Atheism & Solipsism
Are they first cousins, or even siblings?
In self-help groups I've frequented, there's common talk about learning to love oneself as a remedy to paralyzing insecurities, debilitating anxiety and self-destructive behavior.
I have serious doubts about our ability to love ourselves. In our particular universe, I suspect we're disbarred from expressing and experiencing love as a reflexive action. As reflexive actions, we can care, trust and esteem ourselves, but no, we can't love ourselves.
I assert this because I feel that love and sex, at bottom, are social actions. My relationship to myself, egotist though I be, is NOT a social action. Social actions require otherness. Interaction, when it means something, when it possesses gravitas and consequence, occurs between self and other.
I concede someone could make a fancy argument about split-personality disorder and the possibility of a social network within one body, and I have no counter-argument.
Otherwise, self-love is a nasty trek through delusional narcisscism.
Now I arrive at the window looking out onto our universe. Is it mono, or binary? This is fancy language for asking is it a realm wherein otherness dwells, or not?
Falling in love with the other, I assert, is the greatest adventure of our universe. Someone giving a T.E.D. talk said (I think famously) that not only is our universe fantastically strange, it is more strange than what we can imagine. Yes! Our universe is a siren call to outsized adventure.
So then, the crux of adventure is flinging oneself into the gaping maw of the unknown, which is to say, the embrace of otherness. Well, as we've seen in Sigourney Weaver's sci-fi adventure Alien, the leap of faith sometimes ends badly.
So, what's a handy crux of outrageous otherness? God. God puts a face on our unimaginably strange universe, which is to say, our God consciousness boils down the unmanageable universe to something digestible.
Is our redux to God consciousness a falsification of the true nature of things? Of course it is. But not to worry because the artificiality of divinity is why we have existentialism, which understands that our metaphysical commitments are necessary fictions engulfed within absurdity, but for the integrity of existentialism's practitioners. I say, Godot, when are your coming? I'm standing here waiting.
As the world has seen, the scandalous absurdities wrapped within the ginormous counter-intuitions of religion pressure many of us into fending off laughter in response to the pulpit.
Okay. Here's the social experiment in a nutshell: The Sermon On the Mount. As Ayn Rand has taught us in her two, uber-popular tomes, The Fountainhead and Atlas Shrugged, altruism is predicated upon the robust illogic of self-imposed poverty.
What about the meta-narrative hovering over the mad directive to rip your shirt in a driving snowstorm and hand it over to the next man, thereby achieving salvation?
It's a narrative of the mystery of self and other. Our self is not a discrete individual after all. Where I end and you begin is debatable. Rational selfishness wants nothing to do with this. The lesson is the wildly counter-intuitive dictum that says human doesn't get to be a self until human gives that self away.
And that's love. Giving away everything your inner rational egotist has acquired. Going from self-empowered to powerless. Falling from the pinnacle of the pyramid to groveling in prayer at its base. Amazing grace, instead of being chic, goes about dressed in the rags of Vladimir and Estragon.
God is otherness central. We spin ridiculous narratives about God's plans for us because we cannot understand God (although we must pretend that sometimes we do).
Here's the upshot: the theist inhabits a universe of self and otherness. Theist takes truth from mystery stubborn in the face of science. This is a binary universe. Atheist takes truth from science stubborn in the face of mystery. This is a mono universe.
I assert that atheism predicates a mono universe because if you cannot get out of your understanding of things (and the rationalist cannot), then you cannot get out of yourself. Those other people flitting about the atheist, without their essential mystery, that is, without their otherness, are not to the atheist real, actual people, but rather atheist's understanding of them, which is just a subset of atheist.
When the sentient being inhabits the universe of self, don't we call this solipsism?
In self-help groups I've frequented, there's common talk about learning to love oneself as a remedy to paralyzing insecurities, debilitating anxiety and self-destructive behavior.
I have serious doubts about our ability to love ourselves. In our particular universe, I suspect we're disbarred from expressing and experiencing love as a reflexive action. As reflexive actions, we can care, trust and esteem ourselves, but no, we can't love ourselves.
I assert this because I feel that love and sex, at bottom, are social actions. My relationship to myself, egotist though I be, is NOT a social action. Social actions require otherness. Interaction, when it means something, when it possesses gravitas and consequence, occurs between self and other.
I concede someone could make a fancy argument about split-personality disorder and the possibility of a social network within one body, and I have no counter-argument.
Otherwise, self-love is a nasty trek through delusional narcisscism.
Now I arrive at the window looking out onto our universe. Is it mono, or binary? This is fancy language for asking is it a realm wherein otherness dwells, or not?
Falling in love with the other, I assert, is the greatest adventure of our universe. Someone giving a T.E.D. talk said (I think famously) that not only is our universe fantastically strange, it is more strange than what we can imagine. Yes! Our universe is a siren call to outsized adventure.
So then, the crux of adventure is flinging oneself into the gaping maw of the unknown, which is to say, the embrace of otherness. Well, as we've seen in Sigourney Weaver's sci-fi adventure Alien, the leap of faith sometimes ends badly.
So, what's a handy crux of outrageous otherness? God. God puts a face on our unimaginably strange universe, which is to say, our God consciousness boils down the unmanageable universe to something digestible.
Is our redux to God consciousness a falsification of the true nature of things? Of course it is. But not to worry because the artificiality of divinity is why we have existentialism, which understands that our metaphysical commitments are necessary fictions engulfed within absurdity, but for the integrity of existentialism's practitioners. I say, Godot, when are your coming? I'm standing here waiting.
As the world has seen, the scandalous absurdities wrapped within the ginormous counter-intuitions of religion pressure many of us into fending off laughter in response to the pulpit.
Okay. Here's the social experiment in a nutshell: The Sermon On the Mount. As Ayn Rand has taught us in her two, uber-popular tomes, The Fountainhead and Atlas Shrugged, altruism is predicated upon the robust illogic of self-imposed poverty.
What about the meta-narrative hovering over the mad directive to rip your shirt in a driving snowstorm and hand it over to the next man, thereby achieving salvation?
It's a narrative of the mystery of self and other. Our self is not a discrete individual after all. Where I end and you begin is debatable. Rational selfishness wants nothing to do with this. The lesson is the wildly counter-intuitive dictum that says human doesn't get to be a self until human gives that self away.
And that's love. Giving away everything your inner rational egotist has acquired. Going from self-empowered to powerless. Falling from the pinnacle of the pyramid to groveling in prayer at its base. Amazing grace, instead of being chic, goes about dressed in the rags of Vladimir and Estragon.
God is otherness central. We spin ridiculous narratives about God's plans for us because we cannot understand God (although we must pretend that sometimes we do).
Here's the upshot: the theist inhabits a universe of self and otherness. Theist takes truth from mystery stubborn in the face of science. This is a binary universe. Atheist takes truth from science stubborn in the face of mystery. This is a mono universe.
I assert that atheism predicates a mono universe because if you cannot get out of your understanding of things (and the rationalist cannot), then you cannot get out of yourself. Those other people flitting about the atheist, without their essential mystery, that is, without their otherness, are not to the atheist real, actual people, but rather atheist's understanding of them, which is just a subset of atheist.
When the sentient being inhabits the universe of self, don't we call this solipsism?
Comments (146)
You had to mention Ayn Rand. When she's mentioned, I'm obliged to repeat that Ayn Rand is to philosophy what L. Ron Hubbard is to religion.
Self-love is a fault. When it comes to self-love, Ayn Rand is a kind of archetype; nay, a totem, brandished by the selfish to ward off the monster of selflessness.
But I see no connection between atheism and solipsism. Atheists know quite well there are others in the universe; they simply think there's no God there as well.
Nothing to do with one another.
Atheism can take many forms. Nature is just one of them.
But this view is controverted by experience. The love amongst family and friends is not a zero-sum game. My child will not benefit from demonstrations of sacrifice. The freely given benefits me as well as him.
Edited: removed needless taunt.
God has a weakness. God doesn't want to be alone. On the flip side, the atheist wants to be alone, revels in cosmic solitude. This is the upshot of knowing, which God is in retreat from, with God's project for the grand mess of humanity.
We're blighting sinners we humans, destined for hellfire by our own merits, but God wants company, so there's an escape clause that lets us stick around for eternity. Now, on that score, we're busily a day working to shred and defy the contract, but this has always been known.
The above is, of course, a feeble narrative attempting to explain why God created human and, while being a feel-good story, doesn't fool many for long. Just so, some of us like to read John Milton, one of the most God-defiant men of the past millennium.
Back to essentials. The trick of my argument is thus: While it's true that the proof of God's existence is forever beyond reach, it's equally true that the not-existence of God is also forever beyond reach, unless one claims to know.
Claiming to know God entails claiming to know the all-powerful, a stretch for human. By the same coin, claiming to know God-not entails claiming to know what is not-all powerful, which entails claiming to know the all-powerful. It's an easy argument to claim both sides are full-of-themselves with their claims.
The trick of execution of theism is knowing, at some level of awareness, that social engagement means throwing oneself into the incomprehensibilities of societies and cultures. The mystery of otherness is a looming presence to the socially engaged. We're on our knees hoping the presence won't erupt into the neighborhood, disrupting norms and making demands. We know it's bound to happen eventually as these eruptions are the big turns of history.
Enter the atheist. This human has a bulwark against the disruptions of God's near approach, with its bush-burning, halo-endowing difficulties: knowledge. Science, with its accurate predictions of things to come, wards off the nasty surprises of creation.
There's a problem. Knowledge is a looking glass by another name. I generate knowledge by asking questions. Well, the source of a given knowledge is a given question, and the source of that question is human. This leads me to asserting that in my quest to know the all powerful, and thus to qualify for denying existence of the all-powerful being, God, I must become the source of all questions.
The upshot of becoming the source of all-questions and thus qualified to deconstruct God, with questions understood to be the looking glass of the mind, says I land myself within the universe of my (solitary) self. And that's no fun.
Living within a binary universe, with a sometimes loving, sometimes menacing God, that's fun.
:clap:
Sounds like Californian New Age pop psychology. And yes there are people who find this 'love' frame helpful. I think a better way of putting this is 'do not hate yourself'. It seems pretty clear to me that many people marinate in their own self-loathing. For me the solution is not to see the problem as a simple bifurcation that can be switched upwards to 'love' (which is unhelpful dualistic thinking) but to simply give yourself a break, as a fallible, fucked up person - like most of us. Try to do better. Almost everyone already knows what they need to do to improve their life. The hard part is taking the steps.
And now something for the pessimists and antinatalists:
This Be The Verse
BY PHILIP LARKIN
They fuck you up, your mum and dad.
They may not mean to, but they do.
They fill you with the faults they had
And add some extra, just for you.
But they were fucked up in their turn
By fools in old-style hats and coats,
Who half the time were soppy-stern
And half at one another’s throats.
Man hands on misery to man.
It deepens like a coastal shelf.
Get out as early as you can,
And don’t have any kids yourself.
