Lack of Questioning Leads to Atheism?

[Charlemagne_III]

You’ve literally made the very argument I anticipated and provided a rebuttal for.

All you’ve added is that faith “solves” the problem for the theist. However, “faith” is one of those subjective judgements that fall short in the way I described at the very outset:
And so unless you’re going to make a surprise move into some kind of relativism (by saying that whatever you subjectively have faith in is true) you’ve failed to actually answer the objection I raised.

It’s simply enough to see that the atheist has as much faith as the theist.

As you put it, quoting yourself, “I agree that lumping all religions together isn’t entirely fair, but I think they all have a feature which allows us to reason about them collectively. That feature is: lack of a well defined epistemic method for testing their claims.”

Atheists believe there is no God, but they have neither a rationally objective method nor a “well defined epistemic method for testing their claims.”

Right?

 

[Charlemagne_III]

What do you mean that God is infinite? Nothing can defy logic, 1+1=2.

And how do you get meaning as Christian? Is eternal life grant meaning?

God must be Infinite because God is defined as uncreated Being itself.

Meaning for a Christian is defined as being created for a purpose by the Deity.

That’s why atheism is considered a meaningless philosophy: there is no Creator.

All the atheists existentialists I have read agonize over this dilemma. Sartre before he died was the first to break ranks with the older generation of existentialists and return to the idea of a Creator God.

 

[STT]

God must be Infinite because God is defined as uncreated Being itself.

Being creator doesn’t necessitate infiniteness. Do you have an argument in favor of that?

Meaning for a Christian is defined as being created for a purpose by the Deity.

What is the relation between meaning and purpose? I don’t see any. There is a purpose for your life but no meaning, therefore your life is as meaningless as an atheist.

That’s why atheism is considered a meaningless philosophy: there is no Creator.

Meaning has no relation with existence of a Creator. Does it?

All the atheists existentialists I have read agonize over this dilemma. Sartre before he died was the first to break ranks with the older generation of existentialists and return to the idea of a Creator God.

I am wondering why theists agonize about their meaningless life either. Anyway, the life a atheist vanishes after his death but a theist has an eternal meaningless life. Which one do you prefer?

 

[Vera_Ljuba]

Since existence is caused by God (that’s one definition of God, actually) it seems obvious that God exists.

Defining anything (for example God) into existence is not a viable way to conduct a conversation.

 

[Charlemagne_III]

Being creator doesn’t necessitate infiniteness. Do you have an argument in favor of that?

I don’t have the energy to go into that. This article in the Catholic Encyclopedia may help you understand what kind of a God I am talking about. It includes the trait of God’s infinity.

newadvent.org/cathen/06612a.htm

The rest of your post I didn’t understand.

A thing is purposeful if someone plans its purpose.

We don’t get to plan our own purpose since to do that we would have to have been alive and able to plan our purpose before we (or even the whole species) came into existence.

Atheists do not believe we have a meaningful purpose, but rather that we are an unplanned product of godless and meaningless evolution.

 

[CHRISTINE77]

Being creator doesn’t necessitate infiniteness. Do you have an argument in favor of that?

What is the relation between meaning and purpose? I don’t see any. There is a purpose for your life but no meaning, therefore your life is as meaningless as an atheist.

Meaning has no relation with existence of a Creator. Does it?

I am wondering why theists agonize about their meaningless life either. Anyway, the life a atheist vanishes after his death but a theist has an eternal meaningless life. Which one do you prefer?

Theists don’t have meaningless lives. They have God which provides them with true meaning. Only atheists have meaningless lives, because they don’t believe in anything.

 

[PRmerger]

Theists don’t have meaningless lives. They have God which provides them with true meaning. Only atheists have meaningless lives, because they don’t believe in anything.

I think you’ve been on this forum long enough to know that this ^^
simply isn’t true.

Atheists believe in love, they believe in science, they believe in right and wrong…

Now, it’s true that their position has some incoherence, in that if there really is no meaning to the universe, no purpose, then all of the above, in its examination, has no real meaning…

but I don’t think it’s fair to say that atheists have meaningless lives or that they don’t believe in anything.

They just don’t have a paradigm that makes logical sense.

