Where is the hope in atheism?

[apogee]

So therefor, you feel like you can speak for all atheists?

I doubt she thinks she speaks for all atheists, she arguably speaks for all existentialists. I would argue she speaks for 'intelligence' itself, assuming we can all agree it actually exists.

 

[gaara4158]

How a religious perspective can avoid operating under the metaphysical presuppositions of a scientific worldview, you mean? It automatically disqualifies naturalism, since you cannot be a theist and a naturalist at the same time. It usually (though not always) conflicts with materialism as well.

Hmm, so what you’re saying is that science makes negative metaphysical claims, not positive ones? I had interpreted your earlier statement that a scientific approach requires metaphysical assumptions about the validity of the methodologies used to mean that we provisionally accept some metaphysical claims like “yes, I am really in this lab and yes, this ruler is accurate and yes, what’s written on that paper is still what I just wrote down on it.” These are things I would expect theists to have to assume when doing science as well. But what you seem to be saying is scientists must fundamentally assume “no, there’s no God or anything else that could remotely be considered a spiritual or supernatural dimension or entity.” This is of course incompatible with theism, but I don’t think scientists have to make any negative assumptions beyond the provisional, somewhat falsifiable assumption that “no, there is nothing going on behind the scenes that would invalidate my results.” That is to say, a scientist doesn’t need to be a philosophical naturalist, but to be anything else is to import positive assumptions on top of the fundamental scientific provisional negative assumptions of methodological naturalism (boy, that’s a mouthful).

I should reiterate that I’m not so bold as to call myself a philosophical naturalist, but it is the most attractive framework to me due to the great usefulness of methodological naturalism. Sometimes I use the terms naturalism, materialism, and science interchangeably and that’s probably not helpful. Lol

It's a matter of argumentation. What are the perceived strengths and weaknesses of a particular view, are there any deep problems associated with it? Materialism faces the challenge of explaining how unconscious processes can combine to produce conscious ones, substance dualism cannot properly explain how the immaterial mind could affect the material body, naturalism cannot explain why there is a universe and why it seems to behave in an orderly fashion at all, and the various theistic traditions tend to end up with very complicated houses of cards.

Honestly it's a matter of trying to figure out what makes the most sense of all the information available. Science is definitely an important tool--I reject pantheism, for example, primarily because of special relativity. When it comes to metaphysics, there are really two options: either you openly engage in it, recognizing the difficulty inherent in the task, or you ignore it and unconsciously engage in it anyway, conflating evidence with presupposition. Everyone's a metaphysicist; it's the people who don't realize it who are the dangerous ones.

So, here’s the thing. Unless you can dismiss something a priori through logic, I don’t see what we can actually determine from the “strength” or “weakness” of a proposition that can’t be empirically tested. We can judge the parsimony, explanatory power, and explanatory scope of a proposition, but these things alone can’t tell us whether it’s true or not. We’re left with our personal preferences dictating what we believe, and that’s what I’d call a bad epistemology. Of course, it doesn’t really matter how bad your epistemology is if the things you’re using it on are completely irrelevant to your life. I just think metaphysical questions belong on the “what if” shelf next to thought experiments and fiction.

I think most religious people would say that it does have actual real-world consequences, though. I stay at the edges of Christianity because I'm kind of afraid of the whole concept of personal relationship, but a lot of people do swear by it. Some of them seem like crazed fanatics, but for others it really does look authentic. If someone tells me that they know God exists because he's a reality in their life, and they act in a way consistent with this instead of being a hypocrite, that will give me pause. Their interpretation might be off, but it also might not be.

I find it interesting that these people can be so sure of themselves, and yet they disagree with each other. That, and claimed miracles are never things that necessarily wouldn’t normally happen anyway. God’s not healing amputees, for some reason. I’m not saying it’s definitely a placebo, but if it walks like a duck...

 

[DogmaHunter]

I doubt she thinks she speaks for all atheists, she arguably speaks for all existentialists. I would argue she speaks for 'intelligence' itself, assuming we can all agree it actually exists.

If she isn't speaking as if she speaks for all atheists, then she should not be using general wordings like "from an atheist perspective, such and such is the case".

Also, when atheists then respond to her and tell her that that is not how they themselves look at it, she shouldn't be trying to argue with that either. And instead just accept it.