There's not much to say about gods since they are entirely silent and absent themselves. Gods are holding statements for the unknown. We've always understood this.
Quoting Paine
Family doesn't appear to me as a zero-sum game. My speculation is that parents don't break even in the bargain, especially not mothers.
A woman marries, agrees to birth a child, gets pregnant and brings forth. (Modern anesthesia obscures the precarious adventure birthing a child formerly entailed across millennia.) She nurtures the child, ultimately releasing it into adulthood. If this isn't self-sacrifice, then I scarcely know the meaning of the word.
Quoting Paine
What's the look of parenting without self-sacrifice?
Consider Citizen Kane. Charles Foster Kane, a happy boy playing outside in the snow with Rosebud, his sled, learns that his completely insane mother, trading him in for money, has packed him off to New York under proprietorship of Walter Parks Thatcher, a banker.
This is "parenting" without self-sacrifice.
The central purpose of the story is arguably an examination of what happens to a good, innocent lad when the warmth of nurturing is overthrown by the money concern.
Kane's relatability to other humans, if not his humanity, is destroyed.
Mary Kane is no-sacrifice parenting writ large.
I think the problem here starts with that love label. It's such an umbrella term. I don't know when aspects of love are present enough to be able to aggregate some combination of them into a declaration of the term. When do aspects like 'respect', 'familiarity', 'lust', 'need for companionship', 'natural compulsion to reproduce', 'sense of wonderment', 'humour', 'friendship', 'purpose' etc, etc have enough variety and intensity to combine into the label love and how long is such a construction likely to hold, within an entropic time frame.
Can any 'quantums of love' combine into a 'love of self?' I think it must be possible for some people.
Quoting ucarr
Well, I think it's probably more accurate to call such narcissism rather than solipsism.
You move in this direction yourself with:
Quoting ucarr
Solipsism is described as the philosophical idea that only one's mind is sure to exist and anything outside of your own mind is unsure. I think it's a posit about the nature of what reality is from the standpoint of self which does seem to fit with your quote above but I think you are trying to suggest solipsism has an emotional flavour to it, perhaps it does. But Like Atheism, I take solipsism in cold logical terms with no emotional connotations.
Quoting ucarr
From this, it seems that you yourself see the difference between 'healthy requited love' and unhealthy, dangerous, often self-destructive love/obsession/addiction. Is love of alcohol/drugs etc a true love form? even in the 'addiction.' sense? Love 'addiction' towards others can be truly pernicious.
I don't relate to the idea of loving another human being (as pleasant as that can be) as 'the greatest adventure in the Universe' but if you are including love of pursuing knowledge in your words Quoting ucarr then I am more inclined to agree.
Only creatures who live short lives can think that human love is eternal. I think such belief has been described as 'a magnificent illusion.'
Overall, I think Atheism has very little relationship with solipsism.
They are mother and child. Solipsism is the belief that all perceived reality is a perception without an actual content. That all we can be sure of are our perceptions. Believing this means believing other people and God are not real. Not believing in god doesn't mean that you believe other people are not real.
So solipsism can be seen as a mother or father of atheism. Atheism, consequently, is then the child. The child though can revolt though. The mother can be solipsist, giving life to non-belief in God. The atheist son can always claim God to be real, rebelling against his pagan mother, who even thinks her son's newly found belief is utterly unreal, making making love a chimera, it seems.
Only by killing the pagan father and the solipsist brother the theist son can, happily undisturbed, rape his pagan solipsist mother to make her truly realize he and God actually exist.
The mother can still stubbornly maintain that both her son and God are mere illusions. Then she's seriously fucked...
There's no indication the mother is insane in the film. Also, she already had money, and clearly wasn't trading him in to obtain more. Thatcher was a hired man. I thought the scene made it apparent that Charles was being sent away because the mother feared what the father (or step-father, perhaps) would do to him.
I think you must find a different example to support your theory. There must be one out there, somewhere. Maybe something from Dickens. He had the requisite sentimentality.
One of my incidental goals is the honing down of our emotive umbrella word. Love, love, love. What is this immersive experience that's pulling me out of my normal self with such force?
Does it have some basic, universal properties? Part of our job here is tackling such an imposing totem as love and making it concrete and universal in balance.
My efforts in this goal, so far, tell me that a crux of the experience is rooted in the self/other dynamic.
I've been thinking in terms of a dynamic relationship between two sentient beings. I've been overlooking a relationship between a sentient being and knowledge. I don't know if the latter can erode personal boundaries in the same manner as sentience to sentience.
For example, I can read a book over time and evolve my perception and understanding of what I read. This can be gratifying, but the book doesn't change; only I change.
In the case of sentience-to-sentience, the situation is much more dynamical and knarly. Furthermore, my gut tells me knowledge is a bulwark against the transformations of love; such usage is a selfism favored by intellectuals. We laugh at Georg von Trapp in The Sound of Music as his fortress of knowledge crumbles before the onslaughts of love.
In parallel to the above, the solipsistic narcissist blockades the transformations of love with self-knowledge deified.
How about this formulation: Quoting Raymond
Solipsism is the existential framework, the universe that houses the narcissist.
Quoting Raymond
You have enlightened me with your reference to Sophocles' Oedipus. Love is our inner savage writ large and insuperable. It's the thing that makes God consciousness necessary for someone like me.
I like to think the God of the Pentateuch forgave King David his murders for being a lusty, loving man, husband and father.
What do we actually see in the movie?
The boy is happy in childhood. In my view, his frolics in the snow don't bespeak the onslaughts of a pedophillic father, if that's what you're implying.
Suddenly, his mother sends him away, apparently forever, without visitation rights. Such cold mother's milk doesn't put me in mind of mental fitness on the part of Mary Kane.
I see nothing from the father to indicate future trouble for the boy, save the father's anemic defense of the boy's right to remain where he is, comfortably situated within a happy home. It's clear to me this is what the father wants, even as he trembles before the dictatorial mother.
The young man wants to be happy, so he starts spending his large fund of money.
For the rest of the journey, it's just one failure after another to connect humanly, lastingly. Kane's last hope for the warmth of love breaks with the defections of Jedediah and then, finally, Susan Alexander.
The domineering mother is the catalyst and abiding force driving this devastating transformation.
Possessing a handsome sum of money does not imply total lack of greed and lust for more.
Father: "Sorry, Mr. Thatcher. What that kid needs is a good thrashing!"
Mother: "Is that what you think, Jim?"
Father: "Yes"
Mother: "That's why he's going to be brought up where you can't get at him."
Charlie pushes Thatcher into the snow, using Rosebud. Father takes a swing at Charlie, but misses. Then--
Father: "Sorry, Mr. Thatcher. What that kid needs is a good thrashing!"
Mother: "Is that what you think, Jim?"
Father: "Yes"
Mother: "That's why he's going to be brought up where you can't get at him."
The link I see between solipsism and atheism is this:
In theism, knowledge of "how things really are" is received from others, and, presumably, originates with God. It's a top-down process. Someone else tells you "how things really are", you don't figure it out by yourself.
In atheism, no such higher authority is envisioned or made room for, man is left alone with his senses and his mind and whatever he can achieve with those. He believes it's up to him and him alone to figure things out. This way, atheism implies at least epistemic solipsism.
Quoting ucarr
There's an old word for this "self-love": pride. But it's out of favor by now, it's not politically correct (although things seem to be looking up for it lately.)
Quoting Ciceronianus
You have shown me how my exam of Mary Kane is flawed, perhaps seriously. I do, however, maintain doubt as to the soundness of her judgment in handing over Charlie to a total stranger whose interest in the affair is that of a banker, not a father.
We don't get the whole story on dad's poke at Charlie. Could be the kid is an insufferable brat who, indeed, needs a thrashing.
Charlie doesn't seem to fear dad; nor does he seem eager to leave his home. Maybe Mank wants to show that before she abandoned him, she spoiled Charlie, whereas dad would have brought him right if not for mother's protection.
I can't preclude the possibility Mary Kane is internally pressurized to relinquish custody of Charlie due to a greedy desire for great wealth.
She towers over dad in power, so that raises a question about him being able to abuse Charlie.
If we deem dad a serious abuser, then I do recognize the dilemma she faces in trying to choose between the two options.
Excellent exam! Shrewd and instructive explanation. Members of both camps can make good use of this.
With your statement about theism, you make it clear how we little humans are always connected to the world around us. Joni Mitchell informed us about being stardust.
With regards to loving oneself, I've heard it said a newborn dies if another person doesn't pick it up and rock and cuddle and coo away its fear and pain and sudden shock of consciousness. I don't think this hard-wired human interdependence diminishes with age.
It's up to human and human alone to figure things out? I have a theory that says after just a short time in a sensory deprivation tank, human loses all identity, including knowledge of being human. It's the looking glass of other people in society that keeps me on track about who I am and what I'm about.
Didn't Sartre say human is condemned to freedom, thereby suggesting that outside
the social matrix, human is practically nothing at all, thus free. Well, the bold existentialist might reject local norms as inauthentic, declaring the self free to choose otherwise, but that tome he wrote detailing the experience wasn't intended for use as a paperweight.
I'm inclined to think self-esteem is the foundation out of which pride arises. Individuals afflicted with low self-esteem are not often perceived as being proud.
While pride is a natural and good thing, it's reflective. Love, on the other hand, is transformative. I say it's the jump start of mother's love that seeds the germ of self-esteem that sprouts pride.
If we have robust self-esteem (meaning someone loved us), then we deem ourselves worthy of being loved, by someone else.
I don't think we can get beyond ourselves by means of an internal, reflexive action. Make no mistake about it, love tears you beyond yourself big time.
It's the seminal element of otherness that makes love transformative, but only if the self surrenders to the beyond-self. Theism is surrender to the beyond-self, writ large.
Quoting Tom Storm
Great poem. Big chunk of my life in a nutshell. My parents made some colossal goofs raising me, but I love 'em anyway.
There's a real ambiguity in the scene, (which I think is a powerful one--Agnes Moorhead was superb in that brief role). The mother seems stern and cold, except in those moments when she's protecting Charlie, and holding him. Note that it's the father who becomes less insistent that Charlie stay when he learns that they (or rather the mother) would be receiving $50,000 a year, though the bulk of the funds were held in trust for Charlie. He also complains that if Charlie leaves people will think it's because he's a bad father.
So, I think there's a suggestion that the father has been a poor one, possibly due to drink, and inclined to abuse when angered. It's only my interpretation, but I think that the mother has steeled herself to give up her child to thinking to protect him and give him opportunities he wouldn't have at home, and this makes her appear emotionless. But in fact the unfortunate result is that he comes to hate his guardian/trustee/father-figure, and grows to maturity without parental love, seeking love through money and power. Just my guess at the thought underlying a great work of art.
Atheism [math]\rightarrow[/math] Solipsism [math]\rightarrow[/math] Theism
So your logic goes something like:
I do not believe in the existence of any god(s)............> I have no evidence that anything outside of me, exists..............> I do believe in the existence of god(s)
Where is the paradox? This is merely a 'belief' challenged by solipsism that you posit is strong enough evidence for flipping 'belief in god' from no to yes. That is not a description of a paradox.
