Atheism destroyed with a question

Dave Ellis said:

That's my point, we can't prove that we aren't in the matrix, or a brain in a vat, or whatever..... but we also have absolutely no reason to believe that's the case. So, we have no reason to take the idea seriously, even if it were actually true. So, in a sense we're forced into that assumption that the world exists as we experience it.

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Yes, I think we agree. Those are valid beliefs / assumptions.

However (and this is just a minor point) there is no reason to preference "we do not live in the matrix" over "we do live in the matrix". We have no ability to assess either hypothesis, and neither of them clearly fit as the null hypothesis. We are simply ignorant about the entire matter.

Sayre said:

However (and this is just a minor point) there is no reason to preference "we do not live in the matrix" over "we do live in the matrix".

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Seriously? No reason?

I'd say that reason is on the side of going with a straightforward interpretation of life experience, which means not believing in the matrix if we don't have any reason to do so. If we don't operate in this way, reason is pretty much destroyed in favor of arbitrary imagination.


eudaimonia,

Mark

Eudaimonist said:

Seriously? No reason?

I'd say that reason is on the side of going with a straightforward interpretation of life experience, which means not believing in the matrix if we don't have any reason to do so. If we don't operate in this way, reason is pretty much destroyed in favor of arbitrary imagination.


eudaimonia,

Mark

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The reason for the matrix example is that our life experience is IDENTICAL under both hypothesis. If you can differentiate between the hypothesis based on experience then we aren't talking about the same kind of arbitrary belief that I'm talking about with Dave.

Sayre said:

The reason for the matrix example is that our life experience is IDENTICAL under both hypothesis. If you can differentiate between the hypothesis based on experience then we aren't talking about the same kind of arbitrary belief that I'm talking about with Dave.

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The reason that we don't favor the matrix interpretation rather than the straight forward one is Occam's razor.

Dave Ellis said:

And they usually miss the point that the assumptions we make that they'll usually point out are done so for good reason, and we actually have evidence for them.

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Not to mention that the assumptions non-believers make are a subset of the ones believers do. None of them believe we're brains in a vat, so it's not fair to attack you for having that assumption if they accept it as well.

variant said:

The reason that we don't favor the matrix interpretation rather than the straight forward one is Occam's razor.

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Sure, but I wouldn't describe choosing between two equally evidenced scenarios by means of parsimony as evidence based - would you?

I did highlight that this was a very small objection and that for the most part, Dave and I agree on the nature of "faith" and that it appears to be different from these kind of "assumptions".

KCfromNC said:

Not to mention that the assumptions non-believers make are a subset of the ones believers do. None of them believe we're brains in a vat, so it's not fair to attack you for having that assumption if they accept it as well.

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Correct - it would be unfair to "attack" you for the content of your assumptions if they accept those assumptions as well. It is not unfair to point out that you do make assumptions and that not all positions you hold to are evidentially supported.

Sayre said:

Well, I don't want this to turn into a competition, but how do you feel about basic beliefs? The existence of other minds, the uniformity of nature,

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Both of these are supported by evidence. No faith required.

Sayre said:

that we aren't in the matrix, that we aren't a brain in a vat, etc?

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Neither of these are supported by evidence. No faith required.

Even if this were the case, it wouldn't actually affect us in any meaningful way.

Sayre said:

Sure, but I wouldn't describe choosing between two equally evidenced scenarios by means of parsimony as evidence based - would you?

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That is how we deal with a lack of evidence for differentiation of two scenarios in all other cases so yes.

Parsimony is the principle that all things being equal you go with the simpler explanation. The Matrix and the brain in the vat require more complex scenarios to be true.

Sayre said:

First Picture of an Atom's Shadow—Smallest Ever Photographed

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Great. Doesn't refute my prior point though.

variant said:

That is how we deal with a lack of evidence for differentiation of two scenarios in all other cases so yes.

Parsimony is the principle that all things being equal you go with the simpler explanation. The Matrix and the brain in the vat require more complex scenarios to be true.

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More than that, it requires that we are being deceived and the deception is perfect.

This is not like saying there is a 'counter Earth' directly on the other side of the sun that we never see. That actually is testable and centuries ago it was known that there is no such object of planetary size.

variant said:

That is how we deal with a lack of evidence for differentiation of two scenarios in all other cases so yes.

Parsimony is the principle that all things being equal you go with the simpler explanation. The Matrix and the brain in the vat require more complex scenarios to be true.

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Im not disputing occams razor. I'm simply stating that if we have no ability to differentiate between hypotheses and consequently preference the simpler hypothesis, that we can't claim our belief is evidence based.

Sayre said:

The reason for the matrix example is that our life experience is IDENTICAL under both hypothesis.

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That doesn't matter. There is no good reason to suppose that the matrix exists even if what you say is true. It is creating an entity that we have no experience of out of arbitrary imagination. The parsimonious explanation is that we are human beings living human lives, for which we have plenty of direct perceptual evidence. That is the rational mode of thought, not making up stuff.


eudaimonia,

Mark

Sayre said:

Correct - it would be unfair to "attack" you for the content of your assumptions if they accept those assumptions as well. It is not unfair to point out that you do make assumptions and that not all positions you hold to are evidentially supported.

