The epistomological weakness of the logical problem of evil

[reggieM]

You can’t even define what “ultimate significance” might be.

Atheism denies that there is an ultimate significance.

William Provine: “Naturalistic evolution has clear consequences that Charles Darwin understood perfectly. 1) No gods worth having exist; 2) no life after death exists; 3) no ultimate foundation for ethics exists; 4) no ultimate meaning in life exists; and 5) human free will is nonexistent.” Evolution: Free Will and Punishment and Meaning in Life, Second Annual Darwin Day Celebration Keynote Address, University of Tennessee, Knoxville, February 12, 1998 (abstract);

The universe we observe has precisely the properties we should expect if there is, at bottom, no design, no purpose, no evil and no good, nothing but blind, pitiless indifference. As that unhappy poet A.E. Housman put it: ‘For Nature, heartless, witless Nature Will neither care nor know.’ DNA neither cares nor knows. DNA just is. And we dance to its music. Richard Dawkins, River out of Eden : A Darwinian View of Life (London: Phoenix, 1995), 133.

No inherent moral or ethical laws exist, nor are there absolute guiding principles for human society. The universe cares nothing for us and we have no ultimate meaning in life. William Provine

‘Let me summarize my views on what modern evolutionary biology tells us loud and clear … **There are **no gods, no purposes, no goal-directed forces of any kind. There is no life after death. When I die, I am absolutely certain that I am going to be dead. That’s the end for me. There is no ultimate foundation for ethics, no ultimate meaning to life, and no free will for humans, either.’
Provine, W.B., Origins Research 16(1), p.9, 1994.

“Worse, the worldview of science is rather chilling. **Not only do we not find any point to life **laid out for us in nature, no objective basis for our moral principles, no correspondence between what we think is the moral law and the laws of nature, of the sort imagined by philosophers from Anaximander and Plato to Emerson. We even learn that the emotions that we most treasure, our love for our wives and husbands and children, are made possible by chemical processes in our brains that are what they are as a result of natural selection acting on chance mutations over millions of years. And yet we must not sink into nihilism or stifle our emotions. At our best we live on a knife-edge, between wishful thinking on one hand and, on the other, despair.” *Steven Weinberg *nybooks.com/articles/21800

Jacques Monod: “The scientific attitude implies what I call the postulate of objectivity – the fundamental postulate that there is no plan, that there is no intention in the universe. This is basically incompatible with virtually all the religious or metaphysical systems whatever”…”Chance alone is at the source of every innovaton, of all creation in the biosphere. Pure chance, only chance, absolute but blind liberty is at the root of the prodigious edifice that is evolution”

Then you have no idea what atheism is all about. And then you have the audacity to declare that nothing is significant for me.

It’s not that you don’t claim things as significant, but that within the atheistic system, you have no ultimate purpose, meaning or significance. That is how we measure the metaphysic of atheism – as against its final end. The end, for atheism, is nothing. There’s no escaping that. Therefore, we measure whatever significance you claim, against the final end, and we have to conclude that it is nothing.

The first principle of atheism is purposelessness. That is not a very controversial or unusual thing for me to point out. Most atheists accept this.

Well, I advise you not to assume that you are qualified to speak for me, and what I consider significant or not. I have rarely seen such arrogant nonsense.

Again, you seem to be changing this philosophical discussion and making it personal. We’re discussing “atheism” not “R Daneel” (or even “R Daneelism”). What you believe may or may not be consistent with atheism.

It’s like someone who correctly states: “Catholicism requires a belief in the supernatural order”. A false reply to that would be: “I am a Catholic and I don’t believe in the supernatural order – furthermore, I am offended that you claim that I do believe it.”

Atheism is a concept, not a person. As a concept (and a metaphysic) it has meaning that can be discussed. Whether you apply the logic of atheism to your life or not is a different matter.

As a metaphysical structure (that is, an overriding principle, or foundational concept), atheism proposes that there is no ultimate purpose.

That is where you must start when you evaluate whatever “meaning” or “significance” you claim in life. You start at the end – which is “meaninglessness” and “nothingness”.

Then, you measure all things against that end. All of them pass to nothingness. So, what is the value of whatever significance you claim? We measure the value by the end state – and that is non-meaning, total non-signficance.