Solipsism is nothing more than a possible consequence of 'I think therefore I am.' Nothing more. It can be used to suggest that 'self' IS god as only self is real and the universe is a construct/projection of self! But that's not true either as it implies that we are all individual gods, in which case we are just as well all being human.
What is solipsism to a dolphin? Does it suggest that based on solipsism, A dolphin has no evidence that humans exist, including the humans that are in the process of killing it?
Bravo, Ciceronianus! When it comes to interpretation of this scene, your arguments are top flight. I now see it's the dilemma that foils Mary Kane's attempt to give Charlie the best life possible. My choice is to risk the threat posed to Charlie by dad, who Mary dominates. I think navigating the hazards of an ill-tempered dad is a better bet than packing a young child off to an utterly foreign world of material wealth without love. Mary thought otherwise and I think in doing so, she undervalued her abilities as a mother (I want to say loving mother, but I don't see it in her.)
Hello fellow traveler, Agent Smith. Looks like we're on the same page re: the atheism_solipsism connection.
Quoting Agent Smith
universeness re: Agent Smith's above quote,
Quoting universeness
Quoting universeness
I will post, just below this post, my (lengthy) conclusion derived from the points I've posted here so far.
So, universeness, it being your job to demolish my conclusion, proceed. - ucarr
Atheism & Solipsism – Final
My work entails establishing a connection between atheism & solipsism, plus their two modes: monism & idealism.
My core arguments are simple and familiar.
Here’s the connection between atheism & solipsism
Simple counter-argument to knowing, authoritatively, with certain knowledge, God doesn’t exist.
If I say I am a swimmer, then I can prove what I am, by taking a dip in the pool.
Grammatically speaking, I am a swimmer is a verbal equation. I (subject) + (linking verb) am + (subject complement) a swimmer condenses down to I = a swimmer.
God, by definition, comprehends all existence. This is a well-defined property of God.
According to the unrestricted comprehension principle of set theory, for any sufficiently well-defined property, there is a set of all and only the objects that have that property.
If I say, God is not, then I can prove what I know by revealing to you all existence.
This is the unrestricted comprehension principle in application.
Grammatically speaking, God is not is a verbal equation. God (subject) + (linking verb) is + (subject complement) extant not condenses down to God = extant not or
God ? extant.
If I know all existence, a power unique to God, then knowing there is no God means I am God.
If two things comprehend all existence, how can they be different?
Atheistic Idealism – Conceptualization of God as a being who can be denied & refuted.
This is a deep dive into Logos, which is ancient Idealism.
It shouldn’t be surprising to discover that attempts to mark boundaries of the absolute land you in paradox.
Denial of God is marking a boundary of the absolute.
{If you deny God, you become God>Monist}
{If you don’t deny God, you coexist with God>Binary}
Either way, comprehensive God exists & subsumes.
This resembles Russell’s Paradox (a cornerstone of set theory).
Let R = {x | X ? X }, then R ? R <> R ? R
{If it doesn’t belong to the set, then it belongs to the set}
{If it does belong to the set, then it doesn’t belong to the set}
Either way, comprehensive Set exists & subsumes
The switch is between monist/binary.
The switch tells us human cannot catch God in the act of being God. Considering this, of the three positions: theism/atheism/agnosticism, agnosticism becomes previleged.
Not simple are some ramifications of the atheism_solipsism connection.
The upshot of my conclusion is a profile of a distinctly human Deity manifesting as the logical, transcendent sentience of a dynamical world of time_motion, which entails an erratic, sometimes paradoxical morality, always subject to debate & revision.
The existence of God as undecidable*, neither provable nor refutable, continues as a long established stalemate accepted by many on both sides.
*Like infinity, undecidablility covers a spectrum of degrees. I believe atheism is more undecidable than theism.
Strict atheism, however, expresses an extreme position within epistemology.
My simple counter-argument against this position raises few hackles.
My argument has no conflict with atheism as an article of faith.
Even strict atheism is not really my target. Instead, I’m focused on how the counter-argument to strict atheism leads to some useful modifications to establishmentarian theism.
Does atheism belong to a set of ideologies that can be labeled monism?
If so, does the monism of atheism presuppose cosmic solitude, as enforced by its exclusion of a transcendent, teleological sentience i.e., deity?
These two questions follow from an assumption that deity is fundamental otherness, and that otherness is essential to a universe of time & motion.
The exclusion of deity as an article of faith may belong to agnosticism.
The exclusion of deity as a logical conclusion assumes perfected knowledge sufficient to pass judgment on transcendent power.
Perfection is static. It leaves no room for evolution because the highest attainment is accomplished. It leaves nor room for decline because that would negate perfection.
The absolute self, all-knowing & perfected in knowledge eternal suggests a universe without time or motion. Any dynamic process would negate the absolutism of perfection because nothing in a state of change is perfected.
Can such a static universe, the universe of atheism, exist?
If so, then perfection, being static and indivisible, rubs shoulders with Neoplatonism.
If atheism dovetails with Neoplatonism, then we see that atheism replaces The One with The Database (of Perfect Knowledge).
This leads us to surmising that the corrupted world of everyday human experience, our universe of degradation, a devolution down from Plato’s realm of Eternal Things, proliferating with imperfect copies of Eternal Things, harbors a villain.
This villain of the everyday world of human experience is time and its concomitant, motion.
Both Neoplatonism and atheism ask us to assume as fact a static and peerless universe of knowledge that causes our everyday world of phenomena while yet standing apart from its vicissitudes.
The big question raised by The One and also by The Database is point of contact. How do these perfected realms, these ultimate causes, reach humanity within the physical universe of the senses?
The answer is that the conduit connecting the two states of being, static and ultimate causality vis-à-vis the physical universe, is time_motion.
Now we come right up to a pair of germinal concepts: a) the physicalization of morality; b) the moral turpitude of God.
Motion is the limit of epistemology. In a physical universe, motion is essential.
Any static universe of incorruptible causation, such as The One and The Database, by excluding time_motion, forestalls germination of the living.
Dynamical physics and its chief epiphenomenon, sentient life, operate within the womb of time_motion.
These assumptions necessitate the characterization of The One and The Database as extreme versions of both Monism and Idealism. They are paradigmatic constructs of causation, always mirrored imperfectly by the dynamical physics of the world of the living. Within the topsy-turvy world of time_motion and the living, the theist is imperfectly divine, and the atheist is imperfectly secular. Wrong is sometimes, conditionally, good.
If incorruptible causation, an idealism, and time_motion, a realism, always stand apart, then the physicalization of morality and the moral turpitude of God are necessary compromises for the living.
These compromises are the two pillars supporting God-Consciousness, as distinguished from Divine God.
The two spiritual pillars of a universe of time_motion, such as our own physical universe, are Otherness and Transcendence, with the latter being the channel through which the self and the other make contact and communicate.
The One and The Database, in their idealism of incorruptible causation, exclude Otherness and Transcendence, and thus, by the transitive property, also exclude time_motion.
Otherness and Transcendence, innate attributes of the design of a time_motion universe, make time_motion possible.
Motion is the physical manifestation of morality. In a time_motion universe, things can move out of place and become wrong. On the other hand, they can move upward, out of an accustomed place to a higher and better place.
To know there is no focused, teleological, transcendent sentience is to evolve The Database to perfection, wherein motion and morality cease, replaced by the stillness of eternal solitude.
The higher attainment, above eternal solitude, is temporal, evolving sentience that, being animate, can become transcendent.
Yes. Perfection can be topped by imperfection since the former is static whereas the latter is animate.
The Deity of a dynamical, time_motion universe is good because it allows time, motion and evolution to flourish, albeit rife with the imperfections to which Otherness is caretaker.
The universe that bears Deity is thus a topsy-turvy realm wherein being wrong is sometimes, conditionally, good.
Being imperfect, and thus sometimes wrong, allows the presence of love, which, in its essence, means not being alone.
Theism has atheism to thank for pointing the way to perfection of knowledge, an absolute solitude that highlights the value of a morally unstable universe wherein the fellowship of self-and-other i.e., love, thrives upon the morass of its gravitational tendency toward moral failure, all the way down to evil.
Now we have an approach to addressing theism’s hard problem of the presence of evil.
Deity allows the presence of evil because the cosmic richness of the dialogue of self-and-other, love, sometimes gives rise to evil and Deity, looking upon the wealth of sentient beings inhabiting a time_motion universe, allows it as an act of divine love.
Monist excludes Love. Binary includes Love.
God presents a binary contract to human, for the sake of Love.
God-As-Human, binary, seeks Love.
God-As-God, monist, distances Love.
Thank you.
I think love of another person can become cold when subordinated to an ideal.
I wonder what Scientologists think about L. Ron Hubbard. I suspect they feel about him much like you feel about Rand.
I will respond to your points, as best I can, not with the intention of 'demolishing your conclusion,' but with the intention of attempting to scrutinise the logic you employ.
Quoting ucarr
I don't see much connection between atheism and monism. Atheism is not an expression of monism, it's simply a non-belief in god. I can be atheist and believe in the multiverse, such a belief is not monist.
I see the connection between solipsism and monism from the argument that only 'self' is real. But I think solipsism is nonsense as each of us experiences self. Why would my claim of self be more valuable than yours? Solipsism, to me, is just a 'silly idea.'
I do not see atheism as an ideal, there is no perfection that is the source of atheism. To me, such thinking is just flowery tosh. again I state that an atheist does not believe that god(s) exist. I am not in search of any 'ideal atheism.'
If you are suggesting that atheism is merely a construct of the human mind and therefore not real then by that same logic, so is god and so are all constructs/concepts of the 'ideal.' For me, the metaphysical does not exist.
I do not see solipsism as an ideal, it's just an idea and a bad one in my view.
Quoting ucarr
Are you seriously saying that someone displaying an ability to swim, is evidence for the existence of god? God, by definition, comprehends all existence. This is a well-defined property of God
This is a claim, made by theists in their construction of god. That does not give it any credence whatsoever! This provides no evidence of the existence of god and is mere sophestry. It is not even clever sophistry.
Quoting ucarr
I always find amusement when a theistic argument is placed in an academic frame in an attempt to give it scientific credibility. Such attempts are so transparent.
Your god properties are not well-defined, as if god was omnipotent, omniscient and omnipresent then it would have appeared in the center of London, New York, Paris and Washington D.C, simultaneously by now. It has never demonstrated any of the properties you assign to it except within folklore and fairytale.
You are just engaging in meaningless rhetoric and boring wordplay. Let's cut through it. Get your god to show up and do stuff. I have challenged it many times in my own ways. No results, at all, because it does not exist.
I read through the rest of the points you made and got more and more bored.
I suggest that all theists in existence communicate with each other, and make one big prayer/demand of your superhero to appear and show us, inferior humans, what it can do.
