Atheism is delusional?
I would normally consider myself an atheist, however recently I’ve wondered whether some sort of theistic claims are actually reasonable.
One of the ways I and most atheists make sense of the world is with science. We believe that we are just biological animals or just chemicals grouped together through evolution. However, I think that this might be a scientific and logical fallacy. What I will present has been discussed before, but I want to see how others react.
If we are just loads of chemicals grouped together through a random procces, then everything we experience may well be wrong. How do we know that our logical thoughts would actually show any truth in this universe? The answer, if we are just a bunch of chemicals, is that we can’t. Using this logic, science is just an illusion, so is logic. However, we have used science and logic to come to these conclusions, which becomes a paradox.
If you say ‘science and logic are illusions’ then you’ve come to that conclusion using logic (and likely science as well) which is absurd!
I feel the only way to escape this paradox is to say that we are designed by some higher truth in the universe.
This goes against my instincts, but from a philosophical standpoint, science and logic are kind of dependent on this to be true.
Perhaps I have committed some kind of logical fallacy here or have assumed something. Of course, this theory doesn’t completely point to God, but it’s still intriguing.
One of the ways I and most atheists make sense of the world is with science. We believe that we are just biological animals or just chemicals grouped together through evolution. However, I think that this might be a scientific and logical fallacy. What I will present has been discussed before, but I want to see how others react.
If we are just loads of chemicals grouped together through a random procces, then everything we experience may well be wrong. How do we know that our logical thoughts would actually show any truth in this universe? The answer, if we are just a bunch of chemicals, is that we can’t. Using this logic, science is just an illusion, so is logic. However, we have used science and logic to come to these conclusions, which becomes a paradox.
If you say ‘science and logic are illusions’ then you’ve come to that conclusion using logic (and likely science as well) which is absurd!
I feel the only way to escape this paradox is to say that we are designed by some higher truth in the universe.
This goes against my instincts, but from a philosophical standpoint, science and logic are kind of dependent on this to be true.
Perhaps I have committed some kind of logical fallacy here or have assumed something. Of course, this theory doesn’t completely point to God, but it’s still intriguing.
Comments (164)
I get your point. I am an atheist too. But I guess you go to scientific to put arguments why God literally does not exist. Yes, as you said, science is always a good statement/proof against secularism. You put a good example, the evolution theory.
Nevertheless, there are plenty of things in our life that don't need depend on the science but it is also important in belief: law, ethics, democracy, moral, etc... These are abstract and complex concepts and I do not think they depend on "God" or something higher in Cosmos.
For example: respect each other in society is a good example of coliving. If I hurt, robb, or even kill you I get punished by a court (the justice representation in the order) but me as a atheist I will not say "God will punish you" because I do not believe it.
This also depends of free will. Are we truly free to take our own decisions in the Cosmos? Is something observing us out there?
Yes every human it himself and it's consequences. There is not true predetermined context. Also, I do not believe in abstract term as "Haven" and "hell". Those are even metaphors. Probably you can even think your life is a "hell" when you do not know what a hell is.
That's not at all obvious.
Quoting Franz Liszt
You can't conclude anything from a paradox. As you yourself just acknowledged, you have undermined your own reasoning. Any further conclusion that you make on the basis of invalid reasoning will be invalid.
Quoting Franz Liszt
You want to say that science and logic depend on the reliability of our cognitive abilities. I would object that you implicitly assume said reliability whenever you embark on any cognitive task, such as putting together this argument. You can't withhold this assumption without undermining your argument.
But let's grant your requirement for the sake of an argument. Why is supernatural design the only answer to this requirement? If you are a product of design, it is still an open question whether you were designed with reliable cognitive abilities or not. So you have to assume that you are a product of design, and that you were designed for reliable cognitive abilities. But as long as you are helping yourself to assumptions, wouldn't it be more parsimonious to assume just that our cognitive abilities are reliable?
Abiogenesis, the creation of living organisms from non-living matter, as it is currently understood does not involve chemicals grouped together through a random process. This is currently being discussed in another thread on this forum:
https://thephilosophyforum.com/discussion/10328/the-origin-of-the-first-living-cell-with-or-without-evolution/p1
Quoting Franz Liszt
Our current understanding is that all living organisms on earth evolved out of primitive single-celled organisms through the action of natural selection and other mechanisms. One way of looking at this is that everything about us has evolved to keep us alive in this world until we can reproduce. That includes our central nervous system and our mental processes. Our minds were built specifically to allow us to navigate through the reality we find ourselves in.
I can relate. I too was indoctrinated into a theistic worldview by my back-to-the-bible fundamentalist religion. But, upon reaching the age of reason, I began to ask embarrassing questions. Since no satisfactory answers were forthcoming, I eventually rejected scriptural Theism. But I also asked embarrassing questions about the Materialistic model offered by modern science. So, for a while, I became an undecided, yet still searching Agnostic. Apparently Atheists simply abandoned the search for any "higher truth" (than Science) long ago. The "delusion" of Atheism is that it has found a plausible answer to the "hard" questions of "God, the Universe, and Everything".
Ironically and paradoxically, modern Science has never reached the final truth on anything. It's always evolving into newer Theories of Everything to replace the old TOE. For example, the quest for a fundamental "atom" of reality, has led scientists down the yellow brick road to a magic world in the clouds, made of amorphous "fields" of mathematical probabilities. Like the "elusive butterfly of love", the higher truths remain just beyond our grasp.
Nevertheless, in my old age, I am comfortable with my own personal philosophical worldview, that I call Enformationism. I won't go into the technical details here, but the relevant point is that it's neither Theistic nor Atheistic, but Deistic. It's based on the philosophical axiom that a First Cause (your higher truth?) is logically necessary to explain the subsequent series of causes & effects since the hypothetical Big Bang beginning. But, it provides no thus-saith-the-lord assurances to assuage the doubts raised by our limited understanding of how & why the world exists and works as it does, in a progressive & orderly fashion. So, Science will continue to pursue mundane truths, while Philosophy fecklessly attempts to net the "higher truths", fluttering just out of reach. How do your instincts feel about that kind of open-ended paradigm of contingent truth? :cool:
God, the Universe, and Everything Else
https://youtu.be/-IbIzCwb1xQ
“The Ultimate Answer to Life, The Universe and Everything is...42!”
? Douglas Adams, The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy
Introduction to Enformationism
http://bothandblog6.enformationism.info/page80.html
I think so, also. At issue is the nature of valid reasoning. This is not something that evolutionary theory deals with, let alone explains. Nor is it something found in the theories of physics and chemistry.
