Our Response to Anti-Theism

[IWantGod]

And I wonder, if monkeys could learn to talk, such that they could articulate their thoughts to themselves and to others, would they act that much differently than many of the people on this and other political or religious forums? Probably not. This is probably just what you get when semi-intelligent beings first learn to articulate their thoughts.

I see that you have chosen to exclude yourself from that list.

 

[IWantGod]

The question is, do they ever outgrow this stage, or do they remain confrontational and tribal monkeys forever, or until they annihilate themselves?

And what does this have to do with Anti-theism? Are you suggesting that we are just irrational monkeys?

 

[Wozza]

Wozza:

If that’s an argument that God would make a difference (chemistry would work) then it’s as tight a circular argument as one is likely to get.

Not really, not when you take in to account the object we are talking about. You are talking about blind natural processes, that do not act for a purpose or a goal or an intent, loving one another as their natural end. Why you would think that this would be a natural result of physical activity alone is beyond me…

We couldn’t be here unless there was physical attraction. It acts at the lowest level you could consider right up to us. We describe that attraction at our level as love.

It doesn’t make it any less real or meaningful that it’s a natural process. No less real at all.

I think that’s what you don’t get.

 

[IWantGod]

This highlights why I put absolutely no credence in your arguments from non-contradiction, you just seem to throw this assertion out there willy nilly whenever it suits you.

I think it would be better to address my argument, which you failed to quote (not surprising), and if my arguments are really that bad i suggest you find someone else.

Let those with eyes to see, see

 

[IWantGod]

We couldn’t be here unless there was physical attraction. It acts at the lowest level you could consider right up to us. We describe that attraction at our level as love.

And i am saying that the emotional impulse we describe as love is personal in nature (have you ever fallen in love with a person?), and would not exist if only impersonal blind physical forces and processes existed as a possibility. I have explained why in a previous post.

 

[IWantGod]

I did address the pertinent point,

But you didn’t address my argument, so what is the point?

Thanks for the discussion and God bless.

 

[Pattylt]

But how can we get through to people who are set in believing that religion is evil or God cannot exist?

I’m kind of leary jumping into the discussion at this point but I just want to state that anyone who believes religion is evil or that God CANNOT exist is probably beyond reaching. Those are both very much emotional arguments not open to discussion. All you can do is hope they later mellow out where a discussion can be had.

I know many atheists and they have varying views on God and religions. Many that have recently come out of a faith are still working through anger issues. Some just don’t want to even think about these questions anymore. They’re done with it. Some, given time, can readdress the issues. Some never will…

 

[Shasta-Rose]

The failure to perceive validity in theism, barring the possibility that theism is wrong, is due to a host of problems. One of the main issues with religion is that some people don’t believe there is any real existential fulfilment in it. It’s just a form of escapism from the real world, a world that can be incredibly harsh and can lack the fulfilment that people hope for.

I have a friend who believes this. We aren’t real close and I don’t get to see him often, but we get along by respecting each other’s opinions. I will be going to an event where he will give a talk, and I will go and listen to it to support him, because that’s what I’ve always done, and he will say again that it’s just not rational to believe in any god. Course, it won’t keep me from getting up early the next morning and heading up to St. Blank for Mass!

 

[Wozza]

Wozza:

We couldn’t be here unless there was physical attraction. It acts at the lowest level you could consider right up to us. We describe that attraction at our level as love.

And i am saying that the emotional impulse we describe as love is personal in nature (have you ever fallen in love with a person?), and would not exist if only impersonal blind physical forces and processes existed as a possibility. I have explained why in a previous post.

Every single emotion that we, or any other creature feels, is the result of blind impersonal forces. Knowing that does not lessen their effect or the meaning that we give them.

Pain is just a normal reaction to an outside stimulus. It’s the bodies method of telling us to avoid something. Likewise fear is entirely impersonal. You don’t choose what you fear. Just as you don’t decide what will hurt.

Likewise, who you are attracted to has nothing at all to do with your personal decisions. It’s unguided. Love is truly blind. When it happens, how we react to it and how it makes us feel and why we react as we do are not lessened by the fact the we know its biological causes.

