List of common fallacies of Atheists

[tonyrey]

*The starting point is simple: we begin with nothing but our thoughts, feelings and sensations! We infer the existence of physical reality from our perceptions. *
Yes, but this is a very casual use of the word ‘infer’. We are physical wired to process the (name removed by moderator)ut of the senses as reflective of an external reality.

I am not denying that physical reality exists. I am simply pointing out that **our starting point **is our stream of consciousness. So the onus is on the physicalist to explain why physical reality is the fundamental reality. It is certainly not the only testable, verifiable model of reality we have available. We have our own direct experience and that of other people which we can compare, test and verify at first hand. If you deny we have any rational basis for investing any meaning in the existence of our minds you are in effect denying the existence of rationality and its source. You are equating consciousness, reasoning and free will with physical processes without providing any evidence that they can be reduced to physical processes. In other words you are putting the cart before the horse. In the order of knowledge the mind undoubtedly comes first. It does not follow, of course, that the mind is the fundamental reality but there are very good reasons to believe the mind is more powerful than the body, that it transcends the body and cannot be explained in terms of the body.

It is simpler and more adequate to explain the origin of our existence in terms of what we know directly rather than indirectly - and we have direct experience of personality, rationality, autonomy and consciousness…
None of these obtain without a physical context.

We do not need a physical context in order to be aware of ourselves. Our stream of consciousness is the primary object of which we are aware and it is against that background we are aware of the physical world. It is false to assert that our only known source of knowledge is the physical world around us. You seem to be implying that our interior source for knowledge is less real than the exterior world even though it is far more important than what happens in the exterior world. Even though we agree on its main features we all differ in our interpretations of the exterior world and its significance. In other words the world is what we make it! And that is precisely why we exist…

There may be other sources of knowledge, but there are none known, none that do not fail to match “imaginary” in every detail. Again, that’s not proof that there isn’t or can’t be something more. But as it stands we have nothing more in view, nor any reasonable warrant for believing there is.There may be other sources of knowledge, but there are none known, none that do not fail to match “imaginary” in every detail. Again, that’s not proof that there isn’t or can’t be something more. But as it stands we have nothing more in view, nor any reasonable warrant for believing there is

There is very well documented evidence for non-physical sources of knowledge - philosophical, intuitive, spiritual, aesthetic, mathematical and personal - which far exceed the value of science and technology.
Is the power of imagination imaginary?! “imaginary” implies the existence of the imagination. Significantly it exists in the mind and not the body…

Of course there’s powerful psychological and political reasons why the supernatural and God and gods are appealing illusions, so there’s a practical warrant for many personally and culturally, but I’m speaking here in terms of objective existentials, of reasoned analysis as to whether belief in the exist of this or that can be justified as a matter of knowledge, rather than emotional preferences or politics.

It is an argumentum ad hominem to reject the supernatural on the grounds of psychological and political reasons. I could equally well say there are powerful psychological and political reasons why atheism is an appealing alternative to belief in the supernatural. In fact, belief in the supernatural is based on the fact that we transcend nature with our power of reason, free will and ability to control our body and our environment as well as on evidence that naturalism (physicalism) is an inadequate explanation of the richness, value and purpose of existence. Naturalism implies that we are natural objects controlled by our environment which happen to exist in an irrational and pointless universe.

 

[Touchstone]

I am not denying that physical reality exists. I am simply pointing out that **our starting point **is our stream of consciousness. So the onus is on the physicalist to explain why physical reality is the fundamental reality. It is certainly not the only testable, verifiable model of reality we have available. We have our own direct experience and that of other people which we can compare, test and verify at first hand. If you deny we have any rational basis for investing any meaning in the existence of our minds you are in effect denying the existence of rationality and its source.

I think I just affirmed, above, that we cannot do otherwise than to affirm the the existence of our minds. It’s part of our undeniable reality – our physical reality. Again, stick your hand in a flame, and see if you can deny that reality with your mind. Your brain stem will object vigorously.

So rather than deny it, I’m saying this is the defeater for this platonic-Cartesian notion of the “disembodied mind”. The mind is a function of the human body. It’s only as real as the body that provides the context for its processing.

You are equating consciousness, reasoning and free will with physical processes without providing any evidence that they can be reduced to physical processes. In other words you are putting the cart before the horse. In the order of knowledge the mind undoubtedly comes first. It does not follow, of course, that the mind is the fundamental reality but there are very good reasons to believe the mind is more powerful than the body, that it transcends the body and cannot be explained in terms of the body.

There’s an enormous supply of evidence available. Do you know any conscious dead people? When the brain is destroyed, consciousness stops. We have no evidence at all for the persistence of consciousness beyond it’s physical medium. And everything we do and try and observe fits with the hypothesis that the mind is a physical process.

I don’t know of a single “good reason” to think that the mind is more powerful than the body. That’s a confused statement as I read it. The mind is the body. Is a man’s heartbeat more powerful than his body? Does his heartbeat transcend his flesh? Does the heartbeat live on eternally? You might as well believe so, if you think so about the mind.

We do not need a physical context in order to be aware of ourselves.

On what grounds do you say this? This sounds like a claim pulled straight from the other, based on nothing concrete or verifiable. Can you give me an example of a mind that is aware of itself WITHOUT having a physical context, the nerons and synapses of a brain to support its functioning?

That would be a remarkable discovery to find that you could. I believe you cannot.

Our stream of consciousness is the primary object of which we are aware and it is against that background we are aware of the physical world. It is false to assert that our only known source of knowledge is the physical world around us.

Why? We have overwhelming evidence that the physical world is a source of knowledge. So it’s patently a source, at least. But what other source do we have? What can we test like we test physical reality to establish it as a source of objective knowledge about our reality?

I’m not aware of any other sources. No one will demonstrate any others for me, either, when I ask.

You seem to be implying that our interior source for knowledge is less real than the exterior world even though it is far more important than what happens in the exterior world. Even though we agree on its main features we all differ in our interpretations of the exterior world and its significance. In other words the world is what we make it! And that is precisely why we exist…

I’m saying that your interior source of knowledge is just another part of the physical world. It’s an exterior source of knowledge for me, in what parts of your mind you reveal. But real is real, and your brain is made of the same stuff mine is – chemicals, enzymes, electrons, water, etc. There’s no opposition between “interior” and “exterior”. It’s the same thing. “Interior” is just a label we assign meaning that your brain is connected to your body and its perceptual systems. It works with your physical perceptions, and not mine.

There is very well documented evidence for non-physical sources of knowledge - philosophical, intuitive, spiritual, aesthetic, mathematical and personal - which far exceed the value of science and technology.

How are any of those non-physical?

Is the power of imagination imaginary?! “imaginary” implies the existence of the imagination. Significantly it exists in the mind and not the body…

Imagination is a function of our minds. It’s a physical process. What’s the problem with that? Is that not “significant” enough, such that it demands classification as some cosmic-imaginary substance?

-TS

(con’t)

 

[Touchstone]

It is an argumentum ad hominem to reject the supernatural on the grounds of psychological and political reasons. I could equally well say there are powerful psychological and political reasons why atheism is an appealing alternative to belief in the supernatural. In fact, belief in the supernatural is based on the fact that we transcend nature with our power of reason, free will and ability to control our body and our environment as well as on evidence that naturalism (physicalism) is an inadequate explanation of the richness, value and purpose of existence. Naturalism implies that we are natural objects controlled by our environment which happen to exist in an irrational and pointless universe.

Oh, I’m well aware that atheists have the same dynamics available in their realpolitik as well. But my point there was that atheism obtains without that, as a matter of critical investigation of the evidence and facts. Catholicism (and theism) do not. They obtain on other grounds, and get defeated without them.

I think the key word in your paragraph above is “inadequate”, which I take to mean “unsatisfying in an emotional way”. I think that reading is supported by your characterization of the naturalist universe as yielding an “irrational and pointless universe”. As an ex-Christian, I can understand that PoV, and shared if for a long time, but I suggest that’s just hubris talking.

The universe, if it’s godless as it appears, is nevertheless significantly intelligible and rational. We can and do make sense of it, navigate it, and manipulate it predictably to our own ends. And as for “pointless”, well, I think that’s the downside of the anodyne claims of Christianity, that you are “eternal” and have “cosmic value”. It’s a letdown, understandably, to think that all that supernaturalism was just so much self-delusion. But life is preciious because it’s final, it’s more meaningful because we are NOT eternal. Every day has meaning for the man who knows there are no more days beyond the grave, no more him after death. The blue sky is beautiful, the breeze is warm today, and my twin sons just had a walk down a country road filled with frogs and grasshoppers and spiders and a snake, even.