What happened, historically, is that it is presumed that the scientific account superseded the previous religious and philosophical accounts, which were interwoven. Plainly the Biblical accounts are religious mythology, and whatever truth they convey is symbolic. But the broader Christian philosophy contains a great deal more than just religious mythology, as it incorporated the best traditions of philosophy from the ancient world. This was already a highly sophisticated and insightful tradition, and that particular baby was arguably thrown out with the bathwater of Biblical literalism.
But due to the cultural dynamics, it seems necessary to make a choice between two apparently irreconcilable visions - the religious, or the scientific. You're either a sensible, scientific person, or a superstitious religious person. That is the way popular culture depicts it.
(There were and are also schools of thought that tried to accomodate both, like Bergson and Tielhard du Chardin although they have very little visibility in current culture. Theistic evolution is a reasonable attitude, in my view, although not to be confused with 'intelligent design'.)
In any case, the seat of the paradox you're sensing is expressed in a form called 'the argument from reason'. From the Wiki entry on same, a snippet from C S Lewis who advocated this argument:
The argument is that the laws of rational inference cannot be reduced to or explained in terms of material or physical interactions, because they belong to a different level.
So, it's a question of the relationship of logical necessity and physical causation. I think the argument is saying that if everything is determined by physical causation - which is what physicalism presumes - then logical necessity has no real warrant. Furthermore, I think it's a valid argument, although I don't think it 'proves' the existence of God, as many of its advocates want to argue. But at least it opens the door to the possibility, which is all I think philosophy can do.
Science is a combination of logic and observation. It's all built on assumptions about the value of deduction and inference.
No logic at all is required to doubt those fundamental assumptions, and when we do, we may find ourselves trying to come up with scaffolding to support them.
Placing God as that scaffolding is just another way of saying that don't know what accounts for our confidence.
Yep, and it is a great example of the fallacy from incredulity in action. Which is - "I can't think of any other explanation for the world therefore God. Or Aliens... or...."
Quoting Franz Liszt
If your thinking is so loose then no wonder you are confused. But having said that - I don't know who you are but what you have done here is build a standard Christian apologist argument as per William Lane Craig. This what a cunning apologist might do if he or she were to blunder onto this site.
Why not try this to steel man the effort - atheism is self-refuting because if all we are is matter behaving to random forces, then logic can't make sense because it has no foundation for making meaning. Logical argument falls down if we don't have God and a guarantor for all meaning, goodness and truth.
This is quite literally my entire point. The person who says that we are just a bunch of chemicals is making a claim that leads to a paradox.
Of course you can’t ‘conclude’ anything, but that’s a misleading way to think about it.
In this situation, to make the claim ‘we are just a bunch of chemicals’ leads to a paradox, which we logically wish to avoid. In this case, as the paradox follows modal logic, we just have to invalidate the first claim. So I would say that the only way to avoid the paradox is to say that we are not just a bunch of chemicals.
However the ‘paradox’ I presented brings up a key issue: we need to assume that we are right for our logic to be true.
We will always have to grapple with this, or else that too will lead to a paradox, so we need to avoid it too. I suggested that the best way to avoid it is to just say that we are intelligently designed by (or with) a all truthful [thing?]. However, I might be assuming something, so please suggest what an alternative answer could be.
Thank you for the steel man, however the very last thing you say, I disagree with. I do not think we have to be so quick as to say ‘God’ but I guess it can depend on how you define said ‘God’. What I suggested is that the best (or most rational) conclusion is that we are designed by an all truthful [thing?]. This means that this creator designed evolution, and so in some way shape or form involves in some sort of divine intervention.
I am beginning to think that I took too far a assumption based off of some other responses I have received. If we need our logic to be true, is there another explanation you can think of?
If we don't even know whether or not we can know anything, we nevertheless cannot help but act as though we believed one way or the other (either that we can gain knowledge, or not), by either trying to figure things out, or not. To not try would guarantee that we will not figure things out, so if we want to figure things out if it should be possible, but we don't know whether or not it's possible, the best bet is to try, rather than just to give up out the gate.
But there are two different kinds of "giving up out the gate": one is to assume that knowledge is impossible, but the other is to assume that it is guaranteed. The first is to assume that there are questions that cannot be answered; the latter is to assume that there are answers that must not be questioned.
So if you're starting from a place of such uncertainty that you're not even certain about uncertainty, the practical solution is to start by avoiding the assumptions of either unquestionable answer or unanswerable questions, and try to figure out to the best of your ability what is more or less true, keeping in mind always that any answer might be wrong, but that that doesn't mean that every answer has to be wrong[/i].
Hi. I think the issue here is this questionable portrait of the atheist. I'm an atheist , and I think such a statement is silly. One way to think about a certain type of atheist is as an agnostic who is pretty sure that the gods from all the holy books are figments of the human imagination. This kind of atheist doesn't have to deny something like consciousness or identity or what-have-you, or reduce mind to matter. This atheist doesn't have to have a theory about how it all got here, etc., or of what humans really are if they aren't just a 'bunch of chemicals'. They just don't find the god-stories plausible when taken literally. And they are OK with not having all the answers that a theologian might offer.
I appreciate your politeness. Sorry if implied that you weren't an atheist despite your saying so more than once. I probably read into your ambivalence.
IMO, we tend to hide our ignorance from ourselves in the smoke of language. I like philosophy for trying to make us aware of this strange stuff that comes out of our mouths.
Quoting Franz Liszt
I guess you didn't read anything after this sentence.
The argument, which is very badly put by the OP, is that if you seek to *explain* reason in terms of naturalism or evolutionary development, then this devalues the sovereignty of reason. Reason is sovereign because it is capable of revealing truths, not on account of it being the outcome of physical causation or evolutionary adaptation, which is a near-universal assumption.
Actually the argument you presented is known as a presuppositional argument for God and is used by apologists almost word for word. I just polished it up for you. I don't mind if you are an apologist or an atheist. I just thought it was amusing.
Quoting Franz Liszt
There are so many responses possible, I simply don't have the energy to go through them. A few brief comments are as follows.
Firstly, the idea of God has no explanatory power. When someone says 'God did it' this is exactly the same as saying the Magic Man did it or Aliens did it. Aliens are probably more plausible since thousands of people claim abduction experiences and we know there are other planets. (BTW I do not have reason to believe in aliens).
Incidentally, if someone says - "I can't think of any other explanation other than God did it" - that is a logical fallacy called the fallacy of incredulity. There are lots of things we can't explain, running to the supernatural - whether it be Brahman or Osiris - is lazy and retrograde. When humans couldn't explain diseases (not all that long ago and still the case in some countries) we thought sicknesses were caused by evil magic, witches and demons.
Secondly, the believer in God has to demonstrate that reason or meaning is impossible without a God or Magic Man as a starting premise. This can't be done. It's just a claim made.