 

[Charlemagne_III]

The proof is in the pudding.

A meaningful life is a life directed by the sense of joy.

What ultimate realities does the atheist have to be joyful about? The pleasures of the moment are not ultimate or even joyful. They are merely pleasures.

Joy comes at Easter, when we reflect upon and are assured of eternal joy and the everlasting embrace of our Creator…

The atheist is assured of only one thing that is eternal … death.

Hence we observe that suicide is more common among atheists than theists.

conservapedia.com/Atheism_and_suicide

 

[STT]

I don’t have the energy to go into that. This article in the Catholic Encyclopedia may help you understand what kind of a God I am talking about. It includes the trait of God’s infinity.

newadvent.org/cathen/06612a.htm

Thanks for the article.

The rest of your post I didn’t understand.

A thing is purposeful if someone plans its purpose.

That I agree but I think there is a difference between meaning and purpose. Don’t you think?

We don’t get to plan our own purpose since to do that we would have to have been alive and able to plan our purpose before we (or even the whole species) came into existence.

Atheists do not believe we have a meaningful purpose, but rather that we are an unplanned product of godless and meaningless evolution.

Again, there is a difference between meaning and purpose. When we say that life is meaningful, we mean something more than purposeful. Your life can be purposeful but meaningless. That is why you add meaningful to purpose (the bold part). The question is what is the meaning of existence in general?

 

[STT]

Theists don’t have meaningless lives. They have God which provides them with true meaning. Only atheists have meaningless lives, because they don’t believe in anything.

What is the meaning of life from your point of view?

 

[JapaneseKappa]

The only a priori proof that God does not exist would be that nothing exists.

Since we exist, then obviously existence is possible. Since existence is caused by God (that’s one definition of God, actually) it seems obvious that God exists.

I mean, I mentioned earlier that the lack of a single consistent definition of God is an issue. If we’re allowed to define God however we want, then I’m a theist after all! That is, when God is defined as JapaneseKappa.

So if you’re going to say that “God is just existence!” (and not a trinity, moral arbiter, etc.) then once again I am a theist after all! But just as with the “JK” definition of God, I’d say that the God label is basically useless.

 

[JapaneseKappa]

It’s simply enough to see that the atheist has as much faith as the theist.

As you put it, quoting yourself, “I agree that lumping all religions together isn’t entirely fair, but I think they all have a feature which allows us to reason about them collectively. That feature is: lack of a well defined epistemic method for testing their claims.”

Atheists believe there is no God, but they have neither a rationally objective method nor a “well defined epistemic method for testing their claims.”

Right?

It seems you’re essentially agreeing with me. I’m saying that when you attack the reliability of reason/senses, no one has a solution. Not theists, not atheists, not even Descartes. When our reason/senses are completely unreliable, all our tools have been broken; we have nothing left to make progress with. Such an attack doesn’t just drag atheists towards agnosticism, it drags theists towards agnosticism.

And so, when we decide whether or not to trust our reason, we do so arbitrarily. We cannot import anything that is a product of our reason or or senses without creating circular reasoning. Any such attempt necessarily takes the form “well, I trust my reason because I trusted my reasoning.”

And so, atheism and theism are discussions that happen on top of that arbitrary decision to trust our senses and reason. The a-priori arguments for- and against- God are built from this platform, and you can’t undermine the against- by shaking the platform without also destabilizing the for-.

This is where we can start talking about epistemic methods and evidence and such. Not every atheist demands the epistemic method I’ve advocated for here. But once again, you can’t perform the “but what about unreliable reason” attack without shaking the platform both of our arguments rest on.

 

[JapaneseKappa]

You seem to be stuck in some sort of circular argument that views knowledge of the truth to be subjective.

The truth is the truth, eternal reality itself.

Concepts such as “relativism” and “subjectivity” arise from a lack of appreciation of the fundamental ontological reality of relationality. We exist as self-other in our perceptions, understandings, feelings and grounding in what is. Existence is relational in itself and towards everything that it brings into being. Although I am referring to an “it”, the ultimate Reality transcends personhood.