If that doesn’t make “pointless” a rather ridiculous adjective to use for our precious, fleeting moments here, I suggest a good walk in the countryside is in order!

-TS

 

[warpspeedpetey]

Well, the idea that an invisible God makes demands on your actions and loyalties as predicate for some eternal disposition, the idea that the nature of our reality is just an ephemeral stage for some kind of portal to paradise or an eternity in flames…That’s really pretty over-the-top as metaphysical speculations go. If you don’t think that’s ‘out there’, than I can’t think of what would qualify as ‘out there’ in terms of metaphysical speculation. Reincarnation, for example, seems pretty tame, goofy as it is, as a metaphysical statement about our universe.

i thought you were refering to specific metaphysical arguments, these are all theological arguments, but i see what you mean.

though i fail to see a difference between these ideas, and the claim that the universe has no cause. thats a denial of the PSR, if one goes that route then the very basis of science is denied. which i find to be equally ridiculous, it would be just another Poof! theory.

what difference is there?

It’s gratuitous hatred, the fomenting of suffering and distress without warrant. It would be no different than the destructive nature of hating heterosexuality. It’s an irrational, destructive animus.

yet we believe that that there is warrant to hate the sin, if not the sinner, it is clearly a disordered act and a violation of G-ds will as expressed in leviticus. they could remain celibate if they so choose. we are required too, many of us do and understand the extreme difficulty. yet that doesnt excuse us from the prohibition of fornication.

i would suggest that it foments suffering all by itself. did people not make that choice, much suffering might be avoided. (if you claim its inborn, i’ll need some valid scientific evidence) if it is not a choice there is the option of celibacy, that all unmarried people have.

I don’t have to assume it. It’s a conclusion from observing man’s goals, man’s behavior, and reasoning about it. It’s evil because of its gratuitous nature. It propagates suffering without justification. I just had my doctor give my twin sons vaccination, which were traumatic and painful for them. But this bit of suffering, having a sharp needle repeatedly jabbed in one’s thigh, has a reasonable basis, a compensating benefit that justifies the action.

Religiously fomented hatred of homosexuality has no such basis. We might as well condemn homosexuals to a life of harassment and persecution because they were “born under the wrong star”, or because “the rain gods won’t help our crops if we tolerate them”.

by the same token the suffering incurred by homosexuality may have a benefit as well. it could just as easily be G-ds way of slapping their hand, saying “stop that!” just like we may a child.

As for the “Problem of Evil doesn’t exist”, I’m afraid that one didn’t rise to the level of a response, in my view. Far easier to just admit one’s solipsism – man doesn’t know nothin’ and man doesn’t know ‘moral’ from a hole in the ground – than go to all that trouble, eh?

it doesnt happen to be solipsism because i dont deny mans ability to know things, rather that the gap between what he does know and information that he does not makes conclusions drawn about the morality of G-ds actions inherenty invalid, there is always possible information that will exclude the veracity of such a conclusion. as i demonstrate from criticisms of info-gap decision theory.

I’m sure the Midianite children being put to the sword by the People of God under God’s direction might have found some solace in the fact that really, they were information deficient, and given a big, unknown universe, it’s quite likely that their slaughter really was just part of a beautiful, just plan.

this is case in point why such conclusions are invalid, you seem to be ignoring why they were all killed, they caused the Children of G-d to sin. they tempted them to another god. if you wish to blame G-d, you implicitly admit His existence.

if you claim the children should not be held responsible i can post a long list of gruesome child rapist/murderers, child soldiers and assorted villains. children can obviously be held responsible for their acts. remember the boys who raped, tortured, beat to death, and dismembered a toddler, little jimmy bulger, in England?

Too bad ‘info-gap’ theory was developed to late to provide them some comfort as they lay dying…

would you comfort the children who killed the very sweet little boy in England? of course not, so why then do you expect comfort for the midianites? do you think there crime any less? the destruction of a great number of souls? the body dies but the soul remains, i contend that it was a much worse crime.

the point being that no matter the situation, clearly, one lacks the necessary information to draw valid conclusions about the morality of G-ds actions. mere onbservation doesnt provide all the information that may be relevant to a situation. its just your opinion, one that implicitly admits the existence of G-d at that.

 

[Touchstone]

i thought you were refering to specific metaphysical arguments, these are all theological arguments, but i see what you mean.

though i fail to see a difference between these ideas, and the claim that the universe has no cause. thats a denial of the PSR, if one goes that route then the very basis of science is denied. which i find to be equally ridiculous, it would be just another Poof! theory.

what difference is there?

That seems similarly outrageous. It’s possible, too, as “possible” is hard to put limits on metaphysically, but we’ve no more basis for grabbing that metaphysical idea out of the air and call it “true” than the theist does with his metaphysical indulgences.

Metaphysically, we are extremely limited in what we can say.

Incidentally, the principle of sufficient reason need not hold all the way up the abstraction chain, so it wouldn’t necessarily interfere with science. It’s possible the universe “poofed out of nothing” in such a form that it had innate structure which lent itself to physical intelligibility – the successful enterprise of science.

As soon as you start going beyond what’s necessary – reality is real, metaphysics might as well be tiddly winks or astrology. It’s folly, unnaccountable, fanciful, self-indulgent beyond what we must transcendental accept (reality is real, is rational enough to permit conscious/communication). Contemplating commitments like “the universe must have a god” or “the universe must have poofed out of nothing” is silly.

yet we believe that that there is warrant to hate the sin, if not the sinner, it is clearly a disordered act and a violation of G-ds will as expressed in leviticus. they could remain celibate if they so choose. we are required too, many of us do and understand the extreme difficulty. yet that doesnt excuse us from the prohibition of fornication.

Yes, but that belief is no more warranted than “you were born under the wrong star and therefore must be stoned to death”. Believing it doesn’t make it true. You’ve hung that hatred on a sky hook, resting on nothing for its justification, save for, again, outrageous metaphysical commitments (“God is the creator of the universe and he hates homosexuality!”).

I understand you believe it, but my grandfather firmly believed black people were subhuman. He similarly believed there was warrant for his hatreds, too. “Believing you have have warrant” is not the same as demonstrating warrant.

i would suggest that it foments suffering all by itself. did people not make that choice, much suffering might be avoided. (if you claim its inborn, i’ll need some valid scientific evidence) if it is not a choice there is the option of celibacy, that all unmarried people have.

There’s a lot of scientific observation that supports genetic and development (think hormones in the womb, etc.) bases for a homosexual dispostion. Happy to discuss, but that would be a different thread. Homosexuality I’m sure does foment suffering in some cases, just like heterosexuality. It’s a powerful and potentially destructive social dynamic. But there’s nothing that suggests it’s intrinsically destructive, anymore than homosexuality is. Again, if we look to the objective evidence on this, Catholic dogma looks worse the more you learn.

by the same token the suffering incurred by homosexuality may have a benefit as well. it could just as easily be G-ds way of slapping their hand, saying “stop that!” just like we may a child.

Yes, but that is a desperately evil line of thinking. It might have been good for the Jews to have been exterminated from the face of the earth by Nazis or whoever, by the same token. As warpspeedpetey says, under that kind of psuedo-solipsism, maybe we just don’t know enough to understand why all Jews really should be gassed and machined gunned whereverpossible. That could be God’s way of setting things right in the world! (Blech, it’s hard to even type that, but that’s the ramifications of that kind of perverse logic…).

-TS

 

[Touchstone]

it doesnt happen to be solipsism because i dont deny mans ability to know things, rather that the gap between what he does know and information that he does not makes conclusions drawn about the morality of G-ds actions inherenty invalid, there is always possible information that will exclude the veracity of such a conclusion. as i demonstrate from criticisms of info-gap decision theory.

Morality is a man-centric value set. No one understands morality or is more authoritative over its values than man. If we suppose God does exist, and he sees fit to wipe the Midianites out in his good plasure, or to drown all the world’s human population save a handful, or raise up a totalitarian tyrant to reduce the world Jewish population by 90%, who are we to say that’s perfectly despicable on God’s part?

We’re humans of course, and we know more than any non-human God about being human, and what’s moral and ethical from a human perspective. If humans can’t determine for themselves what is moral and what is not, there’s nothing they can determine about anything. There’s nothing more perfectly suborned to human judgement than human morality.

this is case in point why such conclusions are invalid, you seem to be ignoring why they were all killed, they caused the Children of G-d to sin. they tempted them to another god. if you wish to blame G-d, you implicitly admit His existence.