 

[Slowlearner]

Are you saying that pain has no objective meaning?

MOM2, Yes and no. Yes, if like R Daneel, you believe that there is no objective meaning, then pain cannot logically have any significance. No, if you are a Christian, or otherwise believe that there is a truth or meaning greater than what an individual can perceive.

R Daneel, while you feel that pain is significant to you, unless there is a greater meaning, then your thinking is just an illusion. If there is no meaning greater than the individual, then everything happening to you is just random and your feelings are just the programmed responses to the stimuli. You feel as though pain is significant, but it cannot be because you believe you have no significance.

 

[R_Daneel]

Atheism denies that there is an ultimate significance.

So, what? The denial of “ultimate” significance does not mean that there is no significance at all. The lack of “ultimate anything” does not lead to nihilism or despair. It may or may not lead to a good, substantial life, depending on the individual.

It’s not that you don’t claim things as significant, but that within the atheistic system, you have no ultimate purpose, meaning or significance. That is how we measure the metaphysic of atheism – as against its final end. The end, for atheism, is nothing. There’s no escaping that. Therefore, we measure whatever significance you claim, against the final end, and we have to conclude that it is nothing.

It is only you, who measures something against this nebulous “final end”. Have you heard the saying that it is the journey that matters and not the destination? We all die. Whatever we do on our journey is what matters. As a matter of fact, I can say that the Earthly life of the believers is that has no significance. You all believe in some “continuation” and place the importance there. This life only matters to you as a precursor to that assumed continuation. It has no intrinsic value.

The atheist’s life is valuable to him, it has meaning to him.

 

[R_Daneel]

R Daneel, while you feel that pain is significant to you, unless there is a greater meaning, then your thinking is just an illusion. If there is no meaning greater than the individual, then everything happening to you is just random and your feelings are just the programmed responses to the stimuli. You feel as though pain is significant, but it cannot be because you believe you have no significance.

What nonsense. Pain is real, pleasure is real. There needs to be no “greater” meaning - which is just another undefined category. Significance is whatever one feels significant. Why is that so hard to understand?

 

[Sair]

ReggieM, you said,

*The first principle of atheism is purposelessness. That is not a very controversial or unusual thing for me to point out. Most atheists accept this.
I feel I must contradict this erroneous statement. The first principle of atheism is godlessness. This only equates to purposelessness if you believe that purpose can only come from a god, and I think you will find that there are plenty of atheists who don’t believe any such thing.

 

[reggieM]

I feel I must contradict this erroneous statement. The first principle of atheism is godlessness. This only equates to purposelessness if you believe that purpose can only come from a god, and I think you will find that there are plenty of atheists who don’t believe any such thing.

Hi Sair,
The sentence you quoted is from a post I offered which had about 800 words of explanation on this point. You, however, have extracted one sentence out of context.

You quoted me …

The first principle of atheism is purposelessness. That is not a very controversial or unusual thing for me to point out. Most atheists accept this.

But I was merely using a summary statement which omitted a key part (which you skipped over and failed to respond to. Notice the difference in that sentence you quoted and this one which came just before:

*As a metaphysical structure (that is, an overriding principle, or foundational concept), atheism proposes that there is no **ultimate *purpose.

I highlighted a word to show the difference. What I meant in the sentence you quoted was “no ultimate purpose”, even though I said “purposlessness”.

So, this is a strawman argument. What you’re attacking is not the point. You’re now claiming that there are “purposes” in the atheistic system, but you’ve (conveniently?) skipped the term “ultimate purpose”.

You may have simply misunderstood what I wrote, and if so, that’s understandable.

Again, the point is not that atheism can claim some trivial purposes, but that there is no ultimate or final purpose.

I posted about six excerpts from the writings of prominent atheists, all of which said the same thing. There is no ultimate or final purpose in the atheistic view.

Atheism does not merely propose godlessness, but it proposes no supernatural order, no life after death and therefore no final judgement.

The end of life, in the atheistic model, is nothing.

I’ll just repeat Dr. Provine’s comment (you might not have read it), and if you’re interested I can produce many more like this:

‘Let me summarize my views on what modern evolutionary biology tells us loud and clear … There are no gods, no purposes, no goal-directed forces of any kind. There is no life after death. When I die, I am absolutely certain that I am going to be dead. That’s the end for me. There is no ultimate foundation for ethics, no ultimate meaning to life, and no free will for humans, either.’
Provine, W.B., Origins Research 16(1), p.9, 1994.

Let’s look at that.
He says, it is “loud and clear”. It’s not a subtle message – it’s obvious. This is non-controversial. Atheist scholars have known this, taught and explained this for a very long time.

He then says there is “no ultimate meaning to life”.

That simply follows logically. The ultimate state of life is nothing. Therefore, there can be no measurement, assessment, reasoning, philosophizing or evaluating about the ultimate end of anyone’s life. It is nothing.

That is what it means when we say “there is no ultimate purpose”.

 

[reggieM]

This only equates to purposelessness if you believe that purpose can only come from a god, and I think you will find that there are plenty of atheists who don’t believe any such thing.

What you are trying to say, and what many atheists who do not want to face the reality of their own worldview try to say is:

“We have our own meaning and purposes”.

But this is an evasion of the point. You need to say “We have our own ultimate purpose”, or “The end of our life has an ultimate and final meaning”.

Instead, you’re claiming that the trivial meanings you claim for your life are the same as having an ultimate purpose in the end.

This is obviously false. As Mr. Provine says “When I die, I am absolutely certain that I am going to be dead. That’s the end for me.”

Notice again, “that’s the end”. The “end” is the “ultimate” – that is “the finality”.
What is the “end”, “ultimate” and “finality” in the atheistic system.

Provine said it clearly – “I am going to be dead”. In other words, pure non-existence or nothingness.

So, we measure all of your purposes against that end – not against some transient end that you claim. “In the end”, it’s all nothing. So whatever you do, whatever purposes you claim, “in the end, it’s nothing”. That’s how we measure the various meanings and purposes you claim – they are ultimately meaningless, completely gone and totally unnecessary.

That is what you, yourself, are in the atheistic model. You are simply nothing, in the end. Ultimately, you have no purpose or meaning. I don’t have a charitable way to describe a person who claims some trivial, passing “meanings” as if they can be measured against an ultimate nothingness.

What’s a good analogy? I really don’t know.

How about:

A survivor of the Hiroshima bomb saying “the great thing about the bomb was that it warmed the air up just outside the city, also the cloud was very nice to look at”.

These are trivial meanings as compared to the destruction of an entire city.

Or the bombing of the Twin Towers:

What was the effect on you when you saw it?
“When people jumped out of the building it was really interesting to look at them”.

What was one of the difficult things about it?
“I noticed that it was very hard to get a cab that day”.

Again, these are trivial responses that miss the larger meaning.

One last quote, that I already quoted before. From the very first lines of the classic, atheistic novel, The Stranger, by Albert Camus:

MOTHER died today. Or, maybe, yesterday; I can’t be sure. The telegram from the Home says: YOUR MOTHER PASSED AWAY. FUNERAL TOMORROW. DEEP SYMPATHY. Which leaves the matter doubtful; it could have been yesterday.

Can you see exactly the same point here that I’ve been trying to make?
The protagonist is talking about a trivial meaning – which is his ability to know if his mother died today or yesterday. That’s his main interest. The fact that it’s his mother and she is dead, elicits no depth of thought or emotion here. It’s like hearing the score of a baseball game.

 

[Sair]

What you are trying to say, and what many atheists who do not want to face the reality of their own worldview try to say is:

“We have our own meaning and purposes”.

But this is an evasion of the point. You need to say “We have our own ultimate purpose”, or “The end of our life has an ultimate and final meaning”.

Instead, you’re claiming that the trivial meanings you claim for your life are the same as having an ultimate purpose in the end.

This is your perception, and clearly you (rather desperately, it appears) want it to be true - you want to be able to dismiss atheists’ ideas as trivial, and their purposes as trivial, because that then props up your own belief in an ultimate purpose which, let’s face it, may well not exist.

If you find human life and purpose to be trivial, perhaps that is something you should talk to someone about - that kind of attitude can lead to depression. If you find no value in the journey, but only in what you think is the destination, that is really rather sad.

 

[reggieM]

This is your perception, and clearly you (rather desperately, it appears) want it to be true - you want to be able to dismiss atheists’ ideas as trivial, and their purposes as trivial, because that then props up your own belief in an ultimate purpose which, let’s face it, may well not exist.

This is a deceptive reply. First, you claim that the logic I offered is “my perception”. But instead of debating the argument, you attack me personally (desperately?). I’ve mentioned it before – this is the most typical atheistic response (it can’t be called a rational argument). When the logic of atheism is exposed, their response is to attack the person who exposes it.

But more importantly, you claim that I’m dismissing atheists’ **ideas **as trivial. Ok, so you decided to re-write what I said – that’s also very typical. But the fact is, you’ve done nothing to counter the simple point – atheism denies an ultimate purpose. That’s the problem that you’re avoiding.

You then attack me personally again by claiming that the only value of my argument (for me) is that it “props up my belief” in an ultimate purpose. This is another lie.

The belief in an ultimate purpose does not need any propping up from the destructive stupidity of atheism. It’s merely enough to view the arrogant claims of atheism, and then watch how the same arrogance falls in on itself when the logic of atheism is exposed.

Sadly, Sair, you’re a perfect example of how it works. You are now, at least, implicitly accepting that atheism proposes “no ultimate purpose”. But you haven’t outright said it.

I have enough information now to conclude that you deliberately misquoted me in the prior post. You didn’t make a mistake at all – you knew what you were doing. You knew very well that I was talking about “ultimate purpose” and that you had no response for that. So, instead of honestly engaging in the idea, you quoted me out of context and attacked that quote as if I was making a superficial comment.

If you find human life and purpose to be trivial, perhaps that is something you should talk to someone about - that kind of attitude can lead to depression.

This is another means of masking your lies. You again attack me personally because you can’t deal with the consequences of your own belief system.

If you find no value in the journey, but only in what you think is the destination, that is really rather sad.

Again, this is muddled, at best, and dishonest at worst. In either case, you’d do much better to try to deal with the philosophical issues and cease trying to attack me personally. Personal attacks are a violation of the forum rules here, by the way.

But aside from that, these lame attempts to turn the argument around as an attack on me personally indicates that you cannot deal with the argument.

I’ve seen this many times before. This is the so-called “atheistic rationality” at it’s best.

I can’t see any reason why you’re bothering to engage in this discussion since you appear to have no sincere interest in pursuing philosophical discourse.

 

[Sair]

This is a deceptive reply. First, you claim that the logic I offered is “my perception”. But instead of debating the argument, you attack me personally (desperately?). I’ve mentioned it before – this is the most typical atheistic response (it can’t be called a rational argument). When the logic of atheism is exposed, their response is to attack the person who exposes it.

I’m not sure how you could read what I wrote as an ‘attack’ - it was simply my observations on your attempts to characterise atheism as a purposeless and fundamentally nihilistic worldview. This is erroneous, because it is based upon a specifically theistic understanding of what constitutes meaning and purpose. This understanding has been contradicted again and again in this thread, yet you repeat the same arguments.

But more importantly, you claim that I’m dismissing atheists’ **ideas **as trivial. Ok, so you decided to re-write what I said – that’s also very typical. But the fact is, you’ve done nothing to counter the simple point – atheism denies an ultimate purpose. That’s the problem that you’re avoiding.

Atheism denies ultimate purpose. So…what? You create a false dichotomy between ultimate purpose and trivial purpose. Can purpose only ever be ‘trivial’ if it is not ‘ultimate’?

The belief in an ultimate purpose does not need any propping up from the destructive stupidity of atheism. It’s merely enough to view the arrogant claims of atheism, and then watch how the same arrogance falls in on itself when the logic of atheism is exposed.

Sadly, Sair, you’re a perfect example of how it works. You are now, at least, implicitly accepting that atheism proposes “no ultimate purpose”. But you haven’t outright said it.

I have enough information now to conclude that you deliberately misquoted me in the prior post. You didn’t make a mistake at all – you knew what you were doing. You knew very well that I was talking about “ultimate purpose” and that you had no response for that. So, instead of honestly engaging in the idea, you quoted me out of context and attacked that quote as if I was making a superficial comment.

Remember how you claimed that I was making a personal attack? Did you notice that actually is what you’re doing here? But that’s beside the point. You make the claim that all purpose derives from this ‘ultimate’ purpose of which you speak, yet cannot, apparently, define - and then try to wiggle out of your own argument that atheism’s defining characteristic is purposelessness. And, yes, when any atheist here has quite correctly pointed out that purpose is something we create for ourselves, you respond with words to to the effect that, “no, that’s just trivial purpose”. That, in my view, constitutes a dismissal of atheists’ ideas.

I have no fear of acknowledging that ultimate purpose doesn’t exist - although by your above comments, you seem to imply that this is something I and other atheists are always running from. What you don’t seem to be able to understand is that to me, and to many others, ultimate purpose is not necessary for human life to be meaningful while it lasts. Temporal purpose is quite enough for us to be going on with. Life is a journey, a series of changes, and death is just another change. I fully accept that when I die, my consciousness will dissipate, and the material that makes up my body will break down and perhaps go on to make up other bodies in due time; this prospect neither scares nor depresses me, nor does it make me think that what I do, say, think and feel, while I live, doesn’t matter. So what if I don’t matter to the universe? I matter to me, and to the people I love - I am content with that.

 

[Sair]

What you are trying to say, and what many atheists who do not want to face the reality of their own worldview try to say is:

“We have our own meaning and purposes”.

But this is an evasion of the point. You need to say “We have our own ultimate purpose”, or “The end of our life has an ultimate and final meaning”.

Instead, you’re claiming that the trivial meanings you claim for your life are the same as having an ultimate purpose in the end.

This is the first point on which your argument fails. No-one is claiming that temporal purpose is the same as ultimate purpose. The purposes we create for ourselves while we live are meaningful to us, while we live - that is not the same as saying that these things are of ultimate significance in the grand scheme of things.

So, we measure all of your purposes against that end – not against some transient end that you claim. “In the end”, it’s all nothing. So whatever you do, whatever purposes you claim, “in the end, it’s nothing”. That’s how we measure the various meanings and purposes you claim – they are ultimately meaningless, completely gone and totally unnecessary.

That is what you, yourself, are in the atheistic model. You are simply nothing, in the end. Ultimately, you have no purpose or meaning. I don’t have a charitable way to describe a person who claims some trivial, passing “meanings” as if they can be measured against an ultimate nothingness.

And yet you offer no reason for supposing that all purposes must be evaluated against the eventual end of our life, as opposed to the experiences they elicit whilst we live. What you appear to be saying here is that life is pointless because it ends. That, if I may say so, strikes me as a very foolish notion.

 

[MindOverMatter2]

The following is just an attempt at a new argument for objective moral value. I have not put to much thought in to it. Its just a test run; an argument that i want to develop. But i feel there are some points in it that is over looked by those who think that there are no objective moral standards.

that is not the same as saying that these things are of ultimate significance in the grand scheme of things.

But they are meaningful and significant in relation to the fact that we are “living beings” and not inanimate objects. Living people by nature of the fact that they “live” and comprehend the fact that they are alive, naturally feel compelled to seek ends which are for the purpose of staying “alive” and they oppose ends which they acknowledge as reducing them to mere objects, since there is an objective meaning in being alive as opposed to being dead or being an object. There is a definite objective and qualitative difference which we experience in the act of living as opposed to being objects or being dead. We also recognize that some standards of living are not as good as other standards of living. But recognizing this fact only makes sense if we recognize that life is of the nature that we should seek better standards of it; since the lesser the standard the closer we are to death and the greater the standard the more secure we are in living. The more closer we are to death the less true we are to life, and the greater we are in living the more truer we reflect the nature of life. I perceive this as an objective factor expressed by the very fact of being alive. It is not something we have made up in our heads according to some whim or fantasy. Thus we conclude that there is an ultimate standard of life which we ought to be living because it is the truest form of living.

Out of nothing comes nothing and thus our minds cannot produce that which has no objective root in our experiences. The mind develops all its ideas according to what we perceive in reality. Thus it is because we recognize hierarchical standards of living in which some forms or standards are truer in degree to life than others, that we are able to conceive of a “problem” with our standard of living. If there wasn’t truly a moral problem, then there is no reason why we should acknowledge it as a moral problem, if it is in fact nothing more than an impulse to avoid pain. We recognize it as a moral problem because we know that our suffering does not fulfill what we are as existential beings. We don’t just feel pain, but rather, we feel “oppressed”, and our feeling oppressed only makes sense if what we our experiencing is in fact actually degrading our moral value as persons. A table should not feel depressed if it is in its nature to hold things up. It should not matter how much i put on the table; at no time should it shout out that it is being mistreated. It might be in the nature of an organism to avoid pain at all costs because it hurts. This makes sense. But if an organism feels “less” of an organism, feels that its not being allowed to express its true nature, then this implies that a thing can be degraded; that there is a way things ought to be which is not being fulfilled. We as persons often feel degraded, demoralized, and downtrodden and develop all kinds of emotional or psychological problems because of it.

What sense does that make if there is not in fact objective moral standards. What sense does it make for somebody to say that life is not worth living if there is no such thing as being “mistreated” or if we have not in fact experience a better moral standard of living. You have to begin with an experience of “worth” before you can experience the effects of it being degraded or oppressed.

The atheist takes it for granted. They fail to see that it is their quality based experience of “life” that forms the basis of the logical or evidential argument from evil, precisely because we recognize a standard of living that we ought to have if we are to fulfill the act of our existence; and it is to this end that we are compelled to act. But in recognizing this fact, we at the same time indirectly prove the necessary existence of an objective moral standard; since you cannot make arguments based on standards which have no objective basis in our experience.

This is the first point on which your argument fails. No-one is claiming that temporal purpose is the same as ultimate purpose. The purposes we create for ourselves while we live are meaningful to us, while we live -

Why do we create purpose? We create purpose because it fulfills our being to a degree. But if fulfillment has no objective meaning or existence in terms of purpose, then why do we feel fulfilled when we act for a purpose? If you believe in proportionate causality like i do, does this not suggest to you that “purpose” has an objective basis in reality and that we in fact exist for an objective purpose and that this is the reason why we feel fulfilled when we act for purposes?

 

[Slowlearner]

ReggieM, you said,

*The first principle of atheism is purposelessness. That is not a very controversial or unusual thing for me to point out. Most atheists accept this.
I feel I must contradict this erroneous statement. The first principle of atheism is godlessness. This only equates to purposelessness if you believe that purpose can only come from a god, and I think you will find that there are plenty of atheists who don’t believe any such thing.

Some atheists believe in dragons (I’m sure there must be at least one ). Point being the fact that an atheist might believe something does not mean that such belief is rationally consistent with atheism.

 

[Slowlearner]

What nonsense. Pain is real, pleasure is real. There needs to be no “greater” meaning - which is just another undefined category. Significance is whatever one feels significant. Why is that so hard to understand?

R Daneel, am I correct that you posit that each individual is the sole arbiter of what is, or is not, significant to him or her?

If so, a question for you, can what a person considers significant change? In other words, something that is significant today may be irrelevant tomorrow?

 

[Slowlearner]

Going back a bit, but I offer this, R Daneel, so that our discussion might be more fruitful.

It is not consistent with the facts.

 

[Slowlearner]

Atheism does not merely propose godlessness, but it proposes no supernatural order, no life after death and therefore no final judgement.

The end of life, in the atheistic model, is nothing.

I’ll just repeat Dr. Provine’s comment (you might not have read it), and if you’re interested I can produce many more like this:

‘Let me summarize my views on what modern evolutionary biology tells us loud and clear … There are no gods, no purposes, no goal-directed forces of any kind. There is no life after death. When I die, I am absolutely certain that I am going to be dead. That’s the end for me. There is no ultimate foundation for ethics, no ultimate meaning to life, and no free will for humans, either.’
Provine, W.B., Origins Research 16(1), p.9, 1994.

Let’s look at that.
He says, it is “loud and clear”. It’s not a subtle message – it’s obvious. This is non-controversial. Atheist scholars have known this, taught and explained this for a very long time.

