Atheous

[Perplexity]

I am just pulling your leg

 

[Al_Moritz]

When I was a child I thought as a child, but when I became a man (at 17), I put away childish things"–(or something like that). Also, as I have become older (and more mannish), and inflormed and educated, it has confirmed my atheistic/naturalistic Weltanschauung. I am well acquainted withy the Bible, but when it comes to knowledge, give me instead Dawkins, Hawking, Stenger etc -any time.

By the way, Stenger and Hawking? You can’t have it both ways. Hawking dramatically re-affirms fine-tuning in his latest book The Grand Design (his ‘way out’ is the multiverse).

 

[babylonsfalling]

We know what it looks like when someone believes something isn’t there and that’s where the atheist always flunks out.
Nobody devotes this much attention to something nonexistent, nobody is this uptight about things they think are not there nor do they spend such time jumping through hoops trying to prove that what cannot be physically seen in the first place is truly nonexistent.
This is how atheists blow themselves of the water every time.

 

[JDaniel]

I think God detracts from the story. He’d remove the adventurous uncertainty that pervades an atheistic world. It’d be like reading the end of the story before starting it. There’s a certain inevitability when God enters the picture. I believe it’s that uncertainty of an atheistic world that gives it such beauty and adventure.

Perplexed:

Yep, I agree. Like, Will she get pregnant if we do this? Will I get AIDS, or some other disease, if we just follow our hormones? After all, it’s only natural! They’ve got so many, they won’t miss just this one. What she doesn’t know won’t hurt her! Well, he gave me back too much, so it’s really his fault! It’s only a cat. It’s only an itty-bitty lie. I can get away with anything I want, as there is no one and nothing to know that I did it! It’s just a stupid exam. Other people do it! That’s the beauty of it. Etc., etc, etc.



God bless,
jd

 

[JDaniel]

How can an essential random process be said to be designed.

If we look at modern science we find that no process is random at all, but follows a specific mathematical structure. The entire field of Chaos Theory shows us that even when something appears to be completely random, it is in fact ordered.

You bet.

Welcome to CAF, BMullins.
God bless,
jd

 

[Perplexity]

Perplexed:

Yep, I agree. Like, Will she get pregnant if we do this? Will I get AIDS, or some other disease, if we just follow our hormones? After all, it’s only natural! They’ve got so many, they won’t miss just this one. What she doesn’t know won’t hurt her! Well, he gave me back too much, so it’s really his fault! It’s only a cat. It’s only an itty-bitty lie. I can get away with anything I want, as there is no one and nothing to know that I did it! It’s just a stupid exam. Other people do it! That’s the beauty of it. Etc., etc, etc.



God bless,
jd

I’m notoriously bad at telling whether someone is joking online. So, if you are: If not, and this is your understanding of atheism…no wonder you’re theist!

 

[JDaniel]

When I was a child I thought as a child, but when I became a man (at 17), I put away childish things"–(or something like that). Also, as I have become older (and more mannish), and inflormed and educated, it has confirmed my atheistic/naturalistic Weltanschauung. I am well acquainted withy the Bible, but when it comes to knowledge, give me instead Dawkins, Hawking, Stenger etc -any time.

You coulda fooled me!

What’s tough is to know that we’ve been dealing with these same naked assertions, on this forum and elsewhere, for years. So, you’re not the first to come along and act like an adult know-it-all. Come back 17 years from now and tell us what you think. . . .

In the mean time, do you know what “naked assertion” means? You can probably look it up as I’m sure you have your high school Merriam-Webster somewhere in your room. While you’re at it, look up OED Shorter Edition, too. Like so many other things, I’m sure you’ve never heard of that. Also, look up Shakespeare; although you might have heard of him once or twice.

You have a predilection for throwing out a few facticals, that everyone knows of, then mixing them in with a few naked assertions, then trying to pass it all off as some award-winning Pièce de Résistance. You neither help yourself, nor any conversation with such tactics. (You must have been told that we’re a bunch of “push-overs,” since we must be hospitable.)

Also, your arguments are nothing more than argumentative. Many of us come here to learn, if possible, from what we hope are much smarter people than we. But, every so often we get a child who thinks he’s a man.

God bless,
jd

 

[JDaniel]

I’m notoriously bad at telling whether someone is joking online. So, if you are: If not, and this is your understanding of atheism…no wonder you’re theist!

Perp:

You can’t con an ex-atheist con-man. So, don’t even try. As an abject atheist, I got away with everything! (Pronounced exactly as Gary Oldman pronounces the word “everyone!” in The Professional.)

