List of common fallacies of Atheists

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reggieM said:
Contemporary deconstructivist-philosophers have no real audience or impact because they destroyed the nature of “meaning”. Nobody wants to read about that because it has no value or wisdom to offer.
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There are other contemporary schools of philosophy besides the continental ones. Analytic philosophy and pragmatism are two notable examples.
 
I’m more of a finance/economics guy. Took logic & some philosophy at the undergrad level (over a decade ago), but I’m by not means a philosopher (but the good news is there’s jobs in my field :D).

On its face, Anselm’s argument seems ridiculous. More like word play than anything of even a little bit of substance. Even reading this debate is sort of amusing, because it ignores simple common sense.

We know to say something might exist isn’t saying it therefore must exist. I guess Anselm thought he had an epiphany, but I just can’t imagine who was dumb enough to buy into his bizarre idea? I guess it was a long time ago … but frankly that’s still no excuse to believe something so intuitively absurd, at least IMO.

Anyways …
 
reggieM said:
The end result was a widespread confusion in philosohpy - and a discrediting of the field of philosophical studies itself.

If human reason is simply a matter of thinking and claiming anything you want (because you have a subjective imagination about it) – then nobody is going to care about what you have to say. Truth needs to be tied to reality – and that’s what the realist philosophers did through Aquinas and the scholastics.

Contemporary deconstructivist-philosophers have no real audience or impact because they destroyed the nature of “meaning”. Nobody wants to read about that because it has no value or wisdom to offer.

Kant’s attempt to refute the ontological argument has ended up being much weaker than claimed and it caused a chain-reaction in philosophy.
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I think Anselm’s argument discredits the discipline of philosophy much more than Kant’s does (or his later progeny). You can’t make something exist out of thin air.

However, I suspect the reason why philosophy is deemed so useless these days is because most of it is useless. It doesn’t build anything, it doesn’t tell us anything of scientific value, it might even be fair to say we’ve reached the limits of its utility. John Locke, Hume, Bacon, and all the rest served us well. However, there’s only so many ways you can say freedom and equal rights are great things.

Additionally, now real science is taking the stage. Archeology, astronomy and cosmology, physics, biology, chemistry, economics, etc. These disciplines are demystifying the physical world, debunking ancient myth, and make philosophy less relevant. They represent real world solutions to problems, whereas philosophers conjure up the image of aging bohemian hippies talking about useless nonsense in a coffee shop somewhere in New York or San Francisco. Platitudes, nonsensical theories, or whatever won’t make a god pop up out of think air. God either exists or he doesn’t. All indications are there is no divine governor of the universe. When we look at the actions of people and patterns of human conduct, natural phenomena, or whatever we see no evidence of providence. We know the physical causes for natural phenomena. Randomness, not providence, is the only thing that makes sense in light of the evidence.
 
yankee_doodle said:
However, I suspect the reason why philosophy is deemed so useless these days is because most of it is useless. It doesn’t build anything, it doesn’t tell us anything of scientific value, it might even be fair to say we’ve reached the limits of its utility. John Locke, Hume, Bacon, and all the rest served us well. However, there’s only so many ways you can say freedom and equal rights are great things.
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The discipline of science requires a philosophical structure. If we can disregard or dismiss that, then there is no reason to exclude a search for supernatural causes within scientific study.
We know the physical causes for natural phenomena.
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That is a very debatable statement.
Randomness, not providence, is the only thing that makes sense in light of the evidence.
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Do you generally find that your friends and associates agree with your view on this?
 
reggieM said:
Do you generally find that your friends and associates agree with your view on this?
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most do, a few don’t (but some are afraid to deny theism in overly strong terms because of the social stigma attached to atheism and agnosticism).

I do think evolution was a process involving selection through randomness; it’s just that I don’t rule out certain possibilities. What I do rule out is a spiritual being who is omnipresent, hears and answers prayers, and governs the universe.

Throughout history mankind has attributed what we didn’t understand to a supernatural force. Slowly, as generations went by, we demystified one phenomena after the other. We know the natural cause for many of the things our predecessors attributed to an angry god or gods. Yes, there’s still work left for science, we haven’t discovered everything. However, the argument in support of religiosity continues to be the same old argument from incredulity.

We don’t understand the relationship between psychological and physical health, therefore god. There’s been bizarre atmospheric events that science hasn’t fully explained, therefore god.