 

[apogee]

If she isn't speaking as if she speaks for all atheists, then she should not be using general wordings like "from an atheist perspective, such and such is the case".

I think there are worse sins, than accidentally identifying with the people you are communicating with.

Also, when atheists then respond to her and tell her that that is not how they themselves look at it, she shouldn't be trying to argue with that either. And instead just accept it.

Replace 'atheists' with 'christians' and I'll issue your very own limited edition "welcome to my world" card, although I'm actually quite happy for you to not simply accept anything that I say.

 

[gaara4158]

Oh, I absolutely do. I memorize things because they interest me, no practical use required. It seems that information for its own sake has to come before information for the sake of winning at trivia, since you're not going to be specialized in a specific branch of random useless knowledge if it doesn't actually interest you.

So, this information that interests you... does it matter to you if it’s true or not? If so, why?

 

[KCfromNC]

Just wanted to point out that our sensory perception of reality actively conflicts with the scientific picture of it. Is the candle in front of me actually green or is it the light reflecting against it in a specific way that makes my brain register the color green?Is it solid, or does the structure of the atom mean that it and everything else is mostly empty space? Do fundamental particles actually "exist" in the same way that atoms and molecules do at all?

All good questions - and ones science answers using the sensory perception of scientific investigators.

The big problem with the materialist label is that nobody actually can explain what it means anymore.

This seems to bother people railing against materialism way more than the people being railed against. Could be that results matter more than arbitrary labels in some systems, while in others it is much more important to put things into tidy boxes rather than worrying about learning how reality actually works.

If you think that the mind is not reducible to the brain, you are probably a dualist of one variety or another, even if you think it emerges from the brain. Another interesting view is hylomorphism

Case in point here ---^ and here ---v

So even if you want a common sense sort of naturalistic default position, I think there are better options out there than classical materialism.

 

[HitchSlap]

Sorry to interrupt, I was just wondering if we had located the hope in Atheism yet.

Yes.

 

[2PhiloVoid]

Yes, it's important to realize that no matter how smart you think you are, there is no epistemology that can lead you to absolute certitude of things pertaining to the outside world. There will always be a disconnect between reality and ourselves. That's why I find it so important to measure truth by what we can actually do with it, because a difference that makes no difference is no difference.

This doesn't quite make sense. If there is ALWAYS a disconnect between reality and ourselves, then how does implementing a pragmatic measure overcome and ensure that you actually "get some truth" in the process? And if you do get some "truth" in the pragmatic process, then what kind of truth is it? Is it truth that accurately engages you with reality, or does it only provide you partial access to reality? How do you know that your pragmatic tests actually take you to a point where you are indeed dealing with reality as it is and not just as you think it is?

The Christian faith as a whole? I don't necessarily have a problem with people saying "We can't be sure, but I prefer to believe there's a loving God out there with a vested interest in our well-being." But when it gets into making claims about reality that would affect the way you live your life, there seems to be no way to test those claims. In some ways, such tests are outright prohibited (Luke 4:12 "You shall not put your God to the test"). Take the claim that there's an afterlife, since that's a big deal to OP. The only way to empirically test this would be to die and either find yourself in an afterlife, or not find yourself at all. Either way, the result of this test would come at such a time that it is no longer useful to your decision-making. But perhaps there's another way to test for an afterlife. If those who have died are in an afterlife right now, maybe we could detect them. But how? We wouldn't know what to test for. If we don't know what we're testing for, we can't eliminate anything we find as "not it." Who knows, maybe in the afterlife the dead really do manifest in reality as blurry apparitions in out-of-focus video footage. We just can't say. And that's why I say we shouldn't believe claims of this unfalsifiable nature. And yet, people are making major life decisions (or worse - writing public policy) on unfalsifiable claims found in religious texts. I am concerned that people are depriving themselves of a life they would find more fulfilling in order to toe a line drawn by a god that doesn't exist, and I'm even more concerned that my life will be negatively affected by someone conducting themselves in a way they believe is mandated by God.

...Yeah, I don't think your attempted exegesis of Luke 4:12 carries the specific implication about "testing God" that you think it does. You might want to move through the hermeneutical circle and look more intensely at the context(S) and then think further about what actually is inferred and what is being focused upon and communicated in this verse. As far as I can tell, you're jumping to conclusions which partially lie outside of the scope of this verse.