The big one is this. You need to establish God exists before it can be a candidate explanation for anything. You can’t just say the only reason logic makes since is because God exits. This is no more meaningful than saying the only reason meaning exists is because the Hindu creator Brahma exists. Or the Flying Spaghetti Monster.
Additionally, there is no explanation of just how God or Brahma might be responsible for the existence of meaning. This unsatisfying argument, like most uses of God has, as I already stated above, no explanatory power. In almost every instance where God is offered as an explanation you could swap God for the word magic and it would serve the same function in any argument.
No, that's not the OP argument, that's just one of your favorite refrains. The OP denies that reason can be explained in terms of naturalism. He says that if naturalism is true, then we can't have confidence in our ability to reason, which in turn undermines all our beliefs, including beliefs about science and logic. Therefore, our ability to reason has to be put into the explanation "by hand" - God's hand.
This is a species of a skeptical argument, articulated among others (though without the non sequitur conclusion) by Darwin himself. A more elaborate version was later put forward by Plantinga (EAAN).
Sorry if I have made a mistake or misinterpreted your comment.
I guess that depends on how you define atheism. To me it's about criticizing blind faith and bad religion.
Ironically Jesus Christ never advocated for blind faith. He told people to believe in him because of his miracles. He also denied being God. When he quoted the bible he used Jewish scriptures and not the book we have now. And lastly he never described the church as we have in its current form.
In my town there is a man with brain damage. He now believes he is a motorcycle. He goes around town on his bicycle making motorcycle noises. Every freakin' day. What you believe is true, at least for you.
In Daoism we believe that the ultimate truth cannot be defined. That is why some people think the Dao De Jing is beautiful poetry and others think it's as nonsensical as the Law of Murphy. I simply don't remember it. :P
Delusion denotes persistent belief that a demonstable falsehood is true.
Atheism (however defined) is not a demonstrable falsehood.
And science, Franz, is defeasible, fallible, approximative, and incomplete; the only "illusion" is scientism which denies science's indispensable gaps & limits. Thus, your thesis (OP) makes no sense.
As for logic being an "illusion" ... :roll:
(Btw, I self-identify as a freethinker, but when pressed I'll often cop to 'anti-theist atheist'.)
Replying to one sentence taken out of context (only to repeat what you already said several times) is pointless and misleading. If you are not interested in a conversation, then don't bother responding.
:clap: :up:
I applaud your overall outlook/approach to reality but if I'm not mistaken, despite the high regard for logic in philosophy, all that's been going on in philosophy since logic came into its own with Aristotle is disproof of belief systems, hypotheses, theories via refutation. I daresay there's not even one philosophical position that has been proved conclusively. In other words, logic seems to function more like a weapon designed for assault and is rather ineffective as defensive armor; very few ideas have ever run the gauntlet of logic and lived to tell the tale so to speak. This is not logic's fault of course for under the right circumstances, it can furnish irrefutable proofs but these are few and far between and that only if one is charitable enough to relax the rules.
Perhaps what I want to say is that logic is very much the MVP but its teammates are hopeless and a chain is only as strong as its weakest link. Having logic on our side since antiquity has made no difference to humanity's collection of truths but it's saving grace has been/is/will be its wondrous ability to, in a manner of speaking, apprehend, put on trial, execute and bury for good falsehoods assuming people are in their senses which may not always be the case.
You fail to demonstrate a couple of key things and address none of my points. Until you can demonstrate god or that the world can't have been the product of natural processes, you can't really proceed. It sounds more like you are making an assumption based on the fallacy from incredulity - that it can't possibly be any other way than you think.
Quoting Franz Liszt
Demonstrate how you come to this conclusion. For Aliens how can you demonstrate that all of life and with it all illusions of causality and meaning as we know it are not just the product of an advanced laboratory?
To me this is a strange thought. Why should our logic be perfectly correct? Humans just reason in a certain way, and we can examine the way we reason and seemingly do it more carefully. Why be attached to perfect certainty, perfect logic in the first place? Perhaps these concepts (taken as absolutes) are just residues of monotheism in the first place. The big bearded father in the sky fades away like the Cheshire Cat, and his last residue is metaphysics (the a priori, Forms, etc.)
IMO, studying philosophy (which involves some emotional work, no doubt) leads (some at least) to make peace with a fuzzier view of the world. It's annoying when people mention Wittgenstein, but I'll do it anyway and say that studyingthat kind of language-demystifying philosophy really does dissolve some knots and confusions. It's not at all that certain questions are answered but rather their sloppiness and non-centrality is made visible.
For instance, if you are only hypothesizing about some abstract god who isn't the dude in the bible that gives us all eternal life, then what does it matter? It would clarify things for me and maybe for you to figure out whether this is trivial metaphysics or a genuine religious crisis. Is this issue important because you fear hellfire? Or do you have the philosophical itch for Certainty and a Reason? (I have been interested in mind-matter blah-blah off and on, but in the end it just seems dead to me...with no practical-emotional relevance, a form of chess but without the clarity of its rules.)
It's not strange, it is a venerable academic argument. He may not know it but he is referring to the Logical Absolutes (I think Aristotle first articulated these) which it is argued are true, above and beyond human minds.
These are the laws of identity, non-contradiction and excluded middle which allow us to have reason, maths, science. They are necessary presuppositions to have any kind of communication or thought.
There is a vast scholarship that addresses this notion and these axioms are used by some Christians and Islamic apologists to show that atheism is delusional (hence the title from the OP) because to them it is clear that only the mind of God can make these laws true. Kant expresses similar ideas in his Transcendental Argument, ripped off by many to make the point that God is a necessary precondition for our world to be intelligible.
In other words, we have the presuppositions of the laws of logic (which we all need to make) but it is said we need a 4th presupposition - that a God exists - for the first three to work.
My response above is that things that do not exist cannot be the cause of other things. If you want to show that God is the cause of something (logical absolutes or creation) you need to demonstrate that God is real. I doubt it can ever be done - a Nobel and Templeton prize, a fortune and everlasting fame awaits anyone who can do this.
So if God explains logic or meaning, you need to demonstrate 2 things. 1 that God exists and 2 how exactly God is responsible for them.
How do we know that meaning or logic are not a product of the natural universe? This would also need to be demonstrated.
I'm aware of those, and if that's he meant then it's not such a strange thought, though I agree it's not obvious to get from these to some god.
Still, I'm not fond of the 'law' metaphor. I view it more empirically and grammatical. Every thing is identical with itself because that's how 'identical' is used. I don't see any deeper meaning. We learnt he language of the tribe. We can use it to get things done, but the meaning is not 'in us' or present to some inner eye, even if these metaphors have been useful.
