,” people think they see weird things all the time. Sometimes, what they are seeing is really happening, and they simply do not comprehend the mechanism. Other times, they are not seeing what they think they are seeing. And occasionally they are even lying. If a fork that jumps into the ceiling were enough to smash my confidence in the scientific method or the tenets of reason, I would be quite the weak-minded fool.

Not faith. Confidence. Confidence borne of evidence.

My dad was once in a room with some other people, and he says that the table floated into the air on its own accord, and it took all of them to push it back down. Did that actually happen? With so many people there, it very likely did. And I admit some curiosity! That’s a rather unusual occurrence. But who are you to charge that, because it is unusual, there is no reasonable explanation for it?

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Blue, fluid... these things are all just ways the human mind sees things. They might not be how they really are.

I mentioned earlier that whenever our mental picture of something deviates from the physical reality of it, there can be a divergence between truth and comprehension. So what you are saying is not without interest. However, to introduce a divergence where no underlying deviation exists is not logical. Whatever we call it, water is blue. Water is chemically blue. And so whatever we see when we look at ordinary water, that is blue. If the apparent color varies from person to person, or does not show up at all, then that is a function of our individual processing of the visual information, and does not reflect the condition of the water, which is blue. Not orange. Not red. Blue. Nor is our inability to achieve a perfect physical melding with the phenomenon under observation, grounds to dismiss the human evaluative process as flawed and out of touch with reality.

You would do well to study my theory of concepts and objects.

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Fact is, there's always been a concept of an 'original' God... people have always understood that, even amidst the pantheons. Tell me, where does THAT come from?

That comes from the human desire to ascribe a comprehensible, causal beginning to the world.

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Seriously, faith polarizes? People polarize, constantly. Rich and poor; black and white; young and old. It is in the way we think. To pin it on religion is grossly erroneous.

Yet you are so quick to point to religion as the source of all human good. You are a hypocrite, Krispin, and you see only what you wish.

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And yes, humanity is inadequate in its current form. If you think it's adequate, or can make itself adequate... isn't that delusion, when all the evidence of five thousand years of human history speaks against it?

Now I see that I am beginning to repeat myself. You are foolish to expect profound change in the human condition in a few thousand years, especially when our genome has changed little if any during that whole time.

Would you care to learn something new? Humanity is perfectly adequate. We are flawed, weak, petty, and all of those other things, but what we have achieved, in gruesome fits and starts, is something any thinking creature should gape at in amazement. We have risen up from our animalistic history and taken the reins of the world. Tell me that is not remarkable, Krispin. Tell me we are too small and dumb to achieve what we have achieved.

Times will change, and so will humanity. This is not faith but observation. Nothing remains the same but the laws of the physics, and sometimes not even them. Time will pass, and we will change. Perhaps it will be sooner than you think: With our advances in cybernetics and genetics, we are now on the cusp of seizing evolution into our very hands. I won’t pretend that such a future is not without its risks and doomsday scenarios, just as you will not acknowledge that such a future could end in something other than doomsday scenarios.

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But meh, I know you have hopes otherwise, but if Christianity has withstood the persecution of Rome, it'll sure survive this persecution.

Oh, dear me. The mightiest religion on Earth is being persecuted. Pardon me while I laugh. Oh, dear me…I need a glass of blue water to calm down after that one. Krispin, you’re a hoot.

Ah…I tell you what: Christianity will not be defeated by force. You are right about that. It will be defeated from within, as has begun in Europe and in our liberal cities in America. It will pass from people’s lives, as greater interests take its place.

Sure, there will probably be Christians for as long as there are human beings as we know them. But I foresee a decline in the relevance and influence of your religion in the coming century…a good thing, to be sure.

Ah! At last I am finished. Forgive me, I have not got the time to do a comprehensive review or edit, so perhaps you will catch me unawares somehow. But even if you do not, worry not, Krispin and others, for I did not mean to return this place before, and I do not intend to return again. Any rebuttal you might wish to make will go unanswered, at least by me, for ZeaLitY asked me here as a favor and I was happy to oblige, but I am not planning to stick around for a dialogue. In fact, I am long overdue for some tea and a nap.

Good Day.

Radical_Dreamer

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Re: Atheism
« Reply #41 on: January 06, 2008, 06:06:58 pm »
Let me start with the initial topic, of is atheism rational? Well, as there is no evidence of any sort of god or supernatural entity, then yes, atheism is certainly rational. So far, Daniel and I agree. But Daniel makes an error early on in his post. He implies that because there is nothing that absolutely disproves god, it is equally rational to believe as to not believe. This is not the case; it is not a fifty/fifty chance between god and not god.