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What's the evidence for us being a brain in a vat, again? Or are you saying there's no evidence of an external reality? I'm not sure what you're getting to with this idea that belief in reality isn't based on evidence.

Sayre said:

Im not disputing occams razor. I'm simply stating that if we have no ability to differentiate between hypotheses and consequently preference the simpler hypothesis, that we can't claim our belief is evidence based.

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Occams razor is not faith based.

The idea is based upon how we experience evidence and our experience with the likelihood of varying explanations.

That is where Occam razor comes from. The more complex the explanation the less it is favored when we have a model that already works to explain the events.

Let me approach the question in this way. Some people think that if a fact can be used to point to two different conclusions, the fact shouldn't be counted as evidence. That's not quite true.

Evidence comes in packages. A claim depends not just on isolated facts that operate independently to support a case, but on a network of facts that together make a supporting case.

So, all of the observations that support the case that one lives a human life every day -- such as one's personal experiences in daily life, and scientific knowledge of human biology (such as how the senses work) -- together make a supporting case that we are human beings living human lives.

Just because isolated facts might be consistent with a massive deception, such as a matrix, or body thetans, or trickster demons, or the dream-making ability implicit in solipsism, does not mean that they are worthless as evidence for the straightforward conclusion that we are human beings living human lives. But it does mean that those facts are worthless as evidence for the massive deception, at least until evidence for that deception surfaces.


eudaimonia,

Mark

dsian said:

And it raises good points especially of the fine tuning of the universe.

"But that's the argument from design!"

Which hasn't been refuted. The fine tuning is agreed upon by physicists. The video uses academic sources for its claims too.

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I didn't need to watch the whole thing, there were errors right off the bat.

First, as an atheist, I make no claim about the origins of the Universe.

Second, AFAIK, "Nothing" has never been observed, so you cannot claim that something cannot come from "Nothing". There is no evidence to support his claim.

So yeah, I'm still an atheist, although I am still looking for evidence of a God.

A quick question for you, one that no theist on this forum has been able to answer: Why is the Christian God any more believable than Santa Claus or the Easter Bunny?

dsian said:

Since there seems to be many atheists on this "Christian" forum I thought of posting this:



And it raises good points especially of the fine tuning of the universe.

"But that's the argument from design!"

Which hasn't been refuted. The fine tuning is agreed upon by physicists. The video uses academic sources for its claims too.

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The dark background of the video makes it nearly impossible to read the dark words. They should have included sound.


Ken

Opps!

Viren said:

Yeah, fine-tuning has never been a convincing argument for me. It makes the assumption that everything that exists was destined to become this way.

It like dropping a clump of sand on the ground and saying "what are the odds that every grain would land just this way"?

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Indeed. I call it the "teleological fallacy".
There's this great analogy to illustrate the reasoning error...

2 random frogs are sitting by a random pond, where the frogs have been living for generations.
One says to the other: "look how perfect this pond is for us to live... surely a super-frog created it especially for us, so that we may live and thrive".

Off course, the pond isn't fine tuned for the frog. Instead, the frog is fine-tuned for the pond. And no "mind" was involved in that fine-tuning. Rather, it was the blind process of biological evolution.

Viren said:

Also, empty space in a vacuum isn't "something". It's actually is "nothing", but our mind has been trained to only recognized things. Just because you label space as a thing doesn't make it so.

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This, I need to disagree with in this context.
In this context of "something from nothing", what is meant by "nothing" is "absolute nothingness".

The word "nothing" means very different things on different levels.
Consider "there is nothing in this box". By "nothing" here, one means the lack of objects that one would put in a box (books, dvd's, etc). But off course the box is full of stuff... there's plenty of molecules etc in there.

In the vacuum of space, "nothing" means that there are no molecules either. But this vacuum still ways something, it still has an energy signature. There's plenty of quantum stuff going on there. Space furthermore, IS something as well (as opposed to "absolute nothingness).

The problem I have with statements like "(absolutely) nothing can't produce something" is quite simply that none of us have ever observed a state of "absolute nothingness". I'm not even convinced that such a state is even possible at all. It's not clear to me at all that if we remove the universe and everything it contains from reality, that what we would end up with is "absolute nothingness".

So purely by that reasoning, I think I can dismiss the bare assertion that "absolute nothingness can't produce something". For the sole reason that we never witnessed this nothingness, don't even know if it's possible at all, don't know what properties it has or doesn't have, have no idea about what it can or cannot do, because we never studied this state.

I have no clue on how it could ever be studied or if it even makes sense to talk about its "properties"....
But I do know that it's not reasonable to simply accept this assertion and move on. I'll agree happily that it sounds likely that "absolute nothingness" can't produce something... but not for the life of me would I commit to such a statement.