Where is the hope in atheism?

[Silmarien]

That might be true, in some very rare, very particular cases.

Generally though, you have it backwards. Staying stuck in ancient modes of thinking is the trap. Thankfully, science doesn't work that way.

A lot of underlying popular assumptions about reality come straight out of the Enlightenment. Plenty of people wander around parroting Thomas Hobbes, which sets us back to the 17th century. This is itself antiquated, since we're in the middle of a scientific revolution right now and large portions of the underlying mechanistic philosophy have been invalidated.

Now, a lot of ancient and medieval philosophy went out of fashion specifically because they flew in the face of Enlightenment assumptions that have since been shown to be problematic. What is the justification for continuing to assume that those 17th century critiques of ancient thought hold without investigating it ourselves in the light of modern scientific knowledge?

 

[Willis Gravning]

I think they are, in some sense. Non-existence is all the same to you, whether you're dead or haven't been born yet.

That is also a possibility although that would make it two one-sided doors.

 

[(° ͡ ͜ ͡ʖ ͡ °) (ᵔᴥᵔʋ)]

If a tree falls in the forest and there is only an atheist to hear it does it then cease to have made a sound when the atheist dies?

Tuché...lol

 

[Eight Foot Manchild]

A lot of underlying popular assumptions about reality come straight out of the Enlightenment. Plenty of people wander around parroting Thomas Hobbes, which sets us back to the 17th century. This is itself antiquated, since we're in the middle of a scientific revolution right now and large portions of the underlying mechanistic philosophy have been invalidated.

Now, a lot of ancient and medieval philosophy went out of fashion specifically because they flew in the face of Enlightenment assumptions that have since been shown to be problematic. What is the justification for continuing to assume that those 17th century critiques of ancient thought hold without investigating it ourselves in the light of modern scientific knowledge?

I dunno. The same point I was making still applies, no matter where you want to jump in history. Brain surgeons don't rely on medical texts from 400 BCE nor the 17th century. For very good reasons.

 

[gaara4158]

Yep, this is what I've been saying all along. Humanity would be the great tragedy of naturalism, not necessarily something positive to be celebrated. Life itself takes on an uglier tone if there's nothing to it besides chemical reactions gone wild. And I do agree with your assessment of modern society and psychological issues.

And what's worse, I happen to suspect it's true!

On the other hand, I don't think knowledge of cosmology, psychology, and biology really eat up much room at all. It's difficult to see how life could have ever evolved at all if our universe weren't in some sense seeded for it, if different chemicals didn't have it in their nature to give rise to life under certain circumstances. Science explains how physical reality interacts to produce the effects we see; it doesn't explain why it was the case that it would act this way to begin with. I don't see how it even could. It doesn't say too much about ontology in and of itself--it was a specific Enlightenment era mechanistic materialism that ruled out other options, and that was blown to smithereens with quantum physics. Reductionism is a bit out of style now, so things are opening up again. Or they would be if naturalists didn't have kneejerk negative reactions to the alternatives.

Cosmology, psychology, and biology are more destructive to specific types of fundamentalism, ie Biblical literalism. You cannot cling to Young Earth Creationism in light of what we know today, despite the efforts of certain evangelicals. That doesn't mean you have to throw away theism altogether, but removing one belief that was integral to your concept of God can sometimes create a domino effect that topples your entire belief system, leaving you with nothing. We can always find god-shaped holes in our understanding of the universe, but we shouldn't be so hasty to place a god in them just because we can't fathom a different answer. It poses the same problem as having too many brute facts in your worldview.

On the other hand, there are other arguments out there that are much older and meant for very different audiences. Any of the Greek or Scholastic arguments would fall into this category, and the problem with immediately jumping to deconstruction is that you don't necessarily know what they're saying and why they're saying it. We interpret the arguments in a completely different light than what their original proponents intended, so something like Aquinas's teleological argument gets addressed as if it were a modern design argument, and it isn't. At all. The first step here has to be to try to properly conceptualize the argument and figure out what's going on rather than rushing straight to critiquing it, and that almost always gets skipped. And not just by atheists.