Richard Feyman (he of my avatar):

"I have a friend who’s an artist and has sometimes taken a view which I don’t agree with very well. He’ll hold up a flower and say “look how beautiful it is,” and I’ll agree. Then he says “I as an artist can see how beautiful this is but you as a scientist take this all apart and it becomes a dull thing,” and I think that he’s kind of nutty. First of all, the beauty that he sees is available to other people and to me too, I believe. Although I may not be quite as refined aesthetically as he is … I can appreciate the beauty of a flower. At the same time, I see much more about the flower than he sees. I could imagine the cells in there, the complicated actions inside, which also have a beauty. I mean it’s not just beauty at this dimension, at one centimeter; there’s also beauty at smaller dimensions, the inner structure, also the processes. The fact that the colors in the flower evolved in order to attract insects to pollinate it is interesting; it means that insects can see the color. It adds a question: does this aesthetic sense also exist in the lower forms? Why is it aesthetic? All kinds of interesting questions which the science knowledge only adds to the excitement, the mystery and the awe of a flower. It only adds. I don’t understand how it subtracts.”

Your problem is that you don’t realise that genuine emotions can emerge quite naturally from these unguided and impersonal events.

 

[IWantGod]

Every single emotion that we, or any other creature feels, is the result of blind impersonal forces.

What do you mean here? That emotions have emerged within the processes that inform our nature? Or that our emotional experiences exist only because of blind impersonal natural processes and nothing else?

If it’s the latter, then that is what i have a problem with because in that case you are making a metaphysical statement here and not a scientific one. Beyond simply taking the physical relationships with what we experience for granted, why would emotions be a possibility except in reference to a being capable of having meaningful and personal experiences?

Pain is just a normal reaction to an outside stimulus.

That doesn’t mean the possibility of it’s existence is fundamentally caused by physics or can be ontologically reduced to physics alone as an explanation. Why would an experience of pain exist in a universe that is fundamentally made up of blind impersonal meaningless objects and directionless activity? In fact why would anything other than objects exist.

Why would a object/subject dynamic informed by consistently meaningful experiences exist if it is comprised entirely of impersonal and blind activity or objects?

The only explanation a naturalist can give is that we just-so-happen to experience these effects. They just-so-happen to exist in conjunction with physics whether they make sense or not.

I am in the camp that argues that the existence of these things is rationally inconsistent with a materialist or a metaphysical naturalist worldview and therefore these worldviews should be rejected.

Why is it rationally inconsistent (although the answers has been revealed in the question)? Because the idea of a universe being comprised entirely of blind impersonal directionless meaningless objects and activity is counterfactual to the goal-directed personal and meaning-driven activities we perform and experience in one-another.

The teleologically driven nature of love doesn’t make sense in a materialist ontology, but it does make sense in a world purposely created for the existence and experience of personal beings.

 

[IWantGod]

Love is truly blind

That’s not entirely true. Fundamentally, love is a reaction to personal activity - not objects. We may fall in love with different personalities based on different life experiences and other dynamics, but my statement is generally true, and would be agreed upon by any self-reflecting person whom has had sufficient life experiences. Love is only blind in the sense that we do not know who we are going to fall in love with.

how it makes us feel and why we react as we do are not lessened by the fact the we know its biological causes.

Knowing the biological processes involved in actualising that experience, is not the same thing as having an ontological explanation for it’s existence or that the experience of love and the activity of physics is one and the same entity. Materialists often pretend that there isn’t a fundamental problem with their point-of-view or just refuse to explain it in preference of their bias, which is made evident in their uncanny ability to conflate scientific inferences with metaphysical judgements about the nature of a thing; which is exactly what you have done…

When your friend pointed out that you make it a dull thing (or Richard makes it dull), what he meant is that you reduce the experience to physics alone and thus cannot fully appreciate the reality of beauty on it’s own terms and therefore the ontological consequences of it. In other words you take the experience for granted and thus assume a reductionist point of view.

In the experience of beauty, we see more than just an object, we see a realisation of something desirable and meaningful.

My hope is that you realise that these materialistic ideals are unwarranted and is certainly not science. That alone would be a victory for reason, let-alone theism.

 

[0Scarlett_nidiyilii]

One of the main issues with religion is that some people don’t believe there is any real existential fulfilment in it. It’s just a form of escapism from the real world, a world that can be incredibly harsh and can lack the fulfilment that people hope for. Like Karl Marx said, Religion is the opium of the masses.

Yeah, I’ve had people tell me that they don’t need to comfort themselves with religion.

Part of me just laughs, because if I wanted comfort and escapeism, it wouldn’t be to an unpopular religion that makes me do stuff I don’t want to do (forgive my enemies? For real?).
I’d escape into parties and booze and pleasure and petty revenge.

 

[IWantGod]

it wouldn’t be to an unpopular religion that makes me do stuff I don’t want to do ( forgive my enemies? For real?).

Loooool…

 

[Economist]

( forgive my enemies? For real?).