I’m saying that without a manifestly justifying reason, and it’s hard to think of what that would be, it doesn’t matter if there is one or not. So long as WE don’t know it, we are obliged to call it what it is, based on what we do know. Shockingly, desperately evil. I’m convinced that tribal genocide just went look for the “blessing” of divine command, and a bunch of murderous thugs ended up saying that a god that never was ordered them to slaughter the Midianites, but if there is a God and that was his order, then it’s a wicked man who would call that being “good” or holy.

I don’t have to grant God’s existence to consider provisional cases, here, by the way. I’m quite able to imagine the ramifications if God were to be a real being along the lines of what Catholics claim.

if you claim the children should not be held responsible i can post a long list of gruesome child rapist/murderers, child soldiers and assorted villains. children can obviously be held responsible for their acts. remember the boys who raped, tortured, beat to death, and dismembered a toddler, little jimmy bulger, in England?

C’mon now, we’re getting quite beyond the pale of human decency here. The people of God put everyone to death, including all the infants. Do you want to tell me about the Midianite INFANTS that deserved to be run through with the sword.

This is quite a surreal argument to hear from Catholics, known far and wide for being “pro-life”. I think the criticism that Catholics are really “anti-abortion” as opposed to “pro-life” is supported by this exchange. In any case, I invite you to take a second look at what you’ve written here, and let your conscience work on you, even at the expense of your dogma.

would you comfort the children who killed the very sweet little boy in England? of course not, so why then do you expect comfort for the midianites? do you think there crime any less? the destruction of a great number of souls? the body dies but the soul remains, i contend that it was a much worse crime.

I don’t think the Midianite kids who were infants suckling at their mother’s breast, or the toddlers running around in the dirt at their mothers feet had any reason for being slaughtered as the Israelite soldiers fell upon them carrying out God’s divine will. I will be the one here rising in support of innocent life, I see. That is something I expected we’d agree on.

the point being that no matter the situation, clearly, one lacks the necessary information to draw valid conclusions about the morality of G-ds actions. mere onbservation doesnt provide all the information that may be relevant to a situation. its just your opinion, one that implicitly admits the existence of G-d at that.

This is a stance that can justify any kind of atrocity and wickedness from gods or man. So long as you can get your audience duped into forfeiting their moral thinking and principles by tricking them into thinking it matters at all that they “don’t know the whole picture”, you can justify anything, anything, anything at all. There’s nothing too perverse or depraved or cruel to get by under this line of apology. Maybe the Holocaust was just what God wanted after all, and Catholic complicity in the enterprise of Nazism was just aiding God’s divine plan?

What do we know after all? It could be! We don’t know the whole picture! God wanted all the Midianites dead way back when, and all of mankind but eight before that! Becuase of our “info-gap”, we ought to be open that those 6 million Jews had it COMING!

How graphic does the extrapolation of this perverse logic have to be to get through?

-TS

 

[tonyrey]

I am not denying that physical reality exists. I am simply pointing out that our starting point is our stream of consciousness. So the onus is on the physicalist to explain why physical reality is the fundamental reality. It is certainly not the only testable, verifiable model of reality we have available. We have our own direct experience and that of other people which we can compare, test and verify at first hand. If you deny we have any rational basis for investing any meaning in the existence of our minds you are in effect denying the existence of rationality and its source.
I think I just affirmed, above, that we cannot do otherwise than to affirm the the existence of our minds. It’s part of our undeniable reality – our physical reality.

How do you know the mind is** part** of our physical reality? Why do you give the body precedence? What evidence is there that the body existed before the mind and is more powerful?

So rather than deny it, I’m saying this is the defeater for this platonic-Cartesian notion of the “disembodied mind”.

The fact that the mind is related to the body does not imply that it is produced by the body. Contiguity in time and space does not entail causality…

The mind is a function of the human body.

What the evidence is there that
(1)The mind is a function of the human body?
(2)The mind cannot exist without the body?

It’s only as real as the body that provides the context for its processing.

How do you know this? Or is it just an assumption for which you have no evidence?
Can you explain how mental functions are produced by the body?

When the brain is destroyed, consciousness stops.

How do you know that? Do you know how consciousness exists?

We have no evidence at all for the persistence of consciousness beyond its physical medium.

Are you implying that the only reality is physical? If so how do you explain the origin of mind, consciousness, free will and purpose? Do you believe persons are no more than complex molecular structures which were assembled fortuitously?

And everything we do and try and observe fits with the hypothesis that the mind is a physical process.

Do your thoughts, choices and decisions fit into that hypothesis? Do you have no control over them? Are you just a biological machine? Do you treat your family like biological machines? Or as persons with a right to life and happiness?

I don’t know of a single “good reason” to think that the mind is more powerful than the body.

Are you incapable of controlling your thoughts or actions? Or allowing yourself to be hypnotised? Does the lump of tissue inside your skull know that it exists? Is it capable of infringing the law of the conservation of energy? Where is its control-centre? Where is its seat of consciousness? Which part of it is responsible for its activity?

The mind is the body.

You blithely ignore a question debated and discussed by human beings for centuries. Why has mankind always made a distinction between the mind and body? Do you have privileged insight into the nature of reality?

Is a man’s heartbeat more powerful than his body? Does his heartbeat transcend his flesh? Does the heartbeat live on eternally?

All these questions are irrelevant to the mind-body issue…

We do not need a physical context in order to be aware of ourselves.
On what grounds do you say this? This sounds like a claim pulled straight from the other, based on nothing concrete or verifiable.

When you think of yourself do you need to clutch on to physical things to reassure yourself that your mind exists? Do you need a physical context when you are meditating and totally oblivious of the material world?

Can you give me an example of a mind that is aware of itself WITHOUT having a physical context, the neurons and synapses of a brain to support its functioning?

Can you give me an example of a physical object that is aware of itself WITHOUT having a mind? Do you really believe a rational, purposeful mind is the product of irrational, purposeless particles?

That would be a remarkable discovery to find that you could. .

It would be a remarkable discovery to find that you could explain how the mind emerged by chance.

Our stream of consciousness is the primary object of which we are aware and it is against that background we are aware of the physical world. It is false to assert that our only known source of knowledge is the physical world around us.
Why? We have overwhelming evidence that the physical world is a source of knowledge.
So it’s patently a source, at least. But what other source do we have?

We have our thoughts, feelings, sensations, images and decisions as well as the other sources I have mentioned. Scientific knowledge is not the only form of knowledge and certainly not the most important.

What can we test like we test physical reality to establish it as a source of objective knowledge about our reality?

“our reality” is the most appropriate expression you could use because it is the reality we construct with our intellect on the basis of **our **perceptions. I have already pointed out that we have direct knowledge of our mind and we **infer **the existence of other minds just as we infer the existence of physical reality. Do you object to the description of our direct knowledge as objective knowledge? Or do you regard it as unreal or inferior to our knowledge of physical reality?

 

[tonyrey]

• You seem to be implying that our interior source for knowledge is less real than the exterior world even though it is far more important than what happens in the exterior world. *
  I’m saying that your interior source of knowledge is just another part of the physical world. It’s an exterior source of knowledge for me, in what parts of your mind you reveal.

It’s an exterior source of knowledge for you but that doesn’t mean that it belongs to exterior reality.

But real is real, and your brain is made of the same stuff mine is – chemicals, enzymes, electrons, water, etc. There’s no opposition between “interior” and “exterior”.

Then why has that distinction been made by human beings for centuries? Were they all misguided?

It’s the same thing. “Interior” is just a label we assign meaning that your brain is connected to your body and its perceptual systems. It works with your physical perceptions, and not mine.

You keep assuming that the mind is no more than the activity of the brain - which is the very issue at stake. Your physicalism is so deeply ingrained that you are not even aware of the extent to which it shapes your mode of thought.

There is very well documented evidence for non-physical sources of knowledge - philosophical, intuitive, spiritual, aesthetic, mathematical and personal - which far exceed the value of science and technology.
How are any of those non-physical?

Why do you assume they are physical? Can you observe them with your senses?

Is the power of imagination imaginary?! “imaginary” implies the existence of the imagination. Significantly it exists in the mind and not the body…
Imagination is a function of our minds. It’s a physical process.

You reiterate this statement like a mantra but it still requires justification.

But my point there was that atheism obtains without that, as a matter of critical investigation of the evidence and facts. Catholicism (and theism) do not. They obtain on other grounds, and get defeated without them.