It's hard to say what's to be gained by two people arguing either side of an argument neither of them understands. It's also hard to say what use to anyone an argument that no one understands is. If they don't translate well into our paradigm, wouldn't it be wiser to edit the argument to fit our paradigm than ask everyone to shift theirs to accommodate the argument?

 

[Silmarien]

And what's worse, I happen to suspect it's true!

Well, if the existential angst ever gets to you, you know where to find us.

Cosmology, psychology, and biology are more destructive to specific types of fundamentalism, ie Biblical literalism. You cannot cling to Young Earth Creationism in light of what we know today, despite the efforts of certain evangelicals. That doesn't mean you have to throw away theism altogether, but removing one belief that was integral to your concept of God can sometimes create a domino effect that topples your entire belief system, leaving you with nothing.

Biblical literalism is a funny thing, since it has intentionally set itself up as an alternative to modern science. This stuff isn't a relic of an age before modern science; it was itself the reaction to modernity. If Darwin never existed, zealously holding to a 6 day account of Creation wouldn't exist either. Go back to the very beginning of Church history and it was perfectly acceptable to allegorize that. And half the rest of the Old Testament, if you were so inclined.

But yeah, if you're coming out of a fundamentalist background, I definitely understand that all you've really got is a house of cards that isn't really going to withstand serious scrutiny. Which is unfortunate, but I'm not sure what can be done about that problem.

We can always find god-shaped holes in our understanding of the universe, but we shouldn't be so hasty to place a god in them just because we can't fathom a different answer. It poses the same problem as having too many brute facts in your worldview.

Yes, I agree. This is why something like the Intelligent Design movement seems horribly misguided to me--it may well be the case that there is no naturalistic answer to some of the questions evolution poses, but we should not simply assume that this is the case. Especially since there's no reason to expect that the designer would be divine.

This doesn't mean that theism always amounts to finding God shaped holes in our understanding of the universe, though. I'm something of a nondualist, which makes me an anti-materialist and immediately entails a form of panentheism. It's the only theory of mind that has ever really made sense for me both of cognitive science and consciousness as we experience it, so... voilà. You can interpret scientific information through a philosophical framework that ultimately points to theism, and this isn't precisely looking for God shaped holes in the universe.

It's hard to say what's to be gained by two people arguing either side of an argument neither of them understands. It's also hard to say what use to anyone an argument that no one understands is. If they don't translate well into our paradigm, wouldn't it be wiser to edit the argument to fit our paradigm than ask everyone to shift theirs to accommodate the argument?

That depends. If someone thinks that our paradigm is wrong, then it makes sense that they would instead seek to demonstrate what's wrong with it and in what ways medieval thought is more appropriate. Most of Aquinas's proponents take this approach--they argue that Aristotelian philosophy is still relevant and only then do they seek to establish that the Five Ways actually work. This makes it a very difficult position to argue for since you do need to lay down a lot of groundwork first, and that tends to be really difficult around here.

The other problem is that once you get used to Scholastic language, it's easy to just slip into it and start using it without explaining anything. I've seen this happen before with the concept of Maximal Greatness, which is a very, very Scholastic idea, straight out of Anselm. Without really grasping what is meant by it, whenever someone brings it up conversation will just deteriorate into madness. I wouldn't use this term myself because I don't entirely grasp what's meant by it either, but I would be leery of rushing to attack it without first trying to understand it.

 

[Quid est Veritas?]

I dunno. The same point I was making still applies, no matter where you want to jump in history. Brain surgeons don't rely on medical texts from 400 BCE nor the 17th century. For very good reasons.

Sometimes doctors should have paid attention. The Egyptian Ebers papyrus lists a whole slew of effective antiseptics and dressings that Medicine ignored for thousands of years. Likewise some Logikoi physicians from Hellenistic times argued for blood circulation, but Galenic physiology held sway till the 17th century corrected it (and in fact Galenic physiology still describes things like Arterial Wave form better than our modern theories, which have revently been revised further). We also have succesful archaelogical examples of neurosurgical trepanation and burr holes from Hellenistic times and earlier - which Western Medicine abandoned till the 19th century. In fact, it was started up again after physicians noted succesful instances of this amongst native peoples in their colonies.
Another example is succesful Caesarian sections performed in Arsacid and Sassanian Iran (in that the mother survived, which was highly unlikely in Western instances of this procedure till fairly recently).
Just because it is ancient knowledge or more modern, has no bearing on whether it is true or not.