He then says there is “no ultimate meaning to life”.

That simply follows logically. The ultimate state of life is nothing. Therefore, there can be no measurement, assessment, reasoning, philosophizing or evaluating about the ultimate end of anyone’s life. It is nothing.

That is what it means when we say “there is no ultimate purpose”.

reggieM, thank you for continuing to teach me. I wonder if there is another argument that the atheist viewpoint provides no basis for any purpose, significance or meaning – even on the individual level. Does the following make sense? Any sources I could read that elaborate on this?

• atheists posit that there is no God
• without a God or supernatural order, there is no greater meaning, purpose, or truth (I know that humanist atheists would disagree, but they are operating on faith, not reason, but just don’t admit it)
• with no greater meaning, purpose, or truth, each individual becomes his own truth (relativism)

But, as I’ve been asserting, I don’t think an individual can create his own meaning, purpose, or truth because:

• an individual’s conception of his own meaning, purpose, or truth is is a result of his creation (genetics or nature) and his environmental experience (nurture)
• as an individual’s experiences change, his views of his personal meaning, purpose, or truth changes
• without an external reference point, the relativist is completely reactive to his environment and his meaning, purpose, and truth are not his own, but those created by both his nature and nurture.

Lastly, I think that in addition to being trivial, the argument that a relativist can have purpose in avoiding pain and seeking pleasure does not logically address the concept of purpose or significance. My dogs are quite adept at seeking pleasure (they love to have their ears scratched and bellies rubbed) and avoiding pain (they know I’ll smack their nose if they try to jump on table and eat my dinner). Animals, including humans, instinctively seek pleasure and to avoid pain. For an animal to act consistently with it’s basic instincts is not an action with meaning or purpose. Such actions are simply in conformity with physical laws, no different than an apple falling to the earth. For purpose or meaning to exist, we must be taking about more than following basic animal instincts.

 

[aperture]

• as an individual’s experiences change, his views of his personal meaning, purpose, or truth changes

If your trying to say that atheism precludes a firm, enduring belief that certain things are right or wrong, well, that’s rubbish. There are many (for better or worse) moralist atheists.

 

[R_Daneel]

R Daneel, am I correct that you posit that each individual is the sole arbiter of what is, or is not, significant to him or her?

Of course.

If so, a question for you, can what a person considers significant change? In other words, something that is significant today may be irrelevant tomorrow?

Obviously. Just think about it.

 

[R_Daneel]

It would be helpful that when you make assertions about facts, you offer some facts as examples of what you baldly assert. The proposition at question is whether there is “individual meaning or significance.” Perhaps the facts you refer to are that people have feelings of perceived significance. However, the fact that people may feel that they have individual significance does not prove it from metaphysical or philosophic standpoint.

The mentioned “metaphysical or philosophic standpoint” is bogus and irrelevant if it is not applicable to the individual. And the “percieved” significance is the significance for them. No one is qualified to set up a value system for someone else. This is simply trivial.

Are you not interested in the arguments that learned people have made the effort to write. reggieM has posted several references.

As an amplification, yes. As an argument, no. This would be argument from authority, which is a common fallacy.

 

[Sair]

Some atheists believe in dragons (I’m sure there must be at least one ). Point being the fact that an atheist might believe something does not mean that such belief is rationally consistent with atheism.

Well, that depends upon the context in which you use the term ‘dragon’ - if you mean large firebreathing reptiles with wings and various numbers of limbs and - in some conceptions - superhuman intelligence and even psychic powers, then I’m pretty sure most atheists would be appropriately sceptical; there are, however, certain species of lizards that are commonly referred to as dragons - and we have plenty of evidence of their existence

As for holding beliefs that are consistent with atheism…well, the only defining feature of atheism is a lack of belief in any deities. That’s it. That’s what a-theism means, plain and simple. Many of us also disbelieve in supernatural entities altogether, but it is certainly very possible to be an atheist and still find rational justification for believing in such things as souls and a spiritual ‘realm’ of some kind. Ask your friendly neighbourhood Buddhist, and I’m sure they would be happy to explain their beliefs to you.