While the chances of a god are nonzero, they are, with the present evidence, trivial. To say that it is not irrational to believe in god with our present knowledge of the universe is not only to say it is rational to believe that you will win the lottery, but to say that it is rational to believe that you will win each lottery, every time you play, if you play at every opportunity. While possible, it is so incredibly improbable that to hold that belief as equally rational as the assertion that playing the lottery will result in failure is absurd.

Atheism is rational, and theism is not. This is because atheism is the rejection of an irrational position.

~~~

While reading the thread, I jotted down a couple of things I wanted to comment on. If I have misinterpreted (or incorrectly cited) what anyone has said, I apologize, and please correct me.

@BZ
If god exists, that doesn't clarify morality. If anything, it complicates things. Is morality defined by god, or taught to us by god? That is, is a thing good because good says it is, or are some things intrinsically good, and god simply points this out to us? If morality is merely the whim of a divine tyrant, then it is an illusion. If things are good of there own, then there is no need for god as a moral source, and we as humans are within out power to call out the immorality of god where divine teachines contradict the true morality.

There is no "faith" in science. The scientific method has been the only process that has consistently added to humanity's understanding of the world and universe in which we live. A rational person doesn't have faith in science, but rather confidence that this process, which has never failed us when applied properly, will continue to do as it has done before.

@Faustwolf
God as a first cause isn't as simple of a solution as it seems, for what caused God? That you personally find this a stopgap answer to the cause of the universe doesn't make it a reasonable (or correct) answer. This is a "god of the gaps" issue, an assertion that because science does not know the answer right now, god did it. History has shown that these gaps in our knowledge are ever shrinking, and always filled by natural knowledge. To place god in these gaps is to place your fingers in your ears.

You said that you believe that parts of scripture are meant to be challenged; that the contradictions in the holy books are to force people to make choices and decide for themselves. If there are such challenges, and we can decide for ourselves, why waste time and lives with holy books? Many people get it "wrong", and cause untold, unforgivable suffering in so doing. What a cruel god you believe in to set such an insidious trap for mankind.

@Daniel
You asserted that the church has not held humanity back. You know better than this. You know it was the church that betrayed Galileo and today promotes policies that help the spread of AIDS in Africa. You know that it is the ignorant men of the churches that are trying to halt progress in stem cell research, despite the great hope of educated men of science that these cells can lead to treatments for many dreaded diseases. It is the church that is the ever present enemy of both women and homosexuals, wanting to hold back over half of humanity to second or third class citizens. It is the faithful that are fighting to teach the absurdity of creationism to innocent children in public schools, denying them an understanding of the basis of modern biology and condemning them to ignorance of the living world. You know these things Daniel, so unless you can show rationally why striving to spread deliberate ignorance and needless suffering throughout the world is propelling humanity forward, I hope that you will abandon your claim.

You ask us to remember Socrates, and state that democracy was what sentenced him to death. Socrates was accused of corrupting the youth of Athens, and of being an atheist. That his trial was by jury does not absolve the Athenian religion of it's causal role of such charges existing in the first place.

You assert that god is needed because there is death, but offer no evidence for this claim. While many (myself included) consider death an unfortunate state of affairs for the individual, ones own desire to continue to live indefinitely does not in of itself create a means for one to do so. Everything that lives will die; to those of us lucky enough to be aware of our own existence, this is a tragedy, but an irrational hope in a magical sustainer will not make death any less real. Death does not necessitate god. Perhaps science will discover a way to allow indefinite life extension. If this occurs, what then of god? If you live to see that day, will you wash your hands of theism?

You ask what joy there will be if we some day have all the answers. Besides the subtle and evil implication of making willful ignorance desirable, it is a rejection of the joy of knowledge. Your country is filled with natural beauty. When next you have the opportunity to stand on one of Canada's mountains, to look out at the rivers and forests, take a moment to reflect. You are a part of that. Every living thing you see, and all those that you don't, are from a single ancestor. Those rivers are the sustaining force for that life. You know how ecosystems work, you know weather systems work. Stare out at the beauty of nature, and keep in mind your knowledge of how it all works. That is a joy in of itself, far greater than the wonder of ignorance, which is akin to the "high" of oxygen deprivation.

Now imagine being able to stand atop the universe with that same knowledge.