Your god has no power as it does not exist. It is a simple scapegoat for the bad behavior of some humans. Many humans use the god fable to commit heinous acts and then claim god is working through them to enact its will. A very convenient way of demonstrating why it is always absent.
The claim is: "God works in mysterious ways. god is in me, I act in gods name, etc, etc."
Humans have to become grown-ups and get rid of god. When the majority of us have achieved this, perhaps we will be ready to leave the nest and start to inhabit more of this vast Universe.
Let the movie industry be the place where gods/superhero's exist. That's their most useful purpose, as an entertainment.
Come now. What do you think "Ayn Rand is to philosophy what L. Ron Hubbard is to religion" means? Plainly, it asserts a similarity between them and how they're interpreted, the one in relation to philosophy, the one in relation to religion. That's what I address. This similarity need not relate to the quality or coherence of their beliefs; it may refer to their status, their impact, their characters, the character of their followers, their biographical data, their reception by others.
You'll find Rand has been discussed in quite a few threads in this forum. There may be those who would be interested in her philosophy. I'm not one of them.
Oh, I will. It's true I'm not fond of Rand. I'm not particularly fond of Frantic Freddie (as I like to call him) either, by the way. I read a good deal of both Rand and Nietzsche years ago. I think the Sturm und Drang movement continues, and they're both representatives of it in their own way. It had an appeal to me for a time, but no more. But we venture too far beyond this thread.
I haven't read the work you referred to earlier. I read her fiction, and The Virtue of Selfishness, and some other odds and ends. My understanding and my recollection is she was very fond of Aristotle, and also, it seems, his great imitator, Aquinas. I prefer Aristotle to Plato, but think Aristotle's perspective on most things to be narrow.
I think Nietzsche could be brilliant and insightful, but whether due to a lack of patience or an excess of emotion he was disinclined to provide reasons for his insights. He was declarative, even imperious. He was a preacher, I think.
I suppose I shouldn't reject that work out of hand, never having read it, much though I find her objectionable. But if I do so some here may demand that I read Heidegger (whom I've repeatedly deplored here and elsewhere) more than I have--a frightening prospect.
To deny omniscience authoritatively means to be omniscience. By common sense, the self, outside of direct experience & possession of omniscience, has no basis for claiming omniscience non-existent.
Thus, refutation = verification. As with the unrestricted comprehension principle examined in Russell's Paradox, wherein inclusion = exclusion, we have an interesting paradox.
Frege's mission to reduce arithmetic operations to logic was thwarted by a deformation of non-contradiction.
I'm hopeful Godel's Incompleteness Theorem - any first-order math system will generate true statements not provable within the boundaries of that system - has something to say about the limit of Divine Solipsism, to the effect that Divine Omniscience generated human because The One is inadequate. Eternal solitude won't do.
As we all know, Christian Theology has something to say about the relationship between knowing & being - In the beginning, the word was with God, and the word was God.
Now we have solipsism & monism shaking hands, with cognition & phenomenon as one. God's thoughts are the real states of being that populate the universe. But this oneness is destined, by design, to break apart. This is where human slips into the creation.
The Sartrean exam of the relationship of knowing & being has human immersed within absurdity, thereby forced to make decisions that must be treated as axiomatic in the absence of enduring logic.
My take on this is that paradoxes have to be admitted into scientific orthodoxy. Of course I'm arrogantly stealing from Bohr, Planck & Einstein.
Since the digital age rests upon the platform of QM, and QM computing takes a categorical leap upwards in info processing, thus promising to reveal cognitive constructs previously unimaginable, I suppose internal contradictions aren't always the death knell for a theory.
I say the flaw in atheism as omniscient refuter of omniscience is its failure to embrace the paradox that verifies what it denies. This is to say that atheism should recognize its support of theism by the fact of its existence. Under this construction, paradox does NOT equal invalidation. Instead, we're right back to the stalemate: God, neither provable nor refutable.
On the other side of the paradox, theists should accept their Godly utterances as a spotlight throwing human as God-defier into relief, to everyone's advantage, a testified to in Milton's Paradise Lost.
Oh, yes. There's a cosmically mandated deformation of the monism of cognition & phenomenon. Human, Jesus included, drags problematical materialism into the mix.
The deformation of God's monist, Let there be light, echoed down here on earth by Descartes as, I think, therefore I am, let's in our monetized world of commodities, which QM has perplexed back towards the ying-yangish paradox of refutation equals verification.
Much of the above is gibberish. It does contain a few bits of what I want to say. I'm working on it. I need brutal excoriation from harsh critics. That's why I doing this in public.
(after all, the core epistemological argument for idealism that calls into question the material/physical world, similarly calls into question the existence of other minds by the very same token)
Late to this party but absolutely correct. The shot of Anges Moorehead at the end of that exchange is highly charged. What a scene!
Do you think I'm a theist? If so, why? I've been examining some details of atheism. Does my exam imply pro-Theism? If so, please cite examples.
Quoting universeness
I think you're confusing abstract conceptualization with empirical verification.
Quoting Seppo
180 Proof & Seppo make useful points here. They are succinct & clarifying examples of compare & contrast pertaining to theism/atheism.
Seppo,
Regarding the atheist who knows there's no all-present, all-powerful, all-effectual & transcendent sentience, does not such an atheist exemplify an ideal?
I ask this question because: a) within the epistemological discipline, there's no consensus about the possibility of certain knowledge; b) qualification for judging a sentient being of divine status implies divine status on the part of the judge.
I won't bother speculating. I am sure that if you wish to state your religious status, then you will do so.
You were trying to put forward bad evidence(in my opinion) that god exists, hence my use of 'theistic argument.'
Quoting ucarr
No, I am suggesting that abstract conceptualisation is just mental athletics and without empirical verification, it remains mental athletics and nothing more than pure conjecture and can often reach the status of pure nonsense.
No, an atheist does not believe god exists. It's not an ideal, it's an opinion. I am an atheist but I cannot prove there is no god, no-one can, but I am personally convinced as near to 100% as you can get.
I am not being idealistic, I am not aiming for perfection, I just refuse to be as duped as a theist.
I want the generations to come to be freed from religious lies. I am not too bothered about current believers. I want the next generation to be told what we KNOW or are SCIENTIFICALLY most convinced of. That is all we should teach about truth. Let them speculate further or allow their imagination to take whatever flight of fancy it may but teach them not to make policies or build civilisations based on speculation and flights of fancy. Build on what we know!
The theist, like me, is convinced almost 100% he does exist. I don't give a damn about their eventual intentions for the creation of the universe and I don't preach in their name to direct life. I derive no morals from them or whatever. I still regret it that I signed an entrance paper for university. I had to sign to prove my Christian belief (for a physics study...)! Someone (I'm sure you would have liked him!) told me I should have protested. And he is right! The university is the closest by of the two in town. So I signed. What would have happened if I refused to sign?
Quoting universeness
I refuse to be duped as an atheist.
Quoting universeness
I tend to agree with this, but doesn't building society up by politics based on science mean giving the same power to Science as giving power to God?
You could have started a campaign. You may have been surprised by how many in the University would have supported you. One snowflake can start an avalanche. You would perhaps have gained a lot of outside support as well. I support such campaigns if I hear of them. Just like the schools in the deep South of the USA who were forced to accept black students. This pathetic excuse for the word 'University' (the name suggests 'for all, not for theists only!) would have or indeed will have to accept atheists as well or else it should be shut down and replaced.
I would have loved to see the day when you entered that university without having to sign something you perhaps didn't agree with, on principle at the time and those who insisted you did sign, got removed from their jobs.
From what you say, you sound more deist to me than theist but I could be dead wrong.
Quoting Cornwell1
Quoting Cornwell1
I always enjoy a bit of pantomime based exchange, 'Oh no you don't!,' 'Oh yes you do!,'
Oh sh** not that whole 'multiple personality stuff again....aaaaarrrggghhhhh'
Don't worry, normal service will resume soon.
Quoting Cornwell1
No, I am a democratic socialist. Checks and balances, scrutiny of intent....always and forever.
I am reminded of an old story from the early days of the Roman senate.
Anytime a conquering general came back to Rome to receive his big glorious parade.
The senate insisted that a slave be placed behind him on his horse or stood beside him in his chariot and regularly spoke the words 'remember you are just a man.' into his ear. I like that.
We must always seek out those with nefarious intent and stop them.
Unlike god, science is real but it has no power. Power comes from those who wield and control the technologies produced from the activity called science. Look to the well-used phrase.
Bombs don't kill people, people kill people.
We always had the tendency to become destroyers of worlds but that does not mean we have to.
:lol:
Though I don't fully understand...Multiple personalities?
In everyday life I never think about gods. Does it really matter if they exist? Do they offer a moral for our relationship with nature? Do they prevent us from doing harm to others? Can we say it's blasphemy if we curse "goddamned"?
Sometimes, when late at night I walk outside and see moon-lightened clouds float by, in shapes of gigantic creatures, it seems as if the gods are watching the Earth, for whatever reason. You will call it a fantasy, and of course it is. I believe the gods are real existent though. How else can you explain the presence of the universe?
P
Do you advocate for social justice through personal empowerment? Do you believe it's achieved through universal access to personal development in the form of housing, education & employment? Do you think that, where appropriate, businesses should be owned & operated by the public? Do you advocate for pluralism with respect to a person's metaphysical commitments, or lack thereof?
If any of the above is true for you, then you live by certain ideals you work to make realities to the best of your ability. This is a type of socialist idealism, which is not say it's tainted or fallacious thinking. Our mental constructions guide us. Empirical experience keeps forcing us to check, adjust and rethink our ideas & ideals on a daily basis. No one gets it right 24/7.
Many of us agree that deity is idealism. Well, anti-deity is also idealism. John Lennon's Imagine describes a well-defined society worth striving for in earnest.
Practical use of ideals doesn't always place a believer within the realm of fundamentalist naivete.
And in any case, the atheist isn't judging a being (divine or otherwise), but a concept or proposition: the concept of God/proposition that he exists.
And I'm not sure what exactly you mean when you ask whether "such an atheist exemplifies an ideal". Certainly, rational/critical atheism is based on/informed by certain norms/values ("ideals"), especially epistemological ones... but I'm not sure if that's all you're asking.
You don't exist. But I'm not judging you, as a being...
This seems like a magical leap and makes no sense.
To deny omniscience authoritatively from an atheistic perspective is to deny that the claims of theism are true. It makes no direct claim to "knowing there isn't a god," but instead knowing that based off available information, we know that this specific god does not exist.
I think it's just a buzzword to throw everyone off like "omniscence" having any correlation to the position of atheism. I do not care about the word in specific, because it's just put there in spite of it's irrelevancy.
What OP is really saying is that to "to deny God exists is to make a claim of knowledge that no God exists, and if this is the case, then you must be 'self-absorbed thinking you know everything because that is just your opinion, not a scientific fact' ... or whatever variation which is an obvious strawman stemming from lack of understanding.