Additionally, you may want to look at John 7:16-17 and see if you find there any indication as to how Jesus would suggest we epistemically recognize the "truth" of His teaching. His way seems to elicit, not surprisingly, a very Jewish way of recognizing "God's Truth."

16 Jesus answered them and said, “My doctrine is not Mine, but His who sent Me. 17 If anyone wills to do His will, he shall know concerning the doctrine, whether it is from God or whether I speak on My own authority.
​

From the sound of what you've said previously, it seems you want to "test" God...in a more American kind of way, which is pragmatic as far as it goes, just not the kind of pragmatic approach Jesus infers for those of us who want to interact with God and well as with the world in a Christian fashion.

​

 

[Quid est Veritas?]

So you agree that the utility of information is in its applicability to make predictions, not in the stories we tell about why it is so. That's good, but you should note that religious explanations tend to be the ones with tacked-on stories about why things are so, not scientific ones. Kosher laws were useful before we knew how to cook pork safely and test shellfish for mercury, but you can't conclude that all of Judaism is true just because people were getting sick from tainted meat until someone told them to stop. A scientific approach is much more parsimonious, and science is what allows us to eat pork (relatively) safely today.


Either your religious claim makes a prediction we can test, or it is completely irrelevant. Seriously - if God is just the force behind every mechanism we don't quite understand, that's fine. Unless that information can be applied for some pragmatic purpose, I don't care at all. It makes no difference. It doesn't need to be addressed. I'm going to keep probing these mechanisms until there's nothing left to discover about them. If God's existence does make a difference, on the other hand, I would like to know what that difference is, what predictions it makes, and how I can apply that to my decisions.

No, I disagree. Ideas' worth lies in its utility. Not necessarily to make predictions. If it had no utility, it would not have survived as a concept. This may be psychological, practical, for survival, but even soteriological utility. The latter being the one that often really matters to the religious, as I have been trying to stress, and you seem not to grasp, we are not trying to do the same things with science and religion. Ideas directed toward trying to save Man from Sin or such, a metaphysical conception, would never have predictive utility in quotidian ways, but to reject its value in entirety, is simply a philosophical judgement, little more. It is assuming what needs to be proved, therefore, on your part.

I was more pointing out the inadequacy and deep flaws of your example of handwashing, which fundamentally came down to the same thing either way, and therefore had no fundamental differentiation.

You're basically asking how to build a good epistemology, and I've already stated that the only kind of epistemology I find useful is one that follows the pragmatic maxim. The "truth value" or "factuality" of any given statement is in its ability to produce predictable results.
To make this a little more clear, consider this thought experiment. Imagine a possible world where everything I believe about the universe is categorically false. However, every decision I make based on my false beliefs turns out maximally predictable and desirable for me anyway. Likewise, every decision I make based on "true" beliefs yields unpredictable and undesirable results. Is it really meaningful to say that anything I believed was "false?" I don't think so. I think it's best to calibrate our beliefs to the one thing we can actually be sure of, and that's our direct sensory experience. Even if our experience is not an accurate representation of reality, whatever happens inside our existential bubble is an objective fact. This is the only way I know of that an epistemology can even come close to bridging the gap between objective reality and subjective experience; no matter what's ultimately causing our subjective experience, the results we observe are objective.

This is deeply flawed reasoning. Do you know any neurology? We do not perceive anything, but construct a simulacrum in our minds of our perceptions. This is pruned and secondarily controlled from within our nervous system. This is why not all sensation is perceived as pain or why sometimes something obviously painful, is not perceived at all. Or why with psychological effects, such as inattentional blindness, even obvious stimuli is categorical ignored by our sensorium. No observation is objective, nor can be, as long as it is perceived via our senses. Schizophrenics perceive a reality fully in accord with their senses, that happens to not be in accord with intersubjective experience.

Further, even correctly predicting things are nonsense. Have you heard of Galenic Physiology? It was believed for a 1000 years and correctly explains arterial wave form much better than our current beliefs on blood circulation. It even predicted treatments, that work, for certain diseases, like Haemosiderosis. It is patently wrong today though, but its predictive value remains.
Likewise Science used Newtonian mechanics to make predictions, which was ultimately wrong. Further, Quantum physics breaks down on the large scale and Relativity on the minuscule, hence the need for a Unified theory of everything. Fundamentally, we know our current theories used to make predictions can't be right and will need to be re-evaluated at some point. Positive predictive value is a weak criterion, as at some point most systems can do so. The Romans built aquaducts that worked for a thousand years, off incorrect ideas of flow and pressure. As an exclusionary Epistemology, it is very poor.