Can you imagine the fear a solar eclipse must have invoked among the ancients?

I’m also convinced there’s enough similarities between Christianity (and Judaism) and earlier mythological stories from various cultures (near east and Roman) that create significant problems for Christianity. There’s numerous virgin birth motifs, a Sumerian polytheistic twin of the old testament flood narrative, etc. While I’ve heard some overreaching by atheists (with regard to these parallels) the ones we know exist are highly persuasive all the same.

When I add it up, in my personal opinion, religion is unreasonable. However, I also think being a deist (with a healthy dose of skepticism) is perfectly reasonable, although I don’t personally adopt a deist stance. After all, as far as we know everything has a cause (and since we’re pretty sure the universe had a starting point, it makes sense to assume something must have caused it. I just don’t believe it was any sort of omnipotent being as deists do). This doesn’t mean I think we should ever act under the assumption that a supernatural unknowable force did or created anything. We should always assume everything has a natural cause.

I don’t call myself an atheist because I’m not willing to go as far as creating a theory for the origins of the universe, without sufficient evidence (or at least a strong theoretical model), merely to help me attack theism. That’s the type of thing theists do to each other; and it starts to look like a game theory model. One group of theists attack the validity of another group, the other group reacts to that attack (and it throws them down a track they wouldn’t have otherwise gone down), then a counter-attack, and on and on it goes. People get hardened into their respective positions, more in reaction to attacks from the opposing side than any particular doctrine. Sometimes charges by an opponent, even if in inaccurate (if aggressive and consistent enough) can become self-fulfilling.

I try and keep that sort of clouded reasoning out of my brain. I may be occasionally wrong, but I’m not willing to do the same thing theists do, which is to create (or buy into, which is to enable) wild theories to rationalize its beliefs, merely to help “my side” win its argument. It’s not that I’m trying to say I’m holier than thou, I just think it’s harmful to invent or enable false arguments, or baseless theories (and help create a possibility that a bunch of really smart people, who could be spending their lives on productive endeavors, will waste their time trying to validate or debunk a theory that was a load of garbage to begin with).

When false assumptions enter into anything, it pollutes everything that follows, and creates inefficiency.
 
reggieM said:
I agree that it’s good to be respectful of Kant for many reasons – I was just showing some of the problems that don’t get mentioned in the claims that he “refuted” St. Anselm.
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It is worth noting his remarks about God:

“The supreme being remains a mere ideal, it is yet an ideal without a flaw, a concept which completes and crowns the whole of human knowledge… This highest formal unity… is the purposive unity of things…
The speculative interest of reason makes it necessary to regard all order in the world as if it had originated in the purpose of a supreme reason. Such a principle opens out to our reason, as applied in the field of experience, altogether new views as to how the things of the world may be connected according to teleological laws, and so enables it to arrive at their greatest systematic unity”.

So much for his alleged scepticism about a rational basis for theism!
 
We should always assume everything has a natural cause
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Why should we assume that?
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Antibiotics. Electricity. Flight. Agriculture (thanks especially to the late Norman Borlaug). Microprocessors. Plastics. Nuclear energy. Should I go on? I could probably fill pages.

God didn’t do any of that. Humans did. They did it by working under the assumption that the things they studied had natural causes.

Here you are, mooching off of the things that methodological naturalism built, and yet you pretend to question it. What unparalleled arrogance. What hypocrisy.

The real question is, why should we not assume everything has a natural cause? What could it possibly gain us?
 
DavidHume said:
Here you are, mooching off of the things that methodological naturalism built, and yet you pretend to question it. What unparalleled arrogance. What hypocrisy.
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Here you’re attempting to use reason and logic – mixed with some moral outrage.

How did methodological naturalism build any of that?
 
reggieM said:
I’m sorry if I offended the naturalistic gods of plastic by questioning the things they’ve built. We can thank them for the Great Pacific Garbage Patch, for one of many of their wonders and works:
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I’m with you there for the most part… however, the creation of plastic is not what is the problem. It’s our irresponsible use of it. Then again, sometimes I question whether we sometimes open Pandora’s box thinking we can handle it.
 
reggieM said:
I’m sorry if I offended the naturalistic gods of plastic by questioning the things they’ve built. We can thank them for the Great Pacific Garbage Patch, for one of many of their wonders and works:
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You’re welcome to unplug and recycle your plastic-laden computer, hypocrite.
 
reggieM said:
Here you’re attempting to use reason and logic – mixed with some moral outrage.