It's a bit of a digression, but I'd generalize this point by suggesting that nothing is immediate. There is no corner stone, no deep structure that bears all of the weight and has independent significance (semantic holism, basically, is where I'm coming from...it's all subject to the Monet-effect and only makes sense at a distance, against a background.)
And then, indeed, atheism would be delusional.
Hence, the existence of atheists who are not otherwise obviously delusional mitigates against the existence of god...
I don't like it because it sets up the idea that if there are laws there must be a lawmaker. I prefer the term logical axioms. But as far as we can tell, they are absolute. You cannot have any discourse without them. As soon as you argue against them you are using them to do this.
Problem is you are choosing your version of 'overwhelmingly obvious'. The believer sees God in all things. Feels God inside them. Says that God deliberately remains elusive for X reasons. Hence the problem. The fact that you and I require an actual God to show up and say, 'Here I am kids, I can clear this up in a second' has no impact on many arguments, like the notion of divine hiddenness. Or Deism wherein God created the world and then went away.
For me a hidden God is functionally exactly the same as no God. There would still be no good reason to believe.
I don't for a moment think you are an atheist. You are making a theist case, and you disguise yourself as an atheist.
Many atheists use the same stupid and deplorable, but all-too-obvious and transparent tactic to denounce religion, and many theists employ the same method to denounce atheism.
What's the point? You remind me of a joke that floated around in the old country:
"Who is the absolute reactionary? The person who joins the Communist Party, and immediately upon acceptance for membership commits suicide, only in order to have one less communist party member."
Your pretense of saying "I am an atheist, but I recognize that atheism is a completely screwed up and false belief system" does not cut the mustard for me.
Nice joke. :up:
Meaning and logic are human's tools to explain things. In and by themselves they don't exist. If there were no human minds, logic would not exist, nor would meaning. Meaning, in and by itself, is nothing but a process or else part of the process or else else a convention to recreate reality as models of reality in the humans' minds.
This may be a proof of god not being the creator of logic and meaning. If humans don't exist, for instance via extinction of the species, and logic doesn't exist as a consequence, then it's not a creation of god, since god could maintain his one creation even if another of god's creation perishes.
This is good for the atheists as a supportive documentation, but to theists it is not an excluding factor. That is the problem for both sides. No exclusive proof can be built using logic, either way. All ontological arguments include at least one fallacious reasoning, and all anti-religious propaganda miss the point of something being possible even if no evidence exists.
It is, on the other hand, ridiculously easy to falsify the possible existence of the biblical god. Unfortunately the Christian god is not the only god that is an only god in existence by believers.
There is another hurdle for the theists: what is god's nature, and what attributes does it have? Nothing can be hung on him (no pun intended) that is not purely belief, or unsupported superstition. Nobody knows anything about the real god, if one exists, so how can some pretend to assume god is this way or the other way. This applies to all scriptures: fiction. Not substantiated, and therefore they contain less believability by empirical, speculative or a priori considerations, than conspiracy theories.
So what? The point - they would argue - is that logic was created by God for humans. Of course it has no application for a rock. But neither has morality. And can you prove the axioms don't exist in heaven in some neo-Platonist realm? I have seen philosophers really struggle to manage this.
:lol:
I think this is a common view but not sure it has much impact on the debate. There are many people who believe they have access to knowledge about God and see evidence of God's works. All you are saying is you disagree. And there are many others who say God is meant to be a mystery. Read some sophisticated theology (if you can bear it) the debate is far more complex and nuanced.
:up:
Quoting TheMadFool
Agreed. But that's because they (when conceptually coherent and self-consistent) are noncognitive proposals (e.g. criteria, methods, aporia, speculative counterfactuals (i.e. gedankenexperiments), critiques, ...) and not propositions: that is, they 'suppose Y is true instead of X, then ...' rather than 'It is true that X is the case, therefore ... Z'. "Philosophical positions" express conceptual, or reflective, stances (for the sake of argument aka "ideas" rather than as dogmatic commitments aka "beliefs") with regard to the real but not determinations of what is or is not the case, which consist of truth-claims in need of truth-makers like the sciences or history.
But this expression itself presupposes logical truth – grammatical sense – in order to be intelligible either as a proposal or proposition, which therefore renders what you say here incoherent, Fool. After all, logic is just grammar in the most general sense (TLP, Witty). Thus, if, as the OP contends, "logic is an illusion" then ... :roll:
E.g. explain the real world, effacious, applicability of mathematics (Wigner) or information theory or universal turing machines 'without logic'.
Quoting god must be atheist
:clap: :fire:
Now, here I disagree. They may see it that way; but that's not enough to claim that their way of seeing it is pervasive and necessarily true. If we put the onus on the negative truth, it can't be done; and it can't be done if we put the onus on the positive truth either (empirically; empirical evidence is missing).
Your argument goes like this: "1. a person who believes in god 2. claims that he understands god and has direct evidence of god's existence in his mind." This is circular reasoning in one short step. Back to square one, without even ever having left it.
Quoting Tom Storm
I am saying just a tad little more. I am disagreeing for a reason: no empirical or a priori evidence is extant. Those who say they have direct line to god or direct knowledge, are incapable to convey this to be other than delusion or imagination or a straight lie. That must amount to something. If one can do it, all should be able to do it. But all are not able to do it.
You may also counter, "if one can't do it, nobody should be able to do it." And that leads back to my claim: no positive, no negative proof exists, and it is a matter of belief. However, to get at the ATTRIBUTES then mere belief in existence is not enough. Some evidence is required outside of faith. Those who claim the evidence is extant to them, base it on faith. So that's dismissable. Evidence in the mind alone is not accountable evidence.
IMO, these laws are redundant and/or tautological and/or 'grammatical' in some Wittgensteinian sense. (Not saying they are wrong or false, though.) The laws of identity and contradiction are almost definitions of 'identity' and 'contradiction.' I suspect that these 'laws' are about as useful as the luminiferous ether. There are just ways that we must use words if we want to be intelligible. Still, someone can say I'm mad and I'm not mad. Or this cigar is not a cigar. In the right context, it could be witty, it could be appropriate. Think of a background of expectation and a foreground of surprise.
Early or late Wittgenstein?
You may be right. I would like to hear a solid academic account of this. We know the axioms are tautologies. They are also called that by some.
Do you really think so? Such an approach would ultimately be the worst propaganda for theism.
Time will tell (please be telling the truth, @Franz Liszt), but I think this is a case of the metaphysical heebie-jeebies.
I have later Wittgenstein in mind, but I'm pointing at a cloud of thinking on the issue of meaning, so I'm using Wittgenstein as a symbol for this cloud and what I've made of it. Lee Braver's Groundless Grounds is the kind of book/thinking I have in mind.
