The Absurdity of Atheism

[inocente]

The theist begins with faith in God, moves to doubt to test the notion, and resolves with reason.

The atheist begins with doubt, moves to reason to prove a negative, and relies on faith in the power of his reason to discover truth.

Note that the theist’s method is the Socratic method and the common sense method that one lives one’s life. Socrates allows his interlocutor to express a proposition, doubts or questions the proposer, and resolves the proposition with reason. In life, without human faith in those who preceded us (parents, teachers), we would have no framework to doubt.

The atheist’s method is the scientific method – assumes nothing, experiments or observes to produce data and uses reason to order the data. The scientist has faith in the scientific method, a method that cannot prove itself as valid.

The scientific method proves its validity by its results. If it was the slightest bit untrustworthy, it couldn’t produce things as complicated as cellphones or new medicines. Scientists and engineers learn to doubt everything, as that’s the only safe way to build knowledge or to develop an airliner.

There are lots of Christians who are scientists or engineers, and it seems unlikely they would have to keep switching methods of thought depending of whether they are or are not in church - truth cannot contradict truth.

Science says: ‘This is the best explanation that we have at the moment. We’ll get back to you if we find a better one’.

Peoples with a religious belief say: ‘We know what the explanation is and we will not entertain any others’.

You put a smiley on it, this is just to confirm that Christians who are scientists or engineers don’t suffer permanent crippling cognitive dissonance.

When scientists tried to test you could split the atom, they were trying to prove you cannot split the atom?

I doubt it very much.

Then your doubt is misplaced. In math you try to prove, in science you try to disprove. This is because there might be unsplittable atoms we don’t know of somewhere, so you can never prove that every atom in the universe can be split. But you can disprove the inverse - by splitting just one atom you can disprove the notion that no atom can ever be split. Applies to any empirical argument, not just science.

Theology doesn’t accept the accepted science any more than science accepts the accepted theology. They are two different realms altogether.

“5. Theology is scientific reflection on the divine revelation which the Church accepts by faith as universal saving truth.” - vatican.va/roman_curia/congregations/cfaith/cti_documents/rc_cti_doc_20111129_teologia-oggi_en.html

 

[o_mlly]

…
S: You mean when this observable universe started?
C: Yeah. We don’t know what caused that, do we?

S: We do know that the cause was either natural or supernatural.
C: Then you can investigate the probability of a natural explanation for the observed physical phenomena in the universe.
S: Yes, give me a minute. Wow, the probability that we would be even talking about this based on only the existence of low entropy at the Big Bang is 10 to the 123 power to 1. This is tantamount to the same person winning the lottery a trillion-trillion-trillion times in a row.
C: Looks like supernatural is more reasonable to me.

 

[Lucretius]

You misunderstand me. Early man had gods and other supernatural things to explain what they didn’t know. As we advanced and learned more we could explain these events and the supernatural went away.

No, I understand you. That was not how myths functioned at all. They described the poetry of nature, not her mechanics. Only moderns deny the qualities of nature.

In this understanding, saying that a tornado was caused by Aeolus, and saying that a storm was caused by the movement of fronts, is just two valid ways to describe the same thing.

Christi pax,

Lucretius

 

[clem456]

S: We do know that the cause was either natural or supernatural.
C: Then you can investigate the probability of a natural explanation for the observed physical phenomena in the universe.
S: Yes, give me a minute. Wow, the probability that we would be even talking about this based on only the existence of low entropy at the Big Bang is 10 to the 123 power to 1. This is tantamount to the same person winning the lottery a trillion-trillion-trillion times in a row.
C: Looks like supernatural is more reasonable to me.

And in any case, the terminal answer is “I don’t know”.

Christianity proposes a relationship with this mystery, and personifies it as an existence, or “being”. It recognizes that being comes before doing. Being comes before causation. Causation can never be reduced to just another cause, can it? Before causing is being. “I Am Who Am”.
(I am not a philosopher, any Christian folk who can expresses this more clearly please do, )

Anticipating the objection:
“Mystery” does not mean something that is hopelessly incomprehensible. It’s deeper meaning is “to contain hidden and transcendent meaning”.
Theology reaches out to mystery, to find that which is beyond the competence of science. But theology also takes science into account and appreciates the truth it expresses. This truth * is part of the mystery*, as revealed.

 

[o_mlly]

The scientific method proves its validity by its results…

Science is great but saying that it “proves its validity by its results” suggests the tentativeness of its claims as only probablistic and dependent on the next observation/experiment that refutes the claim.