I do understand that this is some sort of game for some and hence we hear talk of “surprise moves”. If you want to know the truth, it is knowable. Consider that your understanding of the how’s, what’s and why’s of existence may boil down to a merely subjective opinion, or perhaps actually a lack there of, but it need not remain as such.

The issue we’re talking about is more fundamental than this. You have reasons for believing in your “relational existence” and “transcendence” and so on. And because those **reasons **require your reason to be reliable you can’t use them as a basis for proving the reliability of your reason. Doing so would beg the question. It would be equivalent to saying: If I assume my reason is reliable, I can prove my reason is reliable!

That’s nice, but we’re facing the prospect of fallible reason and the above discovery gives us no means of dispelling this possibility.

 

[inocente]

Again, either/or thinking is allowed when required or one must have a split personality to embrace opposites.

Example:

God exists. God does not exist. Only mentally challenged persons can embrace the truth of both propositions.

In the case of God, there must be three options.

God exists.

God does not exist.

Maybe God exists.

Is this difficult to fathom?

The atheist cannot say with objective certainty that God does not exist.

He must therefore allow that maybe God exists.

But he doesn’t. So the atheist is guilty of either/or thinking without warrant.

This is probably why Bertrand Russell refused to call himself an atheist but did embrace the label of agnostic.

Either/or is only a fallacy when proposed as a false dilemma. Otherwise the opposite - procrastination and fence-sitting - is imho much worse. To me, unless there’s insufficient evidence, when no decision can be made, it is always better to make a decision. I mean there comes a point where it is wrong to continually ask more questions merely to put off having to make a decision.

But agreed that we should always acknowledge that we may be wrong, otherwise we close our mind to correction. So the atheist who has closed his mind to the possibility that God exists is making the same mistake as the theist who has closed his mind to the possibility that God does not exist.

From what I read of Russell, he had decided that there is no God but acknowledged he couldn’t prove it: “I do not pretend to be able to prove that there is no God. I equally cannot prove that Satan is a fiction. The Christian god may exist; so may the gods of Olympus, or of ancient Egypt, or of Babylon. But no one of these hypotheses is more probable than any other: they lie outside the region of even probable knowledge, and therefore there is no reason to consider any of them.”

 

[Charlemagne_III]

That I agree but I think there is a difference between meaning and purpose. Don’t you think?

They are two different words, but they are tied together by the assumption that for a thing to be meaningful or purposeful there must be some planned direction behind the meaning and the purpose.

Atheism allows no such planned direction because it denies the existence of the One who could supply such meaning or purpose. According to atheism, we are the product of blind Chance but even atheists cannot avoid the temptation to speak of Natural Selection, as if Nature knew full well what it was about when it produced Man.

The bottom line is that even Nature is the product of a directed end (made possible by the set of natural laws set in place at the Creation) and Nature is made meaningful only if that purpose is acknowledged.

 

[Charlemagne_III]

From what I read of Russell, he had decided that there is no God but acknowledged he couldn’t prove it: “I do not pretend to be able to prove that there is no God. I equally cannot prove that Satan is a fiction. The Christian god may exist; so may the gods of Olympus, or of ancient Egypt, or of Babylon. But no one of these hypotheses is more probable than any other: they lie outside the region of even probable knowledge, and therefore there is no reason to consider any of them.”

How would you answer Russell?

 

[Charlemagne_III]

-.This is where we can start talking about epistemic methods and evidence and such. Not every atheist demands the epistemic method I’ve advocated for here. But once again, you can’t perform the “but what about unreliable reason” attack without shaking the platform both of our arguments rest on.

It’s true that reason is unreliable because it is subject to our preferences. A prefers religion; B prefers atheism. Arguments can be raised to support both sides. That is why faith is important. As inocente has suggested citing Bertrand Russell, one chooses the probability that makes the most sense. For Russell the lack of conviction made all religions equally senseless. For Pascal, only Christianity made any sense at all.

I agree with Pascal. One chooses the life philosophy that makes the most sense and renders the best (most desirable) outcome. Atheism makes no sense because it is completely negative and acknowledges the everlasting death of both body and soul. Christ makes the most sense because he is completely positive and acknowledges the everlasting life of both body and soul. Atheism ultimately renders resignation and despair.
Christ renders hope and joy.