I can just as easily assert that theism obtains without that, as a matter of critical investigation of the evidence and facts. Physicalism (and atheism) do not. They obtain on other grounds, and get defeated without them. The evidence is in what we all regard as the most important aspects of reality: truth, goodness, justice, freedom, beauty, purpose and love - none of which you will find in your scientific scheme of things…

I think the key word in your paragraph above is “inadequate”, which I take to mean “unsatisfying in an emotional way”.

“inadequate” means that it is an objectively unsatisfactory explanation of reality because it does not account for all the facts. In Hume’s words, the effects are not proportioned to the cause.

The universe, if it’s godless as it appears, is nevertheless significantly intelligible and rational.

Yes and the question is why it is intelligible and rational. You have to accept it as a brute fact even though you regard rationality as an accidental accretion to matter.

We can and do make sense of it, navigate it, and manipulate it predictably to our own ends.

And you take it for granted that we have the power to do this - again as the result of an accidental accretion to matter.

And as for “pointless”, well, I think that’s the downside of the anodyne claims Christianity, that you are “eternal” and have “cosmic value”.

It seems that atheism has far more anodyne claims, given that you become absolute master of your own destiny, answerable to no one, with no categorical imperatives to bother you, absolutely free to do what you like in an existence sheltered from the prospect of what may come after you die. It’s very cosy when you come to think of it in spite of its drawbacks…

It’s a letdown, understandably, to think that all that supernaturalism was just so much self-delusion.

It’s much more of a letdown to think that life is incomplete, love leads nowhere, justice is an illusion and evil prevails.

But life is precious because it’s final, it’s more meaningful because we are NOT eternal.
Every day has meaning for the man who knows there are no more days beyond the grave, no more him after death.

The death wish is symptomatic…

The blue sky is beautiful, the breeze is warm today, and my twin sons just had a walk down a country road filled with frogs and grasshoppers and spiders and a snake, even.

Yes - and all that beauty, according to you, exists by chance and is swallowed up by death in the twinkling of an eye. Your sons will be given a very dismal view of life: an infinitesimally brief spark in the eternal darkness - “a tale told by an idiot, full of sound and fury, signifying nothing” and, in the words of Hobbes, “poor, nasty, brutish and short”.

If that doesn’t make “pointless” a rather ridiculous adjective to use for our precious, fleeting moments here, I suggest a good walk in the countryside is in order!

The odd thing is that our precious, fleeting moments reveal the infinite value of life. Yet the atheist believes things have no intrinsic value and only exist in the mind! What a mass of contradictions… Rational activity is used to demonstrate everything is ultimately unreasonable, purposeful activity to demonstrate everything is ultimately purposeless and valuable activity to demonstrate everything is ultimately valueless…

 

[Touchstone]

How do you know the mind is** part** of our physical reality?

It’s the simplest, most robust explanation. You kill the brain/body, the mind is destroyed, too. Even more convincing, you mess with the brain, either as an accidental matter (injury/disease), or experiment, and you mess with the mind. There are simply no alternative explanations that approach “physical mind” in terms of economy and performance against the evidence.

Why do you give the body precedence? What evidence is there that the body existed before the mind and is more powerful?

Well, zygotes, if you call that a body, aren’t mind-equipped, are they? The human fetus doesn’t turn out its life-long electrical activity in the cerebral cortex until something like 15 weeks into development. In the womb, a fetus has a body before it has a mind. All you have to do is observe the process to answer your question.

The fact that the mind is related to the body does not imply that it is produced by the body. Contiguity in time and space does not entail causality…

I don’t think it needs to. It’s simply the only explanation that performs robustly and economically in light of the facts.

What the evidence is there that
(1)The mind is a function of the human body?

We only find minds where we find brains. Kill the brain, the mind is destroyed, so far as anyone can tell. Mess with the physical matter of the brain, mess with the mind. It’s compelling.

(2)The mind cannot exist without the body?
No evidence exists to suggest it can. The only way we understand the mind at all is as a function of the brain. We haven’t a clue in terms of experience or observation what it means for a mind to be “disembodied”. All the evidence in view suggests that’s a contradiction in terms.

How do you know this? Or is it just an assumption for which you have no evidence?

This is what looking at the available evidence yields as a conclusion. If you do don’t being with prefab dogma on this, it’s the natural and efficient answer, based on what we observe.

Can you explain how mental functions are produced by the body?

Explain how? You want voltage levels across synapses? We perceive, process, react, emote, act, or not. And the process repeats over and over, constantly, until we die.

How do you know that? Do you know how consciousness exists?

I know it exists because I’m aware of my surroundings. That’s what consciousness means… awareness. I am aware, therefore conscious.

Are you implying that the only reality is physical?

I’m saying quite clearly, not just implying that what we call “physical” (extended in time/space in one way or another) is the only context that we have that gives coherent meaning to the word and concept “reality”. There may be more to it than we know now, but as it is, we have no warrant in terms of reasoning to subscribe to any kinds of speculation about “supernatural” existence.

If so how do you explain the origin of mind, consciousness, free will and purpose? Do you believe persons are no more than complex molecular structures which were assembled fortuitously?

I don’t think it even merits “fortuitously”. The universe doesn’t care if we are here or not. We are an emergent property of the physical world. We are what happens given large amounts of matter, energy and long time spans, operating under the dynamics of physical law. Ice forming at the freezing point from liquid water isn’t “fortuitous”, it’s just a manifestation of physical law. Hydrogen isn’t wet, an oxygen isn’t “wet” yet H2O is “wet”, an emergent property of the universe.

No magical conjuring needed, so far as we can see. The more we learn, the more wonderous and less supernatural (and more intelligibly nature) the process gets.

Do your thoughts, choices and decisions fit into that hypothesis? Do you have no control over them?

Sure, in the usual sense we deploy for the word “control”.

Are you just a biological machine?

Yes, in the same way a galaxy is “just a galaxy”. A human is an extremely complex system, but it is a system, a physical system.

Do you treat your family like biological machines? Or as persons with a right to life and happiness?

There’s no distinction there. Being a biological machine is a wonder, a precious thing to enjoy and respect in ourselves and each other. I treat them and other humans with dignity and respect because of the nature as highly evolved biological machines. That’s just what “human” means.

Are you incapable of controlling your thoughts or actions?

On some level, I’m sure. I’ve tried to hold my hand over an open flame, to test my mind’s detachment from reality, and it’s pretty much subordinate to my brain stem. My body will take over in some situations when my frontal lobes don’t take sufficient precaution to prevent critical harm to my person.

Or allowing yourself to be hypnotised? Does the lump of tissue inside your skull know that it exists?

It does. This is the concept of ‘self’, or “I”.

Is it capable of infringing the law of the conservation of energy? Where is its control-centre? Where is its seat of consciousness? Which part of it is responsible for its activity?

It’s a neural network. There’s no “center” per se. Some areas have been identified that perform specfic functions, like language processing, or visual integration, but asking where the ‘seat of consciousness’ is within the brain is to ask me where the corners are on a basketball. Consciousness is a process that obtains from the function of the entire brain (and its (name removed by moderator)uts).

-TS

(con’t)

 

[Touchstone]

You blithely ignore a question debated and discussed by human beings for centuries. Why has mankind always made a distinction between the mind and body?

Ignorance. For most of man’s history we’ve been hard put to come up with explanations for human consciousness. It’s only in the last couple centuries that we’ve unlocked the keys to unravel this problem. We have a long way to go, but we are standing on the other side of major breakthroughs that most of our forebears did not have available to them. When stuck in ignorance, the mind invents stories. We are a story-telling race, and we are narrative centric. Barring narratves that hew to the evidence and reasoned analsysis, we go with what captures our imagination, or otherwise appeals to us.

It bears noting that the flatness or not of the earth was a matter of great interest for a long time, too, as well as the configuration of the “dome of the heavens”. For a long while it was a matter of deep physical important what the “basic elements” were that constituted everything else – fire, water, earth, and sky, perhaps?

Do you have privileged insight into the nature of reality?

No, that would be a religious position. I’m not religious. What I know is conservative, and based on empirical analysis and reasoned, objective thinking. And even that is always tentative to some degree. No knowledge is final.

All these questions are irrelevant to the mind-body issue…
When you think of yourself do you need to clutch on to physical things to reassure yourself that your mind exists?

No.

Do you need a physical context when you are meditating and totally oblivious of the material world?

I’m never totally oblivious to the material world, unless I’m unconscious or dead.

Can you give me an example of a physical object that is aware of itself WITHOUT having a mind?