God bless,
jd

 

[danserr]

I don’t think there is any beauty or adventure on determinism. I agree with GK that Christians are free to have graded beliefs like that. But, I’m not sure what he means by ‘skeptic’. If he means ‘atheist’, I’d disagree that the skeptic is committed to determinism. What do you think?

Yes, by skeptic in this sense, I meant atheist, sorry I should have been clearer.
I am inclined to think, though, that on atheism, determinism is probably true. If everything is just the inevitable working out of the laws of nature and there is nothing beyond the physical, it hard to see where the room for an in-deterministic element in this is.

I suppose, by atheist, I really mean “scientific naturalist.” An atheistic buddhist or Jainist could assume the existence of the soul and deny scientific naturalism, but I don’t take those to be viable competitors to Christianity or even scientific naturalism.

 

[Al_Moritz]

Can you please explain what is meant by brute chance? Surely brute chance, unless I am not understanding it correctly, would require that all natural law exists necessarily?

Brute chance or a brute fact implies, as I understand it, that things are that way just because they are, for no particular reason. It would be the opposite of necessity.

 

[Al_Moritz]

You seem to be suggesting that our phenomenological experiences would be different than they actually are if determinism is true. This isn’t obvious to me. Suppose we’re determined. We’d still be having this conversation, discerning this issue, etc. We’d continue thinking truth is (x), and hold our epistemologies. We’d just be determined to. So, the naturalist would defend his position as he ordinarily does, and you’d deny it as you are.

On the contrary, I agree that our phenomenological experiences would be the same if determinism were true. However, just like free will would be an illusion, your supposedly rational defense of your naturalistic position would be an illusion as well. How would you know if your brain was right, which affirms naturalism, and not mine, which denies it? All your brain currents making the judgement which brain is right, yours or mine, would be determined – “you” would have no free judgement in that, because “you” would be just your brain currents that you have no control over. So you could not know the truth, which should be a reality outside your brain currents. Thus, the affirmation of the position “naturalism is true” would be self-defeating, even if you had the illusion that it was not – but your phenomenological experience of your position would be just fine.

I just meant a determinist wouldn’t affirm any indeterminacy. But, why is it either determinism or random? Why not probability?

Yes, quantum processes are probabilistic, they are random on a probabilistic basis. Yet if they came into play, the judgments that they produced would not be based on the probability of the proposition being true, but based on physical probability – the chance probability of your brain currents favorably or not favorably aligning with the proposition.

Let’s concede that evolution can indirectly select for an allegedly false belief. We’ll still discern whether a belief is true or false in the manner we are now. Further, most people are theists. Plantinga even uses this to suggest theism is natural for us. So, your argument would seem to work against theism (which we seem naturally disposed to) rather than atheism.

No, the argument works neither against theism nor against atheism. What does the evolutionary usefulness of theism have to do with its truth value? The two things might just happily coincide (even if in this particular example evolutionary psychologists adhering to naturalism would think otherwise). The argument only works against the notion that evolution can reliably select for correct beliefs.

 

[MindOverMatter2]

Brute chance or a brute fact implies, as I understand it, that things are that way just because they are, for no particular reason. It would be the opposite of necessity.

Do you believe in brute facts?

 

[ThinkingSapien]

…] just like free will would be an illusion, your supposedly rational defense of your naturalistic position would be an illusion as well. How would you know if your brain was right, which affirms naturalism, and not mine, which denies it? All your brain currents making the judgement which brain is right, yours or mine, would be determined…]

While I don’t think this is inspired by it, some part of this reminds me of Descarte’s Demons with how does one know that their perceptions are descriptive of reality or whether or not their perceptions are just being fed to them by some demon (or entity of some other name of your choice). If I remember correctly in the case of the demon’s if all some one knew was the perceptions fed to them they would have no way of distinguishing from “reality” and the false perceptions.

 

[Wads42]

Since a rationalisation is “the conscious or unconscious explanation of events or behaviour that avoids giving the true reasons because they would be disadvantageous to the subject or they would be socially unacceptable” the onus is on you to justify your assertion that my statements are rationalisations. It seems more likely that you are rationalising by stating that I am rationalising! Objective reasoning is not composed of such assertions but addresses the issue rather than resorting to irrelevant remarks…

Unless one has detailed knowledge of all the metereological conditions throughout the entire world and throughout history it is impossible to know when laws of Nature have been suspended.

