The absurdity of atheism

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PumpkinCookie said:
I would call what you’re describing here as “inflating” our desires. I’m not so sure most of us really do desire ultimate meaning. In fact, people scorn and laugh at philosophical types of people who get hot and bothered about the “big questions.” “Get your head out of the clouds, get a job, etc…” Aristophanes mocked even Socrates for the same thing!
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I’ll take Socrates over Aristophanes any day of the month.

The fact that scoffers exist proves, essentially, that there are those who will disparage almost anything, including living well or living morally. That doesn’t disprove the value or reality of healthy or moral living. In fact, that these individuals “scoff” surely is a sign of their insecurity with regards to all of those questions.

If they were certain about their position they wouldn’t be scoffing, they’d merely live assuredly, which they don’t.

Whether “most of us” actually do desire, at any point in time, ultimate meaning does not disprove anything. Most of us, at any point in time, do not necessarily desire food, either. That doesn’t disprove the appetite for food or that food exists to meet that appetite, or that we cannot distract ourselves from hunger by substitution.

Why do people indulge in hours of useless TV watching, pornography, drugs, food beyond bodily requirements, trivial pursuits, etc., etc., if they aren’t seriously trying to avoid facing the serious question of ultimate meaning in their lives?
 
PumpkinCookie said:
**Imagine a world where no one had to eat. **Impossible, I know, but I’m trying to illustrate something. In this world, no one has ever heard of food, but people chew on various things for the fun of it, and because they like the taste. Imagine if one day some shaman started teaching people that they should actually swallow the things they like to chew on. He whips up his tribe into a frenzy, he tells them the gods desire them to gulp down the things they chew on very much. The shaman inflates their desire for the taste and texture of objects into the desire to consume the objects. He is inventing “eating” and the concept of “food.” Thousands of years go by, and people just assume they desire to “eat food” even though they have no idea of the utility of what they’re doing and can’t explain it. When some whipper-snapper pipes up and says to the shaman “hey…why are we consuming all of these things? For all we know…it does not good. Why don’t we just chew on things then spit them out?” the shaman replies “everyone’s desire to gulp down these objects proves that we ought to.” Can you see how that isn’t a particularly convincing reason?
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The fallacy of your analogy begins in the first line. Everyone has to eat.

Also, everyone has to worship one thing or another … gods in the heavens, gods on earth, gods of the underworld (devils), the girl or boy next door, etc.

The only living creatures who don’t have to worship are plants and animals, and even they might be said to worship the life force within.

Even the shaman you so cavalierly dismiss worships the gods he perceives to exist.

You can, if you like, call him a fraud, but you can’t really prove to what extent he is conjuring up sheer fantastic trickery. Maybe, just maybe, he is God’s real prophet.
He worships, not just because he likes chewing on divinity, but because the divinity he chews on gives him manifest blessings in his life, and he wants to give thanks, as all do who are conscious of their blessings.
 
PumpkinCookie said:
Imagine a world where no one had to eat. Impossible, I know, but I’m trying to illustrate something. In this world, no one has ever heard of food, but people chew on various things for the fun of it, and because they like the taste. Imagine if one day some shaman started teaching people that they should actually swallow the things they like to chew on. He whips up his tribe into a frenzy, he tells them the gods desire them to gulp down the things they chew on very much. The shaman inflates their desire for the taste and texture of objects into the desire to consume the objects. He is inventing “eating” and the concept of “food.” Thousands of years go by, and people just assume they desire to “eat food” even though they have no idea of the utility of what they’re doing and can’t explain it. When some whipper-snapper pipes up and says to the shaman “hey…why are we consuming all of these things? For all we know…it does not good. Why don’t we just chew on things then spit them out?” the shaman replies “everyone’s desire to gulp down these objects proves that we ought to.” Can you see how that isn’t a particularly convincing reason?
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No actually, I don’t find it convincing at all. I don’t suppose the shaman would get much of a following – certainly not “thousands of years” worth.

Now it might be true that if the shaman somehow taps into a real desire, substituting a false good or end for the real one, he might get some traction – but that is only because of piggybacking on some real desire.

