Do Atheists have a reasonable doubt?

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tafan2 said:
I will argue against it. As one who believes in evolution from a biology as the way life developed on earth, I take exception with the idea that all behavior traits of people are a result of a biological evolutionary process.
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Did I say all? I’m sure that I didn’t.
 
You certainly have a description of a behavioral trait and stated it was due to evolution.
 
tafan2 said:
You certainly have a description of a behavioral trait and stated it was due to evolution.
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The phrase ‘a behavioral trait’ doesn’t encompass all behavioural traits. Just the one. There was more than one I mentioned. But ‘more than one’ still doesn’t encompass all. But the one’s that I mentioned were all due to evolution.

We have to be careful (or at least I do) not to assume that all aspects of our psychologizcal make-up are to be found in our evolutionary past. But equally careful that we don’t dismiss out of hand indications that a great deal of it is.
 
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IWantGod said:
Because if metaphysical naturalism is true , then everything is fundamentally comprised of only blind natural processes and therefore there is no goal directed activity or natural goals or anything associated with that idea and nor should there be. But there is goal directed activity ( it is self evident in our activity as humans ), which is the very antithesis of a blind natural process.
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You misunderstand the metaphysical naturalism. From the expression “everything is fundamentally comprised of only blind natural processes” it does not follow that “there is no goal directed activity”. Just ponder this. From the fact that there ARE goal directed human activities it does NOT follow that the “blind forces” of nature are also goal directed activities.
 
I don’t deny some are, although for much of it scientific evidence is lacking. Certainly social scientists attribute way to much to that. Any widely common behavior is assumed to be driven by evolution. One would think 25 years ago there was a genetic mutation that caused us all to want to stare at a phone all day.
 
tafan2 said:
I don’t deny some are, although for much of it scientific evidence is lacking. Certainly social scientists attribute way to much to that. Any widely common behavior is assumed to be driven by evolution. One would think 25 years ago there was a genetic mutation that caused us all to want to stare at a phone all day.
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I like the line about the phone. And I’ll admit that solid scientific evidence is sometimes lacking. It’s a new line of thought though (relatively speaking). And it’s building. And it’s been built generally on the earlier understanding that common behaviour within a species is common for a very good reason.

If you’re interested, this primer is a good start to understand where I am coming from:

https://www.cep.ucsb.edu/primer.html
 
Thinker_Doer said:
You misunderstand the metaphysical naturalism. From the expression “everything is fundamentally comprised of only blind natural processes”
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Well if only natural events exist, then everything is fundamentally comprised of blind natural processes (processes that are not moved by an intellect, or acting for a goal, or a purpose, or with intention). This just follows necessarily. I do understand.
Thinker_Doer said:
Just ponder this. From the fact that there ARE goal directed human activities
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The fact that there are goal directed human activities is what contradicts metaphysical naturalism because a goal directed activity that is moving with intent is the antithesis of a blind natural process, but despite the obvious contradiction many atheists would prefer an explanation that would reduce goal directed activity to being nothing more than the end result of a blind natural process because they have no choice if they wish to maintain their metaphysical commitment. But you cannot begin with the fact of goal direction and take for granted that it is logically consistent with metaphysical naturalism.

Followers of materialism/metaphysical-naturalism simply assume that these things can somehow be made rationally consistent with their world-view even if they don’t yet know how. But it is clear that this point of view leads to contradictions and brute-facts.
 
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o_mlly said:
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tafan2:
I take exception with the idea that all behavior traits of people are a result of a biological evolutionary process.
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Some evil “traits” can be traced not so much to evolution as to the belief in natural selection.

Gilroy Garlic Festival Shooter Was a Darwinist - The American Vision
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That’s like blaming Christianity for the Thirty Years War.
 
Unless of course “goal seeking” is simply an emergent property. Crystals and fire grow, so far as we can tell, from purely naturalistic processes, and yet we don’t ask “why do those molecules form an organized structure” or “why does lightning ignite wood”. Once any process starts, it either consumes all the matter and energy it can and then ceases to be active, or it continues in a feedback loop. The problem with at least some strains of metaphysics is the desire to take a big ontological position and then try to explain the minutia of physical processes by the same principle.

I’m with Hume. i’m sure metaphysics has some sort of utility, but thus far I have yet to see metaphysics produce a single concrete concept that I would considerable useful in the real world. Yes, science, even evolutionary biology, inherently sits on top of some sort of metaphysical premise, but the beauty of science is that it doesn’t have to sit around like Aristotle pondering the fundamental nature of existence to actually produce useful concepts.

So far as I’m concerned, the only use of metaphysics at this point is to analyze the starting conditions of reality itself, but using it ask questions about why a parakeet sings, a human builds a boat or two chimpanzees have sex is to make metaphysics look pretty silly, and even more useless. Metaphysics, maybe, just maybe, is interesting for big picture questions, but sadly, it does not appear that life itself is actually that interesting a question. It’s a tough nut to crack, but it’s hardly the only tough nut to crack.
 
niceatheist said:
Unless of course “goal seeking” is simply an emergent property.
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Describing goal directed activity as an emergent property no more makes intelligible sense of it’s existence than describing it as a brute fact because it is the antithesis of blind natural activity. We are still talking about something that is only comprised of blind physical activity if metaphysical naturalism is true.

You are are basically saying that goal directed activity is a blind natural process. A square-circle.

Calling it an emergent property doesn’t change that. The contradiction is evident.

The other examples you gave - by themselves - do not seem to involve contradictions, but they might contradict metaphysical naturalism depending on what the process is producing…

It seems perfectly clear to me that Atheists (metaphysical naturalists) really don’t have a reasonable doubt, just a preference for physics-only explanations and they don’t seem to mind if ultimately it doesn’t make any intelligible sense.
 
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And what if it is a blind natural process? So what? Meaning is something humans ascribe to things. Nature is not beholden to any assumption we may dream up.
 
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There are fundemental contradictions in metaphysical models. That’s why metaphysics is useless.
 
IWantGod said:
Well if only natural events exist, then everything is fundamentally comprised of blind natural processes ( processes that are not moved by an intellect, or acting for a goal, or a purpose, or with intention ). This just follows necessarily. I do understand.
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No, you do not. I will explain one more time. You do not realize the significance of emerging attributes. You do not realize that things cannot be reduced directly to the basic building blocks of existence.

One example should be sufficient. Chemistry cannot be reduced to physics. Biology cannot be reduced to chemistry. Sociology cannot be reduced to biology. But that does not mean that one should postulate some “spiritual” substance. That is all.
 
IWantGod said:
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niceatheist:
There are fundemental contradictions in metaphysical models. That’s why metaphysics is useless.
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Asserting this does not make your position anymore reasonable.
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Nor is your position. God/Prime Mover/Deistic Whatever-it-was is no more a “solution” than, say, an “eternal unstable vacuum”.
 
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