So you admit it then? Philosophy hasn't proven anything at all and it's simply an activity that involves the exploration of possible realities i.e. it's nature approaches that of math, assuming certain axioms and seeing what they lead to. The purpose of logic in all this is both to construct good arguments based on whatever axioms philosophers begin with and to come up with refutations and counterarguments for such. It's hard to deny that logic has been more effective in the latter role than in the former, more successful in bringing down than propping up philosophical "ideas." This suggests a rather uncomfortable truth viz. philosophy is synonymous with bad ideas; after all, not a single philosophical claim/idea/theory/hypothesis has survived an encounter with logic. I suppose we could say that the whole of philosophy is simply a tribute to logic for only logic emerges unscathed from the brawl between proponents of ideas and their adversaries.
Quoting 180 Proof
I didn't say that there are no truths which would've made my statement self-refuting and thus incoherent. What I did say though was that philosophy hasn't made any contribution to our stockpile of truths. If we could take a before philosophy and after philosophy picture of our knowledge bank, it would be impossible to tell the difference. In short, philosophy hasn't added to what we know. To be fair though philosophy has proven itself as the one powerful tool in humanity's toolkit for fixing what are essentially delusions (believing falsehoods).
It's quite possible that I'm under some kind of illusion but can you name something philosophy has proved?
Perhaps I've misread you again but then that would mean philosophy is in the business of disproving things. If that's what you mean, I'm in full agreement.
Please don't talk about the sciences. As Islamic scholar Hamza Tzortzis said in a debate with scientist Lawrence Krauss, science is inductive and not deductive and so can't/doesn't prove anything at all. I can go easy on those who still feel science is capable of proving things and concede that it does but only under the condition that the "proofs" are contingent, liable to be overturned/modified in light of new evidence.
:roll:
You've misread what I wrote. More plainly then: claiming that philosophy hasn't proven anything is like claiming an unmarried man still beats his wife – my point is that philosophy, as I understand it, isn't in the "proving" business, Fool, any more than is music or religion. It's nonsense to blame P for what P does not endeavor to do. Anyway, when philosophy seeks to "prove" something it calves-off into one of the sciences, the production of which alone has made philosophy indispensable to culture and civilization.
I was unclear - I agree with you. My point was that believers keep making this old argument from personal experience . The problem with it is we may know it is BS, but how do we help them understand it is?
I once shook up a Baptist fundamentalist by saying - "Everything you've told me, every single point I have heard exactly the same from a Muslim in defence of Allah and the idea that Jesus is not divine but a human. How can anyone from outside tell the difference between your personal experience of truth and the Muslims?' There was a long silence and a frown, followed by, "I guess you can't.'
I do believe you. I was just being playful. Sorry I wasn't more careful. I did say (teasingly) that I thought you had the metaphysical heebie-jeebies, and that's because you mentioned Enformationism, and I don't like that kind of thing and couldn't resist a joke. But I did hear the siren song of metaphysics once, so I understand, even if I have stopped my ears since then.
The first cause is more or less the biggest argument for theism. As well as this, the leibnizian cosmological argument is generally their need for a necessary being. However, what if we suggest that the universe was necessary? The instant reaction is to say: But we know it began to exist!
This does not mean that it is not necessary. We can define the universe as something, and although I am cautious that science does change from time to time, it’s not necessarily impossible that something can come from nothing.
If something can come from nothing, it was always possible when there was nothing, for something to happen. Given that, outside the universe (theoretically there is no outside but I imagine you understand what I mean) there was all the time (even though it had no time, there is in a theoretical sense possibility to happen) so it had to happen.
1. Something can come from nothing (not completely proven, but nearly there)
2. In the nothing, it was always possible for something to appear
3. Something would always eventually happen (at the same time)
I am having difficulty expressing why I believe the third premise to be true. I have other arguments for atheism, but I am not going to waste my time proving I am an atheist like it’s the Middle Ages trying to work out if I am a witch.
I'm with you there, but I won't entertain all propositions with the same seriousness. I don't think anyone can. I don't believe that dead people come back to life. The day may come somehow (presumably through technology) and the very concept of death will change. But in the meantime, I look on reports and hopes of resurrections as implausible to put it mildly. In general I don't believe in miracles and afterlives. That's the main thing: we are alone down here and we all die. If pushed, I'll grant that I could be wrong. I'd even like to be wrong perhaps. [We might, on the other hand, want to give genuine personal death its due, for its kernel is sweet, if you just cross the fiery brook.]
I object to metaphysical theism for more complicated reasons that involve my vision of how language works. I don't want to derail the thread, so I won't go into those.
Don't take it personally. There really are lots of roundabout theists on forums. In itself the theism is no big deal (it's just an 'uncool' position) but the slipperiness can be frustrating.
What then is philosophy? Is it, as I think it is, simply a ritualized homage to logic? Does philosophy merely consist of coming up with clever ways of creating worlds of ideas only so that we may have an opportunity to put to service our much-beloved logic? That seems to be the case and if so philosophers are like the person who invents nails because fae has a hammer and liked nothing better to do than use faer hammer.
Trolls and sometimes misunderstood jokers and occasionally some people on the edge of madness. I remember a guy who was living in the woods and having persecution fantasies. I've followed forums like this for a long time. I love the variety of personalities. It's a massive, uneven book-in-progress.
Good point. And tangentially: if the hidden god did come out of hiding for just me, I would believe myself and at the same time not expect others to believe my account. If we grant that some accounts are false, that humans are subject to delusions, then how is anyone supposed to tell the difference? Low-grade madness and sloppy thinking are the rule, not the exception.
In short, it's fishy that theology has to be so fishy.
I'm very glad you enjoyed that metaphor. As far as trolls go, a certain amount of trollishness is maybe even good, but obviously pure meanness that prevents conversation is worthless. I mention this because sometimes it's been good for me to get my feelings hurt, in the long run. It hurts to let go of this or that idea. It hurts to revealed as sloppy or ignorant or biased, etc. And yet that revelation is valuable. It's like a little piece of the self being chipped off. Personally I think jokes can do some real work in philosophy. IMO, it's not at all like math or chess. It's more like poetry of life & death significance.
Philosophy (and its history) for me means contemplating the variety of ways in which we are unwise (i.e. confused, perplexed, frustrated, oblivious, sleepwalking-through-our-lives aka "foolish") which are studied distinctly as Ontology, Axiology & Epistemology (prioritized by whatever schema (Metaphysics) is deemed most illustrative, or illuminating).
No. Logic is a by-product of philosophy (re: axiology).
:up: :ok: I believe we're on the same page, more or less.