I'm just seeing bare assertions here. You say the religious paradigm is stepwise, let's see the steps. I don't deny that religious men have had very good ideas or that religion has paved the way for some very important philosophical ideas. I'm just not seeing the value in a religion itself that doesn't make a difference whether it's true or not. It's like simulation hypothesis or Last Thursdayism. There's nothing you can really do with that information. I don't mind that you hold this belief, but I find it pretty silly to insist that it's true.

What do you mean 'show the steps'? Read any book of theology and you will see systematic logical reasoning from axiomatic belief. A good example is Aquinas' Summa Theologia.
I can ask you the same weird broad question for the Sciences, as Baconian systems of New Philosophy are really not applicable anymore in Evolutionary Biology or any system that starts to use concepts of group selection or Prisoner's Dilemma-type concepts. I don't really understand what your objection is?

Anyway, Religion matters if true and doesn't, if not true. Whether something is true or not, matters nothing at all if Atheism is true, even the concept "Atheism is true" wouldn't matter. All that would matter would be the ascribed value given it, which has no value beyond what is ascribed to it. It has no intrinsic worth as it were, for even if useful, there is no teleological endpoint, beyond indefensible axiomatic statements like 'Life is better than non-life' or 'propagating the species' or Dialectic or Ideologies. All value remains ascribed and thus need to be willed so. Thus, religious value willed so is equally valid to all other ideas if false, and if true, the only real value, as it were. Sort of Paschal's wager.

I don't find the bedrock of direct sensory experience (or empiricism) to be at all arbitrary. I do agree it can't confirm materialism, but that's why I'm not exactly a materialist. I'll say that if my sensory perceptions accurately reflect reality, materialism is almost certainly true, but there's no way to actually confirm that. I'm a pragmatist, not an omniscient being.

As I said, this is seriously flawed. I made a thread about it a while ago, that deteriorated a bit. There is no way beyond either solipsism or incoherence, without creating a metaphysical superstructure outside such crass materialism.

Reality as Construct

Yeah, the problem with that is it's just empiricism with an extra step. Instead of taking your experience at face value, you take the existence of God on faith and then go on to take your experience at face value and claim to be more justified in doing so because you just assumed you were, axiomatically. In the end, you're taking the same things for granted that an empiricist is, but you're also taking God's existence for granted on top of that. Again, religion is less parsimonious here.


As I've stated above, your supposed advantage in religion is nothing but a failure to exercise parsimony. It contributes nothing to a predictive model of reality and takes a synthetic proposition axiomatically, making it useless and arbitrary.

Well no, the religious person would view it quite differently. If we start from an extreme point of scepticism, the religious person only makes one assumption: God, a ground of Being, exists. We may have to add a few points there, but broadly one concept. From that, the rest of our assumptions follow as consequences.

All of those assumptions; of a repeatable, ordered, perceptible world; needs to be made as individual assumptions, unsupported, by the Atheist. You should remember that William of Occam was a Franciscan monk and his ideas of heuristically using parsimony, was originally used in defense of religious ideas in this manner. The Scholastics even argued the statement 'God does not exist' to be illogical, where God was seen as the ground of Being itself. To my mind, an Atheistic model contributes nothing to our understanding of reality, as it precludes our ability to render anything valid at all, not to mention its lack of veridicality. It greatly increases statements that have to be taken at face value, for it cannot ground them on a singular concept. So I respectfully disagree, unless you can give a more succinct reason why order exists, perception may be trustworthy, intersubjectivity is valid, repeatable situations under the same factors would infinitely yield similar results, etc. than the ordered Cosmos of traditional Western culture - which is grounded on the conception of God as sustainer thereof. You have to import quite a lot of Metaphysics for your view and assume quite a lot. Materialism only works by surreptiously stirring in the intellectual heritage of Christendom and Greek Philosophy, and hoping it was spiced enough that no one notices it is there.

 

[ToddNotTodd]

Sorry to interrupt, I was just wondering if we had located the hope in Atheism yet.

No. Have we discovered what the color yellow tastes like yet?

 

[bhsmte]

No. Have we discovered what the color yellow tastes like yet?

I always get a kick, when some Christians need to claim those who disagree with their religion, can have no hope or meaning in their life. Laughable and quite the crude defense mechanism.

 

[2PhiloVoid]

No. Have we discovered what the color yellow tastes like yet?

Yep. Something like this. Mmm, mmm!

 

[Silmarien]

Surely you're aware of our nation hasn't attempted to stop every genocide from occurring, and yet you remain a part of our nation. Does that mean you lack principles? Or does this argument just make you a hypocrite?

Why would it? I would claim that our country has engaged in hypocrisy and committed a moral evil every time it fails to intervene in a genocide. I can and do disapprove quite strongly of certain things that this country has and has not done. Yes, it's a moral failing on my part as well to not protest and do everything in my power to change the status quo, and I make no excuses for that.

If I thought convictions about genocide were something that we only needed to take into consideration when it was convenient to do so, then yes, I would lack principles. I have more respect for people who stand by values I disagree with than those who betray values I share.

See above. It's the same poor argument as your genocide one. I've never claimed that morality was the sole indicator of behavior, that would be stupid.

I see. Your disapproval of child molestation really only does go so far, then.

"I believe genocide is morally wrong."

Did you see that? I just argued that genocide is morally wrong even though it's only my subjective opinion lol.

No, you didn't. You asserted that you believe that genocide is morally wrong. There is no argument there. Just an assertion regarding your subjective feelings towards genocide.

This is the funny thing about moral relativism. You feel that things are right and wrong but you refuse to give any justification for those feelings. In fact, you deny that any such justification could exist at all. Morality becomes a matter of irrational emotion, positions to be held or dismissed for no logical reason whatsoever.

If we're talking about the utility of something, it's objective. If you're asking about the morality of it, it's subjective.

If you tried to use an anvil as a flotation device, you are objectively using it wrong. If you're asking if it's objectively morally good or bad to use an anvil as a flotation device...you're talking utter nonsense.

The exact same logic applies to your school statements.

No, it really doesn't. By the laws of physics, an anvil would be unable to float. This is a necessary scientific conclusion and an objective fact about the physical world.

How is it an objective fact of reality that schools are places where correct information is transmitted?

If that renders your life meaningless, I feel sorry for you.

Eh, I would say the sentiment was mutual, but it's really not. Moral nihilism is a position I actually respect, but this sort of relativism where we only hold values when it's convenient to do so I find utterly despicable, so there's really no point in arguing about it further. I think we're finished here, unless you want to continue talking about the objective value of education.

 

[KCfromNC]

This doesn't quite make sense. If there is ALWAYS a disconnect between reality and ourselves, then how does implementing a pragmatic measure overcome and ensure that you actually "get some truth" in the process? And if you do get some "truth" in the pragmatic process, then what kind of truth is it?

The kind of truth that allows us to cures diseases, puts people on the moon, and create vast interconnected networks of computers on which people can communicate their skepticism about the effectiveness of pragmatic approaches towards knowledge.

Is it truth that accurately engages you with reality, or does it only provide you partial access to reality?

Is there any way to know the difference? If not, who cares?

How do you know that your pragmatic tests actually take you to a point where you are indeed dealing with reality as it is and not just as you think it is?

What do you mean by "know" and "reality as it is", and how do you know your definitions accurately let us know reality as it is?

We can all play these word games. They continue to lead nowhere. Might as well ask how you know you're not a brain in a vat? You can't, but most people move beyond that pretty quickly.

 

[2PhiloVoid]

The kind of truth that allows us to cures diseases, puts people on the moon, and create vast interconnected networks of computers on which people can communicate their skepticism about the effectiveness of pragmatic approaches towards knowledge.



Is there any way to know the difference? If not, who cares?



What do you mean by "know" and "reality as it is", and how do you know your definitions accurately let us know reality as it is?

We can all play these word games. They continue to lead nowhere. Might as well ask how you know you're not a brain in a vat? You can't, but most people move beyond that pretty quickly.

Actually, there are indicators that we are not "brains in a vat," both Descartes and Hilary Putnam have already addressed these basic indicators. Duh?

Now. While I'm at it, I'm going to posit that there is another side to the Moon. The Dark Side. So, if you don't mind, I'd like to propose that the material covering the surface of the Moon on the Dark Side is very similar in structure, even if not so in its blanchness of color, to the Light side. Do you have any pragmatic way we can find out what the Dark Lunarscape looks like at the moment? Because, I don't know that it is the same since I've never seen it with my own eyes, and at the moment, I don't seem to be able to do much in the way of any empirical study of the Dark side. But, I do believe it exists and is very much like the Light side.

 

[Silmarien]

There you go again, pretending to be able to speak for any and all atheists.

Instead, your actual point is that YOU can't imagine what to say from an atheistic perspective.

No, I'm saying that there is nothing you can say to me. I am the one in this scenario who believes that life in a godless universe is ultimately meaningless and not worth living. You need to be able to convince me that this is not the case for there to be anything that can be said here from an atheistic perspective.

It's an impossible task, of course. Once a person actually hits nihilism, there is nothing you can say.

If she isn't speaking as if she speaks for all atheists, then she should not be using general wordings like "from an atheist perspective, such and such is the case".

Also, when atheists then respond to her and tell her that that is not how they themselves look at it, she shouldn't be trying to argue with that either. And instead just accept it.

An atheistic perspective is the perspective of reality in which atheism is true, not the specific viewpoint of any particular atheist. I'm not trying to identify with you at all--my concern is what it would actually mean to live in a godless universe, not how atheists view things. You don't have a monopoly on being able to conceptualize reality without the existence of God.

All good questions - and ones science answers using the sensory perception of scientific investigators.

You don't actually know anything about modern science, do you? High level physics is about using mathematical equations as models of physical phenomena instead of relying upon imperfect sensory perception. Nobody has ever seen a quark.

This seems to bother people railing against materialism way more than the people being railed against. Could be that results matter more than arbitrary labels in some systems, while in others it is much more important to put things into tidy boxes rather than worrying about learning how reality actually works.

No, that is not the case at all. Materialists are absolutely obsessed with labels too, though they can't always decide between "materialism" and "physicalism." Eliminative materialism, reductive materialism, emergent materialism, non-reductive physicalism, and so forth and so on. This is just the way the field works.

 

[KCfromNC]

Actually, there are indicators that we are not "brains in a vat," both Descartes and Hilary Putnam have already addressed these basic indicators. Duh?

"it remains far from clear how exactly Putnam’s argument should be taken and what it actually proves"

https://www.iep.utm.edu/brainvat/

Par for the course - sounds like a disclaimer which should be attached to every philosophy publication. Luckily we've developed systems which are better at actually answering questions.

While I'm at it, I'm going to posit that there is another side to the Moon. The Dark Side. So, if you don't mind, I'd like to propose that the material covering the surface of the Moon on the Dark Side is very similar in structure, even if not so in its blanchness of color, to the Light side. Do you have any pragmatic way we can find out what the Dark Lunarscape looks like at the moment?

Yep - Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter

Because, I don't know that it is the same since I've never seen it with my own eyes, and at the moment, I don't seem to be able to do much in the way of any empirical study of the Dark side.

Here you go : Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter Camera (LROC) - Targeting

 

[KCfromNC]

You don't actually know anything about modern science, do you?

How many upper-level physics courses have you taken?

High level physics is about using mathematical equations as models of physical phenomena instead of relying upon imperfect sensory perception.

Reality would like a word with you, e.g. : The Large Hadron Collider | CERN. Sure, the result is better models but that's a whole lot of observational equipment for a field which relies on math rather than observation.

No, that is not the case at all. Materialists are absolutely obsessed with labels too, though they can't always decide between "materialism" and "physicalism." Eliminative materialism, reductive materialism, emergent materialism, non-reductive physicalism, and so forth and so on. This is just the way the field works.

Sounds like philosophers at "work", busy trying to slap labels on stuff other philosophers dream up.

 

[apogee]

Sounds like philosophers at "work", busy trying to slap labels on stuff other philosophers dream up.

Are you including natural philosophers in this statement?

 

[KCfromNC]

Are you including natural philosophers in this statement?

Are there any still alive? I thought that field basically died out centuries ago as science matured and left philosophy behind.