If we some day have all the answers, it will be such a beauty, such a sublime joy, that those who live in such a time will pity us, the sad creatures for whom could reach out for, but not grasp at the full knowledge and beauty of the universe.

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Re: Atheism
« Reply #42 on: January 06, 2008, 06:47:00 pm »
Radical_Dreamer, I don't find the traps set by scripture any more nefarious than the traps set by evolution itself -- the very physical differences between human beings can sow hatred even in the absence of religion, I daresay. But finding it within ourselves to overcome the various traps with which we are confronted -- those things, be they scriptural doctrine or otherwise, which cause hate -- is, to me, the essence of ethical growth. And in that way, religious differences, racial differences, differences in orientation, etc., are absolutely desirable. Humanity cannot advance if it is not challenged. Woe, indeed, that the price of failure is so great.

As far as the Creator setting the traps, well -- the Creator didn't fax it from heaven IMHO. People gave us scripture, and thus through the human element were the traps set. As for why a merciful God allows people to fail ethically, I can only say I would loathe a God who prevents suffering by controlling human behavior. If that were the case, we would have no free will to begin with, and there would be no meaning in our actions.
« Last Edit: January 06, 2008, 07:31:24 pm by FaustWolf »

Daniel Krispin

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Re: Atheism
« Reply #43 on: January 06, 2008, 07:04:55 pm »
Wow. Lord J, you're back for this, eh? Well, thanks for the reply, I'll read through it at some point, though it's, heh, rather daunting, ya know? Just one thing I would like to point out is that what I was propounding there was very much Kantian philosophy. Nothing I said is particularly new, and I think at least one thing you misunderstood (probably because I didn't bring it across clearly.)

Quote from: Lord J
Now along comes Krispin, bearing in hand a new message: God, the supreme being whose powers are beyond imagining, whose very existence renders all other truth arbitrary, has revealed itself (ahem, “Himself”) to us. This god is so fundamental to the nature of our existence that to not know him, is to know nothing.

That by itself is extraordinary, but what catapults Krispin’s claim beyond all reason is the final stroke: Faith. As Krispin himself put it, the road to this most heavenly and supreme truth of truths is completely, altogether opposite to the system of scientific inquiry by which we have attained all other factual understanding of our universe.

Eh, not quite. The knowledge of God isn't the precursor to knowledge, it is the knowledge of the concept alone. Even an atheist must have the idea that if something is what it is, and nothing else (ie. this is white, not red, not blue; this is square, not round) and consists of such assertions, then there is the possibility that something exists that has all positive qualifications. This does not mean such a thing MUST exist (which would be the Cartesian view), but merely that we must understand the concept. This is like saying something is half full, somewhat full, whatever, but to make that judgement we must have the understanding that something can be entirely full... even if something doesn't exist that is entirely full.

So you actually quite misread me. I was taking a purely philosophical, Kantian (and that is very logical, I must add) approach to the concept. Philosophically speaking, I must profess ignorance regarding God. What I believe external to reason is another matter entirely, but upon examining my own systems of thought I can tell you that I must have such a concept for me to make any judgements whatsoever. So you've kind of mistaken what I said. I never put this forward as a proof of God at all. Only that there is the possibility. A possibility, I must add, that cannot be proven or refuted.

Lord J, you're fine in saying philosophically that you hold an atheistic position. But you're making a very severe metaphysical error in saying that your position is more certain. Certainty is based on evidence. Since the philosophical God I was speaking of cannot be proven via evidence, what cause have you to refute it, especially in light of the fact that the CONCEPT must exist as per what I outlined? You speak of internal contradictions. Ridiculous. You're talking about my religion now, which is entirely seperate. There is not internal inconsistancy to the mere theistic concept. To make any statement beyond what I did is to make a faith based claim.

Look, I'd beg you to first be a little more philosophically versed before approaching this. You say 'nothing can match empirical observation.' Really? So nothing is a priori, then? Right. Well, then tell me how you're capable of percieving and understanding the flow of time. Really, some things are prior to observation and allow observation to occur. The concepts of time and space, the self, the world, God, these are all amongst them. So are logical constructs. All that you've said sounds little more rational than if I were to tell you why I believe in Jesus because the Bible says so. The 'evidence' you cite says nothing about this matter, nor can it logically. That does not mean it cannot be examined, though (unless you're Hume, but Kant securely showed Hume's error in assuming there is no synthetic apriori category.)