That's our fallacy no. 1. We don't know if it's bs. We have no knowledge of their experience. But it's not revealed to us whether their claimed experience is authentic or not. However, we do have the right to maintain that old adage by the proverbial umpire: "I calls them as I sees them." it is conceivable that god speaks directly to them in a fashion that is convincing enough to take god for god. I don't deny that it's conceivable. I deny, however, their right to demand that we believe their claims.
Quoting Franz Liszt
What do you mean by "reject it". You mean dismiss the argument? No, my main drag was not to dismiss your argument but to question your authenticity.
I admit, you can't do anything to convince me that you are not a theist. I may change my opinion as time goes on. However, you made a few statements OUTSIDE your argument, that an atheist well versed in philosophy would never say, but a theist well versed in philosophy would definitely say. For instance:
Quoting Franz Liszt
We, atheists don't believe that; not all of us, although conceivably some of us would believe that. But to state that ALL of us atheists believe that, is a typical claim of a theist.
Quoting Franz Liszt
What you sincerely seem to claim, and this is not a devils' advocate type of claim, but sincere, that solution to the puzzle is a function of something that is outside the natural realm. If this is not a theist claim, then please put a dagger through my neck two weeks ago.
Quoting Franz Liszt
Whether we are a bunch of chemicals or a different order of movement form, logic and science is not illusionary necessarily (although they can be, if we live solipsism). They can be conceptual, not material, while not being illusionary.
There is an important difference between illusion and conceptual thought. Illusion is the mistaking of one meaning or interpretation of an event for a different one. Conceptual thought is a process in which one builds a mental image of reality and manipulates it.
From this it should be clear that all illusions are conceptual, but not all concepts are illusions.
It is conceivable (but can't be proven) that our perceptions and our interpretations of our perceptions are actually right on. This may not be the case in effect, but it very well may be the case in effect. We don't know which, and we will never know.
However, in your version the claim need the assumption that our concepts are all NECESSARILY false. That is not true. They are possibly false, possibly right on. The problem is, we don't know which. But it still does not give us the right to reject the possibility that our perceptions and their interpretations by us are right on.
:100:
Thanks! I thought/hoped that maybe that line captured a somewhat universal experience.
GMBA - nice work. I would say the same. FL may be an atheist but the trajectory of FL's ideas are word for word apologist-protesting-the-atheist-worldview 101. I find it unlikely anyone could have an atheist worldview with these sorts of classically described reservations.
FL is at best a theist-curious agnostic.
I assume you intended to reply to Gnomon. Enformationism is my attempt to resolve the paradox of Living - Thinking - Loving Matter, without bowing to the authority of any particular scripture or tradition --- amd without hiding my head in the sand. Atheism is the belief system that assumes (without evidence) that the material world (or multiverse) is eternal and un-created. But self-existence (aseity) is a signature property of a Deity. Before astronomers were forced to conclude that the world, suddenly-and-without-warning, began to exist 14 billion years ago, it was logical to conclude that our physical reality was eternal, and possibly self-existent.
Centuries before the BB theory, "atheistic" philosopher Spinoza assumed that the world was eternal, but he called the immaterial "substance" of the world, "God" --- for reasons similar to those you expressed in the OP. And, scientists still have no idea how the property of Consciousness could evolve from an un-conscious origin. So, that's why I propose that Information, not Matter, is the fundamental substance of the real world.
Hence, the hypothetical Originator or Source of our world is presumed to be conscious, at least in potential. If so, then that proto-consciousness may have been encoded into our evolving system as shape-shifting Information, which is the essence of both Matter & Mind. If you don't like the baggage-laden term "God" though, then perhaps "The Prime Programmer" would be more acceptable. :smile:
Aseity : existence derived from itself, having no other source
Physics Is Pointing Inexorably to Mind :
Matter is done away with and only information itself is taken to be ultimately real. This abstract notion, called information realism is a popular philosophical underpinning for digital physics.
___ Bernardo Kastrup : Computer scientist
https://blogs.scientificamerican.com/observations/physics-is-pointing-inexorably-to-mind/
New research indicates the whole universe could be a giant neural network :
[i]The root problem with sussing out a theory of everything – in this case, one that defines the
very nature of the universe itself – is that it usually ends up replacing one proxy-for-god with
another.[/i]
https://thenextweb.com/neural/2021/03/02/new-research-indicates-the-whole-universe-could-be-a-giant-neural-network/
Baruch Spinoza : defines "God" as a singular self-subsistent Substance, with both matter and thought being attributes of such. ... God has infinitely many other attributes which are not present in our world.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spinozism
Enformationism :
A philosophical worldview or belief system grounded on the 20th century discovery that Information, rather than Matter, is the fundamental substance of everything in the universe. It is intended to be the 21st century successor to ancient Materialism. An Update from Bronze Age to Information Age. It's a Theory of Everything that covers, not just matter & energy, but also Life & Mind & Love.
http://blog-glossary.enformationism.info/page8.html
My impression is that theism in general may be attempting to describe something that is real, in an out of date cultural language which can no longer connect with many moderns.
A key problem may be that most theists, like most humans, aren't really that engaged in thinking things through for themselves. They also may not be pursuing their own experience with much energy. And so, like most humans everywhere, they are content to drift along in whatever group consensus they find themselves.
In this environment the old religious stories which have been around for thousands of years take on a mantle of authority, simply due to their age if nothing else. And then modern atheists come along and rebel against the old stories, because they really aren't that well suited to the modern world.
But underneath all this cultural confusion and conflict there may be a germ of truth which is worth considering. It's possible that something along the lines of what we call intelligence may be embedded in the material world much the same way the laws of physics are. As example, bacteria perform data management operations that we would label intelligent if we were doing them.
Agreed. And a plausible method of asking meaningful questions on questions of such enormous scale. Proof please. Never provided.
Another angle is that all sides seem to assume, typically without questioning, that finding an answer would be desirable. So let's just go ahead and kill all the mystery of the universe, eh?
Quoting Foghorn
It's become a commonplace that folk don't think about the deeper stuff any more; they just go with the flow, never pausing to examine their lives.
It must be true; everyone says so.
Or is it that theists need to believe folk are unthinkingly avoiding theism, because the alternative - that they are giving the issue of god due consideration and then rejecting it - is too unpalatable for them?
They're dead when they've been closed by the mods.
Quoting Banno
Generally speaking, folks of all flavors are avoiding thinking about any of this to any serious degree, because that is the nature of most folks. To the degree folks of all flavors do think about it, what typically happens is they travel a little ways down the investigation trail, and then stop and build a fort.
Just what a necromancer would say.
Quoting Foghorn
It may be a cultural thing (Australians tend not to be overtly religious) but when I scratch folk on this issue they generally respond in a considered fashion, rather that reciting dogma. It's usually "I don't really know, so I just get on with stuff"; which is a pretty rational attitude. There alternative minority are those who have accepted a dogma and say anything to defend it.
If our observations of reality are illlusionary as you say then god is just as illusionary, everything is an illusion which is false.
Remember: Truth is a conclusionary answer to a sum of factual knowledge, if you can't find truth/answer your looking for then you need more or re-evaluate knowledge.
It is by this logic that most athiests do not believe in god because there is not enough factual knowledge to support its existence.
Interesting stuff. The idea that the universe as information has always fascinated me on a few fronts.
First is how we should view universal laws, such as the speed of light, or gravitational forces. These appear to be wholly arbitrary, and indeed, it's a question if why they are what they are can ever be solved by physics. Physics is the study of the relationships between physical objects, relationships that can be described as laws. I'm not sure if it will ever have anything to say about why these laws are what they are.
This is relevant to the idea of God because if these laws were set to slightly different parameters, intelligent life, or life at all would be impossible. Tweak the force of gravity a bit and you don't get planets. And indeed, some theories do have these laws bending in the early universe.
Our universe seems to be finite both in size, history, and in divisibility. An infinitely divisible universe also causes all sorts of problems for the generation of material and is relationships with other material.
Thus, we have a universe of finite information, with rules of relationship that allow for the eventual creation of intelligent life.
This seems relevant to both theism and simulation theory. The laws of physics act as firmware, whereas the universe and the relationships of physical objects are code. It's the type of thing you'd expect to see in a simulated universe.
There is also a nice dovetail between these aspects of reality and the image of God as a being that must create something outside itself to define itself and thus exist; something like the theology of Boehme.
Science is an empirical matter. It's something that is not 100% and is open to interpretation (like scripture). Something like triangles have three sides, is a matter of pure reason. This is 100% and is not open to interpretation. Matters of pure reason cannot be meaningfully/semantically refuted.
If you want something 100% or rational with regards to the nature of existence, I recommend the following:
https://thephilosophyforum.com/discussion/11100/god-as-the-true-cogito/p1
The laws & constants of our world do indeed seem to be "arbitrary" to us, because they boil-down to a sequence of numbers that have no meaning for us creatures of the code. I suspect that the agents inside a computer game (TRON, for example) or inside a simulated world ( such as The MATRIX) would not be able to make sense of the digital code that is streaming through their world. (see below) That's because they don't know the Mind of their Programmer -- his numerical language or his intentions for the game.
However, the only reasonable "explanation" for those fundamental ratios so far, is the Anthropic Principle. Atheists reject that notion, not because it's a crazy concept, but because it implies that the Universe, and its occupants, were intended to be here, and not a random accident. Since I have no animosity toward the notion of intentional creation, it sounds like a good guess to me. :smile:
Anthropic principle :
Proponents of the anthropic principle argue that it explains why this universe has the age and the fundamental physical constants necessary to accommodate conscious life. . . .The strong anthropic principle (SAP), as proposed by John D. Barrow and Frank Tipler, states that the universe is in some sense compelled to eventually have conscious and sapient life emerge within it.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anthropic_principle
Quoting Count Timothy von Icarus
I'm more familiar with Hegel than Boeme. But Wikipedia indicates that his notion of deity was basically Judeo-Christian, with some elements of Gnostic Mysticism. Frank Tipler's Omega Point theory also seems to be a modified version of Christian Theology, as viewed through a lens of Quantum spookiness. And I can see his point -- up to a point.
Some posters here jump to the conclusion, that my references to a "Creator" (Enformer) are evidence of either Christian or New Age sympathies. Yet in fact, I constructed my concept of the Creator-as-Programmer primarily from known facts of Astronomy (not Astrology), Cosmology (not Gnosticism), and Quantum Science (not Classical Science). I admit that it does sound New Agey, especially in the image of my previous post. But that was not my intention. So I don't claim to know the mind of G*D, except as demonstrated in the rational organization of the world. And I don't concern myself with Magic or Mysticism. :cool:
“I believe in Spinoza’s God who reveals himself in the harmony of all that exists, __Einstein
THE MATRIX -- RAINING CODE :
Btw, as someone trained in modern physics has repeatedly said:
[quote=Tenzin Gyatso, The 14th Dalai Lama]"If scientific analysis were conclusively to demonstrate certain claims in Buddhism to be false, then we must accept the findings of science and abandon those claims."[/quote]
How about an [s]actual[/s] God who doesn't show up but through a ventriloquist says "Here's my kid" and "I am him or he is I and together we are three" ?
it does say that, it just tries to hide it
I see this distrust in science. People that don't really know God by experience seem to need their storybook to be true; which means they have to attack science.
???
Science can be used to predict as much as it can be used to explain. Religion can only try to explain, it has zero predictive abilities, and in fact only explains anything by appeal to mystery.
Tbf that's true of philosophy :joke: It's all just-so stories; science has the appeal of telling stories about future events in a disprovable way (contrasting with endlessly delayed Armageddons).
If there is any reconciliation to be done between science and religion, it is not by showing that their claims are identical, but that their claims are completely unrelated to each other and belong to separate domains. Religion is not science, science is not religion, and whenever one of them tries to be the other it ends up being really stupid.
Quoting Cheshire
.
the bedrock of science is still magic just like religion
ya science and religion are quite funny
both are based in magic
Gould's 'non-overlapping magisteria' idea, a sort of epistemological separation of church and state. I think this is what theists try to do -- God-of-the-gaps -- but the progression of science tends rob their magisteria somewhat.
humans beings prefer fantasy to reality
which is why we like science and religion.
because we are all insane
the direct experience of consciousness (sensory and mental) as it is right here right now is the closest thing we have to an actual reality.
what else is there? some idea about a reality beyond consciousness? that is just an idea that happens IN consciousness here now.
Exactly.
The challenge is to explain in a non theist manner the emergence of logical thoughts that actually help describe this universe correctly.
that science and religion are both based in invisible things and magical thinking
I think there are claims though that, right or wrong, cannot be determined by science, not because we do not possess the instruments or resources to do so (as would be the case for a flying spaghetti monster), but because in principle they cannot be investigated this way. It is in the nature of these claims to be unfalsifiable.
because im a philosopher
i go beyond science and religion
i go beyond everything and everyone
and i deliver the higher answers down to the simple people. haha
Ah... but they still have the 'hard problem of consciousness' and quantum mystery gaps to keep them engaged for some time.
Copy Cat
It's ok though...
It's more adjacent than beyond.Quoting MikeListeral Well you might want to reel it in a little, because your position is making a pretty magnificent error. Quoting MikeListeral Whatever gets you through the day I suppose. But, the problem is assuming that by showing science and religion are flawed you some how prove something else isn't. Three people can be just as wrong as two.
by showing science is based in magic we eliminate scientism and materialism
good then go educate yourself on hard problem of consciousness
Yes, you seem to be doing a great job educating yourself. Glad to be of help.
Suppose your meme is right.
When science invokes its invisible forces, we get iPhones and airplanes.
What do you get when you invoke religion's invisible forces?
No skin in the game, but just for the heck of it, you will get the peace that passeth all understanding, if you are lucky. Then you may not have to live and die like a dog, that get's kicked around by the very same things/people that you beg to invoke. But again, i have no investments in this...
there's more to life then logic my friend
billion seem to be getting something from it
social and emotional benefits
im doing a great job at debunking you guys
you just dont know it yet, cuz your a slow learner lol
I know you're slow, kitty kat, Otherwise you would have noticed yours truly stands alone ( not part of a you guys). Now come back to daddy when he isn't busy, huh.
I know you're slow, kitty kat, Otherwise you would have noticed yours truly stands alone. Now come back to daddy when he isn't busy, huh.
Yeah, there's a trick of the mind called free association and confusing the two is ill advised. There's also the host of irrational things and suspension of disbelief. However, I think you may have just wanted to evade the point and believe yourself mysterious.
That's why i stared by saying "copy cat", there ya go. Now choke on that evidence.
stop copying me
you using logic to prove there isnt more to life then logic?
lol
stop thinking and open your eyes and look around
There may well be, but I don't think these would lend themselves well to theological explanation. The usual candidates are morality and self, both of which science is making headway in. But I'm second-guessing when I can just ask you... What did you have in mind?
:lol:
No, I didn't do that actually. I agreed and then pointed out this tactic of yours of assuming there's level of awareness you have elevated yourself to for reasons I'll never know.
its called wisdom and enlightenment
Form the profile picture it seems Chicken shit seems to confused about her gender now.
i have reached it and i understand the vastness of your ignorance lol
when you reach it you will understand the vastness of my knoweldge.
haha
the statement contradicts itself. if he knew nothing he wouldnt know it, or say it
Yep. That's my point.
“The fish trap exists because of the fish. Once you've gotten the fish you can forget the trap. The rabbit snare exists because of the rabbit. Once you've gotten the rabbit, you can forget the snare. Words exist because of meaning. Once you've gotten the meaning, you can forget the words. Where can I find a man who has forgotten words so I can talk with him?” -Chuang Tzu
social and emotional benefits are often more important then physical benefits
SO what.
so religion is just as important as science
SO does a bottle of Scotch.
In terms of religion, whether or not a supernatural being created and maintains the universe and has a purpose for doing so, what characteristics this being has (if it exists), and what the relationship is between people and this being.
In my view, which is roughly Kantian, the origin and the ultimate aim of the universe are unknowable (a mystery), and any theories about them are unfalsifiable. Though I believe this to be the case for metaphysical claims in general, in which (proper) religious claims are a subset. Religion has gotten the well-deserved thrashing it has in part because it has made claims about things that it should not be in the business of making claims about, things that science deals with quite effectively on its own.
no
my argument was it gives social and emotional benefits
which is a hell of a lot better then scotch
science is based in magical thinking
invisible things moving and creating things out of nothing
etc...
But that could just as easily be delusional.
I think you're caught up in a semantic jumble. People love to throw around "science" and "logic" and "atheism," but first we should ask some questions about those words -- like, "What do they mean?"
What am I not believing in as an "atheist"? God? What's God? A sky-father humanoid? A "higher truth"? Love? Nature?
What is science? Seems to me it's a human activity, involving faculties of thought and creativity -- similar to philosophy, in fact.
And on and on. I don't think it does much good invoking something like a "higher truth," because that's just as meaningless as "God" or "being" or "force" or anything else you like -- it becomes an x, and can be defined almost any way we want. I don't see this adding anything to the world.
ya, dont take yourself too literally
yes, science looks silly when you examine it further
you see its massive fundamental limitations
Friends and happiness.
Doesn't make it true.
stop being so helpful
be more selfish
Yeah sure, celestial teapots and whatnot. Not falsifiable and, as such, as equally likely as an infinity of unfalsifiable ideas thought of and not thought of. Each so should be weighted accordingly :wink:
Quoting darthbarracuda
I've been wondering a lot about this. While we've learned a lot about the early picoseconds of the universe, the hypothesised singularity seems to be an epistemological limit. Everything in the observable universe is our epistemological remit, and whatever caused the universe lies outside that.
However it's possible we will yet discover that the universe does encode information about its origin in some way, or even (and this is a little out there but is published science) that we might observe other origins within the visible universe. There might be stricter limits on the number of possible causes for universes than we know (in much the same way we eliminate eternal inflation theories for example). So I'm more open-minded on this, but lean a little towards your conclusion. How it ends... until we have ways to observe the future as we do the past (inconceivable, but so was quantum mechanics for millennia), we might have to let that one go. But this still strikes me as the same kind of thinking as God-of-the-gaps, or more God-of-the-edges. It's based on our ignorance of what is yet to be discovered and the hope that it will never be so.
I think the measurement problem was considered a metaphysical issue but now is looking like a physical one with all these Wigner's friend experiments. The trend goes that that which is the realm of metaphysics (including theology) shrinks with time. I would be less confident in thinking of this as some kind of refinement toward a true meta-physical realm that will shrink no further.
I'm not sure if I agree with your comparison of the issue with teapots. There can be good reasons to believe something even if this belief is not falsifiable, no?
I would not say that the reasons for believing that there is a teapot in space have the same degree of plausibility as the reasons for believing that God exists. Especially because any serious form of theism does not define God as a "thing", but more like the grounds of every-"thing".
Quoting Kenosha Kid
Indeed yes I would agree that it can often seem like a God-of-the-edges sort of thing...science has displaced God in explaining natural phenomenon that one can wonder, is the last refuge of the theist in the origin of the universe?, and is that just eventually going to be taken over by science, just as everything else has?
I think this is an understandable position to hold if you only really interact with theists who think that God is a "thing" and regularly invoke the God-card to explain fuzzy things we don't fully understand, like consciousness or morality or really anything else in the natural world that ought to be studied by science. Of course there's not a magic man in the sky. I am in full agreement with you that God should not be used as a placeholder for things that can be assumed to have a naturalistic explanation.
But the point I am making is that I don't think the origin of the universe is something that can be assumed to have a naturalistic explanation. The question, as I see it, is whether the universe has existed forever, or if it has a beginning. The dogmatists can argue one way or the other, but I see no reason to believe that we have any way of determining this. I do not think this is a case of us just not understanding the issue well enough, it's not a God-of-the-gaps sort of thing. This is a metaphysical question, not a scientific one, and I do not think the answers to metaphysical questions are knowable.
:up: