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Syntax
Guest
Yes…I think the motivation is also to appear “smart” as if they were being intellectually responsible by allegedly “suspending” belief on the God question.
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Leela
Guest
I wonder how many times this exact same conversation has taken place on this forum. I’ve certainly participated in it more times than I wish I had. I thought there was a ban on arguing about atheism right now? If not, what can I do to get that ban back into effect? Otherwise, why is it thought to be so important to decide who should rightly be called an atheist? Given that there are so many ways to be religious and so many forms of life that are irreligious it seems to me that trying to create a dichotomy here generates a lot of heat but shines very little light on any important differences between people.
I’m calling into question the notion that belief or disbelief in God is a “core belief.” By “core belief” I mean a belief that cannot be changed without changing a whole lot of other beliefs. I don’t think our webs of beliefs really have such cores, and even if they do, the fact that there must be at least as much variability among the beliefs of believers in God as there are between the beliefs of the two proposed groups in the suggested dichotomy between believers and disbelievers that belief in God itself does not tend to function as a core belief. For example, democrats don’t become republicans (nor vice versa) when they start or stop believing in God. Sure, people do make changes, but I’m not so sure that these changes necessarily depend on the change in belief about God or whether the causal arrow points in the other direction. Belief and disbelief in God are compatible with just about every other belief that need concern one person about another person. There are pro-abortion and there are anti-choice believers as well as disbelievers. There are violent and there are peaceful believers and disbelievers. There are generous and there are miserly believers and disbelievers.
I’m calling into question the notion that belief or disbelief in God is a “core belief.” By “core belief” I mean a belief that cannot be changed without changing a whole lot of other beliefs. I don’t think our webs of beliefs really have such cores, and even if they do, the fact that there must be at least as much variability among the beliefs of believers in God as there are between the beliefs of the two proposed groups in the suggested dichotomy between believers and disbelievers that belief in God itself does not tend to function as a core belief. For example, democrats don’t become republicans (nor vice versa) when they start or stop believing in God. Sure, people do make changes, but I’m not so sure that these changes necessarily depend on the change in belief about God or whether the causal arrow points in the other direction. Belief and disbelief in God are compatible with just about every other belief that need concern one person about another person. There are pro-abortion and there are anti-choice believers as well as disbelievers. There are violent and there are peaceful believers and disbelievers. There are generous and there are miserly believers and disbelievers.
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AntiTheist
Guest
Alright, I guess I’ll bite. What is it that you think I’m denying?
I acknowledge that there’s no objective meaning or purpose to the universe, and I acknowledge that it doesn’t “matter” in any ultimate sense what I care about. What precisely do you think I’m denying?
It doesn’t. They refer to different things – gnosticism/agnosticism pertain to knowledge; theism/atheism pertain to belief. I categorize myself as an agnostic atheist. I don’t know whether there are gods, and I don’t believe in any.
If there are agnostics who don’t consider themselves atheists, then I’m fine with that – I’m just explaining how I (and many other atheists) use the term. Atheism isn’t a “belief” to me – my atheism expresses the fact that I don’t hold a belief on the god question.
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Mystic_Banana
Guest
I acknowledge that there’s no objective meaning or purpose to the universe, and I acknowledge that it doesn’t “matter” in any ultimate sense what I care about. What precisely do you think I’m denying?
That what you are placing value in, according to your own interpretation of reality, has no value to you at all
except you quite clearly do, as does every single self proclaimed ‘atheist’ I’ve ever encountered, making it something of an impotent concept. If you do not hold a belief, you are neccesarily undecided or disbelieving - 2 clearly different standpoints.
Your very username, incidentally, belies the falsity of the position you pretend…
Ultimately, pretty much everyone is technically agnostic, about pretty much everything, whether they like it or not. I do not know that God exists, but I find the evidence both more reasonable than the opposite, and providing the only logical purpose for existence, as far as the evidence goes.
So to apply the term ‘agnostic’ for lack of absolutely conclusive knowledge is moribund - there is none to be had beyond a certain very basic truth. But the term serves a more reasonable purpose in representing those who’s belief is not as strong one way or the other as yours or mine. Otherwise, there is no word for this group! Which, I’m sure, you’d like everyone to be convinced is ‘atheist’ by default
. Admitting it or not, you are trying to place both a neutral/anti position into the same bag, which is essentially the position of opposition (anti), which misrepresents those who’s position is more accurately described by the (perhaps semantically dubious, but necessary nonetheless) neutral position.Ignoring this cock-eyed and calculated bit of redefinition saves going double-barreled to define individual position as well!
To the moderators - please just put a warning about this latter strand of the argument, so we can continue with the former, if it’s still disallowed
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AntiTheist
Guest
I’m sorry, but I don’t understand what you’re driving at here. To me, something that I place value in has value to me. It’s true by definition. How could you claim otherwise?
Could you please rephrase, perhaps offering an example of what you mean as well?
I am responding to claims that gods exist, and I don’t see sufficient evidence to accept those claims. That’s all. It’s certainly possible that there is a god – and one of the Deistic forms is probably the most likely – but I have not seen any evidence to convince me of the claim.
I call myself “AntiTheist” because I’m glad that there is no evidence for the existence of such supernatural beings.
If such a topic is currently banned, I would be happy not talking about it further and instead focusing on nihilism.
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Mystic_Banana
Guest
An example that was put to me many years ago: If you could go the best party of your life, but would forget it the next day if you did, even the fact that you were even going to go to said party, had been etc., what would be the value of going to the party? While you are at the party, you would enjoy it, but the next day, there would be no value at all. So the value of the party to you is 0, even if before you go, and even during the time you are there, you feel it has value, what value can it actually have if it results in no positive/negative results for you the very next day? It might as well have not happened.
You can consider things to have value all you want, but unless they actually have value, your valuing is misplaced. I can see my happiness, for example, lying in eating ceaseless bowls of confetti, but all that I get from eating endless bowls of confetti is nauseau and vomitting, the value of the confetti to myself is somewhat less than I considered.
There’s 2 examples. See what I’m saying?
Actually, in case you didn’t noticed, you’re responding to the claim that God exists, rather than multiple Gods - just making sure you realise that
Why would a Deistic God be ‘more likely’? I know why I think you’d prefer that possibility, but I’d like to see how you percieve it, and see if it sounds less superstitious this time than the last time I saw it
I’d say you are in denial if you think there is no evidence for such things - it’s just that what you consider viable evidence is limited in form by assumption, or more accurately, dogmatic faith, whether you admit it to yourself or not, for you are a devout practitioner of Scientism, are you not?
Hmmm - have I not had this argument with you before?
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AntiTheist
Guest
I’ve bolded the part that’s important here. While you’re at the party, you would indeed enjoy it. If you knew that you wouldn’t remember the party the next day, would that make you enjoy the party less while the party is going on?
As far as I’m concerned, we’re here at the party. Whether or not we’re going to “remember the party tomorrow” – and signs seem to point to “no, we won’t” – has no bearing on my enjoyment of the party.
And if you’re the kind of person who can’t enjoy himself unless he knows that he’ll remember it forever and ever and ever, then there’s nothing I can do for you, except to say that I don’t think that living in the future (and in your imagination) like that is very conducive to dealing with reality.
To answer your question in a different way, the way that I define “value” is in the context of the party itself. To me, the word “value” has no meaning outside of the party, so the kind of thing you’re talking about when you use the word “value” does not exist and is of absolutely no interest to me.
My atheism is the response to all god claims I’ve ever heard, not just your god. I equally do not believe in the Hindu gods, the Greek gods, the Roman gods, the Zoroastrian gods, or any other gods. The reason that I do not hold a belief in any of those beings is that there is no evidence for them.
I think we’ve said enough on the subject.