No, as we define awareness as a function of the mind. If a robot or machine ever is developed that qualifies, we would just adjust out definitions of “mind” to incorporate silicon based machines as well as carbon-based machines as hosts.

Do you really believe a rational, purposeful mind is the product of irrational, purposeless particles?

Sure, it really is the only conclusion that doesn’t indulge itself in caprice and fanciful speculation, “magical thinking” instead of reasoning.

Here’s a question I found can help in looking at this: does ‘walking’ exist? I think the expected answer is “sure”. But in what form does ‘walking’ exist? It’s not a “thing” of it’s own, it’s a complex phenomena based on patterns of matter and movement. Emergent properties are physicalities, just like everything else. I don’t see particles as ‘rational’ or ‘irrational’, by the way; a particle is just a particle. The laws of physics which govern them, however impersonal they may be (and they appear completely impersonal so far as we can tell), are highly rational. That is, uniform, symmetric, consistent, coherent with other laws of physics.

It would be a remarkable discovery to find that you could explain how the mind emerged by chance.

Chance is the how. How would you explain the occurence of anything that depend on randomness, say a decay event for an unstable isotope? There’s no more explanation beyond that. It’s the quantum of explanation.

We have our thoughts, feelings, sensations, images and decisions as well as the other sources I have mentioned. Scientific knowledge is not the only form of knowledge and certainly not the most important.

Didn’t say that it was.

“our reality” is the most appropriate expression you could use because it is the reality we construct with our intellect on the basis of **our **perceptions. I have already pointed out that we have direct knowledge of our mind and we **infer **the existence of other minds just as we infer the existence of physical reality. Do you object to the description of our direct knowledge as objective knowledge? Or do you regard it as unreal or inferior to our knowledge of physical reality?

It’s a pointless question, because it’s moot for human beings. We are not at liberty to doubt the reality of reality, lest we die. Again, if you doubt this, a few seconds of your hand in an open flame will show the folly of your question. The basic reality of reality is a biological given for us. We sense the world through our physical bodies, and process that (name removed by moderator)ut with our physical brains. That’s as direct as it gets for us as biological machines. What more needs be said about “direct” or “indirect” than that?

-TS

 

[warpspeedpetey]

That seems similarly outrageous. It’s possible, too, as “possible” is hard to put limits on metaphysically, but we’ve no more basis for grabbing that metaphysical idea out of the air and call it “true” than the theist does with his metaphysical indulgences.

Metaphysically, we are extremely limited in what we can say.

possibility, contingency, and necessity are all metaphysical ideas, based squarely on logic and reason. we can and do infer a great deal from first principles, their are entire schools of thought based on the study of being and they can cover areas that empirical science cannot.

Incidentally, the principle of sufficient reason need not hold all the way up the abstraction chain, so it wouldn’t necessarily interfere with science. It’s possible the universe “poofed out of nothing” in such a form that it had innate structure which lent itself to physical intelligibility – the successful enterprise of science.

actually thats impossible because nothing begets nothing. however, i have seen dissertations that attempt to deny the PSR, specifically in attempts to deny one or another metaphysical argument. but ive never seen one that didnt fail by invalidating science also. if you accept the validity of scientific inquiry, then you admit the PSR.

As soon as you start going beyond what’s necessary – reality is real, metaphysics might as well be tiddly winks or astrology. It’s folly, unnaccountable, fanciful, self-indulgent beyond what we must transcendental accept (reality is real, is rational enough to permit conscious/communication). Contemplating commitments like “the universe must have a god” or “the universe must have poofed out of nothing” is silly.

if the universe could explain its own existence, then i might see a reason to stop at “reality is real” however, even an infinite universe cannot explain its own existence. stopping then at that is convenient to disbelief and nothing more.

Yes, but that belief is no more warranted than “you were born under the wrong star and therefore must be stoned to death”. Believing it doesn’t make it true. You’ve hung that hatred on a sky hook, resting on nothing for its justification, save for, again, outrageous metaphysical commitments (“God is the creator of the universe and he hates homosexuality!”).

I understand you believe it, but my grandfather firmly believed black people were subhuman. He similarly believed there was warrant for his hatreds, too. “Believing you have have warrant” is not the same as demonstrating warrant.

of course this assumes that G-d doesnt exist, not the position that theists hold. we dont hang it on a sky hook we hang it on G-d.

There’s a lot of scientific observation that supports genetic and development (think hormones in the womb, etc.) bases for a homosexual dispostion. Happy to discuss, but that would be a different thread. Homosexuality I’m sure does foment suffering in some cases, just like heterosexuality. It’s a powerful and potentially destructive social dynamic. But there’s nothing that suggests it’s intrinsically destructive, anymore than homosexuality is. Again, if we look to the objective evidence on this, Catholic dogma looks worse the more you learn.

the Churches position is that even if it is a inborn issue, those people are still subject to the prohibition of fornication, just like heterosexuals. if i cant go down to the bar tonite and talk some cute chick into coming home with me, then i dont see how such a thing varies on orientation. the law applies equally either way. i think homosexuality is intrinsically destructive in that fewer children are born, and those who are often grow up without a father in the home, something well studied with negative consequences. further, it does not, contrary to common opinion generate very many “families” it is intrinsically a culture dedicated to the temporary, hedonistic lifestyle. this is admittedly anecdotal, but i have heard a variation of it from every gay friend i have ever had. though heterosexuals too live like this, having children with a partner is something much more binding. further the brain accepts and is excited by pheremones, even if one suffers from ssa, i suggest that a same gender person produces no such pheremones, leading me to believe that homosexuality has alot to do with hedonism and less to do with biology.

Yes, but that is a desperately evil line of thinking. It might have been good for the Jews to have been exterminated from the face of the earth by Nazis or whoever, by the same token. As warpspeedpetey says, under that kind of psuedo-solipsism, maybe we just don’t know enough to understand why all Jews really should be gassed and machined gunned whereverpossible. That could be God’s way of setting things right in the world! (Blech, it’s hard to even type that, but that’s the ramifications of that kind of perverse logic…).

in fact it was, one word. Israel. the fulfillment of prophecy

Hosea 3:4-5 - “For the Israelites will live many days without king or prince, without sacrifice or sacred stones, without ephod or idol. Afterward the Israelites will return and seek the LORD their God and David their king. They will come trembling to the LORD and to his blessings in the last days.”

Hosea 6:1 - “Come, let us return to the LORD. He has torn us to pieces but he will heal us; he has injured us but he will bind up our wounds.”

see, unless you consider all relevant information, which you cannot, your conclusion can be easily invalidated by information not known or considered, so drawing conclusions that must be intrinsically flawed is irrational and simply results in personal opinion and little more.

 

[Touchstone]

It’s an exterior source of knowledge for you but that doesn’t mean that it belongs to exterior reality.

I think that’s the only thing it can mean. Otherwise it isn’t external, right?

Then why has that distinction been made by human beings for centuries? Were they all misguided?

Human consciousness is one of the deepest, hardest problems for humans to think about clearly, for ‘strange loop’ reasons. We are human, and our consciousness is transcendental. It’s so low-level that it’s largely transparent to us. That makes it very difficult to scrutinize and analyze. It’s only in the past century (just decades really) that we’ve started to break the code on the biology and chemistry behind mental activity and consciousness.

When humans are dazzle by something, it’s ripe for mythologization. The human mind has been a confounding topic because of those difficulties all along, and so has been a particularly attractive target for fantasy and magic thinking, in lieu of actual understanding. Even when confronted with the biology, many are still incredulous at the data and the evidence, and prefer magical thinking over the knowledge that is available.

You keep assuming that the mind is no more than the activity of the brain - which is the very issue at stake. Your physicalism is so deeply ingrained that you are not even aware of the extent to which it shapes your mode of thought.

I was a dualist for nearly four decades, far longer than I’ve been a materialist. So I’m familiar with both sides of this issue. I’m as creduous and prone to indulge my ‘magical thinking’ inclinations as anyone. But the reasoned analysis, if one cares to stick to that instead indulging themselves, just doesn’t support dualistic ideals at all.

Why do you assume they are physical? Can you observe them with your senses?

The only context we have for “math”, even of the most ‘abstract’ sort is in minds, and symbols that can be used as mnemonics for communication between minds. Both are utterly, always physical. There is no math without a physical context known or observed anywhere at all, which shouldn’t be surprising because “observing” is a physical process!

If you have the concept of ‘addition’ in your head, that occupies physical resources and space. You cannot show any kind of access to the concept of addition or any other abstraction without a brain.