The same talking points reworded differently. I won't even get into the solipisism aspect, because as my point just demonstrates it already started fallacious and not worth the blabber.
You imply that a proposition can be analyzed & judged apart from its referent within the empirical world.
You therefore imply that language has existence & meaning independent of the empirical world it describes.
Your implications, because they imply cognitive constructions in language that are existentially real apart from their referents, possess a strong flavor of idealism.
I'm speculating that your implications are, given your commentary upon my Atheism & Solipsism argument, for you, untenable.
Could it be, considering my main theme - that atheism is no less an idealism than theism - that you are, unwittingly, providing corroborating evidence?
Perhaps I misread your above quote. Can you show me some errors in my logic?
There's some incoherence between your first sentence and your second sentence.
The first sentence presents strong atheism, an extreme epistemological position that denies objective omniscience. You cannot authoritatively deny the objectivity of something without knowing it objectively (you can theorize the objective non-existence of something, with each successive moment offering possibility of refutation, or not>theories are not authoritative, but rather speculative ), a position that automatically culminates in the embodiment of what's denied. This paradox, as I've already said, resembles Russell's Paradox, wherein a set includes itself/doesn't include itself. The problem, as Russell pointed out to Cantor, is unrestricted inclusion. The same thing applies to refutation. There's a problem when refutation is unrestricted, as with the denial of omniscience.
Seppo tried to restrict the refutation of omniscience, but in the effort, nose-dived himself into deep idealism, a position, I suspect, he abhors.
In your second sentence, you too attempt to restrict the scope of atheistic refutation, knowing or sensing Russell's Paradox for unrestricted refutation looms large in the not-too-distant background. In the effort, you too make a sharp turn into idealism, characterizing - I suppose unwittingly - restricted atheism in a way that sounds more like agnosticism. This is the incoherence between the two sentences. The turn into idealism is your implication that restricted atheism is reaffirmed on a case-by-case basis. This renders the hard atheism of the first sentence as a speculation or theory. In consequence of this, the extreme epistemology of the first sentence becomes an ideal, a mental construction you treat as an existential reality of the mind, which you reaffirm, empirically, case-by-case.
Let's split "self-love" into:
1. Compassionate emotions and actions directed toward oneself. (Doing things that reflect a caring for self (in the same way we care for, for example, our children): exercise, healthy diet, avoidance of toxic people, places, relationships, etc.)
and
2. Egotistical love, megalomania, narcissism and general conceit. This is where Ayn struts her stupid stuff.
You argument holds good up until the start of the 20th century and the arrival of QM. I resort to the empirical extremis, which greatly weakens my argument, but it's all I've got for now. In the approach & departure to & from 29 Jan, time dilation, grown significant at micro time intervals, perplexes the exact now of beginnings & endings of calendar days. Not only you do not know, authoritatively, the calendar date; no one does. Instead, we must make do with a cloud of probabilities describing our calendar date.
Curiously, in this situation, a cloud of probabilities images more precision than does the old Newtonian conceptualization of time & space eternal.
The authoritative, certain knowledge long sought by science has been partially derailed by science itself.
And "ha, ha, ha" chortles the existentialist as s/he wraps arms around absurdity.
Well said, ZzzoneiroCosm
You call it self-love part 1. I call it self-esteem. I will say this, however; I see your list of reflexive actions as prep work towards experiencing the greatest adventure available in the universe: falling in love with another person unlike yourself.
This post is so daft. This is not how disproving something works. Scientists do not need to 'objectively know a unicorn' or be omniscient to objectively to disprove it's existence. They run experiments on worthy hypothesis and then falsify a claim. This is irrelevant to 'omniscience' (all-knowing) which is just a religious term of blabber. I could be wrong, but whatevs.
You're literally just saying stuff that is irrelevant to atheism, like your first post. I don't know what you're talking about and you're over-complexifying simple stuff.
If you say God doesn't exist then you make the same judgement as when you say That I don't exist. In both cases you ignore a person.
Speculatively, I prefer pandeism ... to either term.
Similarly. It's the most logical approach.
Well, I typed Quoting universeness
One voice in my head agreed with me and another voice did not. So three voices could be three different (or muliple) personalities. Just my sense of humour, nothing more.
Quoting Cornwell1
I understand your frustration, I feel it too, we cant answer your question yet but that feeling of frustration is a driver that makes us continue to seek an answer. So far, if Cosmology is correct, we do understand the 'How,' back to the inflationary moment. We have no idea about the ultimate why? YET!
I just don't need the lazy God of the gaps filler, and all the fables written by humans, about how it or it and its pals have created and manipulated us to give some sort of meaning and significance to it/them.
Well, my point is, I think I have such a self consistent, coherent, explanatory, you name it, theory/model. I can see no more encompassing theory to embrace it with. It accounts for phenomena like mass (there are only basic coupling strengths between two massless truly basic matter fields, the absolute minimum), a finite speed of light, dark energy, the whole shebang. Now what? Where did it come from?
I advocate for social justice as a human right regardless of the 'power' an individual may or may not possess.
I believe providing the basic needs of every human on this planet, including access to free education and medical care from cradle to grave is also a human right and no human individual or group has the right to claim ownership of land. Employment is not such a big issue if everyone can take their basic needs for granted. But life can be boring if you are not engaged in useful activity so I think the vast majority of people who can 'work', would choose to do so, especially if there was a communal need for you to do so.
I believe in nurturing people not profits. Money is the driver of what you call 'business'
Money would not exist in the society I favour.
All of the essential services should be in public ownership and should never be commoditised in a 'stock market' I have no problem with small businesses, if individuals want them. I would disallow large businesses.
I would disallow billionaires and multi-millionaires.
I am a democrat so I certainly advocate political pluralism.
If by metaphysical you refer to a person's right to hold whatever beliefs they choose, including theism,
then yes. That is a vital tenet of true socialism. But you cannot incite violence and you cannot INSIST others believe as you choose to.
I use 'I' a lot in the above text, deliberately as socialism requires the consent of the majority, initially and regularly (through a voting system). To create the society I have outlined. If that consent is withheld or is withdrawn then the system will not and should not hold.
Quoting ucarr
I simply disagree. You can label god as perfect if you wish. Ideal is just a descriptive label, nothing more.
But ideal......idealistic.....idealist is a descriptive ladder towards a 'perfection' concept which is based on Plato and Aristotle's musings and probably many many others before them. Atheism has got nothing to do with 'a ladder towards perfection.' It is an opinion that there are no gods.
I don't know.
Do you not get a little joy from the thought that we still have questions to answer and therefore still have purpose?
I'm certainly not making any such claim or implication. Language can only exist and have meaning in relation to the empirical world and social/linguistic habits of communities of language-users.
The point is merely that this talk of "judging a being" implies that the proper name "God" has a referent, when this is, of course, precisely what atheism denies... and so its a better and more accurate analysis of atheism as the position that neither the proper name "God" nor the common noun "god" has a referent, that there is not any being or entity to which either accurately applies.
Neither relativistic time dilation nor planck-scale uncertainty invalidates our authoritative knowledge of today's date (let alone any of the many other things we know quite authoritatively)- our dating methods are obviously relative to our own reference frame, and the calendar is a social convention and so the date just is whatever we agree that it is.
But the more fundamental point is that knowledge/"authoritative" knowledge, on any acceptable account, doesn't require strict apodeictic/logical certainty, else we could never know matters of empirical or scientific fact, or even of trivial matters of everyday experience... and so doesn't require omniscience, either.
Quoting ucarr
.Very few people would agree with such a characterization of science or scientific knowledge. Absolute certainty has long been an ideal for religion or philosophy (thanks, Descartes), but science is, quite self-consciously, a fallible and approximate method for knowing and navigating the empirical world.
I've already pointed out the differences between the two cases. But sure, there are similarities between local atheism wrt some specific god and disbelief in the existence of some individual.
Quoting Cornwell1
Well, no, not at all. For one thing, whether there is a person to ignore is precisely what is in question, and for another, in thinking about whether God/gods exist, we are doing the opposite of "ignoring" the matter.
[i]George - "Lord Alfred, the big wheel developer, intends to have the abandoned mill property razed to the ground. This in spite of public opposition."
Sidney - "A priori, it would seem that his reach, buttressed by high government connections, acts as an extension of that power."[/i]
----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
[i]Doctor - "How ever did you know the locket, sight unseen, would be inside the vase?"
Holmes - "Deduction, my dear boy. Elementary deduction."[/i]
Question[i] - Do the products of a priori reasoning possess ontic properties independent of the empirical?
Amen. As well as what Hitler is to Just Society. Or what Nero is to Philosopher King. Or what I am to Frank Sinatra. Or what Satan is to Archangelsk. Or what Scott is to the South Pole. Or what Golda Meyr was to a raving beauty of raw animal magnetism. Or what Lajos Kassak was to poetry. What the Moon is to the Sun. What the Holy Ghost is to the Son. Or what Wagner was to Music. Or what Bela Tarr is to cinematography.
I have to give it to you. You're right about that. It's just that you don't abduct criminals as an investigator for the law, you arrest them.
Yes. No doubt about that.
Questioning the existence of gods or other persons is very close to denying them. You have to question their existence firstly. Then denial is a small step.
Do you know the sign God has no referent, or do you theorize the sign God has no referent?
Quoting Seppo
Inertial reference frames of relativity assert the lack of a universal time. What we know in our frame is not known empirically in someone else's frame. So authoritative knowledge of the date, speaking empirically, is local; nonetheless authority is authority, whether local or otherwise.
Claims about God, however, typically speak of God's presence as something that transgresses all perceptible boundaries. Does atheism refute extant_God across all perceptible boundaries, or only within our empirical universe?
Regarding our calendar dates being what they are arbitrarily, the scientific method cannot ascribe its authorization to said dates via testing of reasoning or methods.
It makes no difference in this context; either way, God's existence is what is in question, and so talking of "judging a being", as if there is a being there to judge, is question-begging at worst, an extremely awkward way of speaking at best.
Quoting ucarr
Right. In other words, authoritative knowledge doesn't require omniscience. Maybe some knowledge claims require or imply omniscience, but that would need to be shown on an individual basis; it is not generally true that "authoritative" knowledge implies or requires god-like attributes.
I ask this question because I can claim there are no red German Shepherds, only black & gray ones. If someone denies existence of all shepherds, they must elaborate why canines can't exist, thus eliminating black & gray Shepherds.
Such an argument is a theory, even if no canines have ever been observed.
Not sure what you're referring to here, can you quote/link the post where this claim is made?
With my question, I was attempting to make a distinction between knowing by (2) possible standards: a) observation of phenomena within the empirical world; b) establishing an algorithm based on axioms.
Next, I was attempting to make a distinction between such knowing and propositions arrived at following reflection upon observations held in memory. With regard to the latter, a thinker can articulate a theory that postulates a line of reasoning that justifies a conclusion.
An important action here is to separate a proposition based on empirical observation from a proposition based on pure reasoning.