If there is a God, he should have created us so that joy overcomes despair.

Only in Christ do we discover joy overcoming despair.

 

[AgnosticBoy]

Either/or is only a fallacy when proposed as a false dilemma. Otherwise the opposite - procrastination and fence-sitting - is imho much worse. To me, unless there’s insufficient evidence, when no decision can be made, it is always better to make a decision. I mean there comes a point where it is wrong to continually ask more questions merely to put off having to make a decision.

I agree with you here unless you are implying that there is sufficient evidence regarding God’s existence for all to decide in which case I’d disagree. I’d disagree because different people would assess evidence differently when you factor in the quantity, quality or type, and strength of the evidence. I also don’t think that it is bad to engage in fence-sitting when it comes to “beliefs” (theism, atheism, etc.). I usually come off the fence when I have actual ‘knowledge’.

 

[JapaneseKappa]

It’s true that reason is unreliable because it is subject to our preferences. A prefers religion; B prefers atheism. Arguments can be raised to support both sides. That is why faith is important. As inocente has suggested citing Bertrand Russell, one chooses the probability that makes the most sense. For Russell the lack of conviction made all religions equally senseless. For Pascal, only Christianity made any sense at all.

But this is precisely the point of my whole “lack of an objective epistemic method” objection. Of course there are a-priori arguments for and against theism. You say that which one of these we choose must be based on personal preference. I say that you’re getting ahead of yourself. Once we accept that our reason and senses are at least somewhat reliable, the right thing to do is not to start trying to a-priori things into or out of existence. The correct thing to do is to start making hypothesis about how the world of sense-and-reason behaves, then checking the world of sense-and-reason to see if we are correct.

Now, its possible to object and say that our preferences are too coercive to overcome merely by checking against sense-and-reason. That is, our preferences will prevent us from actually discovering any facts about this world by interfering with our interpretations of sense-and-reason. That is indeed a possible objection; but it is easily overcome by the simple success of the approach. We know more things about the world than we did prior to this approach: we can heat up our foods in microwaves, cure our diseases, and build taller buildings.

And so where do the a-priori arguments for and against God fall in this framework? I like to think of Archimede’s quote “Give me a place to stand, and a lever long enough, and I will move the world.” Once we have somewhat-reliable sense and reason, and an epistemic method, we’ve got “a lever long enough” even to evaluate these a-priori claims. The problem with the theistic/a-theistic a-priori arguments is that we’ve got no place to stand. We simply don’t know how to “get outside” the claims made in a-priori arguments in the way required to apply our epistemic method. The solution isn’t to just say “well I’ll pick the one that makes the most sense to me,” it’s to not prematurely chose between them, and instead to investigate the claims we do know how to evaluate in the hopes that they might one day give us a means to evaluate the a-priori claims.

 

[Charlemagne_III]

And so where do the a-priori arguments for and against God fall in this framework? I like to think of Archimede’s quote “Give me a place to stand, and a lever long enough, and I will move the world.” Once we have somewhat-reliable sense and reason, and an epistemic method, we’ve got “a lever long enough” even to evaluate these a-priori claims. The problem with the theistic/a-theistic a-priori arguments is that we’ve got no place to stand. We simply don’t know how to “get outside” the claims made in a-priori arguments in the way required to apply our epistemic method. The solution isn’t to just say “well I’ll pick the one that makes the most sense to me,” it’s to not prematurely chose between them, and instead to investigate the claims we do know how to evaluate in the hopes that they might one day give us a means to evaluate the a-priori claims.

With respect to God in all this you demonstrate a preference for the epistemic method of empiricism and a dislike for a priori (pure logic).

That is to deny the validity of a priori because you don’t like the fact that you cannot check the* a priori with empirical data. But that is to submit the a priori *to a test that cannot apply to it, especially in the case of God. The epistemic method of approaching and confirming the existence of God is not through the senses but through the spirit. Since even the existence of spirit is denied by atheism, atheism has excluded God from any epistemic confirmation.

Ironically, atheism must also exclude the non-existence of God from being tested by the epistemic method of empiricism. Only by a convoluted form of *a priori *can the non-existence of God be asserted.