Another example: Aristotle demolished an ancient form of Lamarckism and a lot of his thought is highly compatible with modern DNA based heredity. This is why it has been tongue in cheek argued that if Nobel prizes were given posthumously, he should get one for describing the functionality of DNA.
Or the Mpemba Effect of warm water freezing faster that Aristotle, Lucretius and Bacon noted, but was dismissed by Science till the 20th century on completely specious grounds.
In like manner, Aristotle described the mating tentacle of cuttlefish and placental birth in dogfish, that Science only came round to acknowledge in the 20th and 19th centuries respectively.

Sometimes Science takes the long way back home, because of silly assumptions such as that what is more modern is necessarily more correct.

 

[Quid est Veritas?]

And what's worse, I happen to suspect it's true!

I find it odd that modern people cling to this new form of Total Depravity, of subconscious desires, neuroses and Selfish Genes. It almost seems Calvinist, and 300 years ago, I think these people would all be clutching the Institutions in their hands. It does brutalise us, and makes even the greatest saint into nothing but an abject sinner unable to do anything good without ulterior motive.

Cosmology, psychology, and biology are more destructive to specific types of fundamentalism, ie Biblical literalism. You cannot cling to Young Earth Creationism in light of what we know today, despite the efforts of certain evangelicals. That doesn't mean you have to throw away theism altogether, but removing one belief that was integral to your concept of God can sometimes create a domino effect that topples your entire belief system, leaving you with nothing. We can always find god-shaped holes in our understanding of the universe, but we shouldn't be so hasty to place a god in them just because we can't fathom a different answer. It poses the same problem as having too many brute facts in your worldview.

It is also a bit hasty to leave God out too, perhaps. As there are God of the gaps arguments, you also find Science of the gaps. The biggest example of this is perhaps the idea of consciousness as emergent property, or assuming the coherence and verifiability of our perception, simply because we have no actual idea how it emerges or way to quantify factors around it. It is merely based on our metaphysical assumptions whether we dismiss or accept things here, as we really have very little to go on. Philosophic arguments are all that can be made in such cases, and in this sphere the Naturalistic certainly does not take precedence.

 

[gaara4158]

I find it odd that modern people cling to this new form of Total Depravity, of subconscious desires, neuroses and Selfish Genes. It almost seems Calvinist, and 300 years ago, I think these people would all be clutching the Institutions in their hands. It does brutalise us, and makes even the greatest saint into nothing but an abject sinner unable to do anything good without ulterior motive.

It’s as liberating as it is condemning. You know that no one out there is vindicating your decisions and applauding your character, but no one’s damning you either. You’re on your own. Just because you don’t like it doesn’t mean it’s not true, but you’re under no obligation to believe it if it’s not demonstrated.

It is also a bit hasty to leave God out too, perhaps. As there are God of the gaps arguments, you also find Science of the gaps. The biggest example of this is perhaps the idea of consciousness as emergent property, or assuming the coherence and verifiability of our perception, simply because we have no actual idea how it emerges or way to quantify factors around it. It is merely based on our metaphysical assumptions whether we dismiss or accept things here, as we really have very little to go on. Philosophic arguments are all that can be made in such cases, and in this sphere the Naturalistic certainly does not take precedence.

Well, God of the gaps and Science of the gaps aren’t exactly on equal footing. All gaps that have been successfully filled have been filled by science, and it’s science that’s forced God out of gaps he once occupied, never the other way around. It’s true both are forms of speculation, but only one has a method of investigation that empirically demonstrates the accuracy of its hypotheses. Philosophic arguments can demonstrate some pretty wild things to be true based on given premises, but only science can determine if those premises are true. Some premises can’t even be demonstrated to be true by science, and for those things, all I suggest is you try not to lose sleep over them.