You reiterate this statement like a mantra but it still requires justification.
I can just as easily assert that theism obtains without that, as a matter of critical investigation of the evidence and facts. Physicalism (and atheism) do not. They obtain on other grounds, and get defeated without them. The evidence is in what we all regard as the most important aspects of reality: truth, goodness, justice, freedom, beauty, purpose and love - none of which you will find in your scientific scheme of things…

You are simply euphemizing here. I don’t see any problems with the list you provide for a materialist. The supernatural is superfluous, unneeded to apprehend and appreciate any and all of that.

“inadequate” means that it is an objectively unsatisfactory explanation of reality because it does not account for all the facts. In Hume’s words, the effects are not proportioned to the cause.

That cannot be the case in any objective sense, because look at all of the individuals that find those proportions “satisfactory”. It seems you are defining ‘objective’ now as some kind of objective taste of yours for explanations. We cannot expect, ever to account for all facts. That’s a perfection demand, and a practical impossibility. We have limited conceptual and perceptual powers. We use them to some degree or another, but we are not gods. We take reason as far as it can go, and that’s as far as she goes. Beyond that, we are left, by definition, with unreasoning.

-TS

 

[Touchstone]

Yes and the question is why it is intelligible and rational. You have to accept it as a brute fact even though you regard rationality as an accidental accretion to matter.
And you take it for granted that we have the power to do this - again as the result of an accidental accretion to matter.

Well, I don’t claim to have privileged knowledge about the nature of reality as Catholics do. I’m stuck along with the rest who must just reverse engineer the world around them the best we can with the tools of inquiry, observation and analysis.

Those are insufficient, completely insufficient it turns out, to make headway on the question of why the universe is rational in its structure to the extent it is. That’s part of the reasoning process itself: knowing where your reasoning process runs out of steam, and fails.

It seems that atheism has far more anodyne claims, given that you become absolute master of your own destiny, answerable to no one, with no categorical imperatives to bother you, absolutely free to do what you like in an existence sheltered from the prospect of what may come after you die. It’s very cosy when you come to think of it in spite of its drawbacks…

Categorical imperatives are easy – it’s all laid out for you. The life of a slave is a simple one, after all. Being autonomous (as autonomous as we can be as social, gregarious creatures, anyway) is a good and pleasurable thing, if one learns not to fear it. But it can be and is a terrifying prospect for many, and even for me, sometimes and in some regards. It’s not an easy path. But the rewards are a good tradeoff, despite, so you are right in that regard.

It’s much more of a letdown to think that life is incomplete, love leads nowhere, justice is an illusion and evil prevails.

Yes, and there is no Santa, either. Bummer.

It’s an immature, pouty mind that gets stuck in that rut, though. Life is hard, dangerous, short. But it’s also filled with beauty, connection, opportunity for discovery and acheivement, and even the hard parts are so intensely preferable to the annihilation of death we will do just about anything to survive.

Reality is what it is. It’s a bummer that it doesn’t fit expectations that stem from a Santa-clause mentality, but that’s the way it is. Happily, with some pulling on one’s own bootstraps, the world as it is, even as evil does prevail often and some injustices go on forever and ever unresolved, life is full of wonder and opportunities for satisfaction, development, relationship, love and discovery.

The death wish is symptomatic…
Yes - and all that beauty, according to you, exists by chance and is swallowed up by death in the twinkling of an eye. Your sons will be given a very dismal view of life: an infinitesimally brief spark in the eternal darkness - “a tale told by an idiot, full of sound and fury, signifying nothing” and, in the words of Hobbes, “poor, nasty, brutish and short”.

Yes, but these are just immature perspectives on life. The view that pouts when Santa is revealed to be imaginary. What is the point of a world without Santa? Well, the things that actual do have meaning remain, and available. Relationships and love is there for the development. There’s a big, awesome universe out there to explore. The world is filled with problems and suffering that can be mitigated, relieved and prevented to some degree by the efforts of others. There are too many joys and pleasures to count.

All the grousing about “pointless” and “letdown” just sounds like sour grapes from a man who is desperately clutching to his illusions. That’s fine, you are welcome to them, but your cosmic import and eternal destiny won’t be important in the least when your body is lowered into your grave, as there will be no more you. I hope you don’t miss the real and tangible goodness and meaning in life because you were tricked into being a ‘reality snob’ by your religion, prevented from really living and appreciating the world as it is while you are here.

The odd thing is that our precious, fleeting moments reveal the infinite value of life. Yet the atheist believes things have no intrinsic value and only exist in the mind! What a mass of contradictions… Rational activity is used to demonstrate everything is ultimately unreasonable, purposeful activity to demonstrate everything is ultimately purposeless and valuable activity to demonstrate everything is ultimately valueless…
Why is a finite life unreasonable again? Where is this ‘given’ that you are owed some cosmic import, some eternal life? I’m just amazed that people with these commitments think that looking at what happens – you live, you die, and that’s that, so far as we can tell in any objective way – is “irrational” or a “contradiction”. What is being contradicted? I can only think it’s the idolization of the self, the sense that one really has “meaning” enough to live forever (!) that is being contradicted.

-TS

 

[Touchstone]

possibility, contingency, and necessity are all metaphysical ideas, based squarely on logic and reason. we can and do infer a great deal from first principles, their are entire schools of thought based on the study of being and they can cover areas that empirical science cannot.

The fields of speculation and conjecture are indeed unbounded. What can be “inferred” is truly limitless, just so long as one isn’t concerned about the actual correspondance of the idea to reality. So, you posit the Principle of Sufficient Reason as a meta-meta-principle. Great. Now what. you’ve inferred X from Y and Z, and that’s the end. You have no feedback loop, no testing regime, no means for falsification or calibration.

You could be completely out to lunch, and you’d never know one way or the other. And that’s part of the draw of metaphysical speculation. The speculator is completely unaccountable to any validation of the speculation.

That’s why distinctions are made between that and real knowledge – actual, verifiable statements about the real world. It’s fun game of tiddly winks musing about whether the universe could “poof” into existence uncaused, or whether it could only proceed from a Cosmic Mind, but it’s just no more than fools shooting their mouths of in terms of being liable to the alethics of those ideas. It’s a fun pastime, but it is tiddly winks compared to the hard process of acquiring actual knowledge about the real world.

actually thats impossible because nothing begets nothing.

This is precisely the completely unaccountable speculation that I’m talking about above. So, I will respond, for the sake of arguement, with this:

Something can arise from absolutely nothing.

Now what? My metaphysical fluff is just as legit is yours. Neither of us are the list bit accountable to the operation of reality to verify, falsify or otherwise provide some context for our claims in terms of its correspondence with reality.

however, i have seen dissertations that attempt to deny the PSR, specifically in attempts to deny one or another metaphysical argument. but ive never seen one that didnt fail by invalidating science also. if you accept the validity of scientific inquiry, then you admit the PSR.

That’s not a problem. We just consider that the metaphysics are inscrutable, while the physics are somewhat scrutable. It may be that the universe did pop out of nothing, and in such a fashion as to be highly intelligible. That’s metapshysics for ya. No one knows nothin’. So I think what you are confusing here is the denial of metaphysical claims with the idea that being agnostic about metaphysics (which is the only reasonable stance to take, beyond what we must accept transcendantally) doesn’t preclude an ordered, highly structured universe.

Science can proceed apace, simply ignoring the metaphysics. If you say “but the PSR!” and you will be asked to provide verification of your claims, and you will fail and have to consider the tiddly-wink level you’ve been playing this game on.

As human knowledge develops, the support for the conviction that metaphysics is inscrutable (heck, even physics bleeds into inscrutable at the (quantum) edges) grows stronger and stronger. Theists and other intuitions are left to their intuitions, “just knowing” the great metaphysical truths about fundamental reality.

Cuz they wanna.

if the universe could explain its own existence, then i might see a reason to stop at “reality is real” however, even an infinite universe cannot explain its own existence. stopping then at that is convenient to disbelief and nothing more.

There is no ultimate explanation. The explanatory chain must end somewhere, else you are looking at an infinite regress of explanations. For us, the explanatory chain ends with the physical. We do not have access to the means for metaphysical knowledge. That which we operate on for assembling and using real knowledge we get by necessity. We proceed on the assumption that reality is real and at least partly intelligible because we cannot do otherwise. Without that necessity, we have perfectly no basis for that belief, or claim to that as derived knowledge.

-TS

 

[Touchstone]

of course this assumes that G-d doesnt exist, not the position that theists hold. we dont hang it on a sky hook we hang it on G-d.