The gist of my argument is that God, being immaterial and therefore not subject to empirical observation, can only be denied via pure reasoning and that, moreover, pure reasoning, as a channel to valid conclusions, necessarily entails some measure of Plato's objective idealism.
Since we're dealing with a denial, there is a reversal of application of objective idealism. Since to deny God means denying objective existence of an absolute moral sentience, such denial entails embracing objective moral truth of a different sort from theism, or wholly denying objective moral truth, which entails embracing objective truth of a sort that excludes objective moral truth.
Further complicating the picture, denial of God gives the mind a central role in shaping a conception of reality through reasoning that leads to a configuration of the world that excludes immaterial, self-willed teleology. Since the denial, no less than the affirmation, operates without scientific experimentation, it follows that for yea or nay, the route to its conclusion travels through the realm of transcendent idealism.
Whatever the particulars, denial of God entails embracing a priori mental constructions of objective-transcendent idealism.
No, there is empirical content to theism; God stands in various causal relations with the physical world, having created it and periodically intervening in it. Causal relations which would entail observable evidence... and the fact that such evidence is lacking constitutes evidence against theism/God's existence.
Quoting ucarr
I don't see why it should. Logic is "pure reasoning" if anything is, and it consists in the manipulation of symbols on the basis of agreed-upon rules and procedures. And the a priori arguments against God's existence (paradoxes/contradictions between various divine attributes, for instance) are essentially just linguistic analysis of various predicates (omnipotence, etc). Hard to see why any of this should "entail some measure of objective idealism", its appears to be completely neutral to such questions (and thus is perfectly consistent with a realist/physicalist/etc metaphysic).
Quoting ucarr
This also appears to just be non-sequitur. If God's existence isn't being denied on any moral grounds, then one has taken no position on "objective moral truth", or its possible non-existence and so isn't committed to any of these positions.
Quoting ucarr
Maybe it does, but this remains a conclusion in search of an argument; we haven't been given any compelling reason to think this is so, its more or less just been baldly asserted.
Is it your understanding that God's being includes a physical component?
Are you saying that grammar of logic is extant independent of human reasoning? I ask because if not, then you suggest atheist logicians, in refuting God, access the physicalist-spiritual point of contact. If this is denied, then independent grammar of logic is an objective idealism.
No, but nevertheless, theism almost universally affirms that God stands in various causal relations with the physical world (most especially creation), and causal interactions imply, at least in principle, observable evidence.
Quoting ucarr
Why would that follow? Why would linguistic/conceptual analysis showing that certain terms or predicates are mutually exclusive require "access to the physicalist-spiritual point of contact", or imply that "grammar of logic is extant independent of human reasoning"? Once again this just appears to be a gigantic and unwarranted leap.
Quoting Seppo Quoting Seppo
There's a perennial debate whether numbers are discovered or invented. I'm asking a parallel question about logic.
If your answer is that logic is an invention of human understanding, do you acknowledge that together, human understanding and logic form a monism?
No, or at any rate I can't think of any reason why it should. It is the fact of these causal interactions that entails (in principle observable) evidence, how God accomplishes it is the theists business. Having a physical component would certainly provide an easier/more obvious answer, but theism tends to insist that God is pure spirit or some such. And so that's the claim we evaluate: and any evidence for such interactions is conspicuously lacking.
Quoting ucarr
Right and my point is that such discussions are not directly relevant here, the sorts of a priori arguments against God's existence (for instance, arguments from contradictory attributes) we're talking about don't presuppose or commit one to any particular position on nominalism/anti-realism vs. Platonism/realism wrt logic or mathematics.
No evidence is contradicting it either. Who says a lightning striking a church is not caused by the gods?
Sidebars into related topics have been ok before, or am I mistaken?
My question advances a line of attack on a type of atheist argument that uses the invented abstract structures of logic.
Um... Anyone who understands how the physical phenomenon of lightning works? If we are taking theism seriously as proposing a substantive existence claim/factual assertion (rather than as, say, mere poetry), then we treat it as an empirical hypothesis and check to see whether the world looks like what we would expect if theism were true. And that involves excluding the truth of alternative hypotheses.
So if we find, as we do in fact find, that the evidence we would expect if theism were true (evidence of special/theistic creation, evidence of miracles, evidence of the divine revelation of genuinely new/novel information, evidence of the efficacy of prayer, evidence of a moral world order, etc) is lacking, and the evidence we would expect if an alternative hypothesis were true- naturalism/atheism in this case- then that constitutes strong contrary evidence, i.e. evidence that theism is false. If your version of theism is consistent with any and all states of affairs, otoh, then its unclear what exactly it is asserting, if anything (and so atheism wouldn't be the negation of this position, but rather a rejection of its making any intelligible proposition in the first place).
Then make that argument. Because so far as we've been given no explicit reason why it should be relevant. Nominalist or Platonist (or neither/non-commital), both accept proof by contradiction, and so it doesn't really matter what position one takes on the matter to advance a priori arguments against the existence of God on the grounds of contradictory attributes.
Exactly!
When a seeker tries to find physical evidence of immaterial being interacting with matter, that's a very specific search. If the speaker is reacting to claims made to that effect, then the seeker must proceed from the premise that the immaterial being possesses a physical component that makes contact with material onjects. This premise contains another premise > that material evidence can only result from material agents acting upon it. If the seeker doesn't commit to these premises, then s/he allows that transduction between matter and spirit might be possible.
Well, no, not if that has been explicitly denied, as it is with most theistic traditions. And the incoherence of a non-physical entity causing physical changes in the observable world is itself grounds for doubting the truth of theism, apart from the fact that such interactions would imply evidence (evidence which is conspicuously absent).
If you reject such transduction, then you assert that spirit-matter contact is rationally impossible, and the existence of spirit is scientifically undecidable, with extreme skepticism.
Please see above post.
I'm not sure the matter is sufficiently well-defined to answer the question definitively. It doesn't appear to be logically impossible (it doesn't appear to entail a contradiction), but whether it is nomologically/metaphysically possible is ambiguous (which is, again, itself a problem for theism's credibility).
And since its not obviously impossible on any a priori grounds, the matter is to be decided on empirical ones: we look to see if there is any evidence of such causal interactions between God and the observable world (and, finding such evidence to be lacking, decrease our confidence in the truth/probability of theism accordingly).
Maybe God shows itself by means of the hidden variables in quantum mechanics.
It's impossible to check all that is happening in the universe. The heavenly happenings are too faraway. Who says they don't show themselves up there? Maybe they show themselves in the shapes of clouds... Or maybe they don't show themselves at all.
Question – How does an agent in the non-physical category (spirit) cause observable effects in the physical category (physics)?
Theism (theistic metaphysics) has a responsibility to propound spirit-matter transduction.
Atheism (atheistic metaphysics) has a responsibility to examine the same question, with intent to show impossibility.
No, it doesn't require impossibility, only falsity. Atheism is the position that theism is false, not necessarily the position that it (or any of its core truth-claims) is impossible.
And so its not incumbent upon the atheist to work out the details of how a non-physical agent effects physical changes or to show that such a thing is impossible, only to show that we have sufficient reason to disbelieve such causation has actually occurred. Obviously showing it is impossible does that, but it isn't necessary.
Atheism is then empty too. Even doubly!
Quoting 180 Proof
Quoting Seppo
Provisional Closing: Three ISMs
Idealism
When the staunch atheist confronts the question of atheism & idealism, an apparent conflict, s/he encounters a bit of trouble WRT to the perennial debate about the ontological status of numbers. Are they discovered, or invented?
Pertaining to the real or ideal question, numbers fall betwixt and between. What is a number? It’s the ultimate marker. Because numbers firmly mark position, a function that affiliates strongly with time, space, energy, motion, direction, volume and momentum, they’re indispensable to science which, for the past three centuries or so, has firmly planted itself within the realist-physicalist camp. Problematically, numbers don’t grow on trees. Clearly, numbers are an abstract, mental construction and yet, they are essential to myriad foundational operations within the real world of empirical experience.
If one says numbers are discovered, then such person lands somewhere in the vicinity of the objective idealism camp. Abstracts objects that, nevertheless, are out there in the objective world of experience hark back to Plato’s Theory of Forms.
If one says numbers are invented, then such person lands somewhere in the vicinity of the subjective idealism camp. Abstract objects, originating in the cognitive operations of mind, hark back to Berkeley’s Immaterialism.
The two above choices pose a problem for the atheist because any type of idealism, being, cognitively speaking, the express lane to theism, looms as a threat to the purity of the atheist, many of whom are realist-physicalist scientists who count numbers as essential.
The Comprehension Restriction
If we think of theism as a whole, logically, we can represent this whole as an all-inclusive set that encompasses all theisms. This is the set of all theisms.
All-inclusive sets allow us to make generalizations in the form of categorical statements. However, categorical statements don’t always lead to valid generalizations.
At the start of the twentieth century, British mathematician Bertrand Russell discovered, along with others, a limit to set-theoretical generalizations. Regarding the set of all sets not members of themselves, if left unrestricted in scope, it terminates in paradox.
Let R = {x ?x ? x}, then R ? R ?? R ? R
If the set doesn’t belong to the set, then it belongs to the set
If the set does belong to the set, then it doesn’t belong to the set.
The theistic parallel to Russell’s Paradox is what you get if you try to refute all theisms by way of a refutation set with no comprehension restrictions.
*Regarding the set of all theisms not members of themselves,
If it is not a member of itself then,
It is a member of itself> it is a theism
If it is a member of itself then,
It is not a member of itself>l it is a not-theism
*A theism that is not a member of itself i.e., not a theism, is a not-theism, as in, “doesn’t exist.”
** In this parallel to Russell’s Paradox, the paradoxical switch, in addition to alternating between member of itself/not a member of itself, also alternates between theism/not-theism.
Just as a set cannot simultaneously be a member of itself and not be a member of itself, a theism cannot simultaneously be a theism and not be a theism.
The necessity of the comprehension restriction tells us that, regarding set theory, there can be no categorical inclusion set that encompasses an entire category and, likewise, there can be no categorical refutation set that refutes an entire category.
In application, this tells us that there is no inclusion set of all sets that are not members of themselves and, likewise, there is no refutation set of all sets that are not members of themselves.
Talking specifically, this means there can be no wholesale, set-theoretical refutation of all possible theisms.
Each specific theism must be refuted individually.
Conclusion – Atheism is a theory of not-theism. If offers no categorical refutation of theism as a whole. Instead, it strives to refute logically, every instance of physicalist evidence claiming to prove theism.
Therefore, atheism, like theism, is an article of faith. As the theist seeks evidence of a cosmic, teleological sentience, the atheist seeks refutation of a cosmic, teleological sentience.
Transcendence Is Essential
By inference from the above, neither theism, nor atheism, at the physicalist-materialist level of existence, can be a sufficient, stand-alone category. Neither category, alone, constitutes reality.