EDIT: Maybe we haven’t said enough on the subject. I’ve just noticed you trotted out the old “Scientism” gem. No, I don’t have “dogmatic faith” in “Scientism,” whatever that is. I simply follow evidence.
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AntiTheist
Guest
Let me point out something else. Let’s say you’re at the party and you know that you won’t remember a thing about the party the next day. Someone spills their drink on your expensive shirt at the party. Wouldn’t you still get mad, dislike the feeling of being in wet clothes, and then ask the host if he has a shirt you can change into?
I submit that few people would say, “Oh well, I won’t remember this tomorrow, so I just won’t care at all, it makes no difference!”
It makes a lot of difference to you at that particular time, and that’s the kind of “value” I’m talking about.
Just because “I won’t remember this tomorrow” is no good reason to spend the rest of the party with an uncomfortable wet shirt that smells of alcohol. I’m still going to like things, dislike things, and want to change things, regardless of whether I remember it the next day.
EDIT: Here’s another good example: my car has a certain value right now. It has less value now than it did when I first bought it. Many years from now, it will have far less value. Eventually, it will be scrap metal and have no value at all.
But just because it will one day have no value doesn’t mean that the value it has now is somehow negated.
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retribution
Guest
Atheisim is a belief in the “absence of a belief”.?.. Still a belief system then
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Darryl1958
Guest
Atheism and nihilism are intrinsically related. Atheism posits that there is nothing objectively for us to believe in. Nihilism brings atheism to its logical conclusion in positing that there is nothing therefore even worth believing in.
Living itself becomes not a rational decision, but a byproduct of the organic health of any given individual at any given time.
In terms of dignity, human life becomes fully in the order of the animals then. Without God, without gods even, we are animals. We live as animals, according to our instincts and inherent biological desires.
Living itself becomes not a rational decision, but a byproduct of the organic health of any given individual at any given time.
In terms of dignity, human life becomes fully in the order of the animals then. Without God, without gods even, we are animals. We live as animals, according to our instincts and inherent biological desires.
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Leela
Guest
Tillich defined faith as “ultimate concern.” In his theology no one is without faith. The difference between a theist and an atheist is that the theist believes that his ultimate concern is really ultimate, but the atheist, unless also a nihilist, also always has an ultimate concern.
The opposite of faith in his conception is not unbelief but complete apathy. I don’t think anyone is in such a position of complete apathy, but nihilism is the notion of what such apathy is like. It is not at all the same thing as atheism. Atheism and theism are opposite reactions to the same concern, but neither one is the absolute absence of concern we call nihilism.
Best,
Leela
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Darryl1958
Guest
My argumet is that one has to look at the foundation for that ultimate concern too. It is not as if atheists from the Marxists to the nature-worshipers do not have ultimate concerns. It is only that those ultimate concerns are based in personal preference, or worse acquiescence to the power structures of the greater society. There is no objective reason, outside of personal preference or taste, why the ultimate concern is indeed ultimate. There is no reality to sustain their value as being anything other than personal.
Death of God then does tend to nihilism. Nihilism is not inevitable, but just more likely. The nature of ultimate concerns too change from being oriented from morality, from being the hands and heart of an omni-benevolent, loving God, to health and welfare, to developing systems that provide material comforts and personal health for all. Euthanasia and abortion are not outside of this kind of personal ultimate concern, for value is always personal and never objective.
This is not to say that theism cannot lead to nihilism too. Nietzche’s insight into theistic nihilism, such as now best exemplified by the Islamic suicide bomber, is an example of this. Of course, to the extent that he dealt with it all, Catholicism, a sacramental theology in which our world becomes invested with the sacred, centred as it is in the goodness of creation, the goodness of the body—even unto hope of eternal bodily resurrection— will not suffer from this kind of nihilism.
The drug culture comes very, very close to that kind of complete apathy. Tune in, turn on, drop out was the mantra of another era, but its adherents in many ways have gone on to be the movers and shakers or our own world.