 

[inocente]

In that case secondary qualities like color are supernatural. So is consciousness and intellection. Even the difference between a living thing and a corpse becomes supernatural!

None of these things can be reduced to quantity, and so must not be natural.

Didn’t understand this, as there are lots of ways to turn colors into numbers. They’re called color-spaces. Designers and artists tend to use HSB, the quantity of hue, saturation and brightness. Computer and TV engineers use RGB, the quantity of red, green and blue. The closest to human perception is more complicated, known as XYZ, which was made an international standard as long ago as 1931.

Some say everything can be turned into numbers and it’s just a question of figuring out how.

 

[inocente]

Science is great but saying that it “proves its validity by its results” suggests the tentativeness of its claims as only probablistic and dependent on the next observation/experiment that refutes the claim.

Of course, that’s true for all empirical arguments, in philosophy or elsewhere.

S: We do know that the cause was either natural or supernatural.
C: Then you can investigate the probability of a natural explanation for the observed physical phenomena in the universe.
S: Yes, give me a minute. Wow, the probability that we would be even talking about this based on only the existence of low entropy at the Big Bang is 10 to the 123 power to 1. This is tantamount to the same person winning the lottery a trillion-trillion-trillion times in a row.
C: Looks like supernatural is more reasonable to me.

Three issues: First, a probability is only valid if you give the measure of uncertainty, so please list all the assumptions you made to arrive at that value, and the degree of uncertainty generated by those accumulated assumptions. I predict that once you’ve done that, the uncertainty will be so high as to make the probability anywhere between 0% and 100%.

Second, please provide a calculation for the probability of a supernatural cause, as without that you’re not comparing apples with apples, as it could also be anywhere between 0% and 100%.

Third, and I cannot emphasize this enough, theism doesn’t require a belief in intelligent design or a denial of science.

 

[Lucretius]

Didn’t understand this, as there are lots of ways to turn colors into numbers. They’re called color-spaces. Designers and artists tend to use HSB, the quantity of hue, saturation and brightness. Computer and TV engineers use RGB, the quantity of red, green and blue. The closest to human perception is more complicated, known as XYZ, which was made an international standard as long ago as 1931.

You are correct, of course

However, my argument doesn’t deny that there is quantities in color, but that color’s qualities can’t be reduced to quantities. This is rather obvious. You don’t experience quantities when you look at a firetruck. Colors have a qualitative aspect, and a quantitative aspect.

Some say everything can be turned into numbers and it’s just a question of figuring out how.

As I have shown above, “turning everything to numbers” is just ignoring qualities and claiming that all objects are just quantities. But we experience qualities before quantities!

We do this to consciousness all the time. “Science will understand consciousness.” No it won’t, because sciences deals with quantities, and consciousness is not a quantity.

This might explain what I’m saying: realphysics.blogspot.com/2005/07/why-real-physics.html

Christi pax,

Lucretius

 

[JapaneseKappa]

What does it mean to be natural?

I don’t think science can answer “why is there something rather than nothing?”

I don’t think your question demands an answer. It presupposes that, in the absence of any overriding causes, there should be nothing existing. But we don’t have any real basis for making that claim, and this can be exposed by imagining things in reverse.

We can imagine a state where nothing exists, and then ask “why is there nothing rather than something?” We could just as easily demand a reason for the nothingness and assume that in the absence of an overriding reason for there to be nothing, we would get something.

We have no basis for selecting the “nothing exists” scenario as the default in the absence of a cause.

 

[Lucretius]

I don’t think your question demands an answer. It presupposes that, in the absence of any overriding causes, there should be nothing existing. But we don’t have any real basis for making that claim, and this can be exposed by imagining things in reverse.

That is how the question is usually presented, but the another way of asking this is “what is being in itself?” It’s following from the principle of sufficient reason. Existence itself needs an explanation.

We can imagine a state where nothing exists, and then ask “why is there nothing rather than something?” We could just as easily demand a reason for the nothingness and assume that in the absence of an overriding reason for there to be nothing, we would get something.

We can’t reify nothing. Nothing doesn’t exist, in every possible sense. Nothing is a hole, not a thing

Christi pax,

Lucretius

 

[Charlemagne_III]

Atheists may not have as many institutions as theists, but that’s because they did not pass around the tray or tithe %10 from all their non-believers or blackmail for indulgences for many centuries as others have done to amass billions of dollars and build these institutions.

But…the groups and institutions are starting to form.
I just read a magazine cover story about a new, worldwide associations for disaster relief program volunteers that is atheistic/agnostic.

Not cool.