Please, please, understand where I'm coming from before you rail against me. You're accusing me of assuming a supernatural force. BS. I'm not. I was talking from purely philosohical grounds grounded entirely in reason and logic, far more secure than anything you've said. You're bloody accusing my religion, when I wasn't talking about that. Shape up, and talk like a philosopher, not a scientific fanatic, Lord J. You owe yourself that much. Stop trying to insult my faith with every breath, but look at what I said with respect for once.

Oh, and Lord J, you replied to a thing about Pascal's wager? I think this is a better reply. Something my prof wrote to someone (nb. my prof is an atheist, and rather briliant.)
Then, it seems, atheists are just screwed. We cannot simply assume what we know contradicts our belief set, and no a posteriori evidence will 'prove' the atheist wrong. And we cannot by force of will change our minds.
Now it seems, you both think that, knowing that God is POSSIBLE, and that the implications of God-fearing are eternal in reward, the best bet is to accept religion. But I think this is psychologically untenable.
Even I was convinced that believing something false was in my best interest, short of brain-washing, this would not alter my belief. We are simply not all that much in control of what we believe. If you scientifically proved that I would be happier if I believed that I was inhabited by alien souls, and I really really wanted to be happy, and I accepted the science on my own grounds, I STILL wouldn't be able to believe in said alien souls.
So the potential benefits of heaven provide no fulcrum in which to lever a belief.
So, short of God knocking me off my horse (which I would likely chalk up to my own incompetance and not some divine sanction) I am destined for Hell due to a belief set I didn't fully choose.


Quote from: Lord J
Before I am depleted I wish to make one, last, great argument: It is the unending folly of the believer to interpret all things through that insidious lens of religious devotion. You, and many like you, have never truly understood the elegant simplicity of science. You are forever bound to an absolutist mentality that closes your mind to the understanding of the real working of things.

Whoa, whoa, ease up there, will you? Step back and actually read the things I'd written for once, okay? Man, you're so stuck up on attacking religion you're flailing. This wasn't a religious comment at all! It is a scientific statement made out of metaphysical consideration of our own mechanisms of understanding. It's Kant reasoning how the human mind thinks, why we see and perceive things as we do. It is taking that step back, as it were. This is a reasonable, SCIENTIFIC (Kant goes to great pains to prove metaphysics, as he presents it, a true science), statement, and that you took it for a religious one shows how prejudiced you are to assume that someone is talking religion. You couldn't even identifiy this properly when you saw it! The fact is, you cannot know for absolutely certain that connection. That is impossible. Just in the same way that 'time' is irrelivant apart from being perceived. There is nothing 'mystical' in this, but very logical progression. Look, I haven't the powers of speech to present it, but if you're willing read Kant's Prolegomena. That's where these views hail. It is no religious mysticism, but a logical philosopher making sense of how we think. That you considered this comment to be a religious one is... astounding, to put it lightly. Seeing that you've jumped the gun so quickly and jumped to a conclusion, it's doubtful that the rest of what you say is said of a cool intellect. Calm down, and actually think before you speak, perhaps? At any rate, don't deride someone for trying to present a logical philosophy that stands apart from religion, and out of ignorance assume they are talking religion.

Quote from: Radical Dreamer
You asserted that the church has not held humanity back. You know better than this. You know it was the church that betrayed Galileo and today promotes policies that help the spread of AIDS in Africa. You know that it is the ignorant men of the churches that are trying to halt progress in stem cell research, despite the great hope of educated men of science that these cells can lead to treatments for many dreaded diseases. It is the church that is the ever present enemy of both women and homosexuals, wanting to hold back over half of humanity to second or third class citizens. It is the faithful that are fighting to teach the absurdity of creationism to innocent children in public schools, denying them an understanding of the basis of modern biology and condemning them to ignorance of the living world. You know these things Daniel, so unless you can show rationally why striving to spread deliberate ignorance and needless suffering throughout the world is propelling humanity forward, I hope that you will abandon your claim.

Hey, don't start things off on that wrong foot, the 'you know better than this' rhetorical tactic. No, this is my viewpoint. There is nothing to 'know better.' I think you're wrong. You are merely speaking your own rhetoric, and your own viewpoint, not facts (as much as you might consider them 'facts', you're clinging to them as surely as someone religious to their dogma... hey, at least I know where my faith lies. You're worse of, thinking you're free, when you're not.) No, there isn't ignorance in this all, and no, obviously I don't know this. And I'll throw it back at you: surely you know history better than to buy into the media-washed teachings that you're spouting there.