Neither necessarily are, but both *potentially *may be. Ultimately, it is difficult to see how a reality defined in terms of materialism will speak to our own human nature. Neither were any of the beasts of the field a suitable mate for Adam, nor was the serpent a suitable mate for Eve. Denying even the possibility of a reality for our human spirituality does not do anything to change the (submective) reality. Even if it is merely a by-product of evolution, we are something other than mere animals.
The organic health of any individual can keep those spiritual longings at bay however. Just as the spirit is not a concern of animals, so too can mankind live according to the energy of the inner beast, for a time. and after, euthanasia becomes an ultimate personal value.
Nevertheless, be it theistic nihilism which denies this worth of our world, or the nihilism of having life defined solely in terms of material concerns, Catholic theism is the only type of theism I would be an advocate for of course.
Lord knows, the further one strays from the teachings of the Church, the more we stray from the values that alone can sustain life in its fullest.
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AntiTheist
Guest
No, it’s not a “belief in the absence of a belief”; it’s the absence of a belief.Atheisim is a belief in the “absence of a belief”.?.. Still a belief system then
Look, I’ll make it real simple. I don’t have a belief in Bigfoot in the same way that I don’t have a belief in your god, or any other god. [Note that I’m comparing lack of belief to lack of belief and that I’m not comparing Bigfoot to gods – I know the claims are different]
There’s not enough evidence for me to accept the claim that Bigfoot exists, and there’s not enough evidence for me to accept the claim that your god exists. I don’t have a belief that there’s no Bigfoot, and I don’t believe in my lack of belief in a Bigfoot: I’m just absent that particular belief. It’s not a faith, not a belief – just a lack of a belief.
In the exact same way, I lack belief in your god (and all other gods).
Darryl1958:
No, it doesn’t. Atheism doesn’t “posit” anything. It’s the word used to designate the absence of one particular belief in a person. Individual atheists can and do believe in all sorts of things.
See, it’s starting from false assumptions like this that is poisoning the rest of your thinking and leading you to completely incorrect conclusions.
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Darryl1958
Guest
Actually, atheism does posit that there is no God, no gods, no reality outside of the material one. It is not just a lack of belief, but an active disbelief in such a transcendent reality. It posits a belief in the secular, the worldly, and not the spiritual. To the extent that one believes in any sort of thing outside of the secular and into the spiritual and transcendent, it renders the meaning of the word atheism meaningless.
No false assumptions on my part, nor false observations. No delving into the post-modern rubbish either where worlds lose any sense of meaning.
As much as many of them may like to, many atheists just do no stand outside of space and time, as if above it all, looking down on the hoi-polloi, defining yet never being defined. As much as you may enjoy the idea that you are undefined, athiests are a part of the historic moment as much as any one else.
Secularism is a world view too. Once the spiritual is not believed in and rejected, and the worldly is accepted as defining the real, this in itself limits what may or may not be believed in.
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Darryl1958
Guest
The pivotal word in my argument was the word 'objective". Subjectively of course, athiests can and do believe in many things. It is all on the level of the personal, relative to the tastes and want and desires of the person. In the case of Marxism, it is all relative to the tastes and desires of the State, as defined by Marx and Hegel, one supposes, but the basic argument is the same.
Purpose and meaning are not objective in the sense that they exist outside of the personal. Individuals may indeed have purpose and meaning in terms of their own lives, but value simply does not exist outside of the personal. Good and bad become a matter of taste and preference. Ultimately, there can be nothing objectively foundational upon which to place one’s values, no standard to measure what is of greater of lesser value.
Purpose and meaning are not objective in the sense that they exist outside of the personal. Individuals may indeed have purpose and meaning in terms of their own lives, but value simply does not exist outside of the personal. Good and bad become a matter of taste and preference. Ultimately, there can be nothing objectively foundational upon which to place one’s values, no standard to measure what is of greater of lesser value.