 

[Quid est Veritas?]

It’s as liberating as it is condemning. You know that no one out there is vindicating your decisions and applauding your character, but no one’s damning you either. You’re on your own. Just because you don’t like it doesn’t mean it’s not true, but you’re under no obligation to believe it if it’s not demonstrated.

Things are often paradoxical. As Paul said, we only become free as slaves of Christ, for a similar Christian paradox.
My personal problem is the complete inability to vindicate anything, though.

Well, God of the gaps and Science of the gaps aren’t exactly on equal footing. All gaps that have been successfully filled have been filled by science, and it’s science that’s forced God out of gaps he once occupied, never the other way around. It’s true both are forms of speculation, but only one has a method of investigation that empirically demonstrates the accuracy of its hypotheses. Philosophic arguments can demonstrate some pretty wild things to be true based on given premises, but only science can determine if those premises are true. Some premises can’t even be demonstrated to be true by science, and for those things, all I suggest is you try not to lose sleep over them.

This is rife with those metaphysical assumptions I was talking about. This entire piece rests on certain philosophical positions taken as axiomatic, it seems. For how does Science determine a premise true? Why is empiricism given primacy as to accuracy? Those are all pure metaphysical propositions taken for granted.
I personally do not know out of which gap God has been forced, for I haven't really seen it. Science investigates the natural world, not Metaphysical reality, which is where the concept of God operates. It was invented by Churchmen afterall.

Maybe Science dispells a few fallacious ideas held by the religious, assuming the validity or veridicality thereof, but the concept of God really has not suffered under it. Dostoyevsky writes somewhere that Atheists seldom discuss God, but things peripherally associated with Him, like history or theories as to the physical working of the world, and then think this somehow addresses the former.

 

[bhsmte]

It’s as liberating as it is condemning. You know that no one out there is vindicating your decisions and applauding your character, but no one’s damning you either. You’re on your own. Just because you don’t like it doesn’t mean it’s not true, but you’re under no obligation to believe it if it’s not demonstrated.



Well, God of the gaps and Science of the gaps aren’t exactly on equal footing. All gaps that have been successfully filled have been filled by science, and it’s science that’s forced God out of gaps he once occupied, never the other way around. It’s true both are forms of speculation, but only one has a method of investigation that empirically demonstrates the accuracy of its hypotheses. Philosophic arguments can demonstrate some pretty wild things to be true based on given premises, but only science can determine if those premises are true. Some premises can’t even be demonstrated to be true by science, and for those things, all I suggest is you try not to lose sleep over them.

There is no question, that many religious beliefs have had to be adapted because of scientific discoveries. On the other hand, science has not needed to adapt, because of religious beliefs.

 

[2PhiloVoid]

There is no question, that many religious beliefs have had to be adapted because of scientific discoveries. On the other hand, science has not needed to adapt, because of religious beliefs.

Science has not adapted? Don't make laugh. There have been major paradigm changes in the realm of science at least three times over the past 2,500 years since the time of Aristotle. And if we want to get picky about it, we might find more.

 

[bhsmte]

Science has not adapted? Don't make laugh. There have been major paradigm changes in the realm of science at least three times over the past 2,500 years since the time of Aristotle. And if we want to get picky about it, we might find more.

I said science has not needed to adapt because of specific religious beliefs, not that it hasnt adapted in general.

 

[2PhiloVoid]

I said science has not needed to adapt because of specific religious beliefs, not that it hasnt adapted in general.

Ok. But, I don't see how religion itself, whether it be Christianity or any other religion, has needed to adapt. No, people adapt their foundational assumptions, their paradigms, and/or their methods of interpretation. Sure, some of this could come out of a sense of cognitive dissonance; but some of this could also come by growth through additional learning in general rather than from cognitive dissonance. Again, it's NOT as if God's revelation has been delivered to us in full or in whole cloth. Rather, it has been given in specificity, progression, fragmentation, partial insights, and veiled and allusive ancient references.