Please let me know about this article if you can find it.

Tithing is not for the purpose of making money for pleasure domes. Tithing was always rooted in the desire to help others with the fruits of our labors. The absence of atheist charities in the past is notable, for the simple reason that there is nothing in atheism that commands charity. Yet it’s understandable that atheists today realize that fact, and are trying to cover up this deficiency of atheism by suddenly getting into the charity business.

But getting a competitive edge is not the best motive for building charities. Doing unto others as we would have them do unto us is the best motive possible.

 

[inocente]

As I have shown above, “turning everything to numbers” is just ignoring qualities and claiming that all objects are just quantities. But we experience qualities before quantities!

We do this to consciousness all the time. “Science will understand consciousness.” No it won’t, because sciences deals with quantities, and consciousness is not a quantity.

This might explain what I’m saying: realphysics.blogspot.com/2005/07/why-real-physics.html

I disagree with that blogger’s thesis - it doesn’t have to be either/or, things can have both quality and quantity.

Perhaps some philosophers used to have a flawless argument that colors must be qualities, not quantities. Then a bunch of engineers, ignorant of this flawless argument, invented lots of ways of quantifying colors. The same could happen with other things which philosophers currently argue cannot be quantified, simply because engineers never got the message.

And the quality of watching a sunset doesn’t disappear just because the colors can be quantified:

“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.” - Richard Feynman

 

[Lucretius]

I disagree with that blogger’s thesis - it doesn’t have to be either/or, things can have both quality and quantity.

You don’t disagree with the Blogger: he agrees with you here

Perhaps some philosophers used to have a flawless argument that colors must be qualities, not quantities. Then a bunch of engineers, ignorant of this flawless argument, invented lots of ways of quantifying colors. The same could happen with other things which philosophers currently argue cannot be quantified, simply because engineers never got the message.

We Thomists have always known that things can have a qualitative aspect, and a quantitative aspect.

And the quality of watching a sunset doesn’t disappear just because the colors can be quantified:

“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.” - Richard Feynman

Exactly. The Poetic dimensions of a thing and the Mathematical dimensions are not reducible to each other, nor do they contradict. They are two different kinds of truths about the same thing.

Christi pax,

Lucretius

 

[Charlemagne_III]

Third, and I cannot emphasize this enough, theism doesn’t require a belief in intelligent design or a denial of science.

Theism does require a belief in God.

Do you believe in God?

What would be the rational grounds for your belief?

How would you expect to show an atheist the rational grounds for your belief?

Or do you assert the existence of God to be irrational?

 

[NM505StKate]

To kind of bring this around. How does any of this say atheism is absurd?

 

[Charlemagne_III]

To kind of bring this around. How does any of this say atheism is absurd?

Or, to bring this around, how does any of this say that atheism is rational?

 

[DCNBILL]

To kind of bring this around. How does any of this say atheism is absurd?

First question would be; Do you think some people are better than other people?

 

[o_mlly]

…Three issues: First, a probability is only valid if you give the measure of uncertainty, so please list all the assumptions you made to arrive at that value, and the degree of uncertainty generated by those accumulated assumptions. I predict that once you’ve done that, the uncertainty will be so high as to make the probability anywhere between 0% and 100%.

Degrees of uncertainty apply to the analysis of statistical data. The measurement of entropy at the Big Bang comes from theoretical physics so I’m sure you meant to ask the degrees of freedom. You can do the math yourself at:
lipn.univ-paris13.fr/~duchamp/Books&more/Penrose/Road_to_Reality-CAPE_JONATHAN_%28RAND%29%282004%29.pdf

Second, please provide a calculation for the probability of a supernatural cause, as without that you’re not comparing apples with apples, as it could also be anywhere between 0% and 100%.

If the cause can only be natural or supernatural then the probability of the supernatural is 1- (prob natural).

Third, and I cannot emphasize this enough, theism doesn’t require a belief in intelligent design or a denial of science.

Does your theism propose an “unintelligent designer.” If so, please use a lower case “g” in naming your designer. You don’t have to emphasize what has not been claimed – faith does not deny science.

 

[o_mlly]

Okay let me go slow. You say “God exists” an atheist says “prove it”. That is all. No shifting the burden of proof. You made a positive claim now prove it.

Let me know if this is slow enough for you:
The topic is “The Absurdity of Atheism.” Atheism claims “God does not exist.” Prove the claim is not absurd either scientifically or philosophically. I won’t hold my breath.

 

[NM505StKate]

Or, to bring this around, how does any of this say that atheism is rational?

How is it irrational?