That seems a distinction without a difference. What god is this you refer to? How might we check up on you to see if you are telling us a tall tale?

As far assumptions go, I think “no god” is the conclusion, rather than the starting assumption. If a God exists, how should we expect to detect or verify his existence? How do we validate the reality of any supposed entity? Starting with these questions, an evidential pursuit yields “no support for the idea of an actual God”. But that’s a conclusion, rather than a premise.

the Churches position is that even if it is a inborn issue, those people are still subject to the prohibition of fornication, just like heterosexuals. if i cant go down to the bar tonite and talk some cute chick into coming home with me, then i dont see how such a thing varies on orientation.

I don’t think it does. But if you want to commit to a solemnized, serious and long term relationship with some attractive lady, you are at liberty to do that in ways that the homosexual is not, both in civil terms and in “Catholic” terms.

And for no good reason beyond brute power: God said so.

the law applies equally either way. i think homosexuality is intrinsically destructive in that fewer children are born, and those who are often grow up without a father in the home, something well studied with negative consequences. further, it does not, contrary to common opinion generate very many “families” it is intrinsically a culture dedicated to the temporary, hedonistic lifestyle.

Hmmm. If this were a serious idea within the Church, they wouldn’t have a problem with long term, monogamous, stable and family-friendly homosexual relationships. But alas, the Church is bound by its dogma, and is committed to categorical prohibitions that have nothing to do with hedonistic lifestyle commitments. It is not wise enough, even blessed with the fulness of God’s truth, to apprehend those homosexuals who seek responsible, stable, healthy, perfectly “non-hedonistic” relationships. Alas!

this is admittedly anecdotal, but i have heard a variation of it from every gay friend i have ever had. though heterosexuals too live like this, having children with a partner is something much more binding. further the brain accepts and is excited by pheremones, even if one suffers from ssa, i suggest that a same gender person produces no such pheremones, leading me to believe that homosexuality has alot to do with hedonism and less to do with biology.

That’s spectacularly misinformed. Google that a bit, and if you still think your statement here should stand, PM me or mention it here, and we can spin up a thread to really tear that paragraph to tiny shreds with the evidence and knowledge available to us. I note that this is precisely the kind of prejudicial thinking that rightly offends hmosexuals, and has them clearly sensing the evil ramifications of doctrines like the RCC’s on this issue. You have to go out of your way… to want to misunderstand to pull off a paragraph like that, I think.

This is speculation, but having run into this line of thinking before, I suggest you have misunderstood what you’ve read or been told about the biology at work here. Homosexual men react viscerally to sexual ‘odors’, but they react to the scent of men in the way that women do. That’s a strong defeater to your point. It’s not that they aren’t biologically reacting in terms of low-level physical arousal cues. They are. Homosexual men are just found, when this is studied clinically to respond that way to OTHER MEN.

in fact it was, one word. Israel. the fulfillment of prophecy

Hosea 3:4-5 - “For the Israelites will live many days without king or prince, without sacrifice or sacred stones, without ephod or idol. Afterward the Israelites will return and seek the LORD their God and David their king. They will come trembling to the LORD and to his blessings in the last days.”

Hosea 6:1 - “Come, let us return to the LORD. He has torn us to pieces but he will heal us; he has injured us but he will bind up our wounds.”

see, unless you consider all relevant information, which you cannot, your conclusion can be easily invalidated by information not known or considered, so drawing conclusions that must be intrinsically flawed is irrational and simply results in personal opinion and little more.

Well, there you go. God as mass exterminator in our latter day. But it’s for a good cause, trust us!

Just is as Just does, as was the quip in my previous Christian circles.

-TS

 

[warpspeedpetey]

We’re humans of course, and we know more than any non-human God about being human, and what’s moral and ethical from a human perspective.

 

[tonyrey]

Well, I don’t claim to have privileged knowledge about the nature of reality as Catholics do.

You are evading the issues. Let me formulate them as propositions:

1. The belief that rationality has an irrational origin is irrational.
2. The belief that control originated in that which lacks control is unintelligible.

I’m stuck along with the rest who must just reverse engineer the world around them the best we can with the tools of inquiry, observation and analysis.

Reverse engineering based on tools which have an** irrational **origin…

Those are insufficient, completely insufficient it turns out, to make headway on the question of why the universe is rational in its structure to the extent it is. That’s part of the reasoning process itself: knowing where your reasoning process runs out of steam, and fails.

More important is understanding how your reasoning process emerged in the first place…

Categorical imperatives are easy – it’s all laid out for you.

It’s far easier to give yourself hypothetical imperatives - such as “If you decide not to live then commit suicide - regardless of others”.

The life of a slave is a simple one, after all.

Simple but unbearable… (the belief that Christians are slaves is of course a distortion of the truth. We have far more responsibility than atheists.)

Being autonomous (as autonomous as we can be as social, gregarious creatures, anyway) is a good and pleasurable thing, if one learns not to fear it.

Belief in autonomy infringes the law of the conservation of energy. (The belief that Christians fear autonomy is false. It is the very foundation of our belief - that our conscience is our ultimate authority)

But it can be and is a terrifying prospect for many, and even for me, sometimes and in some regards. It’s not an easy path. But the rewards are a good trade off, despite, so you are right in that regard.

You clearly believe we are uniquely and utterly responsible for our decisions even though that belief conflicts with the law of the conservation of energy. Which other living organism has rational autonomy?

Yes, and there is no Santa, either. Bummer.

It remains true that it’s much more of a letdown to assume that life is incomplete, love leads nowhere, justice is an illusion and evil prevails.

It’s an immature, pouty mind that gets stuck in that rut, though.

It’s an immature, pouty mind that gets stuck in the rut of a closed physical system which is the sole reality…

Life is hard, dangerous, short. But it’s also filled with beauty, connection, opportunity for discovery and achievement, and even the hard parts are so intensely preferable to the annihilation of death we will do just about anything to survive.

Including destroying millions of other creatures to save your own skin? That’s where your hypothetical imperatives come in very handy… Respect the rights of others unless you’re going to be a loser!

Reality is what it is. It’s a bummer that it doesn’t fit expectations that stem from a Santa-clause mentality, but that’s the way it is.

Reality is what it is. It’s a bummer that fits expectations that stem from a manic-depressive mentality, but that’s the way it is.

Happily, with some pulling on one’s own bootstraps, the world as it is, even as evil does prevail often and some injustices go on forever and ever unresolved, life is full of wonder and opportunities for satisfaction, development, relationship, love and discovery.

Pulling on one’s own bootstraps conflicts with the law of the conservation of energy. Where does the energy to pull come from?

Your sons will be given a very dismal view of life: an infinitesimally brief spark in the eternal darkness - “a tale told by an idiot, full of sound and fury, signifying nothing” and, in the words of Hobbes, “poor, nasty, brutish and short”.
Yes, but these are just immature perspectives on life. The view that pouts when Santa is revealed to be imaginary. What is the point of a world without Santa? Well, the things that actual do have meaning remain, and available.

Yes but the meaning is imaginary. The atheist’s reality is meaningless because it is invented.

Relationships and love is there for the development.

Where do you get love from? Sexual attraction?

There’s a big, awesome universe out there to explore. The world is filled with problems and suffering that can be mitigated, relieved and prevented to some degree by the efforts of others. There are too many joys and pleasures to count.

So life’s not so bad after all. We often hear about the problem of evil. What about the problem of good? Oh well, that can be swept under the carpet with Santa… It seems to be a case of selective thinking. You take what suits you and ignore the rest…

All the grousing about “pointless” and “letdown” just sounds like sour grapes from a man who is desperately clutching to his illusions. That’s fine, you are welcome to them, but your cosmic import and eternal destiny won’t be important in the least when your body is lowered into your grave, as there will be no more you.

It sounds as if you have direct knowledge of the experience of being lowered into the grave… or special insight into the nature of reality… perhaps you’ve had some sort of special revelation. After all “there will be no more you” is the most dogmatic, unscientific, unverifiable assertion you could find anywhere. It seems as if you’re trying to convince yourself as well as others. But your assertion is entirely consistent with your atheism. You believe there is no “you” anyway. There is nothing to disappear apart from the molecules of which the body is composed. It would be more logical in future to replace personal pronouns in future by “this body” (which “belongs” to no one) and “that body” (which “belongs” to no one). Then people would not be misled into believing there is a self…

 

[warpspeedpetey]

The fields of speculation and conjecture are indeed unbounded. What can be “inferred” is truly limitless, just so long as one isn’t concerned about the actual correspondance of the idea to reality.

fortunately metaphysics does have bounds, it begins as the physical sciences with what we know from observation, first principles. the most basic of course, cogito ergo sum. where did you get the idea that metaphysics is unbounded?