Yeah, Sokrates was accused of 'corrupting the youth', but guess what? We all know, and they all knew, it was a pretext. There was nothing really religious about it, and to think so is either having an agenda (ie. making the historical facts fit your view, which I see atheists doing all the bloody time) or else simple ignorance. Damn, I hate it when things get to this point, but you must know I have nothing against atheists per say. The most brilliant professor I've ever had is an atheist, and I'm switching classes just so I can get taught by him again (coincidentally, he being the one that taught me about Kant... indeed, he very much likes Kant.) But these things are just terribly misconstrued.

So please, just try, try very hard, to understand your viewpoint isn't so enlightened as you take it to be. Frankly, I've read enough of antiquity to know that there were people thinking just like your 2500 years ago, so this struggle isn't exactly anything new, and will continue for a long time. And unfortunately, it's always been the religious rationalists that win out: not the theistic or atheistic fanatics. Or that's what history has shown, anyway. Progress has not been the cause of atheism, but theists who follow reason.

Yeah, I asserted God is needed because of death, but I broke off, because that's not a philosophical claim. If you want me to be specific, by death I didn't mean temporal death, but that's all theological, and that's an entirely different issue. That's a theological one based on my own beliefs, and that doesn't have currency here. Just like statements like 'religion has done such and such and is terrible' shouldn't, because there isn't any proof. You're just buying into one or another guru that's told you these things about history, and not free thinking. That's what's troubling me. The atheists seem all superiour (ironic because that's the same thing they accuse the religious of) in thinking they're enlightened, but they're just following the herd.

Eep, gotta make one more comment. Actually, you're off in your first comment. Fact is, it is an unknowable thing. To use the term 'evidence' in this way is to make a grave metaphysical blunder that charactarised pre-Kantian metaphysics. Your statement about 'with the present evidence' is absolutely meaningless. 'Evidence' has no currency on what I said, as I was speaking bloody 'a priori'. Prior to evidence. Specifically, I'm speaking synthetic apriori, but that's more complicated. So, simply, you're wrong. Not on belief grounds, but Kantian logic has you in a stranglehold. Your example is, to put it bluntly, ridiculous. Why are you saying 'play the lottery every time'? As though there are multiple instances? Then the chances wouldn't be fifty fifty. They would be 25/75. No, this is a single yes or no. Your example is irrelivant upon that issue, and in the 50/50 chance to believe you will win or believe you will lose has equal currency. THAT is what we're in, and it doesn't make sense that you say 'every time you play' as though there were multiple instances of this.

Look, guys, what I'm seeing mistaken in you is not your atheistic belief. You simply have it for the wrong bloody reasons. Most of your reasons and 'logic' can be entirely circumvented by Kant. And that's what I find so painful: that while you're accusing the religious of being unswerving, of not having open eyes, of being stuck in their own beliefs to the exclusion of 'evidence', you fail to see yourselves as the biggest perpetrators of this. Kant, via logic, has two hundred years past dismissed many of your viewpoints - evidence, if you wish to call it that! - but still you cling desperately to it. And you'll get mad at me for questioning what you see as 'unquestionable.' You're acting for all the world like those stuck in their own beliefs. After all, if you're so open, why can't you open yourselves to the possibility that God might exist, even an equal possibility? Because just now I, a religious person, have shown myself more open minded in saying that it is, philosophically speaking, entirely reasonable to have an atheistic position. Hm? Match that one, and I'll call you enlightened. Till then, have fun in your pre-Kantian dark age.

Hmph. Well, I think I'm outta this. Sorry guys, but I guess even the Compendium isn't up for this level of discussion. Lord J, and the rest of you, I'm sorry this topic came up. I thought we could all handle it like philosophers, but all we got was a bunch of opinion ridden rants. I'll leave this discussion to my philosophy club... there there are atheists that I can brings this up with without being told what my religion believes and how horrid it is. This has utterly disgusted me. I thought for once we could talk about the reasons for ideas, rather than just accusing each other's beliefs. But heck, you guys really made a bad showing of yourselves. Like I said, my philosophy club will give me far more intellectual stimulation. I'm just sad that the Compendium wasn't able to rise above their petty vehemence against religion.
« Last Edit: January 06, 2008, 07:51:46 pm by Daniel Krispin »

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Re: Atheism
« Reply #44 on: January 06, 2008, 07:44:30 pm »
I, for one, got a lot out of this discussion at least, and I thank you for bringing it up Daniel. I come from a very religious family and, quite frankly, it's healthy for me to be exposed to the atheistic ideas propounded here. Not what you wanted to accomplish, perhaps, but certainly not a waste of time by any means IMO. Sorry for my useless quips -- I know that didn't help bring the level of discussion up either  :mrgreen:.