Sufficiency of being requires transcendence of being & transcendence of self across a spectrum that incorporates the empirical universe & the transcendent Logos of deity.
Moreover, this transcendence is bi-directional. The logos of deity needs the physicalist-materialist manifestation of its will no less than its material beings need Logos.
The connection between material being, let us say human, & Logos, effects a mystical duality that subsumes all upwardly dimensional evolutions of reality.
At the level of science, upwardly dimensional evolutions of reality will manifest themselves as stages of increasing empirical complexity.
Monism – Solipsism*
*Note On Solipsism Being a variety of Idealism, solipsism, through Idealism, links atheism to itself.
... Language can only exist and have meaning in relation to the empirical world and social/linguistic habits of communities of language-users. — Seppo
Seppo’s description of language absent cosmic, teleological sentience equals SYNECDOCHE for cosmic monism-solipsism. The rejection of Logos leads to separatism in cosmic solitude. Matter evolves upward dimensionally to the status of a conscious self with no dialogue between that physicalist-materialist self and a cosmically transcendent source. Dialogue with other humans doesn’t break this solitude as the cosmic dialogue between self & other is between categorical human & transcendent deity.
The monist cognition of atheism is stoic, as human, by nature, wants to talk to the creation as a whole. The demands of human nature don’t stop there. Human wants creation to talk back. Human wants to experience cosmic dialogue. The essential gravity of sentience is other sentience. Sentience-to-sentience, on the cosmic scale of self & other, alone can satisfy the soul.
The theism-atheism dialectic boils down to the dualism of sentience-to-sentience vs. the monism of sentience upwardly evolved from non-teleological matter.
The monism-solipsism of realist-physicalist atheism and, therefore, of humanity, as viewed through this POV, is the result of expunging the upwardly dimensional (i.e., beyond three-dimensional reality) presence i.e., deity from existence.
Theism says human is mystically connected to the upwardly dimensional, divine presence which is transcendently real & transcendently sentient. Through this connection, human, in turn (as above in heaven, so below on earth) becomes transcendently real & transcendently sentient.
The chief attribute of this connection is, arguably, faith.
Put in everyday language, faith (vis-à-vis the material world) is the unseen window in a room without windows.
Life, then, under theism, is never completely containable as material substance. It begins in transcendence & whilst it persists, endures in the transcendence of sentience-to-sentience. This is the explicit stance of Neo-Platonists & Christians.
For the atheist, sentient life is only upwardly evolved, and thus upwardly dimensional from matter, but is not transcendently real & is not transcendently sentient. There is no trans-rationality of faith. There is only rationality. If the room has no windows, there is no way out. This is the rationality of physicalism-realism.
And yet, QM continues to pose challenges to this. QM is upwardly dimensionalizing 3-space articulation, thereby reducing its finality.
Jesus, being claimed as the physical manifestation of God, obligates atheists to refute the resurrection of Jesus as God in the flesh.
Since atheism denies the resurrection of Jesus on the cross, it must refute verbal evidence handed across two millennia with contrary evidence, say, another verbal account, contemporaneous with the crucifixion of Jesus.
If human understanding leads to reason-logic-truth, wherein the advent of human has no prior, cosmic, teleological sentience as its cause, but rather follows from a numerical probability of animate physical processes combined absent intent, then the forces driving history & evolution forward are probability and self. This is cosmic monism wherein animal kingdom, with human apex, forms a monist universe arisen probabilistically.
It doesn’t matter if the self takes human form, or some other form. Still, there is only one categorical self. Under the rubric of atheism, the universe is both monist & solipsistic. To be clear, under atheistic evolution, monism-solipsism prevails in the relationship between the collective self and its circumambient universe. Interrelationship between individual instances of selves has no bearing on this.
This monist universe of self-willed human stands in distinction from the binary universe of God-the-other and human, united in the cosmic mystery of LOVE.
Solipsism of Atheism 1 – It’s due to human consciousness being a probabilistically evolved sentience vis-à-vis its circumambient cosmos, or generative matrix. There is only a probabilistically evolved and then self-willed & self-directed self. There is no pre-existing cosmic sentience intending the human self into being. This is a MONIST universe WRT sentience.
Human sentience intended into being via a pre-existing cosmic sentience i.e., God, forms a DUALIST universe WRT to sentience.
Solipsism of Atheism 2 – The physical universe, by including a possible combination of factors that lead to sentience, provides physical evidence that allows recognition of the universe as neutral on the question of cosmic, teleological sentience. This cosmic duality is the essential component of LOVE. Its structure consists in the SELF-OTHER dynamical relationship.
This innate possibility for cosmic duality, through human acknowledgement, leads to the essential component of LOVE. Its structure obtains in the SELF-OTHER dynamical relationship.
To deny cosmic neutrality on the possibility of teleological sentience ordaining the advent of human sentience as a mathematical probability, atheism must postulate a physicalist universe wherein no possible combination of physical factors leading to sentience exists.
Since the agent of this project must necessarily be a sentient being, it’s doomed from the start.
The default option for atheism is to propound a theory featuring an auto-expansion of sentience paralleling the Big Bang.
This is an argument over whether possible combinations of physical factors that prove to be sentience-bearing only occur absent intent. If these combinations can be described & therefore predicted according to mathematical probabilities, then they are not randomly occurring.
The atheism project to deny a cosmic & teleological sentience can, at best, stipulate a paradoxical atheism since the agent of the project, a non-randomly evolved human sentience exists as a contradiction to its own project.
In a solipsistic universe of a monist self, probabilistically evolved and, at some point, self-directed in its upward evolution, LOVE is narcissistic.
The concept as a Type of deity (e.g. theism) can be shown to be empty, establishing every Token of that deity Type (e.g. Allah, YHWH, Zeus) as imaginary .
Grounds for "categorical refutation" ...
I claim (to know) that theism as such is not true.
Quoting 180 Proof
(Click my handle-link.)
NB: Also, this vignette about "faith" :pray: :eyes:
:up: Exactly. If we have good reasons for disbelieving in the existence of an entity with properties distinctive of theism as such/shared by many specific forms of theism, then we have good reasons for disbelieving in theism as a whole. Moreover, if we have good reasons for accepting positions which logically exclude the truth of theism- naturalism, or physicalism, for instance- then by the same token we have good reasons for rejecting the truth of theism.
Also, this is to ignore the fact that many atheistic arguments are arguments for different local atheisms- atheism wrt some particular form of theism (Christianity, for instance)- most especially against the form of theism that happens to be predominant in a particular region or culture (so, atheists in America spend a good deal of time thinking about Christianity, or Abrahamic monotheism, for instance).
No, not necessarily; this is either an extremely outdated categorization, or a gross oversimplification. Quine was a realist wrt abstract objects, but he was hardly an "objective idealist" in any meaningful sense: just because one grants some substantive ontological status to abstract objects doesn't really tell us about the nature of that ontological status, and there is, as in any other field or debate, a broad range of opinions among both camps, realists/platonists and anti-realists/nominalists.
Quoting ucarr
As I remarked already, theism and idealism have certainly been friendly towards one another, historically speaking, but idealism doesn't entail theism. One could be an atheist and an idealist, without any obvious contradiction, despite this historical affinity.
Quoting ucarr
This appears to be a strawman, as far as I can tell. Typically, atheism is the rejection of extant forms of theism... not "all possible" forms of theism.
Quoting ucarr
This doesn't really follow, even granting all of your premises leading to this point (mostly for the sake of argument, since as above, there are several serious problems with those premises); there is middle ground between what we can deductively/logically refute as impossible and what must be accepted as an article of faith (for instance, any empirical matter of fact falls into this middle ground).
And "faith" isn't merely something that is believed in the absence of sufficient evidence, faith must also be something we hope/wish to be true- you couldn't say "I have faith I am going to die today" without doing violence to language, and I don't think most atheists want there to be no god (or an immortal soul, or an afterlife), they simply believe that is the position most consistent with the available evidence.
Quoting ucarr
Um, why? This came out of nowhere, its not clear what this is even supposed to follow from.
I have to say, I stopped reading at this point, we've already strung together quite the series of non-sequiturs, and we're not even halfway through the post. At the very least, you've got a few major blanks to fill in here, as you've got a few conclusions that don't appear to follow from any of your stated arguments.
Even in a logical environment, it's bad policy to seek after final answers, as the cusp of a categorical pivot into a new era will be obscured by categorically correct theory.
I don't want to choke off counter-intuitive connections that upwardly dimensionalize orthodoxy.
I think you'll find that most atheists (at least those of a philosophical persuasion) are perfectly fine with that, and aren't claiming anything stronger than that atheism is warranted/probable in light of the currently available evidence (few atheists will claim that theism has been conclusively disproven to a logical certainty, or any such thing)... and are willing to reconsider that evaluation if/when new relevant evidence comes to light.
What is your response to the following characterization of pandeism?
pandeism- nature is a large scale mechanism operational within specifiable, obdurate boundaries. Its productions & their consequences are verifiable by means of evidence examined through the lens of materialist-physicalist premises. Philosophy of nature is propounded by exercise of reason as expressed in logical arguments supported by pertinent evidence.
What is your response to the following question?
Assuming we posit that flights of fancy, via the human imagination, occur within nature as described above, what is the the ontological status of flights of fancy?
Note - This isn't a question concerning specific content of a particular flight of fancy. It is a question about the phenomenon of flight of fancy that departs from reason, eventually making claims that have no empirical verification. Since this phenomenon is an existing thing occurring in nature, examination of its ontology promises illumination of important attributes of reality.
It's perfunctory and insufficiently speculative (re: by contrast e.g. ).
They are abstractions merely subsisting (Meinong).
You realise that many theists think Jesus died on the cross, or may not even have lived. Islam and Judaism for one view the Christian Jesus story as wrong. As do other faiths.
Claiming Jesus was an itinerant preacher about whom legends were constructed is not just an atheist position. I even know Christians who think Jesus was a mortal - an ethical teacher rooted in Jewish tradition.
It's one thing to argue for a god on the basis that there are as yet unexplained issues in physicalism. All of which sound like fallacies from ignorance. It's another thing entirely to use these gaps to state the case for a particular god. We could just as well argue that humans are part of an alien experiment in evolved apes. Or whatever.
Then there's the issue of atheism and argument. I suspect most people don't care about arguments or intense displays of reason being bent in all directions. People are atheists because the reasons for god/s are not convincing and the religious stories seem child like. But mostly it's not possible to believe if you lack a sensus divinitatis. Nothing can be done to make god/s seem relevant.
The real problem is the weak-arsed nature of all the god's who refuse to show up and communicate directly to people but leave proof of their existence to a priestly class and to fan fiction and to laborious arguments.
:clap: :smirk:
Quoting 180 Proof
I understand your use of perfunctory. You think my characterization is superficial. Regarding insufficiently speculative, I don't understand. Speculative - engaged in conjecture rather than knowledge. Given this definition of speculative, saying my characterization is insufficient, you're saying it needs to be more conjectural. Isn't this backwards? Did you mean to say, excessively speculative?