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Mystic_Banana
Guest
The fact is, I’d say you are assessing value according to the limits you set yourself according to your beliefs, in a way I’m sure you wouldn’t if not for the need to do so in order to give yourself an illusion of value. We don’t live in the moment, otherwise no-one would go to work. Even if you do live in the moment, you must realise that that eternal now would not include you at a point in the not-too-distant future. So you have this dichotomy of considering short term futures, while ignoring the long term future, which would become the now, well, then.
It’s like this: You would have something to discourage you from killing someone else in the party if you thought you may have to answer for it the next day, but if their long term mortality didn’t depend on your actions in the party the next day (i.e. they would be alive/dead regardless of your actions), whether they remained alive or dead during the party would be of infinitely less importance - especially if you thought they would forget whether you killed them during the party or not, and neither of you would be effected by your actions then the next day. Why not kill them? (Hmmm… I’m not sure if I’m so happy with the way I’m taking this!)
Scientism is ultimately the exclusivist ignorance of any possibility, whether within empirical realms or not, that cannot be verified by science. Since human experience involves a wealth of such experience, I’d say it’s entirely superstitious to ignore possibilities simply because we can’t validate them according to our own limited ability
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Darryl1958
Guest
So then, rather than poisoning the well with misconceptions, my analysis actually remains true to the form that your own arguments make. The assumption that I make about atheists not objectively believing in anything is in fact your own argument.… I personally don’t think that life has an objective meaning, but that doesn’t stop me from attributing a personal meaning to things in my own life or to finding value or meaning in the things that I do.
me:
you:
Note though, that be ‘anything’ we have not been talking about pencils and trees. We have been talking about values. Atheists can and do objectively believe in many things, from planets to global warming. It has already been your own argument that values themselves are subjective.
In terms of the party then, if one person gets pleasure and meaning from squashing bugs, and another from tending to the untouchables along with Mother Teresa, there are no gods saying one form of enjoyment is better than the other. Subjectively speaking, both are of equal value for they give the respective people equal enjoyment.
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AntiTheist
Guest
Actually, the desire to earn a living occurs in the moment. The decision to go out and earn it occurs in the moment. Taking into account the likely effects of actions similarly occurs in the moment.
It’s unrelated to the thread, but I should point out that even a basic practice with meditation and paying attention to reality should reveal that everything that happens necessarily happens “now.”
While I’m at the party, I would have to take into account the likely effects of actions before I decide on them. The fact that I might not remember the party the next day is irrelevant.
For example, to take the surprising example you brought up, I wouldn’t kill anyone at the party. First and foremost, I’m not the kind of person who would be inclined to kill anyone at any party, unless in self-defense. But secondly – and most importantly to this conversation – even if I were inclined to kill someone, I would have to take into account the fact that if I did so, the other members of the party would gang up on me and do something highly unpleasant to me.
I prefer a party where people get along, and the best way to have a party where people get along is to get along with everyone else. I have plenty of good reason to work for a party where people get along, and it’s completely unrelated to the question of whether I’ll remember it the next day.
There may actually be sociopaths in the world who think like you suggest: “Gee, if there are no ultimate consequences…then cool! It’s time to murder, rape, and pillage!” To be honest, that point of view is positively frightening, but luckily pretty rare. If I somehow convinced you that life has no objective meaning, I don’t think that you actually would think like that; as you indicate yourself, you don’t like the direction you’re heading with this argument, and it’s only something you’re putting on for the purposes of this conversation.
Of course, if the only thing keeping you from being a loony killer is the idea that there’s some “objective value” to the universe, then by all means, keep believing in it. Just be sure to stay well away from me…
Well, if that’s what “scientism” is, then I don’t subscribe to it, and I don’t know anyone else who does.
There are all kinds of things that happen every single day that “cannot be verified by science.” The warm and fuzzy feeling I get when I look up at the clouds, for example, lies beyond science’s ability to detect and verify. All of my feelings, in fact, are beyond science’s ability to verify. The creaking noise I just heard in my house is beyond science’s ability to verify. The dream I had last night is beyond science’s ability to verify.