So, it should more properly be said, in my view, that there ALWAYS WAS room for improvement, or learning, or growth in understanding as time has gone by, and God meant for this to be, and I don't care how many Fundamentalist stand in line to tell me otherwise when the Bible itself is obviously starring us in the face and not only tells us its revelation in limited human terms, but implies that human epistemology, as applied to things Divine, is being hedged and manipulated by God Himself, quite apart from leaving it all to us to figure out just by our lonesome rationality.

 

[bhsmte]

Ok. But, I don't see how religion itself, whether it be Christianity or any other religion, has needed to adapt. No, people adapt their foundational assumptions, their paradigms, and/or their methods of interpretation. Sure, some of this could come out of a sense of cognitive dissonance; but some of this could also come by growth through additional learning in general rather than from cognitive dissonance. Again, it's NOT as if God's revelation has been delivered to us in full or in whole cloth. Rather, it has been given in specificity, progression, fragmentation, partial insights, and veiled and allusive ancient references.

So, it should more properly be said, in my view, that there ALWAYS WAS room for improvement, or learning, or growth in understanding as time has gone by, and God meant for this to be, and I don't care how many Fundamentalist stand in line to tell me otherwise when the Bible itself is obviously starring us in the face and not only tells us its revelation in limited human terms, but implies that human epistemology, as applied to things Divine, is being hedged and manipulated by God Himself, quite apart from leaving it all to us to figure out just by our lonesome rationality.

I said religious beliefs have adapted, because of scientific discoveries.

For example, how many different religious beliefs believed in a literal biblical creation 100 years ago, vs today?

Looking at specifically Christians, more and more Christians have come to accept the Scientific theory of evolution, vs a previous belief that was based on a literal interpretation of scripture.

I would call that an adaptation, of a religious belief.

 

[Silmarien]

I said religious beliefs have adapted, because of scientific discoveries.

For example, how many different religious beliefs believed in a literal biblical creation 100 years ago, vs today?

Looking at specifically Christians, more and more Christians have come to accept the Scientific theory of evolution, vs a previous belief that was based on a literal interpretation of scripture.

I would call that an adaptation, of a religious belief.

Again, as I pointed out before, the reason people were likely to hold to a literal biblical creation a century ago is because Darwinian theory was still new and opposing it was in some sense an issue of piety. So this was not really a battle between science and religion--it was between theological liberalism and theological conservativism, and science was the weapon of choice. Go back earlier than the modern period and there would have been much less resistance to evolution because it was fairly consistent with medieval philosophy.

Science by itself seldom really forces anyone to alter their beliefs. It's almost always a matter of underlying cultural paradigm shifts, whether from ancient Jewish belief to Hellenistic Judaism 2000 years ago, as we saw with theologians like Philo of Alexandria and many of the early Church Fathers who were reinterpreting Scripture to fit with the culturally privileged Greek worldview, the development of Catholicism throughout the medieval period in the shadow of the Fall of Rome, or cultural wars over modernity.

Paradigms do shift, and the ways of conceptualizing beliefs shift with them. Science is kind of impervious to influence from the religious sphere right now because its the scientists themselves who refuse to look for inspiration outside of their chosen framework. You see this happen when the Dalai Lama gets interested in modern neuroscience and a whole bunch of scientists freak out over it, because Buddhism is religion and therefore bad. Never mind that it's also psychotherapy with centuries of consciousness studies behind it.

 

[gaara4158]

I said religious beliefs have adapted, because of scientific discoveries.

For example, how many different religious beliefs believed in a literal biblical creation 100 years ago, vs today?

Looking at specifically Christians, more and more Christians have come to accept the Scientific theory of evolution, vs a previous belief that was based on a literal interpretation of scripture.

I would call that an adaptation, of a religious belief.

Galileo’s geocentric model of the solar system was also famously opposed by the Catholic Church. Ask them what their position on the solar system is now.

 

[2PhiloVoid]

I said religious beliefs have adapted, because of scientific discoveries.

