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MindOverMatter
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Then why did you post this?
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Sair
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I may have addressed this one already, but I’ll try and do so as succinctly as possible, for the sake of clarity. I believe ‘goodness’ is both subjective and objective. By which I mean that there are things that tend to be objectively beneficial to living creatures, humans included. However, it is possible for those things to be achieved in a manner that is not beneficial to others, so the achievement of them cannot then be considered ‘good’ in a subjective sense. If, however, there is benefit everyone involved, or at least no harm, then the achievement of objectively beneficial ends can be considered subjectively good. Love is a subjective experience, and its details are different for everyone who experiences it, but it is the accumulation of similar processes in the body for every individual. The processes that make us feel love are then objective, while the experience is subjective.
Where I seemed to be having the major disagreement, in particular with Tonyrey, was about the idea that the concepts and experiences we call ‘goodness’ and ‘love’ are independent entities existing on some plane apart from sentient beings. I don’t think it’s possible to speak of them in such a context.
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MindOverMatter
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You said that it is completely rational to seek happiness. Happiness to me is the fulfillment of ones existential, emotional, and moral situation. It is to be completely secure and absolutely fulfilled as a person. This means that are beliefs must conform to that pursuit. But in a material world such as ours, a world that can take things away as much as it can give, it is in this world that you seek a happiness that is fleeting and is ultimately not fulfilling in so far as our existential/emotional and moral situation. Thus you are irrational, because you hold a naturalist belief, which forces us in to a situation where our happiness cannot be ultimately fulfilled, since we are merely organisms seeking tolerant situations and sensory stimuli, inventing meaning & hope when we believe there is none; living for nothing much and inventing fantasy about how wonderful we are as individuals.
I seek a happiness that is by definition ultimately and eternally fulfilling of everything i am and can possibly be, existentially, emotionally, and morally; and you can have the same. Belief in God is the most positive expression of humanities hope. Atheism is its most negative. God is the most positive expression of love because it is in God that love is fulfilled and is eternal. Atheism is negative because it robs us of objective meaning purpose and value and the fulfillment of those things which is eternal heaven; these things are the most fulfilling truths that a human being have. Atheism exposes us to an ontological state that is eternally insecure fleeting and fall of nothing but death and the mistaken grandeur of human beings. That’s a living tragedy. A love that is finite cannot give ultimate personal fulfillment to a being that needs eternal love. Belief in God is the most natural expression of human nature because it is only an objective God that can ultimately fulfill human. But you choose not to to place your hope in God. You have given up hope. Why? Your argument boils down to to the following, “look how wonderful i am because i am stronger then a christian with crutch! I am better because i can bare to live in a meaningless purposeless world”. But you are seeking glory where there really is none. You seek meaning where there is meaninglessness and then you have the audacity to ridicule Christians. You are not serious about the existential situation that we find our selves. For what ever reason, your are taking life for granted.
Do you really think its okay for an intelligent moral and emotionally mature person to bring children in to a world full of potential horror, disease and the inevitable despair of death. It seems to me that you are making excuses for something that’s inexcusable. It would be different if you could offer them heaven; but you can’t. There is nothing that you can offer a child that’s not going to be taken away from them, and there is nothing you can give them that will fulfill their existence. You are merely imposing your subjective desire and godless hope on children with the excuse that you want to make their lives good. It might feel good to give love to children, but it is ultimately a selfish act to bring a child in to the world and teach them atheism. What kind blind arrogance tells us that we have the right, if you cannot fulfill their existence? You are not living in the real world, you are fantasizing and yet you have the arrogance to ridicule those who seek faith?
However there is hope for children in God. God is heaven and eternal fulfillment; and if that is true then i want to exist no matter what suffering i have to go through because God is that which is good for me.
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MindOverMatter
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We experience the universe subjectively. You can’t pick and choose as you please.
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Sair
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Quite simply because instead of taking my post in the spirit it was meant - as me backing off and giving you the chance to calm down and regroup - you immediately used it to accuse me of having no argument. Since you appeared to have recovered yourself enough to blithely commit such an act of intellectual dishonesty, I assumed you were no longer ‘down’.