“Verification” only comes into play when we want to determine what’s true – assuming that we define “true” as “the actual state of things,” which obviously needs to be verified in order to be called “true” – and “verification” isn’t always scientific. In my daily life, I make all kinds of verifications that aren’t “scientific” – I can observe things and verify my ideas perfectly well without forming hypotheses and engaging in double-blind experiments.
But verification necessitates relying on evidence of some kind, and the more serious we are about verifying things, the more serious we are about gathering enough evidence and making the best judgment that we can because we know that it’s so easy for us to fool ourselves. For example, my senses reveal to me the sun at different positions at different times of day. My reason operates on this evidence and tells me that the sun is traveling around the earth. I thus have the experience of observing the sun traveling around the earth, and it’s a perfectly “real” and “valid” experience. I’m not denying that that experience happens. But if I really became interested in whether it was true that the sun travels around the earth – that is, if I really wanted to determine the “actual state of things” – I might investigate and discover that my reason was operating on faulty data to begin with.
In short, no one denies “possibilities that cannot be verified by science.” But the truth of claims is something that has to be verified, and the more extraordinary the claim, the more extraordinary the evidence needed to verify it.
Darryl1958:
I gave a definition of atheism. If you can locate it and cite it here, I’ll give you three points of extra credit.
Well, duh. Please cite anything I’ve said that even comes close to implying that atheists are not “part of the historic moment.”
Well, the “form that [my] own arguments make” in the particular case you cited begins with “I personally.” That should have been your first clue that I was talking for myself and not for all atheists.
In the first place, if you don’t mean “anything,” then you should use a different word than “anything” – that’s basic in terms of communication. In the second place, even in terms of values, there are plenty of atheists who believe that values are “objective,” in one sense or another. Now, I personally disagree with them, but that’s me, personally.
Atheism doesn’t have a position on the existence of values or on the value of secularism or on anything else.
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Leela
Guest
You defined “subjective” as relative to the tastes and wants and desires of the person and “objective” as existing outside of the personal. Do mean “personal” to mean all persons or one individual person?
Is the desire for food objective or subjective? Is the desire to be in a relationship with God subjective or objective?
Best,
Leela
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Leela
Guest
Nature and “the state” really do exist, so there is in fact a “reality to sustain their value.”
Isn’t there? But I agree with you that the distinction that theists need to argue is not that others have no concern (that they are nihilists) but rather that non-theist’s ultimate concern is not really ultimate, though I doubt that theists will make a convincing case for true ultimacy to anyone who is not already a theist. At any rate, it is important to note that all people (those who are not sociopaths) share a concern for other people whether as part of a true ultimate concern or part of an ultimate concern that is not really ultimate or makes no claims to be ultimately ultimate.
Do you have any statistics on nihilism as related to belief in God? I don’t know any nihilists, and I’m unconvinced that nihilism is a real problem (except for the suicide bombers you mentioned).
I asked in a separate post about this distinction between personal and objective. I’ll wait to respond until I understand you better.
The heroin addict certainly does have an ultimate concern, it’s just a really really lousy one. She and everyone around her would be better off if she had a better ultimate concern.
Best,
Leela
Neither necessarily are, but both *potentially *may be. Ultimately, it is difficult to see how a reality defined in terms of materialism will speak to our own human nature. Neither were any of the beasts of the field a suitable mate for Adam, nor was the serpent a suitable mate for Eve. Denying even the possibility of a reality for our human spirituality does not do anything to change the (submective) reality. Even if it is merely a by-product of evolution, we are something other than mere animals.
The organic health of any individual can keep those spiritual longings at bay however. Just as the spirit is not a concern of animals, so too can mankind live according to the energy of the inner beast, for a time. and after, euthanasia becomes an ultimate personal value.
Nevertheless, be it theistic nihilism which denies this worth of our world, or the nihilism of having life defined solely in terms of material concerns, Catholic theism is the only type of theism I would be an advocate for of course.
Lord knows, the further one strays from the teachings of the Church, the more we stray from the values that alone can sustain life in its fullest.
- Status