How did methodological naturalism build any of that?
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Why should we not assume everything has a natural cause? What benefit can it possibly give us?

Don’t dodge the question.
 
liquidpele said:
I’m with you there for the most part… however, the creation of plastic is not what is the problem. It’s our irresponsible use of it. Then again, sometimes I question whether we sometimes open Pandora’s box thinking we can handle it.
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I’d like to reply to this and try to take the discussion to the next level of questioning. But I’m answering three members of the forum who have different views on the topic, so it’s difficult to keep a sustained argument which builds one point on the next. One guy will accept significant possibilities and the other will reject everything except materialist positivism.

yankee_doodle: a materialist who believes that “randomness” makes the most sense. But he’s open to the possiblity of Deism (while rejecting it personally).

DavidHume: a more hard-core materialist who believes that we should assume that everything has a natural explanation, and who seemed offended by my merely asking why we should make that philosophical assumption.

liquidpele: a more experienced member of the forum (twice as many posts) who has been able to offer a friendly give-and-take and take a less rigid or absolutist view on atheistic-materialism.

So, liquidpele – discussing this with you, I would try to show areas of common-ground, and where your views might be open to new interpretations and possibilities.

But my post on the Garbage Patch was intended for DavidHume in the hope of trying to break through, what I perceive, as an extremely narrow world-view. Science produced and offered non-biodegradable plastic products to the public and now we see the profound damage this has done. Supposedly, I am not allowed to question the evolutionary-materialism that is based on blind, unintelligent, unconscious, amoral physical laws. Questioning that is “unparalled arrogance” according to DavidHume. The very moral laws that he uses to condemn my views (or perhaps condemn the Garbage Patch) are logically eliminated in the view of atheistic-evolutionism. The destruction of the world’s oceans cannot be morally condemned in a philosophical system that claims that “everything is a product of nature”. Nor can my questioning of atheistic ideas be condemned as “arrogant” in that system.

I do find it interesting how he seems to take it personally – as if I have some kind of obligation and sacred duty to honor naturalistic philosophy.

So, at the same time – if I was to shift-gears and adjust the conversation towards you (liquidpele), it would be a more difficult task because you are able to avoid the more obvious errors of materialist thinking.

The problem at hand, again, is that materialism does not logically permit one to strike a tone of moral outrage against anything. Nature does not command or forbid any moral action. The destruction of the ocean in a cesspool of plastic garbage is as much a good thing as was the supposed random evolution of flowers and hummingbirds – it is no more immoral than the chance occurence of a rockslide. We do not see atheistic-materialists scolding the rocks for sliding down the mountain. Nature just happens. Plastic just happens. That’s the magic of evolutionary-materialism. There’s nothing and no one to blame. There should be no expectation of justice or reward. Actually, reason, logic, argumentation and thought are determined by unintelligent processes. The clogging of the ocean is as much a good thing as anything. New and improved forms of life will supposedly emerge through evolutionary processes. Perhaps life forms that thrive on eating plastic bottles will bring evolutionary progress to an even higher state. More beautifully evolved and intelligent creatures than humans will begin evolving from the plastic-choked fish.
 
DavidHume said:
Why should we not assume everything has a natural cause? What benefit can it possibly give us?

Don’t dodge the question.
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We shouldnot assume that everything has a natural cause because natural laws and randomness have limits. Additionally, when I see someone claiming that everything has a natural cause, and yet acting in a way that radically contradicts that view – then I’m convinced that even the most ardent believers in naturalism cannot bring themselves to live by those tenents.

I asked you to show me where methodological naturalism gave us logic and reason and moral outrage.