Yes, I know that is what you said, but I would instead say that people's understanding of HOW to approach the Bible has adapted, and this social phenomenon is not a new one, definitely not one exclusive to modern science. If anything, people (Christians even) have adapted their views on their faith due to various social and rational factors throughout history. Where there has been a disagreement between Christians and some new insight has emerged from the clash of interpretations of ideas (or doctrines), one could say there has been an "adaptation" to the original understanding. So, none of this new, and it's surely not solely contingent upon the mere rise of Darwin's work.

For example, how many different religious beliefs believed in a literal biblical creation 100 years ago, vs today?

Obviously, we know that prior to Darwin, most Christians assumed something approximating a 6 day creation. However, I'd simply make the case that this reading by many Christians [particularly Protestants] has been due to two things: 1) An overly dedicated assumption to always take the Bible at face value, and 2) the additional dedication by many Christians to assume the Bible tells them more than it really does and that its purpose was to fill in all questions about the world that science over the past 200 years has been investigating. But, in this regard, I'm going to have to go with Galileo on the way in which we think about this ...

Looking at specifically Christians, more and more Christians have come to accept the Scientific theory of evolution, vs a previous belief that was based on a literal interpretation of scripture.

Yeah.........and some of us Christians accepted the ToE before we became Christians and haven't changed on that since.

I would call that an adaptation, of a religious belief.

Fine. You can call it that. Just realize that this is to be expected, and should have been expected all along. It's called education, and as far as I can tell, other than those mysteries God doesn't intend to fill us in on--or those pertaining to Human Sin--He doesn't otherwise put a high value on ongoing ignorance (the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil notwithstanding in this evaluation.)

 

[Silmarien]

Galileo’s geocentric model of the solar system was also famously opposed by the Catholic Church. Ask them what their position on the solar system is now.

This is actually a bit of a myth. The problem with Galileo was specifically that he was making very flamboyant claims to Absolute Truth without actually having good evidence behind him. His model of the solar system was wrong, since he insisted that the planets were orbiting in perfect circles and this meant the calculations didn't work. It wasn't until Kepler introduced the idea of elliptical orbits that heliocentricism actually worked as a theory.

Galileo had a bad theory, went around insisting that it was Truth, and then got involved in religious matters by pretty much demanding that the Church interpret Scripture in the way that he had been more or less divinely inspired to interpret it. He was stepping on toes with his theological proclamations, not his scientific ones. (Though it's also worth pointing out that general relativity means that from our perspective, the sun actually kind of is moving around the earth. Ptolemaic and Copernican astronomy both break down.)

 

[bhsmte]

Yes, I know that is what you said, but I would instead say that people's understanding of HOW to approach the Bible has adapted, and this social phenomenon is not a new one, definitely not one exclusive to modern science. If anything, people (Christians even) have adapted their views on their faith due to various social and rational factors throughout history. Where there has been a disagreement between Christians and some new insight has emerged from the clash of interpretations of ideas (or doctrines), one could say there has been an "adaptation" to the original understanding. So, none of this new, and it's surely not solely contingent upon the mere rise of Darwin's work.

Obviously, we know that prior to Darwin, most Christians assumed something approximating a 6 day creation. However, I'd simply make the case that this reading by many Christians [particularly Protestants] has been due to two things: 1) An overly dedicated assumption to always take the Bible at face value, and 2) the additional dedication by many Christians to assume the Bible tells them more than it really does and that its purpose was to fill in all questions about the world that science over the past 200 years has been investigating. But, in this regard, I'm going to have to go with Galileo on the way in which we think about this ...

Yeah.........and some of us Christians accepted the ToE before we became Christians and haven't changed on that since.

Fine. You can call it that. Just realize that this is to be expected, and should have been expected all along. It's called education, and as far as I can tell, other than those mysteries God doesn't intend to fill us in on--or those pertaining to Human Sin--He doesn't otherwise put a high value on ongoing ignorance (the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil notwithstanding in this evaluation.)

And what caused them to change how they approach the bible?

Scientific discoveries and acquiring knowledge about the same, appear to have compelled many people, to adapt how they approach interpreting the bible.