So, you posit the Principle of Sufficient Reason as a meta-meta-principle. Great. Now what. you’ve inferred X from Y and Z, and that’s the end. You have no feedback loop, no testing regime, no means for falsification or calibration.

You could be completely out to lunch, and you’d never know one way or the other. And that’s part of the draw of metaphysical speculation. The speculator is completely unaccountable to any validation of the speculation.

That’s why distinctions are made between that and real knowledge – actual, verifiable statements about the real world. It’s fun game of tiddly winks musing about whether the universe could “poof” into existence uncaused, or whether it could only proceed from a Cosmic Mind, but it’s just no more than fools shooting their mouths of in terms of being liable to the alethics of those ideas. It’s a fun pastime, but it is tiddly winks compared to the hard process of acquiring actual knowledge about the real world.

sure we do, they actually take several forms. the physical sciences, and logic. both of which impact metaphysics at different stages of its build up. they are indeed “feedback loops” through which we can test our conclusions as we push the boundaries of the studies of existence. thereby validating, invalidating, or causing more study on conlusions we draw. thereby showing the truth or error of our conclusions. the easy thing in my mind is that which i can see, its not difficult to be a glorified mechanic, its much more difficult to build up from the basic truths of a mechanistic universe to the necessary truths that are the ultimate foundation of those mechanics. to merely claim that only empirical sciences have value is to claim that what we derive them from, existence, has no value. a self defeating proposition. like there are signs at the edge of knowledge saying “no tresspassing here!” it is to be satisfied with a certain level of ignorance about the origins of the mechanistic universe which cannot explain its own existence.

This is precisely the completely unaccountable speculation that I’m talking about above. So, I will respond, for the sake of arguement, with this:

Something can arise from absolutely nothing.

Now what? My metaphysical fluff is just as legit is yours. Neither of us are the list bit accountable to the operation of reality to verify, falsify or otherwise provide some context for our claims in terms of its correspondence with reality.

you think that statement is legit? if you dont understand the basics of metaphysics, no wonder you discount it so readily. to wit

“no-thing” has no substance to lend to “some-thing” ergo, from “no-thing” can come only nothing.

thats really basic stuff.

That’s not a problem. We just consider that the metaphysics are inscrutable, while the physics are somewhat scrutable. It may be that the universe did pop out of nothing, and in such a fashion as to be highly intelligible. That’s metapshysics for ya. No one knows nothin’. So I think what you are confusing here is the denial of metaphysical claims with the idea that being agnostic about metaphysics (which is the only reasonable stance to take, beyond what we must accept transcendantally) doesn’t preclude an ordered, highly structured universe.

Science can proceed apace, simply ignoring the metaphysics. If you say “but the PSR!” and you will be asked to provide verification of your claims, and you will fail and have to consider the tiddly-wink level you’ve been playing this game on.

science is a shallow pool, its like saying there is no more water because it isnt in this pool. ignoring the necessity of a larger pool doesnt make it go away, it just supports disbelief.

As human knowledge develops, the support for the conviction that metaphysics is inscrutable (heck, even physics bleeds into inscrutable at the (quantum) edges) grows stronger and stronger. Theists and other intuitions are left to their intuitions, “just knowing” the great metaphysical truths about fundamental reality.

Cuz they wanna.

and if one stops at the boundaries of the physical, one remains ignorant of knowledge, cuz they wanna. the foundations of science begin in metaphysics, who expects a skyscraper to stand if you only build the top half?

There is no ultimate explanation. The explanatory chain must end somewhere, else you are looking at an infinite regress of explanations.

what? thats a common misconception but it is no where near the truth, an infinite regress of explanations is impossible. they end as always with the maximal state of being.

For us, the explanatory chain ends with the physical. We do not have access to the means for metaphysical knowledge.

the means of metaphysical knowledge is observation and logic. the same that one uses to practice science. you do indeed have the means to metaphysical knowledge.

That which we operate on for assembling and using real knowledge we get by necessity. We proceed on the assumption that reality is real and at least partly intelligible because we cannot do otherwise. Without that necessity, we have perfectly no basis for that belief, or claim to that as derived knowledge.

so why do you stop at what we can see? thats an arbitrary distinction. ignoring that knowdge may be found that doesnnt correlate solely to our emprical observations, yet we know that all forms of logic can transcend the physical just as mathematics, another branch of logic, does so.

you dont seem to have the basic foundations in metaphysics necessary to understand how we derive knowledge. i urge you to consider that as science is based in metaphysics, you cannot deny their utility.

 

[warpspeedpetey]

That seems a distinction without a difference. What god is this you refer to? How might we check up on you to see if you are telling us a tall tale?

we can get to G-d metaphysically, the proof that it is the Christain G-d is the mathematical odds of convergent prophecy. and yes, you need more than claims of a lack in specificity, since many are very specific, and conspiracy theories to dismiss it.

i like to explain it the same way one runs an investigation, we have witness statements across several millenia all describing the same relationships and events. a little too much evidence to simply dismiss.

As far assumptions go, I think “no god” is the conclusion, rather than the starting assumption. If a God exists, how should we expect to detect or verify his existence?How do we validate the reality of any supposed entity? Starting with these questions, an evidential pursuit yields “no support for the idea of an actual God”. But that’s a conclusion, rather than a premise.

how do you detect or verify any phenomenon? observation. we see a universe that cannot justify its own existence. can you not infer that your house had a builder from its existence?

i started from the assumption of no G-d, and found much to my chagrin at the time, there is really no reasonable way to have a universe without one.

I

don’t think it does. But if you want to commit to a solemnized, serious and long term relationship with some attractive lady, you are at liberty to do that in ways that the homosexual is not, both in civil terms and in “Catholic” terms.

And for no good reason beyond brute power: God said so.

that G-d said so is a good reason, but if you need one then biology alone provides one. homosexuals cant produce children. it cannot be fruitful, it is selfish in that it can only be practiced for ones own pleasure. it perverts a natural function into an unnatural function.

Hmmm. If this were a serious idea within the Church, they wouldn’t have a problem with long term, monogamous, stable and family-friendly homosexual relationships. But alas, the Church is bound by its dogma, and is committed to categorical prohibitions that have nothing to do with hedonistic lifestyle commitments. It is not wise enough, even blessed with the fulness of God’s truth, to apprehend those homosexuals who seek responsible, stable, healthy, perfectly “non-hedonistic” relationships. Alas!

indeed, the Church is bound by G-ds word on the subject, they arent free to simply ignore it. that is the measure by which we must operate and G-d clearly labels homosexuality a disordered act.

That’s spectacularly misinformed. Google that a bit, and if you still think your statement here should stand, PM me or mention it here, and we can spin up a thread to really tear that paragraph to tiny shreds with the evidence and knowledge available to us. I note that this is precisely the kind of prejudicial thinking that rightly offends hmosexuals, and has them clearly sensing the evil ramifications of doctrines like the RCC’s on this issue. You have to go out of your way… to want to misunderstand to pull off a paragraph like that, I think.

shred it here then. i hardly misunderstand, i know it both from the anecdotal evidence and from the sociological side.

This is speculation, but having run into this line of thinking before, I suggest you have misunderstood what you’ve read or been told about the biology at work here. Homosexual men react viscerally to sexual ‘odors’, but they react to the scent of men in the way that women do. That’s a strong defeater to your point. It’s not that they aren’t biologically reacting in terms of low-level physical arousal cues. They are. Homosexual men are just found, when this is studied clinically to respond that way to OTHER MEN.

id be greatly interested in the methodology of any such study, i only care about receptors in the brain, not observed reactions. one can associate a pleasurable event with the odor of sewage, thereby resulting in in an excited state, that doesnt mean that the normal biological mechanism responds to sewage. it just means one associates it with something they like.

Well, there you go. God as mass exterminator in our latter day. But it’s for a good cause, trust us!

G-d is mean because we think so!, unfortunately i dont think that inherently invalid conclusions get any better on emotional appeals.

Just is as Just does, as was the quip in my previous Christian circles.

indeed, so what G-d does is just. i used to be an atheist. im not eaily impressed with emotional appeals, you shouldnt be either.

 

[wanstronian]

Touchstone,

Bravo! Plenty of lucid, logical, considered, well-phrased reasoning, and your patience in the face of stubborn posturing and empty rhetoric from your antagonists is admirable.

:clapping::clapping::clapping: