Ok, so this is the sub-forum where I go when my inhibitions are lowered.
I read The God Delusion by Richard Dawkins, and I felt like I was talking to a repressed High School buddy about why he didn't want to go to his parents' church.
Atheism will always be a chicken-**** philosophy for juvenile emoremoved. The reason? It relies on other people's definitions of God in order to disprove the existence of God.
So, God created everything? Easy to disprove. 747 argument. Who designed the designer? A creator would be more complex than the creation, which would require an explanation.
Of course, who said God created the Universe? Christians. Nevermind Persian Zorastrians who believed that an incorporeal, impersonal force of Time created the Universe, while Osmud created the Earth and is the force of Good. Not to mention that the Christian Bible itself suggests that Jehovah's creations and the Universe are not stated as co-extensive, "behold my numerous creations" and so forth. In fact, God could be a race of mortal aliens that deposited identical organic life on Earth, mated with the Virgin Mary, and it wouldn't necessarily contradict the Bible. Only a strawman version of the Bible on which Dawkins relies.
Basically, the fault of the book is that it confuses Atheism with ontological Naturalism. Naturalism being the belief that all complexity originates from natural forces. Dawkins seems to disprove one version of un-natural creation, and then concludes on that basis that there must be none. But Theism being the inverse of Naturalism, defined as the theory that intelligent forces created some or all of the complexity we see, it kind of stands untouched by the refutation of any one definition of that intelligence, simply changing the definition to another.
Is the philosophy that some complexity developed naturally (Naturalism) and other complexity is artificial (Theism) really so devoid of passionate support? Is everyone so biased that this idea goes neglected by serious discussion? Is Ontology just somewhere that pissed off people go to get back at their parents?
Inappropriate language removed, Warning issued ~r_0
The crux of the issue is whether or not all/some of nature has/had an intelligence or "will" behind it.
The atheist always says 'no' and the theist says 'yes.'
Yeah, I agree with this summary. But the question is how Atheism can ever disprove intelligent design without resorting to some other camp's definition of what that intelligence must be.
The intelligence could be something as powerful as to create the Universe. Or it could be something as mundane as an Alien race that arose any number of ways, even by Naturalism. I just see most Atheists as saying, "Oh, Christian God is bunk. Game, set, match." All when even a strict read of the Bible doesn't define intelligent design in such absolute terms.
You are right to say that any discussion about a claimed designer is contingent upon the claim that said designer exists. When dealing with claims the responsibility, the burden even, is on the person who is proposing said designer to exist.
There are as many different proposed religious being as someone with time on their hands to imagine them. I need not concern myself with them unless people are actually attempting to claim the being exists and have put out at least a modicum of effort towards evidencing it. Why would I bother disproving the greek gods? Why would I bother disproving the odd little cults that pop up here and there? Why would I bother trying to disprove anything that didn't have at least a little bit going for it?
Now, if someone goes "X is true because Y" then we are getting somewhere. Until then, what would you have us prove?
Yeah, I agree with this summary. But the question is how Atheism can ever disprove intelligent design without resorting to some other camp's definition of what that intelligence must be.
Who says atheists can't tackle the issues on the table one at a time? Let's say they can only disprove the Christian God. Okay, that's two billion people out of a religion, give or take.
Maybe not "game, set, and match" as you put it, but I think a neutral observer would call that a pretty good outing for the atheists, all in all.
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A limit of time is fixed for thee
Which if thou dost not use for clearing away the clouds from thy mind
It will go and thou wilt go, never to return.
Atheism will always be a chicken-**** philosophy for juvenile emo-tards. The reason? It relies on other people's definitions of God in order to disprove the existence of God.
And why do we need to disprove the existence of god(s)?
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We have laboured long to build a heaven, only to find it populated with horrors.
Atheism will always be a chicken-**** philosophy for juvenile emo-tards. The reason? It relies on other people's definitions of God in order to disprove the existence of God.
That's not quite true. Atheism is a single position on a single question. It's the "no" answer to the question "do you believe a god exists?"
Depending on the god whose existence is being claimed, an atheist might be able to go further and say "I believe that god doesn't exist," but that requires a bit of extra work.
Anyway, I don't know that Dawkins' book is a great introduction to the atheist position. He's better at explaining evolutionary theory.
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Do I Contradict Myself? Very Well Then I Contradict Myself.
I think its a fine introduction to the position, although as you said its a pretty simple thing,
None of the facts or reasoning are bad, but we could say he overstates his conclusion. Disproving specific religions does not disprove religion in general. So either he is overstating his conclusion or he only views a rather specific amount of religious thought as being sufficiently worth debunking.
As has been stated before, if you want to make a claim you need evidence to back your claim up. Some atheists will claim "there is no god", and you would be correct in assessing that this claim is just as valid as the claim "there is a god". However, you can reject the notion "there is a god" without claiming "there is no god".
We are uncertain of the existence of a god, but since there is no reason to believe in a god, why shouldn't we fight against those who wish to propagate an ignorant position?
Ok, so this is the sub-forum where I go when my inhibitions are lowered.
I'd rather this be the sub-forum you go when you have something serious to talk about... it's not a rants board. Not that I see anything report-worthy, but, c'mon man.
I read The God Delusion by Richard Dawkins, and I felt like I was talking to a repressed High School buddy about why he didn't want to go to his parents' church.
I'm not a huge fan of that particular book, but I'm a huge fan of Dawkins (particularly the biological stuff).
This book came out in a string of similar books ("God Is Not Great", "Breaking the Spell" - which I happen to have a minor, unimportant credit in ), and if you're serious about understanding why The God Delusion was/is an important book, it's not that complicated... somehow I doubt you are, though.
Atheism will always be a chicken-**** philosophy for juvenile emo-tards. The reason? It relies on other people's definitions of God in order to disprove the existence of God.
Setting aside the extreme hostility (easily disproven, by the way - I'm an atheist and also a responsible and upstanding adult, not a juvenile in any sense of the word, nor an "emo-tard"), this is just a silly thing to say. If you're going to disprove something, OF COURSE you need to use the definition of that something that other people are using.
So, God created everything? Easy to disprove. 747 argument. Who designed the designer? A creator would be more complex than the creation, which would require an explanation.
That's Dawkins' argument, yes. I'm not entirely sure it's true (human beings may someday design a computer more complicated than we are), and that's one of the reasons I don't particularly buy his argument in the book, but hey.
Of course, who said God created the Universe? Christians. Nevermind Persian Zorastrians who believed that an incorporeal, impersonal force of Time created the Universe, while Osmud created the Earth and is the force of Good. Not to mention that the Christian Bible itself suggests that Jehovah's creations and the Universe are not stated as co-extensive, "behold my numerous creations" and so forth. In fact, God could be a race of mortal aliens that deposited identical organic life on Earth, mated with the Virgin Mary, and it wouldn't necessarily contradict the Bible. Only a strawman version of the Bible on which Dawkins relies.
I don't think you know what the word "strawman" means, because you're the one setting up a straw man.
If you went out on the street and told 100 Christians that you think their beliefs are sustainable because God is actually a race of mortal aliens that brought life to earth, they would say you're a nut job, or at least that they think you're totally wrong. The versions of "God" that Dawkins is taking on (which includes both fundamentalist Christianity and more moderate Christianity - both "God created everything 6000 years ago" and "God set the universe in motion with the Big Bang 20 billion or so years ago) are held by the vast, overwhelming majority of theists.
If your point is that he didn't argue against every single possible interpretation of "God", well, that's true but also trite. Of course he didn't. There are infinitely many (or at least Vastly many) possible interpretations of God!
Basically, the fault of the book is that it confuses Atheism with ontological Naturalism. Naturalism being the belief that all complexity originates from natural forces. Dawkins seems to disprove one version of un-natural creation, and then concludes on that basis that there must be none. But Theism being the inverse of Naturalism, defined as the theory that intelligent forces created some or all of the complexity we see, it kind of stands untouched by the refutation of any one definition of that intelligence, simply changing the definition to another.
First, understand why he's writing, and why Dennett was writing essentially the same thing, and why Christopher Hitchens was writing essentially the same thing at essentially the same time.
They were writing these books at the time because of the growing tide of fundamentalist and evangelical Christianity threatening to do serious harm to the United States and Great Britain through things like removing biology education from schools and replacing it with a religious education instead. They were writing to others who aren't committed religious people, in an effort to arm them to hold their own in arguments against committed, generally fundamentalist religious people. They were also persuading atheists - who, in many places, were feeling particularly isolated - that they weren't alone.
The book isn't written to disprove all gods, forever. The book is written as part of a broader effort to support the non-religious community at a particular point in history. So, you're more or less right, he doesn't disprove all gods forever. He didn't attempt to. He does set some bars that any religion has to clear in order to sustain an argument (i.e. why is there a highly complex, highly organized God-being instead of just a universe?), but he never meant to disprove all gods forever.
Is the philosophy that some complexity developed naturally (Naturalism) and other complexity is artificial (Theism) really so devoid of passionate support? Is everyone so biased that this idea goes neglected by serious discussion?
The idea that God set the universe in motion with natural laws that would lead to life forms with meaningful levels of intelligence is a very common one, if that's what you're asking.
The idea that God set up the universe to run along specified rules, than intervened a bunch of times - that's not so common, for some good reasons. If you believe in an interventionist God, you probably believe in it due to a religious tradition that holds that God created the world ex nihilo, so why postulate the natural laws portion of it?
Is Ontology just somewhere that pissed off people go to get back at their parents?
You really need to get used to the fact that just because you don't see the point in a topic doesn't make it a pointless topic. Quotes like this are just totally unproductive. Yes, we get it, you missed the point, you don't understand why we're having the conversation. You're being intentionally dismissive without justification, and all it really reflects is your own ignorance.
(Incidentally, ontology is a serious branch of philosophy, though I'm not especially surprised that you don't know that.)
Although I do agree with your view that book is rather poor it is not for the reasons you give.
This book came out in a string of similar books ("God Is Not Great", "Breaking the Spell" - which I happen to have a minor, unimportant credit in ), and if you're serious about understanding why The God Delusion was/is an important book, it's not that complicated... somehow I doubt you are, though.
I think you are over emphasising its importance. He was more interested in making money than contributing anything of any worth to any religious debate. The shrill tone of the rhetoric bearing witness to that. To think that Aquinas even says that everything has a cause show tremendous ignorance.
Then again ignorance is somewhat of a characteristic when it come to the new atheism and religion.
You're really arguing about words. The consensus definition of god is, as far as I can tell, completely incompatible with ontological naturalism as you describe it.
To think that Aquinas even says that everything has a cause show tremendous ignorance.
I believe that Dawkins faithfully (if briefly) represented Aquinas' arguments, at least as far as I have knowledge of them:
Quote from The God Delusion: THOMAS AQUINAS" "PROOFS" »
2 The Uncaused Cause. Nothing is caused by itself. Every effect has a prior cause, and again we are pushed back into regress. This has to be terminated by a first cause, which we call God.
In the world that we sense, we find that efficient causes come in series. We do not, and cannot, find that something is its own efficient cause — for, if something were its own efficient cause, it would be prior to itself, which is impossible. But the series of efficient causes cannot possibly go back to infinity. In all such series of causes, a first thing causes one or more intermediaries, and the intermediaries cause the last thing; when a cause is taken out of this series, so is its effect. Therefore, if there were no first efficient cause, there would be no last or intermediary efficient causes. If the series of efficient causes went back to infinity, however, there would be no first efficient cause and, hence, no last or intermediary causes. But there obviously are such causes. We must therefore posit a first efficient cause, which everyone understands to be God.
I concur that Dawkins did not distort the argument, at least as it was originally presented by Aquinas. There has been development since that might lead one to say that he wasn't addressing the best form, but even the best form isn't very good.
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A limit of time is fixed for thee
Which if thou dost not use for clearing away the clouds from thy mind
It will go and thou wilt go, never to return.
He was more interested in making money than contributing anything of any worth to any religious debate. The shrill tone of the rhetoric bearing witness to that.
I'd agree that his interest lies on in religious debate. However, to say that he's only interested in making money is just stupid.
Have you ever read his introduction to "The Greatest Show on Earth: the Evidence for Evolution"? In it, his reasons for attacking religion become quite clear. I don't agree with his approach, but whatever.
Then again ignorance is somewhat of a characteristic when it come to the new atheism and religion.
How presumptuous.
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We have laboured long to build a heaven, only to find it populated with horrors.
Atheism will always be a chicken-**** philosophy for juvenile emoremoved.
This is what we call....projection.
The reason? It relies on other people's definitions of God in order to disprove the existence of God.
He used the definitions in order to argue intelligently...and you are confused by this?
There is no reason to disprove God. What is presented without evidence can be dismissed without evidence.
And disproving the existence of anything is pretty much impossible. How does one do that exactly....show a video account of every particle in the universe to show that God is not among them?
Of course, who said God created the Universe? Christians. Nevermind Persian Zorastrians who believed that an incorporeal, impersonal force of Time created the Universe, while Osmud created the Earth and is the force of Good.
It seems that you're upset that he did not add a few million more pages to the book to discount the countless thousands of other religions in the world. Even though doing so would be painfully redundant as he would simply be repeating the same argument over and over.
Only a strawman version of the Bible on which Dawkins relies.
Quoted for irony.
Is the philosophy that some complexity developed naturally (Naturalism) and other complexity is artificial (Theism) really so devoid of passionate support?
Not at all. I've watched theists move the goalposts in this fashion for years, for example the transition between overwhelming majority claims among creationists that evolution does not occur to a general acceptance that microevolution (as though adding 'micro' to the word makes it a different process) does occur. Another example is when the vatican finally accepted in 1992 that Galileo was right - the rest of the world knew it for hundreds of years and as usual, religion is dragged kicking and screaming and refusing to accept what is obvious to anyone who has the courage and intelligence to look at things objectively. Its a pity, if everyone who believed in a Creator actually respected the Creator enough to honestly examine creation....we would all be in agreement.
Although I do agree with your view that book is rather poor it is not for the reasons you give.
This book came out in a string of similar books ("God Is Not Great", "Breaking the Spell" - which I happen to have a minor, unimportant credit in ), and if you're serious about understanding why The God Delusion was/is an important book, it's not that complicated... somehow I doubt you are, though.
I think you are over emphasising its importance.
It was important enough that if you go to a website like this to argue about it, most of the people have read it. Has it persuaded a lot of people? Probably not. But you'll find arguments from it in many religious vs atheist debates.
I'm not saying it was important like the Bible is important, but it can't be completely dismissed, either.
He was more interested in making money than contributing anything of any worth to any religious debate.
I doubt it.
The shrill tone of the rhetoric bearing witness to that. To think that Aquinas even says that everything has a cause show tremendous ignorance.
'Shrill' probably is a fair word for his tone in the book, but the point on Aquinas has been rather roundly refuted already, I'd say.
Then again ignorance is somewhat of a characteristic when it come to the new atheism and religion.
...
Have you ever sat down and talked to Dan Dennett or Richard Dawkins? 'Ignorant' is the very last word that could ever be used to describe them.
Basically, the fault of the book is that it confuses Atheism with ontological Naturalism. Naturalism being the belief that all complexity originates from natural forces. Dawkins seems to disprove one version of un-natural creation, and then concludes on that basis that there must be none. But Theism being the inverse of Naturalism, defined as the theory that intelligent forces created some or all of the complexity we see, it kind of stands untouched by the refutation of any one definition of that intelligence, simply changing the definition to another.
First, understand why he's writing, and why Dennett was writing essentially the same thing, and why Christopher Hitchens was writing essentially the same thing at essentially the same time.
They were writing these books at the time because of the growing tide of fundamentalist and evangelical Christianity threatening to do serious harm to the United States and Great Britain through things like removing biology education from schools and replacing it with a religious education instead. They were writing to others who aren't committed religious people, in an effort to arm them to hold their own in arguments against committed, generally fundamentalist religious people. They were also persuading atheists - who, in many places, were feeling particularly isolated - that they weren't alone.
The book isn't written to disprove all gods, forever. The book is written as part of a broader effort to support the non-religious community at a particular point in history. So, you're more or less right, he doesn't disprove all gods forever. He didn't attempt to. He does set some bars that any religion has to clear in order to sustain an argument (i.e. why is there a highly complex, highly organized God-being instead of just a universe?), but he never meant to disprove all gods forever.
Yes, this exactly. Atheism isn't taken as the next logical step in the evolution of human belief. Or even as a philosophy more representative of what we scientifically know about the cosmos. It falls short of being conclusive on these fronts. So, it's best understood as "social commentary"???
If it's social commentary, then what is left to recommend it? Isn't rationalism the spirit of it? That people shouldn't believe in superstition anymore in this age? People should verify something first? If so, it immediately contradicts itself, since there's no sound defense of it as anything other than superstition itself.
If you admit you can't disprove the idea of God, then how can one rationally believe in Atheism as defined? And how can you even give it its own independent meaning? If all it's concerned with is the social value of disproving Judeo-Christianity, isn't it more appropriately called anti-Christianity? Instead, it's masquerading as its own thing, when all it really boils down to is "I hate you, dad, for making me go to church."
All arrayed against the self-assessed harm of the religious spreading their belief in religion.
The reason for it all is that self-important people have difficulty doing what science and the age of reason would actually suggest. They can't do the Socratic, Cartesian thing of admitting, "I know that I know nothing." What started out as the basic kernel of science is hidden underneath a blanket, and when it's lifted, accusations of unfairness fly insisting that Atheism has to be taken on the same terms as every other "social commentary".
That kind of arrogance distracts from the message of rationalism that Atheism claims to enshrine. Worse, it distracts from the actual debate - which is between Naturalism, Theism, and neither. It assumes naturalism, and concludes by doing so that everything is an appropriate matter for scientific inquiry. Then, it assumes that anything that can't be proved or disproved by science must be false, because after all, naturalism is true. Then it just recycles that message over and over. God can't be proven, so it must not exist.
It's impossible to even have the debate as long as Atheism continually fails to admit that Naturalism and Rationalism have nothing at all to do with one another. Naturalism is an eyes-in-the-clouds ontological philosophy that starts off on the same grounds as all the others, unproveable by definition. Scientific Rationalism isn't a philosophy, but rather a mechanism of simplifying inquiries by declaring anything that cannot be observed as outside its territory. The appeal, obviously, is that Naturalism defines everything as being inside the realm of observation, and therefore science. Essentially discarding the more humble portions of Descartes. But at accomplishing the impossible task of actually proving Naturalism, Atheism does absolutely nothing, and confuses the issues instead by begging the question.
Which is why I said, Atheism is a philosophy for (rephrasing) intellectually immature thinkers motivated to irrationality by a disdain for tradition. Like tweens, they find themselves unable to outgrow the influence of tradition, so they stomp their feet at it. The philosophical equivalent of Twilight fans. Saying "I hate you, dad!" out of one side of their mouths, then demanding "Now, pay my cell-phone bill!" out of the other.
Which is why I said, Atheism is a philosophy for (rephrasing) intellectually immature thinkers motivated to irrationality by a disdain for tradition. Like tweens, they find themselves unable to outgrow the influence of tradition, so they stomp their feet at it. The philosophical equivalent of Twilight fans. Saying "I hate you, dad!" out of one side of their mouths, then demanding "Now, pay my cell-phone bill!" out of the other.
Apart from the fact that most of what you said is prima facie and overtly fallacious well-poisoning, you do realize that you've defined the term "atheist" in such a way that not even Richard Dawkins himself is an atheist, right?
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A limit of time is fixed for thee
Which if thou dost not use for clearing away the clouds from thy mind
It will go and thou wilt go, never to return.
Which is why I said, Atheism is a philosophy for (rephrasing) intellectually immature thinkers motivated to irrationality by a disdain for tradition. Like tweens, they find themselves unable to outgrow the influence of tradition, so they stomp their feet at it. The philosophical equivalent of Twilight fans. Saying "I hate you, dad!" out of one side of their mouths, then demanding "Now, pay my cell-phone bill!" out of the other.
Apart from the fact that most of what you said is prima facie and overtly fallacious well-poisoning, you do realize that you've defined the term "atheist" in such a way that not even Richard Dawkins himself is an atheist, right?
Ok, some people seem to think that insult-laden refutations are the same as ad hominem fallacies. They are NOT.
There's nothing wrong with calling an idiot and idiot, a charlatan a charlatan, or a juvenile emo malcontent a juvenile emo malcontent. It's when you try to use an insult to discredit someone's position that it becomes a fallacy.
The above is criticism that stands on its own two legs logically. Then I offer that the reason people might be taking illogical positions is because they are juvenile, emo malcontents. Which is not a premise to the argument at all.
That out of the way, the very existence of the "theistic probability spectrum" belies Atheism as no more than an exercise in faith, exactly the same thing that it's intended to supplant. It's saying, "Here, we know you can never really know what created this Earth, or why we might be here on it, but we're going to blink our eyes really hard and believe that there's no reason whatsoever. Rate yourself on this scale at how good you are at doing that. I'm a 6.9, guys. 7 is too much."
I mean, really? And get this, if you're a middle 4 on the scale, it means that you believe that the probability of the existence of God is exactly 50%. Slide up or down and the probability moves. Come on.
That's not at all how Rationalism works. You either know something, or you don't. You don't assign probability, as if what you're talking about comes down to a die roll. If you don't know something, you posit a falsifiable theory, and then you go about proving it. If you can't do that, you continue to be unable to know something.
What you definitely don't do is go around taking people's opinion that you don't like, railing on the tradition of it, then argumentatively place the weight of all of the scientific advances of the last 200 years behind your own opinion. You just say, hey, here's my opinion.
So, it's not that Atheism is a belief that I have a problem with. It's the fact that this phony appeal to Scientific Rationalism is what fuels it, when it has no right to that whatsoever. It's not rational. It's not scientific. It's just some guy's exercise in faith.
Ok, some people seem to think that insult-laden refutations are the same as ad hominem fallacies. They are NOT.
1) Insult-laden refutations are, apart from anything else, bad faith debate and should be avoided for that reason alone.
2) You are poisoning the well because you are making assertions about atheists that relate not to the truth or falsity of a particularly stated position of atheism (How could they? You don't even understand the position to begin with...) but are rather devoted solely to casting aspersions on the ostensible mental state of the atheists themselves.
3) This instance of well poisoning is also both ad hominem and non sequitur, because even if you could prove that all atheists are trolls, that would say nothing as concerns the correctness of their position.
Then I offer that the reason people might be taking illogical positions is because they are juvenile, emo malcontents. Which is not a premise to the argument at all.
Hah! Does this apply to anyone who might take an illogical position in any matter? Because everyone says and does illogical things from time to time, but not everyone is a juvenile, emo malcontent.
That out of the way, the very existence of the "theistic probability spectrum" belies Atheism as no more than an exercise in faith, exactly the same thing that it's intended to supplant. It's saying, "Here, we know you can never really know what created this Earth, or why we might be here on it, but we're going to blink our eyes really hard and believe that there's no reason whatsoever. Rate yourself on this scale at how good you are at doing that. I'm a 6.9, guys. 7 is too much."
No, the point of that spectrum is to make clear (in agreement with some of your own basic epistemic claims!) that properly scientifically-grounded theories do not express certainties, and therefore a way of describing the position "Although I am not necessarily certain in either direction, such evidence as I have collected militates (for/against) God's existence" is needed.
I don't know that the spectrum is the best way to do that. I do know that every one of your objections, which are grounded in the incorrect idea that atheism is concerned solely with expressing certainty, collapse in on themselves for anyone who doesn't give themselves either a 1 or a 7.
That's not at all how Rationalism works. You either know something, or you don't. You don't assign probability, as if what you're talking about comes down to a die roll. If you don't know something, you posit a falsifiable theory, and then you go about proving it. If you can't do that, you continue to be unable to know something.
That soccer chant where the crowd sings "you don't know what you're doing" over and over again is playing in my head right now.
Then I offer that the reason people might be taking illogical positions is because they are juvenile, emo malcontents. Which is not a premise to the argument at all.
Hah! Does this apply to anyone who might take an illogical position in any matter? Because everyone says and does illogical things from time to time, but not everyone is a juvenile, emo malcontent.
No, I suppose I should have said, "I offer that the reason people might be taking illogical positions on this issue is because they are juvenile, emo malcontents." Am I really going to be criticized for not being specific enough there?
That out of the way, the very existence of the "theistic probability spectrum" belies Atheism as no more than an exercise in faith, exactly the same thing that it's intended to supplant. It's saying, "Here, we know you can never really know what created this Earth, or why we might be here on it, but we're going to blink our eyes really hard and believe that there's no reason whatsoever. Rate yourself on this scale at how good you are at doing that. I'm a 6.9, guys. 7 is too much."
No, the point of that spectrum is to make clear (in agreement with some of your own basic epistemic claims!) that properly scientifically-grounded theories do not express certainties, and therefore a way of describing the position "Although I am not necessarily certain in either direction, such evidence as I have collected militates (for/against) God's existence" is needed.
I don't know that the spectrum is the best way to do that. I do know that every one of your objections, which are grounded in the incorrect idea that atheism is concerned solely with expressing certainty, collapse in on themselves for anyone who doesn't give themselves either a 1 or a 7.
I don't have the incorrect idea that Atheism is grounded only in certainty. In fact, just the opposite, if you've been reading. I consider it a faith-based belief system. If it correctly proclaimed itself to be a faith-based belief system, I would give it the same deferential treatment as every other faith-based belief system.
It doesn't do that. It claims to be scientific and rational. Doing so, it attempts to put all the scientific advances of the last 200 years, and the force of the Modern Era itself, underneath its argumentative weight. It has no right to do this, because the questions it aims to answer are beyond observation and experiment, things upon which Science and Rationalism rely. It's a self-deception, and should be exposed as such. One way to do that is an absurdist appeal to what Atheism would be if it really could claim the credit for Science and Rationalism. Which is what I've been doing a lot in this thread.
What would Atheism look like if it correctly held itself out to be a belief? Probably a lot like the philosophy of Naturalism, hence the title of the thread. Naturalism is the idea that all things have an observable cause. If Atheism were nothing more, you wouldn't have hypocrisy, the persecution of other ideas, etc. You wouldn't have this quasi-religious commitment to the idea as being definitive of one's existence and social identity. Instead, you'd have philosophical debate that wouldn't carry beyond the realm of the academic. Which is what people should be having. The fact that there's more reveals that the core of Atheism as nothing more than anti-religion, and is worthy of less Scientific respect than its derivative.
I'm not advocating for Theism, or for Atheism. There's no rational basis to have such discussion. I'm advocating for the humility to accept doubt. That just because Science is the most important philosophical revolution in human history, it's not a mythical Oracle of limitless reach. There are those questions that lie outside its capability to answer. The questions are healthy for human beings to be asking themselves. There's a belief that these questions have been disposed of by people who've been given advanced college degrees and research grants. That the reason common folk don't understand is because we don't have these icons of scientific achievement. Some Atheists really do believe this, particularly the ones of our generation. This is damaging. It's at the very least damaging to humanity's tendency to ask these questions of themselves. Because if you've been duped into thinking someone's answered the question, you don't ask it.
No, I suppose I should have said, "I offer that the reason people might be taking illogical positions on this issue is because they are juvenile, emo malcontents." Am I really going to be criticized for not being specific enough there?
No he's criticizing the pot for calling the kettle black.
I don't have the incorrect idea that Atheism is grounded only in certainty. In fact, just the opposite, if you've been reading. I consider it a faith-based belief system. If it correctly proclaimed itself to be a faith-based belief system, I would give it the same deferential treatment as every other faith-based belief system.
Atheism isn't a faith based system. It's a lack of faith in god(s). Calling atheism a faith based system is like calling bald a hair color.
Quote from Justice1337 »
It doesn't do that. It claims to be scientific and rational. Doing so, it attempts to put all the scientific advances of the last 200 years, and the force of the Modern Era itself, underneath its argumentative weight. It has no right to do this, because the questions it aims to answer are beyond observation and experiment, things upon which Science and Rationalism rely. It's a self-deception, and should be exposed as such. One way to do that is an absurdist appeal to what Atheism would be if it really could claim the credit for Science and Rationalism. Which is what I've been doing a lot in this thread.
How are you attributing any of this to atheism? Atheism doesn't claim any of that, it's not making a claim at all. It only says one thing, 'I reject the claim that god(s) exist' and that's it.
Quote from Justice1337 »
What would Atheism look like if it correctly held itself out to be a belief?
What would bald look like if it held itself out to be hair?
Then I offer that the reason people might be taking illogical positions is because they are juvenile, emo malcontents. Which is not a premise to the argument at all.
But the only one who is acting this way is you. Which is why you received a warning for it.
I consider it a faith-based belief system. If it correctly proclaimed itself to be a faith-based belief system, I would give it the same deferential treatment as every other faith-based belief system.
I am more than happy to say that it is possible that there is a god or gods out there. The moment that evidence rolls in for their existence I will be happy to believe.
But so far there isn't. So I don't.
The moment that there is evidence for an elephant in my closet, I will believe that that it exists.
But so far there isn't. So I don't.
This is not a faith-based belief system. Its just being rational.
I'm advocating for the humility to accept doubt. That just because Science is the most important philosophical revolution in human history, it's not a mythical Oracle of limitless reach.
Okay I get it - you're arguing against a non-existent person who claimed that science is a mythical oracle of limitless reach.
This discussion would be more meaningful if, instead of creating imaginary opponents with weak arguments that you are capable of defeating, you instead address real arguments.
No, I suppose I should have said, "I offer that the reason people might be taking illogical positions on this issue is because they are juvenile, emo malcontents." Am I really going to be criticized for not being specific enough there?
Of course. Because why would being illogical about this particular issue be special? If I argue illogically about -- I don't know, the sound of a tree falling in a forest when nobody hears it -- I'm not accused of emo malcontentedness, but if I argue illogically about God's existence, I am?
Of course this whole premise is completely moronic to begin with, but you make it worse when you add special pleading on top.
I consider it a faith-based belief system. If it correctly proclaimed itself to be a faith-based belief system, I would give it the same deferential treatment as every other faith-based belief system.
Your assessment is not correct. Uncertainty weighted by evidence and faith are not the same things.
Uncertainty weighted by evidence: "I hold the position P not because I know it with certainty but because it is consistent with the balance of the evidence. If I receive new evidence that militates against P, I will re-evaluate my position to be less favorable to P."
Faith: "I hold the position P because I have faith in it. No matter what evidence I receive, even if it is against P, I will continue to believe P, because faith is just not the kind of thing that cares about evidence."
Atheists aren't saying "hey, look, there's all this evidence for God but we just reject it because our faith-based dogma requires us to believe God doesn't exist, come what may." They're saying "There's no evidence for God and until you show me some, I don't buy into it." That is not a faith-based viewpoint.
It has no right to do this, because the questions it aims to answer are beyond observation and experiment
Not all of them are. For instance, an atheist has as much at stake in the answer to the question "Did Jesus Christ rise from the dead after three days?" as does any Christian, because if the answer is "yes," that would be evidence. But that question could, in principle, be answered in the negative purely by observation and experiment. After all, "this person was dead and then was alive three days later" is an empirical, falsifiable claim. Or consider the evidential problem of evil, which uses empirical facts to buttress an argument that would otherwise take place within the confines of theology.
In other words, S.J. Gould was wrong: there is an overlap between the magisteria.
What's more, even some of the issues that do appear to be outside the realm of experimentation can still be addressed by argumentation and a priori methods.
Probably a lot like the philosophy of Naturalism, hence the title of the thread. Naturalism is the idea that all things have an observable cause.
Naturalism can refer to many different things, but the idea that everything has a cause is not among them. Many atheists do hold various viewpoints that could be called naturalism, but it is entirely possible to be an atheist without being a naturalist. (Suppose, for instance, you think there is something supernatural but it lacks the properties required of God.)
(The idea that all things have an observable cause, which is emphatically not naturalism, is probably not true.)
If Atheism were nothing more, you wouldn't have hypocrisy, the persecution of other ideas, etc. You wouldn't have this quasi-religious commitment to the idea as being definitive of one's existence and social identity.
No, you would always have that, because I'm sorry to say that douchery is part of human nature. The problems you point out here arise not from the propositional content of atheism, which entails none of what you think it does -- but rather from the human foibles of some of the people who label themselves with the term.
Instead, you'd have philosophical debate that wouldn't carry beyond the realm of the academic. Which is what people should be having.
Why should it be surprising that individuals outside of philosophy or academia are intensely interested in engaging with these concepts?
The fact that there's more reveals that the core of Atheism as nothing more than anti-religion
If by "nothing more than anti-religion" you mean that atheism consists of assertions against the existence of God while religion asserts the opposite, then yes.
I'm advocating for the humility to accept doubt. That just because Science is the most important philosophical revolution in human history, it's not a mythical Oracle of limitless reach.
A humility and doubt that even Richard Dawkins himself, the figurehead you're emo-railing against (and a guy that even most atheists regard as being on the shrill and dismissive end of the spectrum) already possesses.
There's a belief that these questions have been disposed of by people who've been given advanced college degrees and research grants.
No there isn't. Who thinks the god question is solved merely because one guy waving around a Ph.D. said so? Not even many people on the atheist side, who would win if this were the standard for anything, think this.
That the reason common folk don't understand is because we don't have these icons of scientific achievement. Some Atheists really do believe this, particularly the ones of our generation. This is damaging. It's at the very least damaging to humanity's tendency to ask these questions of themselves. Because if you've been duped into thinking someone's answered the question, you don't ask it.
I think that we agree on a core belief here.
I'd be as angry as you if an inquiring mind asked about God and some professor just waved his Ph.D in his face, said "there's no God because I said so and this piece of paper means I'm always right, and you're not allowed to ask the question ever again because now you know the final and eternal and certain answer." Free inquiry is probably the most important human right, in my book.
The problem is that this is not the sort of thing you've been saying in the rest of your posts. What you said before is that the professor, if he disbelieves in God, cannot be rational but in fact must be some sort of emotionally damaged troll. "Why bother listening to his argument, since it's just going to be about him rebelling against some church or hating Christianity or still being upset about 9/11? There can't be any science or reason underlying his beliefs -- after all, he's not certain, and science and reason are always certain about everything."
And that is idiocy of equal magnitude with that of my trumped-up professor: you stifle free inquiry just as much when you don't permit one party in the argument to speak without pre-distorting their position and poisoning the well with your exceedingly ignorant nonsense.
I read The God Delusion by Richard Dawkins, and I felt like I was talking to a repressed High School buddy about why he didn't want to go to his parents' church.
Atheism will always be a chicken-**** philosophy for juvenile emoremoved. The reason? It relies on other people's definitions of God in order to disprove the existence of God.
So, God created everything? Easy to disprove. 747 argument. Who designed the designer? A creator would be more complex than the creation, which would require an explanation.
Of course, who said God created the Universe? Christians. Nevermind Persian Zorastrians who believed that an incorporeal, impersonal force of Time created the Universe, while Osmud created the Earth and is the force of Good. Not to mention that the Christian Bible itself suggests that Jehovah's creations and the Universe are not stated as co-extensive, "behold my numerous creations" and so forth. In fact, God could be a race of mortal aliens that deposited identical organic life on Earth, mated with the Virgin Mary, and it wouldn't necessarily contradict the Bible. Only a strawman version of the Bible on which Dawkins relies.
Basically, the fault of the book is that it confuses Atheism with ontological Naturalism. Naturalism being the belief that all complexity originates from natural forces. Dawkins seems to disprove one version of un-natural creation, and then concludes on that basis that there must be none. But Theism being the inverse of Naturalism, defined as the theory that intelligent forces created some or all of the complexity we see, it kind of stands untouched by the refutation of any one definition of that intelligence, simply changing the definition to another.
Is the philosophy that some complexity developed naturally (Naturalism) and other complexity is artificial (Theism) really so devoid of passionate support? Is everyone so biased that this idea goes neglected by serious discussion? Is Ontology just somewhere that pissed off people go to get back at their parents?
Inappropriate language removed, Warning issued ~r_0
The atheist always says 'no' and the theist says 'yes.'
Yeah, I agree with this summary. But the question is how Atheism can ever disprove intelligent design without resorting to some other camp's definition of what that intelligence must be.
The intelligence could be something as powerful as to create the Universe. Or it could be something as mundane as an Alien race that arose any number of ways, even by Naturalism. I just see most Atheists as saying, "Oh, Christian God is bunk. Game, set, match." All when even a strict read of the Bible doesn't define intelligent design in such absolute terms.
You are right to say that any discussion about a claimed designer is contingent upon the claim that said designer exists. When dealing with claims the responsibility, the burden even, is on the person who is proposing said designer to exist.
There are as many different proposed religious being as someone with time on their hands to imagine them. I need not concern myself with them unless people are actually attempting to claim the being exists and have put out at least a modicum of effort towards evidencing it. Why would I bother disproving the greek gods? Why would I bother disproving the odd little cults that pop up here and there? Why would I bother trying to disprove anything that didn't have at least a little bit going for it?
Now, if someone goes "X is true because Y" then we are getting somewhere. Until then, what would you have us prove?
Who says atheists can't tackle the issues on the table one at a time? Let's say they can only disprove the Christian God. Okay, that's two billion people out of a religion, give or take.
Maybe not "game, set, and match" as you put it, but I think a neutral observer would call that a pretty good outing for the atheists, all in all.
Which if thou dost not use for clearing away the clouds from thy mind
It will go and thou wilt go, never to return.
And why do we need to disprove the existence of god(s)?
That's not quite true. Atheism is a single position on a single question. It's the "no" answer to the question "do you believe a god exists?"
Depending on the god whose existence is being claimed, an atheist might be able to go further and say "I believe that god doesn't exist," but that requires a bit of extra work.
Anyway, I don't know that Dawkins' book is a great introduction to the atheist position. He's better at explaining evolutionary theory.
Very Well Then I Contradict Myself.
None of the facts or reasoning are bad, but we could say he overstates his conclusion. Disproving specific religions does not disprove religion in general. So either he is overstating his conclusion or he only views a rather specific amount of religious thought as being sufficiently worth debunking.
We are uncertain of the existence of a god, but since there is no reason to believe in a god, why shouldn't we fight against those who wish to propagate an ignorant position?
I'd rather this be the sub-forum you go when you have something serious to talk about... it's not a rants board. Not that I see anything report-worthy, but, c'mon man.
I'm not a huge fan of that particular book, but I'm a huge fan of Dawkins (particularly the biological stuff).
This book came out in a string of similar books ("God Is Not Great", "Breaking the Spell" - which I happen to have a minor, unimportant credit in ), and if you're serious about understanding why The God Delusion was/is an important book, it's not that complicated... somehow I doubt you are, though.
Setting aside the extreme hostility (easily disproven, by the way - I'm an atheist and also a responsible and upstanding adult, not a juvenile in any sense of the word, nor an "emo-tard"), this is just a silly thing to say. If you're going to disprove something, OF COURSE you need to use the definition of that something that other people are using.
That's Dawkins' argument, yes. I'm not entirely sure it's true (human beings may someday design a computer more complicated than we are), and that's one of the reasons I don't particularly buy his argument in the book, but hey.
I don't think you know what the word "strawman" means, because you're the one setting up a straw man.
If you went out on the street and told 100 Christians that you think their beliefs are sustainable because God is actually a race of mortal aliens that brought life to earth, they would say you're a nut job, or at least that they think you're totally wrong. The versions of "God" that Dawkins is taking on (which includes both fundamentalist Christianity and more moderate Christianity - both "God created everything 6000 years ago" and "God set the universe in motion with the Big Bang 20 billion or so years ago) are held by the vast, overwhelming majority of theists.
If your point is that he didn't argue against every single possible interpretation of "God", well, that's true but also trite. Of course he didn't. There are infinitely many (or at least Vastly many) possible interpretations of God!
First, understand why he's writing, and why Dennett was writing essentially the same thing, and why Christopher Hitchens was writing essentially the same thing at essentially the same time.
They were writing these books at the time because of the growing tide of fundamentalist and evangelical Christianity threatening to do serious harm to the United States and Great Britain through things like removing biology education from schools and replacing it with a religious education instead. They were writing to others who aren't committed religious people, in an effort to arm them to hold their own in arguments against committed, generally fundamentalist religious people. They were also persuading atheists - who, in many places, were feeling particularly isolated - that they weren't alone.
The book isn't written to disprove all gods, forever. The book is written as part of a broader effort to support the non-religious community at a particular point in history. So, you're more or less right, he doesn't disprove all gods forever. He didn't attempt to. He does set some bars that any religion has to clear in order to sustain an argument (i.e. why is there a highly complex, highly organized God-being instead of just a universe?), but he never meant to disprove all gods forever.
The idea that God set the universe in motion with natural laws that would lead to life forms with meaningful levels of intelligence is a very common one, if that's what you're asking.
The idea that God set up the universe to run along specified rules, than intervened a bunch of times - that's not so common, for some good reasons. If you believe in an interventionist God, you probably believe in it due to a religious tradition that holds that God created the world ex nihilo, so why postulate the natural laws portion of it?
You really need to get used to the fact that just because you don't see the point in a topic doesn't make it a pointless topic. Quotes like this are just totally unproductive. Yes, we get it, you missed the point, you don't understand why we're having the conversation. You're being intentionally dismissive without justification, and all it really reflects is your own ignorance.
(Incidentally, ontology is a serious branch of philosophy, though I'm not especially surprised that you don't know that.)
smoke_Killah
I think you are over emphasising its importance. He was more interested in making money than contributing anything of any worth to any religious debate. The shrill tone of the rhetoric bearing witness to that. To think that Aquinas even says that everything has a cause show tremendous ignorance.
Then again ignorance is somewhat of a characteristic when it come to the new atheism and religion.
I believe that Dawkins faithfully (if briefly) represented Aquinas' arguments, at least as far as I have knowledge of them:
I concur that Dawkins did not distort the argument, at least as it was originally presented by Aquinas. There has been development since that might lead one to say that he wasn't addressing the best form, but even the best form isn't very good.
Which if thou dost not use for clearing away the clouds from thy mind
It will go and thou wilt go, never to return.
I'd agree that his interest lies on in religious debate. However, to say that he's only interested in making money is just stupid.
Have you ever read his introduction to "The Greatest Show on Earth: the Evidence for Evolution"? In it, his reasons for attacking religion become quite clear. I don't agree with his approach, but whatever.
How presumptuous.
He used the definitions in order to argue intelligently...and you are confused by this?
There is no reason to disprove God. What is presented without evidence can be dismissed without evidence.
And disproving the existence of anything is pretty much impossible. How does one do that exactly....show a video account of every particle in the universe to show that God is not among them?
It seems that you're upset that he did not add a few million more pages to the book to discount the countless thousands of other religions in the world. Even though doing so would be painfully redundant as he would simply be repeating the same argument over and over.
Quoted for irony.
Not at all. I've watched theists move the goalposts in this fashion for years, for example the transition between overwhelming majority claims among creationists that evolution does not occur to a general acceptance that microevolution (as though adding 'micro' to the word makes it a different process) does occur. Another example is when the vatican finally accepted in 1992 that Galileo was right - the rest of the world knew it for hundreds of years and as usual, religion is dragged kicking and screaming and refusing to accept what is obvious to anyone who has the courage and intelligence to look at things objectively. Its a pity, if everyone who believed in a Creator actually respected the Creator enough to honestly examine creation....we would all be in agreement.
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My BUGWR Hermit druid BUGWR deck.
It was important enough that if you go to a website like this to argue about it, most of the people have read it. Has it persuaded a lot of people? Probably not. But you'll find arguments from it in many religious vs atheist debates.
I'm not saying it was important like the Bible is important, but it can't be completely dismissed, either.
I doubt it.
'Shrill' probably is a fair word for his tone in the book, but the point on Aquinas has been rather roundly refuted already, I'd say.
...
Have you ever sat down and talked to Dan Dennett or Richard Dawkins? 'Ignorant' is the very last word that could ever be used to describe them.
Yes, this exactly. Atheism isn't taken as the next logical step in the evolution of human belief. Or even as a philosophy more representative of what we scientifically know about the cosmos. It falls short of being conclusive on these fronts. So, it's best understood as "social commentary"???
If it's social commentary, then what is left to recommend it? Isn't rationalism the spirit of it? That people shouldn't believe in superstition anymore in this age? People should verify something first? If so, it immediately contradicts itself, since there's no sound defense of it as anything other than superstition itself.
If you admit you can't disprove the idea of God, then how can one rationally believe in Atheism as defined? And how can you even give it its own independent meaning? If all it's concerned with is the social value of disproving Judeo-Christianity, isn't it more appropriately called anti-Christianity? Instead, it's masquerading as its own thing, when all it really boils down to is "I hate you, dad, for making me go to church."
All arrayed against the self-assessed harm of the religious spreading their belief in religion.
The reason for it all is that self-important people have difficulty doing what science and the age of reason would actually suggest. They can't do the Socratic, Cartesian thing of admitting, "I know that I know nothing." What started out as the basic kernel of science is hidden underneath a blanket, and when it's lifted, accusations of unfairness fly insisting that Atheism has to be taken on the same terms as every other "social commentary".
That kind of arrogance distracts from the message of rationalism that Atheism claims to enshrine. Worse, it distracts from the actual debate - which is between Naturalism, Theism, and neither. It assumes naturalism, and concludes by doing so that everything is an appropriate matter for scientific inquiry. Then, it assumes that anything that can't be proved or disproved by science must be false, because after all, naturalism is true. Then it just recycles that message over and over. God can't be proven, so it must not exist.
It's impossible to even have the debate as long as Atheism continually fails to admit that Naturalism and Rationalism have nothing at all to do with one another. Naturalism is an eyes-in-the-clouds ontological philosophy that starts off on the same grounds as all the others, unproveable by definition. Scientific Rationalism isn't a philosophy, but rather a mechanism of simplifying inquiries by declaring anything that cannot be observed as outside its territory. The appeal, obviously, is that Naturalism defines everything as being inside the realm of observation, and therefore science. Essentially discarding the more humble portions of Descartes. But at accomplishing the impossible task of actually proving Naturalism, Atheism does absolutely nothing, and confuses the issues instead by begging the question.
Which is why I said, Atheism is a philosophy for (rephrasing) intellectually immature thinkers motivated to irrationality by a disdain for tradition. Like tweens, they find themselves unable to outgrow the influence of tradition, so they stomp their feet at it. The philosophical equivalent of Twilight fans. Saying "I hate you, dad!" out of one side of their mouths, then demanding "Now, pay my cell-phone bill!" out of the other.
Apart from the fact that most of what you said is prima facie and overtly fallacious well-poisoning, you do realize that you've defined the term "atheist" in such a way that not even Richard Dawkins himself is an atheist, right?
Which if thou dost not use for clearing away the clouds from thy mind
It will go and thou wilt go, never to return.
Ok, some people seem to think that insult-laden refutations are the same as ad hominem fallacies. They are NOT.
There's nothing wrong with calling an idiot and idiot, a charlatan a charlatan, or a juvenile emo malcontent a juvenile emo malcontent. It's when you try to use an insult to discredit someone's position that it becomes a fallacy.
The above is criticism that stands on its own two legs logically. Then I offer that the reason people might be taking illogical positions is because they are juvenile, emo malcontents. Which is not a premise to the argument at all.
That out of the way, the very existence of the "theistic probability spectrum" belies Atheism as no more than an exercise in faith, exactly the same thing that it's intended to supplant. It's saying, "Here, we know you can never really know what created this Earth, or why we might be here on it, but we're going to blink our eyes really hard and believe that there's no reason whatsoever. Rate yourself on this scale at how good you are at doing that. I'm a 6.9, guys. 7 is too much."
I mean, really? And get this, if you're a middle 4 on the scale, it means that you believe that the probability of the existence of God is exactly 50%. Slide up or down and the probability moves. Come on.
That's not at all how Rationalism works. You either know something, or you don't. You don't assign probability, as if what you're talking about comes down to a die roll. If you don't know something, you posit a falsifiable theory, and then you go about proving it. If you can't do that, you continue to be unable to know something.
What you definitely don't do is go around taking people's opinion that you don't like, railing on the tradition of it, then argumentatively place the weight of all of the scientific advances of the last 200 years behind your own opinion. You just say, hey, here's my opinion.
So, it's not that Atheism is a belief that I have a problem with. It's the fact that this phony appeal to Scientific Rationalism is what fuels it, when it has no right to that whatsoever. It's not rational. It's not scientific. It's just some guy's exercise in faith.
1) Insult-laden refutations are, apart from anything else, bad faith debate and should be avoided for that reason alone.
2) You are poisoning the well because you are making assertions about atheists that relate not to the truth or falsity of a particularly stated position of atheism (How could they? You don't even understand the position to begin with...) but are rather devoted solely to casting aspersions on the ostensible mental state of the atheists themselves.
3) This instance of well poisoning is also both ad hominem and non sequitur, because even if you could prove that all atheists are trolls, that would say nothing as concerns the correctness of their position.
Hah! Does this apply to anyone who might take an illogical position in any matter? Because everyone says and does illogical things from time to time, but not everyone is a juvenile, emo malcontent.
No, the point of that spectrum is to make clear (in agreement with some of your own basic epistemic claims!) that properly scientifically-grounded theories do not express certainties, and therefore a way of describing the position "Although I am not necessarily certain in either direction, such evidence as I have collected militates (for/against) God's existence" is needed.
I don't know that the spectrum is the best way to do that. I do know that every one of your objections, which are grounded in the incorrect idea that atheism is concerned solely with expressing certainty, collapse in on themselves for anyone who doesn't give themselves either a 1 or a 7.
That soccer chant where the crowd sings "you don't know what you're doing" over and over again is playing in my head right now.
Which if thou dost not use for clearing away the clouds from thy mind
It will go and thou wilt go, never to return.
No, I suppose I should have said, "I offer that the reason people might be taking illogical positions on this issue is because they are juvenile, emo malcontents." Am I really going to be criticized for not being specific enough there?
I don't have the incorrect idea that Atheism is grounded only in certainty. In fact, just the opposite, if you've been reading. I consider it a faith-based belief system. If it correctly proclaimed itself to be a faith-based belief system, I would give it the same deferential treatment as every other faith-based belief system.
It doesn't do that. It claims to be scientific and rational. Doing so, it attempts to put all the scientific advances of the last 200 years, and the force of the Modern Era itself, underneath its argumentative weight. It has no right to do this, because the questions it aims to answer are beyond observation and experiment, things upon which Science and Rationalism rely. It's a self-deception, and should be exposed as such. One way to do that is an absurdist appeal to what Atheism would be if it really could claim the credit for Science and Rationalism. Which is what I've been doing a lot in this thread.
What would Atheism look like if it correctly held itself out to be a belief? Probably a lot like the philosophy of Naturalism, hence the title of the thread. Naturalism is the idea that all things have an observable cause. If Atheism were nothing more, you wouldn't have hypocrisy, the persecution of other ideas, etc. You wouldn't have this quasi-religious commitment to the idea as being definitive of one's existence and social identity. Instead, you'd have philosophical debate that wouldn't carry beyond the realm of the academic. Which is what people should be having. The fact that there's more reveals that the core of Atheism as nothing more than anti-religion, and is worthy of less Scientific respect than its derivative.
I'm not advocating for Theism, or for Atheism. There's no rational basis to have such discussion. I'm advocating for the humility to accept doubt. That just because Science is the most important philosophical revolution in human history, it's not a mythical Oracle of limitless reach. There are those questions that lie outside its capability to answer. The questions are healthy for human beings to be asking themselves. There's a belief that these questions have been disposed of by people who've been given advanced college degrees and research grants. That the reason common folk don't understand is because we don't have these icons of scientific achievement. Some Atheists really do believe this, particularly the ones of our generation. This is damaging. It's at the very least damaging to humanity's tendency to ask these questions of themselves. Because if you've been duped into thinking someone's answered the question, you don't ask it.
No he's criticizing the pot for calling the kettle black.
Atheism isn't a faith based system. It's a lack of faith in god(s). Calling atheism a faith based system is like calling bald a hair color.
How are you attributing any of this to atheism? Atheism doesn't claim any of that, it's not making a claim at all. It only says one thing, 'I reject the claim that god(s) exist' and that's it.
What would bald look like if it held itself out to be hair?
I am more than happy to say that it is possible that there is a god or gods out there. The moment that evidence rolls in for their existence I will be happy to believe.
But so far there isn't. So I don't.
The moment that there is evidence for an elephant in my closet, I will believe that that it exists.
But so far there isn't. So I don't.
This is not a faith-based belief system. Its just being rational.
On behalf of the millions of religious atheists in the world, allow me to say.... lol what?
Okay I get it - you're arguing against a non-existent person who claimed that science is a mythical oracle of limitless reach.
This discussion would be more meaningful if, instead of creating imaginary opponents with weak arguments that you are capable of defeating, you instead address real arguments.
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My BUGWR Hermit druid BUGWR deck.
Of course. Because why would being illogical about this particular issue be special? If I argue illogically about -- I don't know, the sound of a tree falling in a forest when nobody hears it -- I'm not accused of emo malcontentedness, but if I argue illogically about God's existence, I am?
Of course this whole premise is completely moronic to begin with, but you make it worse when you add special pleading on top.
Your assessment is not correct. Uncertainty weighted by evidence and faith are not the same things.
Uncertainty weighted by evidence: "I hold the position P not because I know it with certainty but because it is consistent with the balance of the evidence. If I receive new evidence that militates against P, I will re-evaluate my position to be less favorable to P."
Faith: "I hold the position P because I have faith in it. No matter what evidence I receive, even if it is against P, I will continue to believe P, because faith is just not the kind of thing that cares about evidence."
Atheists aren't saying "hey, look, there's all this evidence for God but we just reject it because our faith-based dogma requires us to believe God doesn't exist, come what may." They're saying "There's no evidence for God and until you show me some, I don't buy into it." That is not a faith-based viewpoint.
Not all of them are. For instance, an atheist has as much at stake in the answer to the question "Did Jesus Christ rise from the dead after three days?" as does any Christian, because if the answer is "yes," that would be evidence. But that question could, in principle, be answered in the negative purely by observation and experiment. After all, "this person was dead and then was alive three days later" is an empirical, falsifiable claim. Or consider the evidential problem of evil, which uses empirical facts to buttress an argument that would otherwise take place within the confines of theology.
In other words, S.J. Gould was wrong: there is an overlap between the magisteria.
What's more, even some of the issues that do appear to be outside the realm of experimentation can still be addressed by argumentation and a priori methods.
Naturalism can refer to many different things, but the idea that everything has a cause is not among them. Many atheists do hold various viewpoints that could be called naturalism, but it is entirely possible to be an atheist without being a naturalist. (Suppose, for instance, you think there is something supernatural but it lacks the properties required of God.)
(The idea that all things have an observable cause, which is emphatically not naturalism, is probably not true.)
No, you would always have that, because I'm sorry to say that douchery is part of human nature. The problems you point out here arise not from the propositional content of atheism, which entails none of what you think it does -- but rather from the human foibles of some of the people who label themselves with the term.
Why should it be surprising that individuals outside of philosophy or academia are intensely interested in engaging with these concepts?
If by "nothing more than anti-religion" you mean that atheism consists of assertions against the existence of God while religion asserts the opposite, then yes.
A humility and doubt that even Richard Dawkins himself, the figurehead you're emo-railing against (and a guy that even most atheists regard as being on the shrill and dismissive end of the spectrum) already possesses.
No there isn't. Who thinks the god question is solved merely because one guy waving around a Ph.D. said so? Not even many people on the atheist side, who would win if this were the standard for anything, think this.
I think that we agree on a core belief here.
I'd be as angry as you if an inquiring mind asked about God and some professor just waved his Ph.D in his face, said "there's no God because I said so and this piece of paper means I'm always right, and you're not allowed to ask the question ever again because now you know the final and eternal and certain answer." Free inquiry is probably the most important human right, in my book.
The problem is that this is not the sort of thing you've been saying in the rest of your posts. What you said before is that the professor, if he disbelieves in God, cannot be rational but in fact must be some sort of emotionally damaged troll. "Why bother listening to his argument, since it's just going to be about him rebelling against some church or hating Christianity or still being upset about 9/11? There can't be any science or reason underlying his beliefs -- after all, he's not certain, and science and reason are always certain about everything."
And that is idiocy of equal magnitude with that of my trumped-up professor: you stifle free inquiry just as much when you don't permit one party in the argument to speak without pre-distorting their position and poisoning the well with your exceedingly ignorant nonsense.
Which if thou dost not use for clearing away the clouds from thy mind
It will go and thou wilt go, never to return.