A nonsensical question.
If you don’t know the difference you are on the wrong forum!

Go on then, tell me.

 

[Wads42]

If you choose to ignore what I said above, with links, about Victor Stenger and cosmological natural selection, that is your prerogative. It only demonstrates what I have thought all along: your atheism is not based on serious study, but on a constant ritualistic repetition of your confirmation biases until you have convinced yourself that you are ‘right’. If you want to impress us you have to do better.

Wads: No you will have to do better to impress me that your own confirmation bias that there is a God, is true. Only evidence counts, not belief. I have serioust studied Physics; you have avoided any discussion of Victor Stengers research, but merely derided it; that won’t do.

 

[Wads42]

Perhaps you need to improve your reading skills. I said “the naturalistic worldview is simplistic”, not “the natural world is simplistic”. The latter is indeed full of complexity, as you say.

Wads: Well then please explain. Bald statements are not enough.

 

[Wads42]

As I said before:

I am afraid that de-conversion at such a young age is rarely based on sufficiently informed views, and keeping the naturalistic position into adult age then becomes involved with a whole lot of after-the-fact rationalization and confirmation bias.

Which Dawkins? The one of “The Blind Watchmaker” and “Climbing Mount Improbable”, or the one of “The God Delusion”? While the latter book reveals a ludicrously shallow and uninformed amateur philsopher (who has even been attacked by atheist philosophers for that), I fully endorse the scientific Dawkins of the former two books.

Stenger? Yeah right. See:

forums.catholic-questions.org/showpost.php?p=8702165&postcount=115

Wads: Just more derision on your part; please explain the “ludicrous shallowness” of Dawkins conclusions one by one. He writes simply and clearly, not full of theistic-type obsfucation which masquerades as profundity.

 

[tonyrey]

Go on then, tell me.

Consult any dictionary…

How can an essential random process be said to be designed? You are assuming that evolution is an essentially random process.

How would you justify that assumption?

It sounds like modern art, in which if you throw a paint-pot at a canvas you can then claim that you have “designed” the resulting mess. This is a semantic muddle. We need to be more careful in our use of words and meanings, so as to avoid the fallacy of equivocation.

You are need to be far more careful in your use of the word “evolution”… You are guilty of equivocation by assuming it is an essentially random process.

The general fallacy behind Christian theology is that it is “teleological”, (an error picked up from Aristotle and Aquinas, (with apologies to neo-Thomists)). In other words they assume that evolution both cosmic and biological- has a Purpose, a distant Divine Plan, and end-point, an Omega Point (Teilhard de VChardin). Whereas the very existence of billions of modern galaxies, stars, planets, and animal and plant species, means that everything that can happen does happen. We are just one product;
– and as we started off as resourceful tree-dwelling Primates with forward facing eyes, and grasping hands (for branches), we rapidly specialised in evolving big brains, (rather then effective teeth and claws), and so we developed technology which allowed uo to gain the upper hand over all the big powerful animals around us.
Simple really.

So simple that it is self-refuting! If your reasoning is not teleological it is simply due to physical processes and of dubious value. You must be aware of the inefficiency of instinctive behaviour when it gets out of its depth…

Just to confirm that our dominance is not a Gift from God, but the result of millenia of struggle, you should remember that we are still locked in a struggle to the death, with insects, bacteria and viruses,–simply because they are more numerous than us, and too small to swat on the head with a club!
Our big brains give us big heads, which is why child-birth is painful and difficult; and nothing to do with Adam and Eve.

Big heads are rightly associated with a simplistic view of reality which disposes of itself! Your “natural” thinking reduces your “reasons” to mere physical reactions in response to environmental conditions and of even more dubious value than instinctive behaviour…

                                            As for the comment that Naturalism cannot be proven by naturalism,  this is a combination of various fallacies, notable "Reification"  (again). Nature is not a Thing or an Entity having objective existence,  but just a convenient personification,-a metaphor, (a bit like  "Einstein's "God").

Besides , we use our Minds to study “the Mind”; otherwise there would be no science of Psychology (and there is.)

According to naturalism the mind is merely the functioning of **a lump of tissue inside the skull **- which lacks insight and understanding. Biological computers are necessarily incapable of reaching conclusions about the nature of reality because they are not even aware they exist. Persons don’t exist in the naturalist’s scheme of things and reasoning is an illusion - like all other abstract processes - and all your statements are no more than meaningless, **purposeless **permutations of molecular patterns caused by physical events which occur for no reason whatsoever.… GIGO!

 

[Wads42]

The hypothesis of Cosmological Natural Selection does not solve the design problem, see chapter 3 of my article:

home.earthlink.net/~almoritz/cosmological-arguments-god.htm

Wads: Of course it does; in just the same way as Charles Darwin has solved the Design problem. Who now, except the seriously deluded, believes in “Paley’s Watch” any more?

Haha, Stenger. Here is what I wrote in above link, after pointing out the flaws in his arguments:

“Just like Michael Behe (Darwin’s Black Box), Victor Stenger stands outside mainstream science, and both have in common to twist or ignore scientific facts for the purpose of advancing their world views. In other words, the opinions of those who base their cosmological views on Stenger can be taken seriously to no greater extent than the opinions of those anti-evolutionists who base their views on the writings of Behe.”

Wads: Should I remind you that every big sciece breakthrough has been made by scientists who stand outside the mainstream: Planck, Einstein, Bohr, Galileo, Darwin etc.
At least you agree that Behe is rubbish, probably because he has been demoloishe d by one of your own; Kenneth Miller.

By the way, the calculations by Stenger that you mention have been rather devastatingly debunked by cosmologist Luke Barnes:

letterstonature.wordpress.com/2010/04/18/no-faith-in-monkeygod-a-fine-tuned-critique-of-victor-stenger-part-2/

Wads not necessarily so, There is always a danger in doing a blanket condemnation of ALL of a particular scientists findings (maybe one or two specifics perhaps)
t makes one think you might possibly be biased?
Other examples are rubbishing ALL of Dawkins on “God” (anyone can discuss Theology, Cardinals and Popes do not have God’s ear, though they would like to think it).
I do not see how the writings of Christian Apologists can be used to critique serious science; it is a category error. By all means criticize Dawkins on Theology or Philosophy; but please give specific examples so that we can critique your critiques.

 

[Wads42]

Consult any dictionary…

How would you justify that assumption?

Wads: I assume nothing.

                                              You are need to be far more careful in your use of the word  "evolution".. You are guilty of equivocation by assuming it is an  essentially random process.

Wads: Whether it is random or not depends upon higher-level semantic definitions. Everything has a cause. Asteroids. volcanos, contintental drift, climate changes; all the things which influence evolution by being envirnmental factors,–have causes, but that does not mean that there is a God who has a teleological goal. .Assuning teleology and divine guidance is a big claim to malke. You have not offerred any evidence. All you are doi ng is Christian apologetics. If you are so sure of teleology,–(and to be so, God must hae confided His Plan to you personally),–then pray(!) tell us exactly what the Plan and Purpose is?

                                             So simple that it is self-refuting! If your reasoning is not  teleological it is simply due to physical processes and of dubious  value. You must be aware of the inefficiency of instinctive behaviour  when it gets out of its depth...:)

Wads: They are indeed of dubious value. Evolution goes off in all directions, randomly; it is not seeking a teleological goal. Why nother to evolve at all? -and yet it happens; it is a brute fact.

                                           Big heads are rightly associated with a simplistic view of reality  which disposes of itself! Your "natural" thinking reduces your  "reasons" to mere physical reactions in response to environmental  conditions and of even more dubious value than instinctive behaviour...

Wads: meaningless comment.

According to naturalism the mind is merely the functioning of **a lump of tissue inside the skull **- which lacks insight and understanding. Biological computers are necessarily incapable of reaching conclusions about the nature of reality because they are not even aware they exist. Persons don’t exist in the naturalist’s scheme of things and reasoning is an illusion - like all other abstract processes - and all your statements are no more than meaningless, **purposeless **permutations of molecular patterns caused by physical events which occur for no reason whatsoever.… GIGO!

Wads: You do not seem to have much respect for the mere “lump of tissue” inside our heads; despite it being a marvel of construction and function, and probably the most complex thing in the Universe. The only reason you are able to make wild hypotheses at all is because of this “lump of tissue”.
How do you distinguish Naturalism -ie the fact of Nature,-from divinely created artifacts put there by God? Apart from levels of complexity, what for you, is the essential difference between a rock and a brain? They both are made of atoms and molecules, crystals (in rocks ) and minerals. Did God not make the rock as well as the brain? If so, then there is no such thing as Nature and a natural event and causealogy. We are back to cherubs steering the planets , and a homunculus in your head because your brain apparently is such a useless “lump of tissue”. But what guides the Homunculus?