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Sair
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Going to have to take this one paragraph by paragraph, I think, since I don’t get enough characters per post to deal with it all at once.
From my point of view, the belief in an unprovable god and an unverifiable afterlife can have the opposite effect from what you feel it has. It seems to me that there is a lot at stake, to be gambled on the possibility that these notions are correct. The world is the way it is, whether that is because there’s a god who thought this was the best possible world to create, or whether it just is that way because it is. One way or another, we have to live in it, and make the best we can of it. The difference lies in whether we believe that ‘making the best of it’ should be done in view of attaining a spiritual heaven after we die, or in view of making the life we know we have as happy as we can while we can - the ‘make hay while the sun shines’ approach, if you like.
Happiness, as I understand it, is a journey rather than a destination. I don’t expect to be blissful at every turn. Nor do I expect that at some point I’m going to sit back and say, “I have achieved happiness, now I can stop”. Happiness is born of action, not passivity. I’m not certain what you understand by fulfilment, but I doubt it comes from resting on your haunches and letting happiness just wash over you. If, however, at the end of my life, I can look back and say that I worked towards happiness for myself and others in the best way I knew, that by being alive I made a positive difference, however small, to the world, then I can’t honestly say that I need anything more than that.
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Sair
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I’m not sure where you get the idea that I’m taking life for granted, or that I am giving up hope. There is nothing in any of my posts that actually suggests either of these things, so I can only conclude that you are putting words in my mouth (figuratively speaking, of course).
It is a widespread misconception that atheism is a negative worldview. I used to think so myself, until I stepped aside from old assumptions and actually thought about the implications of a godless universe. Yes, it certainly can be depressing to think there is nothing for us after we die, but if you think about it realistically, if our consciousness ceases with death (and thus far we have no evidence to suggest otherwise), we ourselves will not be aware of any loss once we have died. But knowing that life is finite lends it a preciousness and vibrance that can be lost if you treat this life as merely a prelude to the next.
If I seek meaning from life in a purposeless universe, it is meaning that is intimately bound up with my own life and the lives of those close to me, and indeed anyone upon whom my life can have an effect. Just to deflect any accusations of arrogance here, I can think of plenty of people who have had profound effects upon my life, so this is a meaning that can be applied to all people. I can define the meaning of my life in terms of the tangible and experiential effects I have on others. If this is an imaginary imposition, it is certainly no more so that the claims of religious faith to have a monopoly on the meaning of life. Thus far, I have seen no more substantial offering in that regard than, “the purpose of life is to attain heaven” - which is as much as to admit that this life is not the point of our existence, even though this is the only verifiable existence we have. How exactly does this bestow meaning upon us?
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Sair
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I was not necessarily questioning your children diatribe. Merely wondering where in my posts you had found the impetus for it.
In any case, I do believe it is a selfish act to bring children into the world. It is the propagation of our species - perhaps at the expense of others of both our own and other species - and there are plenty of people who do it with little regard for the life their child will lead. That said, I think that if one is rationally convinced that they could give a child the foundations to lead a happy life, then having children is a commendable choice. I don’t believe, as you seem to, that happiness in this life is fundamentally impossible.
There are unfortunately large numbers of children who are not brought up to seek happiness in this life. Still more, perhaps, who are not born into circumstances that make it very possible to pursue happiness. However, having been brought up Catholic, it is my sincere belief that religious indoctrination from an early age does a great disservice to a child.
What your last comment is saying, essentially, is that humans are incapable of being fully human without a superhuman god. How exactly is that rational?
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tonyrey
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Reasoning and creativity are not just concepts but also activities: they certainly depend on sentient entities but not on brain processes. Physical constants are not just concepts but also mathematical facts about physical events regardless of whether we exist or not.
Most philosophers and scientists agree that there is no reason to attribute necessity to our universe - or to regard it as the only possible universe, as the multiverse theory illustrates. If we fail to consider these possibilities we are giving our universe an absoluteness it does not possess which inevitably distorts our view of reality - like those thought the earth is the centre of the universe. It pays to have an open mind!
Rational agents cannot so easily equated with brains. How can a lump of tangible tissue discover intangible facts, philosophical principles, legal presumptions, mathematical proportions and logical relations? You are leaping from the concrete to the abstract as if there is no gulf between the two. The mind-body problem has preoccupied philosophers for well over 2000 years. It is hardly likely to have such an easy solution.
I have suggested nothing of the kind. In the light of the above and other considerations it seems to me extremely unlikely. Your discourteous implication that I deflect questions is merely a red herring which does precisely nothing to further the discussion…
You have neglected a far more important fact. Our ability to imagine is also rooted in what we observe happening within ourselves… which is an occupational hazard for the materialist!
Before hypnosis was discovered most people thought it was impossible to control our body by the power of suggestion - let alone the thoughts and actions of others. Those who did were considered cranks or imbeciles. I believe we grossly underestimate the power of the mind. We may well be able to develop other abilities like telepathic communication, healing physical and mental disorders - and possibly even some degree of telecontrol. There is plenty of evidence that some of these feats have already been achieved by gifted individuals - which, as so often, is rejected by cynics, sceptics and materialists.
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jkiernan56
Guest
Lets stay on objective reality - things that are good for all human beings (regardless of subjective experience).- most importantly the objective reality of love.
If you acknowledge the reality of objective good for all, then do you acknowledge there is such a thing as objective evil ? (ie - realities that are detrimental to all human beings).
Please try to stay on the level of objective reality if you decide to respond.
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MindOverMatter
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There is nothing to lose and everything to gain.
A True fulfilling objective happiness is an eternal state (not static) within a being that fulfills us emotionally, personally, and existentially. It is not just one or many fleeting moments of sensory pleasure. To acquire such a state of being, a person has to make a conscious decision to enter in to an eternal relationship with the objective good (God), in order to be united with that which completes them existentially. This requires them to serve the greatest good which is eternal love and all that which love reveals . If one does not serve eternal love, they cannot be fulfilled in eternal Love. Love is an action, not just a feeling. As imperfect as i am, a true objective fulfillment of the human person is that which i seek, and it is what i believe to be in the nature that is God and the revelation of Jesus Christ.
The subjective version of happiness that you are speaking about is fleeting and imperfect, since it is reliant on imperfect people and an imperfect world. That you have settled for that which is merely tolerable, doesn’t tell me that you have a rational belief, but rather that you have given up on God for the sake of something else in the world; something that doesn’t objectively fulfill us, but perhaps gives service to the subjective fulfillment of our God complex (our desire to be God). The root of all war and strife lies in our desire to be Gods, and it just so happens that some of the human Gods realize, given their natural ability to reason, that it would be more practical if they worked together. People have deceived themselves into thinking that there is some kind of fulfillment in a naturalist worldview, thus they ignore their natural inclination to serve the greatest ontological good for the subjective inventions of their imaginations; something that is ultimately imperfect. The problem is we cannot be God and we are all going to die, and this is why atheism is irrational; quite simply because the belief itself does not fulfill our objective nature.
There is only two reasons that one would be an atheist. They have been brainwashed in to believing that naturalism is the only logically consistent system of thought and thus it is impossible to believe in God because Gods existence is logically impossible (strong Atheism), or they want to define their own existence free of any eternal objective law or plan for their lives, accept those enforced by human society, and the only way they can do that is to deny Gods existence and thus all the objective value that is in the world. For some reason you think this is a rational decision. But I don’t see it, sorry.
Perhaps this is not my definition of happiness? Perhaps you should stick to my objective definition, rather then that self glorious fantasy you keep telling your self to help you wake up in the morning. That is just a thought.
You have done nothing but glorify your self, but it is meaningless, and you have offered life nothing but a fantasy. In the end, everything we say and do amounts to nothing, and our so called search for happiness and glory will amount to nothing. There is nothing rational about atheism, since it robs us of that which fulfills our humanity objectively; it ultimately robs us of a true objective and existentially fulfilling happiness. Thus a rational person whom has desires and knows that there is no definitive evidence against Gods existence, will refuse atheism in order to preserve the objective value of their humanity. Belief in God represents the pinnacle of humanities desire for the greatest good. But in order for us to have the greatest good we must sacrifice our self serving attitudes and learn to live for the greater good of others for this is the nature that is love. Some of us, while we find that there are some goods that we are happy to serve, realize that there are many sacrifices that does not fit well with our self serving attitude, and so some of us make a conscious decision to become atheists, denying the objective value of God.
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MindOverMatter
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We are aware of it now. It is in human nature to desire life and happiness and thus it is rational for them to avoid death for the objective and greater good that is an existentially fulfilled life. We are not fulfilled by death and that is why we avoid it in the hope for something greater. If you wish to ignore the reality of life, go a head. But this is what it is to take life for granted. Ignorance is bliss as they say.
It depends on what it means for there to be a next life.
This is why you are irrational since there is obviously objective meaning in the universe. Love has an objective meaning. Good has an objective meaning. To be people is objectively meaningful and to degrade them is objectively wrong. Life has an objective meaning. You are in denial of these things, because it suits you to be in denial.
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Sair
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We may be talking at cross purposes when it comes to our definitions of ‘objective’ and ‘subjective’ here, but I’ll try and play along.
When speaking of objective realities, I prefer to do so in terms of benefit and detriment. It’s obvious that death and serious injury, for example, are detrimental to living things. It’s also obvious that things like nourishment, growth, reproduction and cooperation are beneficial to living things.
When speaking of ‘good’ and ‘evil’, I think, we are getting into the realm of subjective experience. To use an obvious example, Christians believe that Christ’s death was ‘good’, while it’s terribly apparent that it was detrimental to the person involved. By the same token, if we take the point of view of a terminally ill person, they may see ending their life as a good thing, or at least a preferable thing to lingering in intolerable suffering. Someone who thinks that goodness and evil are objective, immovable, universal imperatives might take the view that the person ought to linger, because ending one’s life is ‘objectively’ evil.
What I’m getting at here is that our subjective perceptions of benefit and detriment are what lead us to the concepts of goodness and evil. If we were not highly evolved apes with large, complex brains, we may not have been able to conceptualise goodness and evil, and be content with the fact that some things help us and other things harm us. When it comes to goodness and evil, we are not, in my view, dealing with objective, independently existing entities, but with collective consciousness of benefit and detriment.
I have no doubt that there are ample amounts of suffering and happiness in the world (the things that generally correspond to what we think of as ‘evil’ and ‘goodness’) but the point of these being subjective is that if there were no sentient creatures - subjects - to experience them, they would not exist on their own. According to my definition, that makes them subjective, regardless of how common such experiences are to sentient creatures.
How do you define what you call objective goodness and evil?
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jkiernan56
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Would you agree love (according to your earlier definition) between persons (human beings) is an OBJECTIVE good for the whole human race? What is good for one is good for all. It is a SUBJECTIVE good as well for those experiencing real human love.
Can you think of one thing that would be detrimental Objectively or Subjectively where there is real human love between persons (human beings)? I can’t, but if you could enlighten me …
I am trying to see if you and I agree on the Objective and Subjective “Good” of Love. Do you acknowledge the reality and goodness of love both objectively and subjectively. If so, then maybe you and I can continue this discussion …
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Sair
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Again, I’m not sure how you arrive at your interpretation of what I have thus far written. At what point am I ‘ignoring the reality of life’? Try as we might, none of us can avoid death in the long run, and I certainly don’t see my eventual death as a barrier to achieving an existentially fulfilled life while I am alive. I just don’t seek existential fulfilment in imaginary places, via the intervention of imaginary beings.