Quoting ucarr
Quoting 180 Proof
You haven't answered my question. I'm not asking about the content of flights of fancy. I'm asking about the phenomenon of humans engaging in flights of fancy. To a large extent, this is a question about the psychology of a certain type of behavior, namely, flights of fancy. The question is neither idle nor digressive because, in our context, we're examining human understanding of the general nature of existence & reality. Speaking epistemologically, human imagination & the Christian doctrine of faith are first cousins. I don't think science expels imagination from the scientific method. Do you think it does?
Quoting 180 Proof
Metaphysical Solipsism : True by definition.
Methodological Solipsism : Unavoidable.
Psychological Solipsism : Dangerous and unhealthy, avoid at any cost.
Do the naysayers of the Jesus Godhead have any contemporaneous accounts denying the alleged miracles?
I guess those supporting the allegations have worked harder to promote the miracles than those denying them.
I work from the assumption some contemporaries of Jesus were deniers. Where is their 2000 year effort to sustain a narrative of no miracles?
An appeal to tradition is a logical fallacy.
All religions have venerable stories of great deeds, gods and miracles - do you believe them all? Because if you accept the New Testament on the basis of an ongoing tradition then you need to accept Islam too or Buddhism or anything else featuring 'amazing stories', ancient doctrines and old books.
I'm just saying that motivation counts for something. Of course all types of people from all manner of belief systems deny human Godhead, miracles & redemption.
The work of promoting same entails nothing supernatural.
Why hasn't this vast array of good news deniers done the work of creating & promoting a venerable book of denial, dating from the time of Jesus, or have they? Perhaps you think the history of science is a kind of bible of rational denial.
No, it's just that I don't accept your over-aching premise that there needs to be an equal and opposite tradition to any given religious stories. In most cases people are free to just ignore magic stories whatever their source. There is no need to erect an edifice of oppositional doctrines.
I'm not implying popularity equals verification; it doesn't. As you are well aware, multitudes believe in debunked falsehoods, as by your your estimation Christianity.
I'm thinking of the job of the philosopher. Isn't it to explain why one particular set of myths has staying power across two millennia? Maybe it's more the job of the psychologist, eh?
At any rate, something's going on with Christianity. Why are multitudes such fools for Christianity? Is the good book a supreme example of successful promotion?
Why haven't clever operators seized upon this example of selling myth with shelf life of more than 2000 years?
Don't say it! You think televangelists are doing just that.
Why do televangelists fall like bowling pins, whereas Jesus and other divines keep surviving? You can count their names on one hand.
You say Aristotle predates Jesus, and he's still going.
Well, scholars have worked across 24 centuries to promote Aristotle, and there's talk Jesus was one of his students.
Some of the Pharisees were contemporaneous naysayers of Jesus, and Judaism rejects his Godhead, but Jesus was a faithful Jew.
These antiquities are a philosophy perennial.
We're going around in circles. Maybe you just have a need for the the Jesus story to be true and it suits you dismiss Islam and Hinduism and their miracle stories which are still very much from a living tradition. Miracle stories are so common it's scarcely worth noting them. What is rare however is actual miracles.
Quoting ucarr
People have a need for stories to help them cope with the struggles of life. You know that. There's a reason people take drugs and drink too. Even when the brands change. Televangelists seem to bounce back from scandal anyway because the followers don't really seem to care about ethics as much as they care about belief.
Quoting ucarr
Sure, but they had help. For centuries you were put to death for disbelief in Jesus or Allah. And powerful universities run by dominant groups determined and maintained the tradition of what counted as scholarship. It was never just about quality.
Quoting ucarr
The job of the philosopher is to help determine whether tradition is worth preserving and to test the truth or merit of ideas which are often popular despite the harm they cause.
.
If the Fundamental [i]condition[i] of any possible form of Reality is Matter, then it isn't exactly Atheism one believes in, is it? I believe that the Material Universe (as described by the Standard Model Of Cosmology see Cole and Ellis' Theoretical Cosmology) is all that exists, and that does in fact preclude some sort of magical Divine; but the absence of a god is not exactly the essential thrust of my conviction, just a corollary Truth.
So I guess I am an accidental Atheist.
And I am convinced, as per Darwin, that Consciousness infallibly denotes an objectively extant Material Universe, so I can hardly a Solipsist, can I?
Atlas Shrugged, contrariwise, is out and out loony, the embittered daughter of Tsarist aristocrats' dark vision ennobling one strata of society so as to justify their unending greed and lusts for power, as if the capitalist class was in reality anything but a collection of ruthless thieves. No one needs any further reason than the work itself to completely denigrate Rand's Moral and Political philosophy, but if you want an easier and less time consuming clue, there's her willing and happy assistance to the House Un-American Activities Committee in the middle of the last century, which should earn her the contempt and contumely of every decent person.
Are you claiming that consciousness is an emergent property of matter?
If your answer to the above question is "yes," then, regarding your identity as a self who is an attribute of the material ground, consider,
Quoting Michael Sol
Quoting Michael Sol
So, you believe matter is all.
So, as an attribute of the one & only thing that is real, matter, and thus being nearly as one with same, how can you be anything other than a solipsist?
Assuming we posit that flights of fancy, via the human imagination, occur within nature as described above, what is the ontological status of flights of fancy? — ucarr
Note - This isn't a question concerning specific content of a particular flight of fancy. It is a question about the phenomenon of flight of fancy that departs from reason, eventually making claims that have no empirical verification. Since this phenomenon is an existing thing occurring in nature, examination of its ontology promises illumination of important attributes of reality. – ucarr
They are abstractions merely subsisting (Meinong). — 180 Proof
As for "the ontology status of flights of fancy", click on the link I'd provided "(Meinong)" to an article about "ontological status" and you won't find anything said or implied (by me) about "the content". I have answered both questions clearly, just maybe not with answers you'd expected (or over your head). – 180 Proof
You haven't answered my question. I'm not asking about the content of flights of fancy. I'm asking about the phenomenon of humans engaging in flights of fancy. To a large extent, this is a question about the psychology of a certain type of behavior, namely, flights of fancy. – ucarr
With the above, I’m trying to make a distinction between a mental construction e.g. “fancy,” and its materialistically real substrate “cognitive behavior (that generates the fancy).”
Let’s examine your quotation of the plural pronoun “They.” What is the antecedent of “They”? (Human) behavior isn’t a good candidate because its number is singular, not plural. Also, behavior isn’t an abstraction. It’s objectively real. Regarding “flights of fancy,” that has a plural number. Also, flights of fancy are mental constructions that can be construed as abstractions.
Your communication by citation appears to be a characterization of “flights of fancy,” not the behavior that supports it, a material reality.
As you say, to my question, as stated, it is a clear answer, to wit: They are abstractions merely subsisting (Meinong). — 180 Proof. Your citation is a meditation on the ontological status of the content of flights of fancy.
It is not an answer to my question as intended. I failed to state the question such that it makes a clear distinction between objects of fancy & the real behavior that causes them. I’m concerned with the latter, not the former.
The answer to my intended question, it turns out, is simple. The ontological status of the human cognitive behavior that gives rise to such things as square circles is that of a physical-material reality objectively verifiable.
From the OED, the first sentence of their entry for Solipsism:
"Philosophy. The theory or belief that one's own self or consciousness is all that exists..."
So, I repeat, having every reason to believe that all you Zombies are as real as I am or the Sun in the sky is, I can hardly be a Solipsist.
Philosophy sure does truck with reductive materialism.
But I am epiphenominal!
Scratch matter & you disappear right along with it.
I am a distinct self, nearly, but not entirely material.
Saved by an adverb!
Epiphenomenalism, I'm sorry to say, is nonsense. You don't get Consciousnesses except through Evolution in a Material Environment. Evolution depends on 'mental events' like pain and pleasure, amongst other things. Since there is every reason to believe any Extant Reality must be Material, there is utterly no reason, since there is also no Empirical Evidence, to suspect anything Immaterial exists.
You need an alternative theory to our picture of matter constantly cycling and changing by means of causal processes before you can even begin to try to argue for the Immaterial - what would that look like?
Heaven, Hell, Immortal Souls? Sorry, just the Dreams of pre-Darwin and Einstein, primitive Philosophers.
Sidebar - Is it true that OED = Oxford English Dictionary? Just want to get that clarified.
Herein we're both working with some pretty tough concepts. I'd like us to agree about what you & I mean, respectively.
Quoting Michael Sol
Wait a minute. In your second sentence above, you give a causal description of consciousness that aligns closely with what I understand to be epiphenomenalism.
Here's a quote from my Apple dictionary,
Epiphenomenalism is a position on the mind–body problem which holds that physical and biochemical events within the human body (sense organs, neural impulses, and muscle contractions, for example) are causal with respect to mental events (thought, consciousness, and cognition). According to this view, subjective mental events are completely dependent for their existence on corresponding physical and biochemical events within the human body yet themselves have no causal efficacy on physical events.
If you're refuting instead of confirming the above definition, then you're handing my solipsism claim to me on a silver platter.
Immaterial mind's lack of causal effect is what separates it out from matter. It's immaterial because it's non-causal.
If epiphenomenalism, as defined above, is nonsense, then there is no separation-distintion between brain & mind, and thus the mental self is one with matter, and thus your matter is all proposition is all inclusive, making the material self the only thing extant within our universe.
Quoting Michael Sol
Here, again, you argue in favor of my solipsism proposition. If I am wholly material, then my mind is material, so the material mind is part of the only thing that exists, matter.
Note - The existence of other material minds, with whom you interact socially, has, per your view, no bearing on our cosmic solitude, as the categorical material self is the only extant self.
I differ from you in that I believe, by choice, that, in addition to the categorical immaterial self, there is also a transcendent immaterial cosmic self. The gist of my journey through existence is that it is an interpersonal dualism of self & cosmic other, whereas the gist of your journey through existence is that it is a solipsistic monism of categorical material self.
You're implying ontological status of a thing is metaphysical?
Theism is a theory of theism. It offers no categorical refutation of atheism as a whole. If you wanna believe in atheism, then that's up to you.
Quoting 180 Proof
Gods are no concepts. They are real features of reality. Every attempt to show they are empty or imaginary is based on the assumption they don't exist in the first place, which makes the attempt false, viciously circular, or vacuous at least.
I heard someone say this:
"If the only thing keeping a person decent is the expectation of divine reward, then, brother, that person is a piece of shit."
Indeed. Still, that person acts decent. And actually that person should be pitied. Acting decently out of fear is an undesirable state to be in. Acting decently because you love the universe they created is desirable. The same holds for a non-created universe, but such a universe can't exist.
Here's my adjustment.
Metaphysical Solipsism : 'true' only by contingent, encrusted, congealed habits in our blabbering
Methodological Solipsism : a game that was played until the pieces melted together and the board evaporated into a purple haze
Psychological Solipsism : (happy with what you said)
Keeping on laughing about it doesn't make them go away Booze!