Indeed, that is just another irrational concept - if it is taken as a general commandment. Sometimes forgiveness is good, other times it is foolish. Conflict resolution is a much more complicated subject than a sound-bite. It is a good idea to study game theory to learn more about it.

That’s not entirely true. Fundamentally, love is a reaction to personal activity - not objects.

Don’t you “love” a good food? Love is another complicated concept. Even erotic love is based upon many facets. We have five senses, and we have no control over what we find “palatable”. Most people could not even describe why do they find someone else to be attractive.

 

[IWantGod]

Don’t you “love” a good food? Love is another complicated concept. Even erotic love is based upon many facets. We have five senses, and we have no control over what we find “palatable”. Most people could not even describe why do they find someone else to be attractive.

We have no control over what we find desirable, but the fact remains that Love (what me and wozza was talking about) is a response to personal activity and becomes actual within the activity of two persons and the meaning they experience from one another - not objects. Objects don’t fall in love, atoms don’t seek each others company.

 

[IWantGod]

Indeed, that is just another irrational concept

If you are truly a servant of love you will desire the salvation of everybody (all your brothers and sisters under God) and in that respect forgive them, because the opposite is not love. Not wanting to is an emotional matter and is besides the point.

There is nothing irrational about it. Vengeance is self-serving, an attempt to quell some emotion conflict inside oneself at the expense of the objective value of another being (a value that is not dependent on how we feel about someone) which is different from self defence.

It’s simply about having the wisdom to see it. If we condemn people in vengeance, then you are basically saying that the value of a human life is not intrinsic but dependent on the whim of a person or how they feel at any given moment.

Enter nihilism and Christianity is the answer to it. A religion that seeks the salvation of everyone and sanctifies the intrinsic existential value of a person…

 

[Wozza]

Wozza:

Every single emotion that we, or any other creature feels, is the result of blind impersonal forces.

What do you mean here? That emotions have emerged within the processes that inform our nature? Or that our emotional experiences exist only because of blind impersonal natural processes and nothing else?

If it’s the latter, then that is what i have a problem with because in that case you are making a metaphysical statement here and not a scientific one. Beyond simply taking the physical relationships with what we experience for granted, why would emotions be a possibility except in reference to a being capable of having meaningful and personal experiences?

I see your problem here. You think that love, for example, is some metaphysical experience.

You do know that we can artificially control our emotions? It’s quite simple. We find out what chemicals the body produces when we are afraid, depressed, euphoric, loving, sexually excited etc and we introduce them into the body to produce those emotions.

Every single emotion you feel is a direct result of chemical reactions. There is nothing whatsoever metaphysical about them. And most of them are there to serve a purpose. To keep you alive and produce copies.

Now that sounds a bit dry and depressing. But the emotions themselves are as real as you could possibly demand. That we know how and why we fall in love is no more mysterious than how and why we know we feel fear. Or hunger. Or anger. There is nothing mystreious about them. And describing them in physical terms doesn’t lessen their impact on us whatsoever.

Just because Feynman knew why we enjoy the sight and smell of a rose doesn’t mean that therefore he cannot experience the pleasure of those experiences.

 

[IWantGod]

You do know that we can artificially control our emotions?

It’s irrelevant.

 

[Wozza]

Wozza:

You do know that we can artificially control our emotions?

It’s irrelevant.

No, it’s the main point. It shows that our emotions are simply chemical reactions. That’s it. Nothing more.

Now what you feel because of those chemical reactions is real. You are the sum total of all the activity that goes on in your body. Primarily in your brain. There’s no aether. There’s no homunculus. There’s nothing metaphysical happening. It’s all physical activity. Made up of chemical changes and electrical charges and molecules and atoms all interacting with each other.

But you seem to think that we need something more. There isn’t any more. But it’s still as real as you could possibly demand. We are not made less by this knowledge.

 

[IWantGod]

No, it’s the main point. It shows that our emotions are simply chemical reactions.

No it shows that chemical reactions actualise what we experience as love. There is not a group of atoms floating around that is the experience of love. The meaning we find in those experiences are not reducible to quantitative values. What you are saying here is not a scientific statement, it is a metaphysical statement about the nature of that experience we describe as love.

You think it’s meaningful to reduce that experience to physics alone, i am arguing that it is meaningless to reduce those experiences to physics alone in a world that is objectively meaningless, has no meaning in it’s parts, does not exist for a purpose, is not acting for a goal or end. In other-words the existence of these things are not consistent with metaphysical naturalism, which is not science by the way.