Again with the aggressive personal attack… (here’s a hint - you may want to refrain from calling people irrational, and focus on the ideas they express in their posts). In any case, what are all these objective meanings to which you refer? Love, goodness and our consciousness of being persons are all subjective experiences, no matter how universally they are shared. Empathy is also a subjective experience, but one that allows us to infer that others can feel as we do, thence to infer that it would be wrong for us to treat them in ways that we would not like to be treated. Without subjective experience, there would be no morality - only a collection of events and actions that just happened to be beneficial or detrimental. It is only our capacity to care that makes us moral creatures.
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Sair
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The kind of objectivity you seem to be asking me to acknowledge is not objectivity as I understand it. No matter how universally they are shared, experiences and perceptions to which we give the names of goodness and love only exist in relation to their subjects, which are sentient creatures. I’m not sure how my experience of love can have objective benefits for a person on the other side of the world whom I have never met, and of whose existence as an individual I am practically unaware. I may experience empathy and compassion, which may lead me to act in ways that may be beneficial to this hypothetical stranger, such as donating to an international aid organisation. That is a translation of subjective experience into objectively beneficial action (although the two remain distinct phenomena). This would be an action we would subjectively see as good, because it involves direct action to objectively benefit another.
That, however, is not the context in which I have seen many people on this forum speak of objective good, as something that exists independently of subjective experience. Without sentient creatures, without us, there would be no good, no evil, no love - they don’t exist apart from us. I will not be drawn into saying that goodness and love have an objective existence in their own right - to then be told that to acknowledge these things is to acknowledge God. It just doesn’t work that way.
The subjective experience of love can also have tangible benefits to the person, of course, in terms of the physiological effects that tend to accompany the emotional experience. And it is also reasonable to suppose that this is true of all people. So if you mean objective in that sense, then I agree. As to your question about objective or subjective detriment in the face of the human experience of love, I’m really not sure what you’re getting at with this question. Are you basically taking a roundabout route to saying ‘love conquers all’? Because I’m pretty sure it doesn’t. It can certainly make life a lot more pleasant, and hardship a lot more tolerable, and it can even provide us with motivation to overcome negative situations. However, I think it’s extremely naive to suppose that nothing can truly harm us if we feel love.
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Sair
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From my point of view, of course, the sentience of the entity is dependent upon brain activity. Nowhere is there any evidence that sentience occurs independently of brain activity.
What you are doing, whether you realise it or not, is employing a form of ‘god-of-the-gaps’ reasoning - you are essentially saying, “Clearly, the powers of the mind and human consciousness have no natural, physical explanation, therefore they must be supernatural and separate from our physical bodies.”Rational agents cannot so easily equated with brains. How can a lump of tangible tissue discover intangible facts, philosophical principles, legal presumptions, mathematical proportions and logical relations? You are leaping from the concrete to the abstract as if there is no gulf between the two. The mind-body problem has preoccupied philosophers for well over 2000 years. It is hardly likely to have such an easy solution.
You have neglected a far more important fact. Our ability to imagine is also rooted in what we observe happening within ourselves… which is an occupational hazard for the materialist!
Before hypnosis was discovered most people thought it was impossible to control our body by the power of suggestion - let alone the thoughts and actions of others. Those who did were considered cranks or imbeciles. I believe we grossly underestimate the power of the mind. We may well be able to develop other abilities like telepathic communication, healing physical and mental disorders - and possibly even some degree of telecontrol. There is plenty of evidence that some of these feats have already been achieved by gifted individuals - which, as so often, is rejected by cynics, sceptics and materialists.
There are problems with this approach. Firstly, it’s not at all clear that there is no physical explanation for conscious experience. We have no obvious reason to suppose that the causes of these phenomena will not one day yield to scientific enquiry. Secondly, if these things were supernatural in origin, how would we know? How could it be discovered and verified? Internal awareness, contrary to your assertion, presents no problem to the materialist, who is quite capable of attributing ideas, emotions, mood swings, etc, to the physiology of the brain ( for one thing, this is why antidepressant drugs work - they affect the chemical reactions taking place in the brain, which in turn affects subjective experience).
You rightly say that sceptics - who prefer to suspend their credulity until they have solid, persuasive evidence - dismiss many reports of psychic powers, telepathy, telekinesis and so forth. And why, I would ask, should they not? Why should not these things be held up to the same rigorous standards of proof that apply in a scientific context? The assumption that they are supernatural actions does not excuse them from being verified as such. Remember that professional illusionists make their living by fooling people’s senses. How are we to decide whether claims of psychic abilities are more than just smoke and mirrors?
Having said that, I am well aware that many abilities of human brains - and by extension, minds - are only just beginning to be discovered and understood. We still have a long way to go before we have ourselves figured out. However, slotting in a supernatural ‘explanation’ doesn’t really help us to understand what’s going on here.
You seem to feel that there is a yawning gulf between the physical structures of our brains and what we experience as consciousness, thought, imagination, etc. I have no difficulty with the notion that these things are the result of physical and chemical interactions in the brain. To return to the analogy of computers, the text, images and movement we see on the screen bears no practical resemblance to the millions of tiny transistors that store all the information, or to the components that process it. Yet we know there is a direct causal relationship here. Consider how vastly more complex is the human brain compared to the average computer. Are you seriously convinced that such a sophisticated biological machine could not naturally give rise to conscious self-awareness?
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jkiernan56
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Sair,
'Oh what a tangled web we weave … ’
Universal human love is a “GOOD” common to the whole human race - no matter how you want to slice and dice it - objectively or subjectively. Please do not waste any more of my time with any of your BS. You can’t even acknowledge the nose on your face …
“Deception is a false reality imposed on a true reality. It is a fragile and complex weaving of truth, half truths’, lies and lies of omission. To successfully deceive another or several people, one must be skilled in the art of deception. To create a deception worthy of belief one must be able to create plausible details that help create the illusion of truth. It is the details that people listen to and remember and the one deceiving is obligated to remember these detail in order to avoid having the lie exposed. The problem with remembering the lies we tell is that all people are basically good and we tend to forget the bad things we’ve done. In order to successfully perpetuate deception, the liar must be willing to live that lie when necessary. This becomes the tangled web we weave, especially when first we practice to deceive.”
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Sair
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To my way of thinking, universal human love does not exist as a tangible, uniform, ever-present source that we can tap into whenever we need it. It’s subjective experience, plain and simple, that affects individuals emotionally and physiologically, and communities when translated into action.
Theists often talk of an objective ‘good’ existing apart from human subjectivity - indeed, apart from humans altogether. I have attempted to clearly state the reasons for my suspicion of this claim. By all means, speak of objective benefits, but what we define as ‘goodness’ is a far more nebulous concept, far more subject to change than our physiological needs.
This parody of a conversation has gone beyond ridiculous. It doesn’t seem from my reading of any of your posts that you’ve made an honest attempt to understand where I’m coming from. If you had, you wouldn’t have bothered trying to get me to admit that love is objective.
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jkiernan56
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Give me a break … the goodness of love will never change … regardless of all other needs … it is our greatest need as human beings …
Yes, I am trying to get you to acknowledge the reality of Objective Love … because if you look around you … and take your head out of the sand … you would realize the greatest Evil around you … is the poverty of Love … when humans DO NOT love each other … the devastation of lives all around you … and the terrible poverty of loneliness … and selfishness … and greed …
but then again … your subjective experience of the world might differ from MILLIONS of others … i realize that when you have your head in the sand … or up another place where there is no sunshine … I can understand why you might not be able to acknowledge the REALITY OF EVIL … because you can’t acknowledge Objective Good. Evil only has meaning in context of Goodness. Without the ability to acknowledge goodness, no wonder you have problems acknowledging the reality of evil as well. Didn’t they teach you in math class that the number ‘two’ comes after the number ‘one’? Ooops … that might not be true come to think of it … if you were upside down looking at those numbers … the number 1 would come after the number 2 … you aren’t hanging upside down are you? lol
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