I would assume that smoking, drug addiction, alcoholism and homosexuality fall into the same category. These are all parasitic on real desires aimed at existent realities.

My point was that the real desire that human beings have for ultimate meaning in their lives proves ultimate meaning and also accounts for the inordinate amount of time and energy people put into filling that need for real meaning by substitution, diffusion or distraction.
 
Bradski said:
If people sometimes desire things that they believe exist, it doesn’t logically follow that these things actually exist. I find it odd that I have to point that out.

The few dozen virgins are an excellent example. Anyone want to suggest why people believe that?
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They are desiring sex.

Sex clearly exists.

Do *you *have any examples of desires we have for things that don’t actually exist?
 
PRmerger said:
They are desiring sex.

Sex clearly exists.

Do *you *have any examples of desires we have for things that don’t actually exist?
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You are dismantling your own argument, PR. The error has already been pointed out.

Just because men want sex doesn’t mean that 72 virgins exist in some Heavenly Harem. Just because a child wants a bike doesn’t mean that Santa exists. Just because I want a few million dollars in my bank account doesn’t mean it’s there. And just because people don’t want to die doesn’t mean that Eternal Life is available to them.
 
Bradski said:
You are dismantling your own argument, PR. The error has already been pointed out.

Just because men want sex doesn’t mean that 72 virgins exist in some Heavenly Harem.
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Right.

But it does mean that they desire something that exists.

You still have to offer an example of a (sane) man who desires something that doesn’t exist.

Otherwise, it appears that you’re supporting an idea for which there is NOTHING ELSE in the universe for which you can model this belief.
Just because a child wants a bike doesn’t mean that Santa exists.
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LOL!

What it means is that…

bikes exist.
Just because I want a few million dollars in my bank account doesn’t mean it’s there.
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sigh!

Money exists, luv.
And just because people don’t want to die doesn’t mean that Eternal Life is available to them.
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Then this would be an example of which there is NOTHING ELSE IN THE UNIVERSE like it–a desire for something which doesn’t exist.
 
PRmerger said:
Right.

But it does mean that they desire something that exists.
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The concept exists. You can’t want something for which there is no concept. That’s logically impossible. But that doesn’t make it real.
 
Bradski said:
You are dismantling your own argument, PR. The error has already been pointed out.

Just because men want sex doesn’t mean that 72 virgins exist in some Heavenly Harem. Just because a child wants a bike doesn’t mean that Santa exists. Just because I want a few million dollars in my bank account doesn’t mean it’s there. And just because people don’t want to die doesn’t mean that Eternal Life is available to them.
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No Bradski, you are dismissing rather than dismantling.

Just because men want sex DOES mean women exist.
Just because a child wants a bike DOES mean bikes exist.
Just because you want a few million dollars does mean money exists.
And just because people don’t want to die does mean they understand life has potential that extends beyond death.

Sure, some men do not want sex, some children do not want bikes, some humans do not want money and some people do not want to live but that does not mean women, bikes, money and life do not exist.

What about absolute or certainty of meaning for one’s life?
 
PRmerger said:
I think this is probably the best way to chat with your cat:

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Yeah, we had that conversation before.

She agrees, by the way, that the desire for food means food does exist.

She even claimed that her desire to converse about meaningful and intelligent things with me must imply that I have SOME intelligence. She wasn’t very committal in terms of how much, though 😦

We’re back on speaking terms, by the way. 😉
 
Bradski said:
The concept exists. You can’t want something for which there is no concept. That’s logically impossible. But that doesn’t make it real.
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Again, give me an example of a desire which can’t actually be fulfilled.