You then claimed that this was a “dodge” – clearly, you don’t want to deal with that issue. You are *mooching * off of those ideas yourself and yet are unable to trace their source to materialistic processes. So, the assumption of naturalism is a false one.
 
reggieM said:
The problem at hand, again, is that materialism does not logically permit one to strike a tone of moral outrage against anything. Nature does not command or forbid any moral action. The destruction of the ocean in a cesspool of plastic garbage is as much a good thing as was the supposed random evolution of flowers and hummingbirds – it is no more immoral than the chance occurence of a rockslide. We do not see atheistic-materialists scolding the rocks for sliding down the mountain. Nature just happens. Plastic just happens. That’s the magic of evolutionary-materialism. There’s nothing and no one to blame. There should be no expectation of justice or reward. Actually, reason, logic, argumentation and thought are determined by unintelligent processes. The clogging of the ocean is as much a good thing as anything. New and improved forms of life will supposedly emerge through evolutionary processes. Perhaps life forms that thrive on eating plastic bottles will bring evolutionary progress to an even higher state. More beautifully evolved and intelligent creatures than humans will begin evolving from the plastic-choked fish.
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Well… yes and no. I’ll try to explain my viewpoint.

Materialism simply says that everything is based on physical attributes. For the most part (up until you get into quantum theory) I agree with this as I’ve seen no evidence of the contrary. You’re correct that in this case, physically there is no difference between trash and flowers if no bias is used at all. However, this is not a practical way to view it for two reasons. First, our physical bodies have developed preference. We like flowers, sex, and candy, and dislike garbage, scrapped knees, and isolation. Second, continued existence plays a big roll in what is perceived as good or bad. Murder is bad, destruction of what is viewed as “home” (nature, community, etc) is bad, etc. Liking destruction is counter productive to the survival of that very preference, and thus it is no wonder that some things are liked and some disliked… Both these reasons are relative to our species. I doubt the algae blooming from our garbage would think it is a bad thing.

In short, materialism says we’re just material, but it doesn’t say that order and purpose are not a part of what that material can render for itself.
 
reggieM said:
We should not assume that everything has a natural cause because natural laws and randomness have limits.
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What does that even mean? “Natural laws and randomness have limits?” Everything has limits. If there weren’t limits, Zeno and Parmenides would have been correct.
I asked you to show me where methodological naturalism gave us logic and reason and moral outrage.
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Which is not relevant to the question of why we should not believe that everything has a natural cause.

You seem to think it absurd to assume that everything has a natural cause. But assuming that there is a natural cause for things has been the single greatest engine of progress throughout history, so practically speaking it is not absurd to proceed under that assumption.

Superstition and voodoo have gained us what, exactly? Some nice literature that I can quote at you, perhaps: Matthew 7:15-20. But it doesn’t take divine revelation to come up with that idea.

To answer your question, it is entirely consistent to assume that human logical and emotional faculties have natural causes, without laying out a specific causal chain that lead to those faculties.
You are *mooching * off of those ideas yourself and yet are unable to trace their source to materialistic processes. So, the assumption of naturalism is a false one.
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This does not follow.
 
reggieM said:
The problem at hand, again, is that materialism does not logically permit one to strike a tone of moral outrage against anything.
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This is nauseatingly false and is yet another slander that bigoted religious people often lay upon those who do not share their beliefs.

Moral outrage is the product of human sentiment. There is no reason to believe that human sentiment does not have natural causes, or that materialism precludes the existence of human sentiment.
 
DavidHume said:
What does that even mean? “Natural laws and randomness have limits?” Everything has limits.
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It would be interesting to know the specific limits to what randomness can produce. You can show this mathematically or through any other method. Again, what are the precise limits that randomness, combined with natural laws, can produce? What is the origin of randomness and how have you tested it for limits?
You seem to think it absurd to assume that everything has a natural cause. But assuming that there is a natural cause for things has been the single greatest engine of progress throughout history, so practically speaking it is not absurd to proceed under that assumption.
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Science has been the single greatest engine for destruction through history.
To answer your question, it is entirely consistent to assume that human logical and emotional faculties have natural causes, without laying out a specific causal chain that lead to those faculties.
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It’s not consistent to insist that one must reject the possibility of non-natural causes in favor of an assumption that is not supported by the existence of a specific causal chain.
 
reggieM said:
Science has been the single greatest engine for destruction through history.
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And yet you continue to reap its benefits while spreading your slanders and lies, therefore adding hypocrisy to the mix.
reggieM said:
It’s not consistent to insist that one must reject the possibility of non-natural causes in favor of an assumption that is not supported by the existence of a specific causal chain.
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Yes it is, because the first approach has produced nothing of benefit, while the second has produced everything that is allowing you to use this forum.

Saying “I don’t know, but maybe I can find out” is one of the most productive things a person can do. Socrates recognized this centuries before Romans allegedly crucified a rabble-rouser.
 
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