:coffeeread:
 
Bradski said:
Again, a concept. An appealing wouldn’t-it-be-nice one, no doubt. Which is why many people have it. But that in itself don’t make it true…
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My argument against God was that the universe seemed so cruel and unjust. But how had I got this idea of just and unjust? A man does not call a line crooked unless he has some idea of a straight line. What was I comparing this universe with when I called it unjust? If the whole show was bad and senseless from A to Z, so to speak, why did I, who was supposed to be part of the show, find myself in such violent reaction against it? **A man feels wet when he falls into water, because man is not a water animal: **a fish would not feel wet. Of course I could have given up my idea of justice by saying it was nothing but a private idea of my own. But if I did that, then my argument against God collapsed too – for the argument depended on saying that the world was really unjust, not simply that it did not happen to please my private fancies. Thus in the very act of trying to prove that God did not exist – in other words, that the whole of reality – namely my idea of justice – was full of sense. Consequently atheism turns out to be too simple. If the whole universe has no meaning, we should never have found out that it has no meaning: just as, if there were no light in the universe and therefore no creature with eyes, we should never know it was dark. Dark would be without meaning.
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Source: C.S. Lewis’ Rival Conceptions of God
 
My daughter is making some chocolate covered strawberries as I write this. She’s going to give them to her friend later. She takes pleasure in making them, will take pleasure in giving them and her friend will be pleased to receive them. It’s like a token of their friendship. So the process has some meaning.

There’s a pile of leaves in the garden which my wife has asked me (yet again) to clear up. It’s just a pile of leaves. They serve no purpose and they have no meaning.

So it’s obvious that we have a concept that some things have meaning and some not. It’s not like we live in Lewis’s completely dark universe. We have the concept of light and dark, of meaningful things and meaningless things.

What some people would like is that everything would have an ultimate meaning. To expand what is occasionally and temporarily meaningful to include everything at all times. Again, it’s a nice concept. That there must be more to life than chocolate covered strawberries. It keeps a lot of people happy to think so. They believe it to be so.

But that doesn’t make it real.
 
Bradski said:
My daughter is making some chocolate covered strawberries as I write this. She’s going to give them to her friend later. She takes pleasure in making them, will take pleasure in giving them and her friend will be pleased to receive them. It’s like a token of their friendship. So the process has some meaning.

There’s a pile of leaves in the garden which my wife has asked me (yet again) to clear up. It’s just a pile of leaves. They serve no purpose and they have no meaning.

So it’s obvious that we have a concept that some things have meaning and some not. It’s not like we live in Lewis’s completely dark universe. We have the concept of light and dark, of meaningful things and meaningless things.

What some people would like is that everything would have an ultimate meaning. To expand what is occasionally and temporarily meaningful to include everything at all times. Again, it’s a nice concept. That there must be more to life than chocolate covered strawberries. It keeps a lot of people happy to think so. They believe it to be so.

But that doesn’t make it real.
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The leaves have a purpose. They decompose and become humus. The world grows on dead leaves and dead things. But the problem is Bradski: this world is not all there is. There is much much more than this world of dead leaves and chocolate strawberries.
 
CHRISTINE77 said:
The leaves have a purpose. They decompose and become humus.
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That’s the most useful thing most of us will ever do. Although I managed to perpetuate the species to a certain degree (the’s a smaller version of me spraying water all over the garden and kicking those damn leaves everywhere at the moment).
 
Bradski said:
My daughter is making some chocolate covered strawberries as I write this. She’s going to give them to her friend later. She takes pleasure in making them, will take pleasure in giving them and her friend will be pleased to receive them. It’s like a token of their friendship. So the process has some meaning.

There’s a pile of leaves in the garden which my wife has asked me (yet again) to clear up. It’s just a pile of leaves. They serve no purpose and they have no meaning.

So it’s obvious that we have a concept that some things have meaning and some not. It’s not like we live in Lewis’s completely dark universe. We have the concept of light and dark, of meaningful things and meaningless things.

What some people would like is that everything would have an ultimate meaning. To expand what is occasionally and temporarily meaningful to include everything at all times. Again, it’s a nice concept. That there must be more to life than chocolate covered strawberries. It keeps a lot of people happy to think so. They believe it to be so.

But that doesn’t make it real.
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You do note that in your very statement that the leaves “serve no purpose”, you have given them a purpose, yes? Even if they are merely the subject of your sentence, they are…er,…a subject to your predicate.
 
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