Atheists 2

Conversations with Atheists -

page 2

From FZ to Alan Myatt

>> However, as I read the book it became quite clear that Smith has a world view and since he does, then he also believes in something. <<

Of course. But it depends on how you qualify "belief." I mean, I "believe" I exist. I could have been created in place along with everything/everyone else along with a bogus personal history last Tuesday, but I think it's safe to assume that such a notion is untenable in a practical sense.

However, when it comes to gods/goddesses, atheists simply lack belief in those and consider them human inventions from a pre scientific age when god belief (general belief in the supernatural) served to explain nature.

Now, by current standards such explanations would not be offered, and so we no longer "explain" storms as a result of angering Poseidon. In fact, as scientific knowledge has accumulated, the "God of the gaps" has had an increasingly difficult time finding a gap in which to demonstrate his alleged puissance.

>> That is he has not fallen into either absolute skepticism or solipsism (if there is indeed a difference). <<

Well, there's certainly a difference in meaning of the two words. I'm not sure what you mean by "absolute skepticism" though. Do you mean something like nihilism?

>> So since he believes that he knows something, and since he defends an epistemology ( in his case Ayn Rand's objectivism if I remember right) then he quite clearly has presuppositions or axioms on which his system rests. <<

Well, yeah. Rand starts with "existence exists" or something like that, IIRC. I suppose that's a presupposition or axiom, but it always seemed kinda obvious to me.<G> But I suppose you gotta start somewhere.

However, while objectivism is pretty clearly atheistic in nature, it does not by itself define atheism. Again, with the qualification IIRC, as it's been a while since my fling with objectivism and I don't recall all the details.

>> And here I would suggest that perhaps you have missed the point of my previous post. My point is that, in general, all atheists have a world view in which God is either explicitly denied or held to be irrelevant. <<

Generally, the latter. Although that too requires a bit of qualification. God is irrelevant to my understanding of the universe and to my daily conduct. However, I live in a god-believing culture and the god-beliefs of others may be relevant to my safety.<G>

In Free Thought section a while back, we had a crashing bore who kept insisting on a distinction between what he called "Type 1" and "Type 2" atheism, sometimes known as "hard" and "soft" atheism. Type 1 made a positive assertion that god(s) do not exist, while Type 2 was more along the lines of a disbelief in god(s) from the lack of supporting evidence for the existence of such beings.

It was hard to take him seriously in his daily harangues because he was merely restating the obvious.<G>

>> In any case, it is a world view that does not require the existence of God or gods. My experience has been that this usually turns out to be philosophical materialism of some sort.<<

Yup.

>> And while there are various ways of constructing such a world view, it still requires, as all world views do, an epistemology that allows the corresponding ontology of the system to be knowable. <<

Yup -- subject to the proviso that knowledge of the system's ontology is always tentative and subject to change with additional evidence.

>> Now, my interest is in understanding what the basic underlying assumptions of such an epistemology are in any given case. <<

Okay.

>> To deny that one has such assumptions is simply to assert that one believes one has knowledge for no reason at all. This is an option that some take in our age of irrationalism, . . .<<

Ain't it da troof!<G> However, I would question the general applicability of "age of irrationalism." For example, there seems to be a class of what someone once called "technopeasants." These people use the fruits of science (technology) without the slightest understanding of the underlying principles involved. For them, flipping a light switch is not all that far removed from a gesture that invokes a "light demon" in the bulb.

I would agree that we live in an age of irrationalism relative to available knowledge. It never ceases to amaze me that as the 20th century draws to a close, there are still a substantial number of people who "believe in" magical things like crystals and healing prayer. I mean, it may make them feel good to assert these claims, but they have no substantiating empirical evidence.

>> So, I would be interested in knowing what your basic world view is, how you justify knowledge, what are your basic presuppositions concerning epistemology... for starters. After all, if you atheists want us to give up belief in God, or at least to consider your viewpoint intellectually viable, then you will need to offer us a rational alternative., <<

Mmmm, well, this atheist takes a live and let live position. I have no problem with your god-belief. I don't share it, but I understand that it is emotionally important to you. I certainly have neither intent nor reasonable hope that I could convince you to give up your god-belief. Religious memes surround themselves with strong protective memes to insure survival, and direct assaults against those memes merely activate them and make them stronger.

Alan Myatt to FZ

>> It never ceases to amaze me that as the 20th century draws to a close, there are still a substantial number of people who "believe in" magical things like crystals and healing prayer. I mean, it may make them feel good to assert these claims, but they have no substantiating empirical evidence.<<

Indeed, it never ceases to amaze me either. Thanks for you irenic and thoughtful reply. Now concerning the last statement here, my question for the atheist, at least most of the ones I've met anyway, is why should there be a need for any empirical evidence? How is it that empirical knowledge is justified in a naturalistic universe anyway? What are the presuppositions underlying the demand that empiricism is the final court of appeal? Are those assumptions valid? I don't know if you hold this view, but most atheists I have encountered seem to be in the empiricist camp.

Cordially,
Alan

From Alan Myatt to FZ

>>Of course. But it depends on how you qualify "belief." I mean, I "believe" I exist. I could have been created in place along with everything/everyone else along with a bogus personal history last Tuesday, but I think it's safe to assume that such a notion is untenable in a practical sense.<<

It may not be practical, but based on empiricism, how do you know it isn't true?

>>consider them human inventions from a prescientific age when god belief (general belief in the supernatural) served to explain nature. <

This theory was favored by the early sociologists, Durkheim, Marx, as well as by many anthropologists. Popular atheism picked up on this as a way of explaining away religious belief. The problem with this construction is that on an empirical basis there no conceivable way to prove such an hypothesis. It is a necessary move for the atheist to make, but it can never be more than a dogma. Durkheim's scheme that God is a projection of humanity's underlying reverence for society is aesthetically interesting, but there is nothing in his analysis of the religion of "primitive" Australian tribes that demonstrates such an historical development.

>> as scientific knowledge has accumulated<<

This seems to indicate that your system includes (or depends on) the belief that there is such a thing as scientific knowledge. We will come back to this point later.

>>Well, there's certainly a difference in meaning of the two words. I'm not sure what you mean by "absolute skepticism" though. Do you mean something like nihilism?<<

Yes, there is a difference, although practically they seem to me to be in the same boat together. Nihilism is a bit more radical I think, but it seems to me to be the only place left for the absolute skeptic to go. What I am referring to is one who believes that no knowledge is possible because he recognizes that on the basis of pure empiricism no knowledge can be justified.

>> But I suppose you gotta start somewhere.<<

Yeah, that's the whole point. Everyone has to start somewhere. But not all starting points are of equal value.

>>Yup -- subject to the proviso that knowledge of the system's ontology is always tentative and subject to change with additional evidence.<<

I'm not sure what to make of this. If one's ontology presupposes that the universe is all there is and that all evidence is thus evidence about the universe, then no amount of evidence could cause one to change it, since the only evidence that could possibly do so would have to come from outside of the universe. But no such evidence would ever be allowed into consideration because by definition no such evidence could exist, since there is no "outside of the universe". It is difficult for me to imagine then, under what circumstances even the staunchest empiricist/atheist could allow the fundamental assumption that the universe is all there is to be challenged by the evidence. He would always find a naturalistic explanation (no matter how implausible) because he has set up the rules of the discussion in such a way that that is the only type of explanation possible. This excludes the possibility of, say, the Christian God right from the start. This is one of the problems of the typical demand of the atheist that the Christian present evidence for God. The atheist wants the Christian to play his game according to his rules and with a stacked deck. I prefer to challenge the atheist's rules at the outset. Before such evidence can be entertained it is necessary to deal with other issues of a more basic nature.

>> I would question the general applicability of "age of irrationalism."<<

It seems to me to fit. Existentialism, pragmatism, postmodernism, drug culture, New Age mysticism, cults ... the 20th century is replete with philosophies and philosophers who deny the possibility of rational knowledge in any traditional sense. Now we have folks like Rorty who tell us just to forget about epistemology and get on with life. It is exactly this type of irrational leap of blind faith that I am opposed to.

>> substantiating empirical evidence.<<

Part of the problem is exactly what counts as evidence. Beyond that, one first has to establish that empirical evidence is capable of supplying knowledge in the first place. More on this later.

>Mmmm, well, this atheist takes a live and let live position. I have no problem with your god-belief.<<

Unfortunately, I cannot say that I have no problem with your lack of belief. Not that I would ever want to deny you the right to believe whatever you want. Conversion by coercion is no conversion at all and I am totally opposed to forcing one's beliefs on someone else. But my problem is, if you are right and I am wrong, then when we both die we will simply slip into oblivion with our last breath. However, if I am correct and you are not, then you face a most unpleasant future as you will stand before God and give an account for your sins without the benefit of Christ's sacrifice to atone for them. Personally, I do not want to see that happen to you and as I am convinced that Jesus is your only hope, you will understand why I at least have to press the issue to some degree.

>> I don't share it, but I understand that it is emotionally important to you. I certainly have neither intent nor reasonable hope that I could convince you to give up your god-belief. Religious memes surround themselves with strong protective memes to insure survival, and direct assaults against those memes merely activate them and make them stronger.<<

Well, it is emotionally important to me, but don't imagine for a minute that I believe in God primarily for emotional reasons. I believe because I am convinced that it is true and that it is the only rational world view. To not believe would require a leap into the irrational that I am unwilling to make. There are certainly other reasons for believing but they are not sufficient to sustain faith in something that is not true.

By the way, you might want to consider that there are emotional reasons why one would want to be an atheist rather than a Christian. The Christian God is not just a warm fuzzy, a teddy bear that you clutch in the night when you are afraid of the dark. He is, in fact, very awesome and threatening. Even in the life of the believer there are many times when it would be easier in a sense to simply forget it. When I find myself convicted of sin and in need of changing, then belief can be quite inconvenient. Passing from unbelief to belief requires total repentance, a complete capitulation of one's will, one's entire being, to the sovereign will of an infinite Being. It means that you no longer get to determine for yourself the direction of your life. God does. It means that you submit to what he says is right and that your opinions must conform to his, unconditionally. It means that you give up your autonomy. Now the average unbeliever does not want to do this. He imagines that he will become an automaton and have to sacrifice his mind. Images of mindless fundamentalist, cult members, come to mind and he gets frightened by this. (I would say this is a distorted image) Also, he will have to give up his idea of what is moral in favor of what God says. He will have to admit that he is a sinner and that he deserves God's judgment and punishment. He can no longer be a freethinker if that is taken to mean free to believe anything you want.

R. C. Sproul wrote an interesting book, If There is a God, Why Are There Atheists. I think every atheist ought to read it. He takes the old Freudian argument that God is a wish projection of the believer who wants a fatherly figure to comfort and protect him and turns it back on the atheist. Perhaps atheism is the wish projection of the unbeliever who, at all costs, wants to avoid being confronted with the reality of a God who is judge and who demands repentance for sin. In fact, given the nature of the biblical God, I think it is highly dubious to suppose that he would have ever been invented for any of the reasons proposed by Freud or anyone else. But then as I said above, such an hypothesis is pure speculation anyway.

Certainly there are many benefits to being a Christian. In particular I would assert that being a critical thinker is an essential aspect of developing a Christian mind. I just wanted to point out that the God the Christian serves is not one who exists for the comfort of the believer. Very often he forces us right out of our comfort zone and into experiences that we would not choose otherwise. But he is good. And his way is the best way.

Alan

From FZ to Alan Myatt

>> It may not be practical, but based on empiricism, how do you know it isn't true? <<

Do you think I'm worried about whether it's true? How could I tell the difference, whether it is or isn't? (1)

>> The problem with this construction is that on an empirical basis there no conceivable way to prove such an hypothesis. <<

Nope, don't need to prove it.

>> It is a necessary move for the atheist to make, but it can never be more than a dogma. <<

Nope, it's just a reasonable assumption, given the evidence. (2)

>> Yes, there is a difference, although practically they seem to me to be in the same boat together. Nihilism is a bit more radical I think, but it seems to me to be the only place left for the absolute skeptic to go. What I am referring to is one who believes that no knowledge is possible because he recognizes that on the basis of pure empiricism no knowledge can be justified. <<

Say, you wouldn't be one of the presuppositionalists, wouldja? We had one of 'em in here a while back and he made just that argument. But it always seemed a bit of a straw man, since I don't know of any absolute skeptics.

>> I'm not sure what to make of this. If one's ontology presupposes that the universe is all there is and that all evidence is thus evidence about the universe, then no amount of evidence could cause one to change it, since the only evidence that could possibly do so would have to come from outside of the universe. <<

and

>> But no such evidence would ever be allowed into consideration because by definition no such evidence could exist, since there is no "outside of the universe". <<

Well, y'see, you gotta show me something that you assert to be from outside the universe. The simple fact that its origins are unknown to me as yet doesn't immediately qualify it as from "outside the universe." (3)

Show me some "evidence" of something from "outside the universe" and then we can talk.<G>

>> It is difficult for me to imagine then, under what circumstances even the staunchest empiricist/atheist could allow the fundamental assumption that the universe is all there is to be challenged by the evidence. <<

Funny, I don't have any problem with it. Let's see some evidence first, and then we'll see if ya got a contender.

>> He would always find a naturalistic explanation (no matter how implausible) because he has set up the rules of the discussion in such a way that that is the only type of explanation possible. <<

What? I'm amazed that an intelligent man has any problem. First, when you say "(no matter how implausible), what are you talking about. Gimme a concrete fer'instance and I'll take a swing at it.

>> This excludes the possibility of, say, the Christian God right from the start. <<

Yeah, well, get him down here for a little chat and I might change my mind.

>> This is one of the problems of the typical demand of the atheist that the Christian present evidence for God. The atheist wants the Christian to play his game according to his rules and with a stacked deck. <<

That's not a stacked deck -- that's the same rules we operate under quite successfully in the non-religious life. Seems like it's only when the topic is religion that theists wanna have some "special" rules.

Say, did I ever tell ya about the dragon in my garage? Or the unicorn on the front lawn?

>> >> I would question the general applicability of "age of irrationalism."<< <<

>>It seems to me to fit. Existentialism, pragmatism, postmodernism, drug culture, New Age mysticism, cults ... the 20th century is replete with philosophies and philosophers who deny the possibility of rational knowledge in any traditional sense. <<

Existentialism? Think you could find ten people out of a hundred chosen at random who had ever heard the word existentialism, let alone what it's about? I dunno about pragmatism, cos it always seemed to make pretty good sense to me. Postmodernism, well, it's likely a reaction of those who went overboard on what they thought science could do for them -- when they didn't understand science anyway. And when science didn't fulfill their expectations they got in a hissy fit and declared that nothing could be known.

I don't take them seriously, and they don't seem to have had much of an effect on the scientific end of psychology. Only the lit-crits still think postmodernism is the berries. Did you see the parody a physicist wrote using postmodern buzzwords, and got it published with great acclaim in one of their leading journals. I can't recall his name, but the postmods went into denial immediately, those who weren't angry at his "dishonesty."<G>

>> Now we have folks like Rorty who tell us just to forget about epistemology and get on with life. It is exactly this type of irrational leap of blind faith that I am opposed to. <<

Then, by golly, you don't have to do it. And rest assured I'll support your right not to.<G>

>> Part of the problem is exactly what counts as evidence. <<

Tell me about it. People around here have some funny ideas about what constitutes "evidence." For example, they think words from an old book are "evidence" for some scientific, empirical assertion they make. YE creationists are particularly bad about that.

>> Beyond that, one first has to establish that empirical evidence is capable of supplying knowledge in the first place. More on this later. <<

Hokay.

>> Unfortunately, I cannot say that I have no problem with your lack of belief. Not that I would ever want to deny you the right to believe whatever you want. Conversion by coercion is no conversion at all and I am totally opposed to forcing one's beliefs on someone else. <<

Yes, I know. The theistic meme wants company. No offense, but I know you think you have a Great Truth that you wish to share, and you must needs see as perversely intransigent (or intransigently perverse) those who don't buy into your Great Truth.

>> But my problem is, if you are right and I am wrong, then when we both die we will simply slip into oblivion with our last breath. However, if I am correct and you are not, then you face a most unpleasant future as you will stand before God and give an account for your sins without the benefit of Christ's sacrifice to atone for them. Personally, I do not want to see that happen to you and as I am convinced that Jesus is your only hope, you will understand why I at least have to press the issue to some degree. <<

BZZZZT! Pascal's Wager Alert. Secure all boarding hatches, security to your stations!<G>

Well, Alan, I don't want to seem rude, but Pascal's Wager was a crock when he formulated it, and it's still a crock. (IMO, of course.)<G>

Y'see, if I'm right, I won't have wasted my time in pursuing the vision of something that never existed except in the minds of its followers. If I'm wrong, given what their Bible (as well as the certainty-embracers here) say about their god, it looks like I can follow all the rules and still get roasted. Now, if you guys can't even agree on points of doctrine when you all claim to have a hammerlock on "Absolute Truth," why should I take any of you seriously?

>> Well, it is emotionally important to me, but don't imagine for a minute that I believe in God primarily for emotional reasons. <<

Which brings up an interesting point. Antonio Damasio, in Descartes Error, points out that while the traditional Western view has been of the duality of reason and emotion (with reason the superior), they're just two aspects of cognition. Without emotion, you can be even crazier than someone displaying excessive emotion.

What we call emotion is what causes us to make a choice when we come to a choice point.

>> I believe because I am convinced that it is true and that it is the only rational world view. To not believe would require a leap into the irrational that I am unwilling to make. <<

Well, that's a problem. You keep saying that non-theism is irrational, but I haven't seen an adequate case for that yet.

>> By the way, you might want to consider that there are emotional reasons why one would want to be an atheist rather than a Christian. The Christian God is not just a warm fuzzy, a teddy bear that you clutch in the night when you are afraid of the dark. He is, in fact, very awesome and threatening. <<

So you say, so you say.<G> No cosmic Mama, no celestial Papa, no Santa Claus. I truly feel bereft.<G>

>> When I find myself convicted of sin and in need of changing, then belief can be quite inconvenient. <<

Interesting. When I find myself discovering that I have done someone a wrong, I try to make amends and be more careful in the future.

>> Passing from unbelief to belief requires total repentance, a complete capitulation of one's will, one's entire being, to the sovereign will of an infinite Being. It means that you no longer get to determine for yourself the direction of your life. God does. <<

Well, the problem here is that I don't know what God wants -- and I strongly distrust those who say they know what God wants -- too often from voice in their heads. I think they just think they know what God wants, and it's all internally manufacutered.

>> It means that you submit to what he says is right and that your opinions must conform to his, unconditionally. <<

Nope, I think I'll just keep my "reasoning mind" as B calls it.<G> As I said, everytime I hear someone say that he knows what god wants, I think he's just blowing smoke. Self-deluded smoke, but smoke nonetheless.

>> It means that you give up your autonomy. Now the average unbeliever does not want to do this. He imagines that he will become an automaton and have to sacrifice his mind. <<

Despite being a very intelligent fellow, Alan, you've convinced me that you do have to sacrifice one's mind from what you've written.

>> Images of mindless fundamentalist, cult members, come to mind and he gets frightened by this. (I would say this is a distorted image) <<

Oh, I realize the idiots are in the minority, and generate most of the publicity.

But you really ought to talk to atheists themselves more often and find out what they really think rather than what you think they think.

>> He can no longer be a freethinker if that is taken to mean free to believe anything you want. <<

Erm, some people doubtlessly believe that, but I don't think that describes your average freethinker. I think that's a straw man.

>> R. C. Sproul wrote an interesting book, If There is a God, Why Are There Atheists. I think every atheist ought to read it. He takes the old Freudian argument that God is a wish projection of the believer who wants a fatherly figure to comfort and protect him and turns it back on the atheist. Perhaps atheism is the wish projection of the unbeliever who, at all costs, wants to avoid being confronted with the reality of a God who is judge and who demands repentance for sin. In fact, given the nature of the biblical God, I think it is highly dubious to suppose that he would have ever been invented for any of the reasons proposed by Freud or anyone else. But then as I said above, such an hypothesis is pure speculation anyway. <<

A colleague of mine from over in the History department (I'm a psychologist, but I hang out with the History and English folks a lot) gave me that. First, I'm not one who considers psychodynamic theories like Freud's psychoanalytic theory very compelling.

In fact, I often refer to it as the "dead religion of Psychoanalysis." Y'see, it was non-empirical from practically the beginning. What was true was what Freud believed to be true. And, although there were quite a few who broke with him, such as Adler, Horney, and Jung, he accumulated a flock of disciples and so it became quite popular as a therapeutic method until the cognitive/behaviorists came along and demonstrated they could do a better job in less time.<G>

>> Certainly there are many benefits to being a Christian. <<

Yeah, you're not called a "filthy atheist," you aren't automatically consider to be of dubious morality and patriotism. . . Lotsa bennies.

>> In particular I would assert that being a critical thinker is an essential aspect of developing a Christian mind. <<

Just as long as you don't think critically about the LPD.<G>

From B to Alan Myatt

>>>> I believe because I am convinced that it is true and that it is the only rational world view. <<<<

Well, perhaps for you, it is the only rational world view for you to have. Not for a lot of others, however.

It's one thing to develop a world view because it is in line with your basic way of looking at things; it's quite another to expect the rest of the world to curtsy to that bias.

>>>> To not believe would require a leap into the irrational that I am unwilling to make.<<<<

For you it would be an irrational leap, for it lies outside the parameters of what you have allowed yourself to consider as being rational. For others, unbelief is quite rational, and as far as you should be concerned, innocuous. Unbelievers generally aren't evangelistic about it. The ones who are commit the same error as the evangelistic believer; i.e. insisting their own world view is flawlessly correct at the expense and spurning of any others.

>>>> It means that you no longer get to determine for yourself the direction of your life.<<<<

Bummer. God, the spoilsport. But hey, what if my determination was basically cool and decent and moral, yet it merely lacked an assent to God's existence? He gets ticked off 'cause a guy living a pretty decent life is doing it without crediting the alleged bastion of morality and virtue, God himself?

>>>> It means that you submit to what he says is right and that your opinions must conform to his, unconditionally. It means that you give up your autonomy. <<<

Translation: cease to be human. Since this is impossible, it looks like fertile ground for dysfunction and neurosis, given that the human mind cannot tolerate attempts to conform to the impossible.

>>>> Also, he will have to give up his idea of what is moral in favor of what God says. <<<<

But what if he independently reaches a moral conclusion that God agrees with? Suppose an atheist is horribly opposed to murder and killing of any kind? Now suppose this atheist becomes a believer, but still holds onto the idea that killing is wrong, but it's mighty nice that God happens to think that way also, but he really isn't inclined to credit God for leading him to that conclusion. Now, God is displeased with that?

This assumption that a human being cannot conclude in, to use your terminology, the context of his autonomy that certain acts are essentially immoral without a deity base is specious, at best. Humans can, and do, all the time. Now, if God's main beef is that people conclude many obvious points of morality all the time yet don't really bother to credit him for either the origin of it or for not desiring to see him as the source, well that's how it goes, I guess. I don't think it's very becoming of an omniscient being to throw temper tantrums, do you?

>>> Perhaps atheism is the wish projection of the unbeliever who, at all costs, wants to avoid being confronted with the reality of a God who is judge and who demands repentance for sin.<<<<

Perhaps it would be best if you spent more time actually getting to know atheists and asking them how they feel and how they came to be atheists before you progress further in this kind of speculation. Many of the atheists I know and are friends with say nothing more than they find no compulsion, at times aside from reason, at others due to it, to believe in a deity. Oh, and they're not out killing, pushing drugs, pimping prostitutes, defacing church buildings, burning crosses, etc. And if they were to meet your God, they wouldn't flinch to tell them their thoughts, since supposedly God knows them all already, so what's to lose? <g>

>>>> In fact, given the nature of the biblical God, I think it is highly dubious to suppose that he would have ever been invented for any of the reasons proposed by Freud or anyone else. <<<<

Given the nature of the biblical God, it's very understandable why atheists don't believe in him. Why should they? Freud's proposal isn't the end all, anyway, but I would add that people with weak father figures in their lives would naturally be attracted to a diety who appears as a divine father figure.

>>>> Very often he forces us right out of our comfort zone and into experiences that we would not choose otherwise. But he is good. And his way is the best way.<<<<

That is to suggest that nobody would ever leave their "comfort zone" unless God nudged them along. I don't agree. If a person has any semblence of a honed conscience, he will quickly realize, through rational deduction, that any supposed "comfort zone" is merely an illusion. They aren't very comfortable, for those who think they "got it made" are seldom happy in the midst of it. There often is a coexisting discontentment, an angst, if you will, to realize the alleged "comfort zone" is actually stagnation.

All that is, provided, that the basic aim of the person is to learn and grow, for such entails growing pains. Some folks aren't really inclined that way, yet life in general is. So, they tend to get slapped around a lot, even if they think they've created for themselves some kind of "comfort zone".

From Alan Myatt to B

Message text written by B
> Well, perhaps for you, it is the only rational world view for you to have. Not for a lot of others, however.

Are you assuming that there is more than one kind of rationality? What is rationality anyway? Now there is one that I suppose could be debated here for awhile. But if we suppose something can be rational for me but irrational for someone else, then it seems that we are defining rationality in a subjective manner that already confesses that there is no final truth, but rather multiple truths that may even be contradictory, but nevertheless true and rational for those who hold them. Well, if we go that route then I think the discussion is over. No one could make any kind of a truth claim about the content of a system not his own. However, for the Christian to settle for this is to admit that the biblical God does not exist as a condition of the discussion. I think you can see why I would not be willing to do that <g>.

>For you it would be an irrational leap, for it lies outside the parameters of what you have allowed yourself to consider as being rational. For others, unbelief is quite rational, and as far as you should be concerned, innocuous. Unbelievers generally aren't evangelistic about it. The ones who are commit the same error as the evangelistic believer; i.e. insisting their own world view is flawlessly correct at the expense and spurning of any others.<

Yes, the unbeliever thinks his position is rational, but they too are controlled by their presuppositions. And you are correct to imply that presuppositions control what a system can consider as being rational. I have a bias for sure. Anyone who claims not to is seriously deluded. So I don't think that is a crime, except perhaps when it is allowed to operate as an unrecoginzed control belief unbeknownst to the one holding it. However, it appears to me that if one starts with the presuppositions of non-theism then the end result, when they are carried to their logical conclusion, is the destruction of rationality itself. I am quite willing to examine any claims that the atheist is willing to make on behalf of his system (whatever it may be).

Unbelief is not always innocuous. I think it has certain social ethical consequences ultimately as well, as does any world view. As for not being evangelistic, I think history has shown that there have been plenty of atheists who have been zealously evangelistic about it. Now I am sure you are a peaceful person and this next remark is in no way intended to reflect on you or anyone else in this forum. However, if you will check with Amnesty International you will discover a little publicized fact and that is that during the 20th century more Christians have been martyred for their belief than any other time in history. And many of these at the hands of atheists (under Stalin, Mao and their successors). Now you will certainly bring up the Inquisition at this point, and all that both of these examples really prove is that murderers hide behind a variety of belief systems. I am not implying that the typical atheist in the United States would approve of such a thing. I am sure they would not. But the notion that atheism has not produced its own evangelistic movements in light of the history of the last three centuries is absurd.

As for the error of insisting that our own world view is correct and rejecting others, the Christian world view is of such a nature that if it is correct then its contrary cannot be true. So if I decide to admit that both Christianity and Hinduism could be true, then I would in fact have already abandoned Christianity. I simply will not discuss the issue of whether or not Christianity is true in the context of a set of assumptions that make its truth impossible in the first place. That would be suicidal. I doubt that an atheist or a follower of any other faith would agree to such a scenario either.

>>Bummer. God, the spoilsport.<<

Well, it depends on what you call fun. When one becomes a Christian, thus having a change in world view, then what one wants to do changes as well. So submission is as much an attitude as anything else. Anyway, after 23 years I have no regrets.

>> But hey, what if my determination was basically cool and decent and moral, yet it merely lacked an assent to God's existence? He gets ticked off 'cause a guy living a pretty decent life is doing it without crediting the alleged bastion of morality and virtue, God himself?<<

That is not exactly the way God sees the situation according to Christianity. Basically, there are no cool, decent and moral people when measured by God's standard of absolute moral perfection. That really is the whole point of the Christian gospel. We all need to be rescued from our sins. Even the morality of Mother Teresa is not sufficient to qualify, and certainly not mine. Jesus' standard of decency and morality included one's thoughts as well as actions. So if you thought you would like to kill someone, or if you fantasized about sleeping with your friend's spouse, then as far as Jesus was concerned, you were guilty. There is no such thing as a "pretty decent life" from this perspective. It is either perfection or nothing. I was having this discussion with a friend of mine who happens to be criminal prosecutor in a large urban center, and he said that he had come to understand it much better. He often had defendants who went to great lengths to tell the court about all their good deeds, accomplishments, and positive contributions to society. However, that was all irrelevant to the issue at hand. The issue at hand was a specific charge and whether they did that or not. No amount of other good deeds would change their guilt related to the charge. So while we might stack up decency and morality in a number of areas, there isn't a one of us who could claim to be impeccable. I think if we were honest with ourselves we would find that we are a whole lot worse than we want to admit. So God gets ticked off because sin is serious and we are all guilty.

>Translation: cease to be human. Since this is impossible, it looks like fertile ground for dysfunction and neurosis, given that the human mind cannot tolerate attempts to conform to the impossible. <<

That, of course, depends on your definition of what it means to be human. The Christian definition differs from the atheisms of Freud, Skinner, Sartre, etc, etc. Personally, I don't think that autonomy or independence from my Creator could possibly make me more human. You disagree of course. As for the old notion that religion supports dysfunction and neurosis, I think that has been adequately debunked by scientific research into religion. Dysfunction and neurosis are complicated, occur in many varieties and have varied causes (just look at the size of the DSM-IV), most of which are unrelated to religious issues.

>This assumption that a human being cannot conclude in, to use your terminology, the context of his autonomy that certain acts are essentially immoral without a deity base is specious, at best. Humans can, and do, all the time. <

Well of course they do. I never said otherwise. That is partly because God has implanted morality as an inherent structure of the human mind (see Romans 1-2). Now as to whether or not there can be any valid philosophical warrant for doing so in a universe where the ultimate reality is impersonal is another question which I have raised elsewhere. It is my contention that the notion of an essentially immoral act cannot be defended successfully once the existence of God is denied.

> I don't think it's very becoming of an omniscient being to throw temper tantrums, do you?<

I sure wouldn't want to be in his way if he did.

>Perhaps it would be best if you spent more time actually getting to know atheists and asking them how they feel and how they came to be atheists before you progress further in this kind of speculation.

What makes you think I haven't? My point here is that the argument that people believe in something for emotional comfort, etc. is just as likely to be the case for an atheist as anyone else. So it doesn't qualify as a valid argument against either the atheist or the Christian. I made this remark in response to F's post, which I took to imply that Christians hold their beliefs because they need them emotionally (since they couldn't possibly be true). Once we have decided that the other guy is wrong then we can make ourselves feel more secure in our own system if we can explain why the other guy holds to his wrong belief. Often that has the convenience of removing the necessity to take seriously his arguments.

> Oh, and they're not out killing, pushing drugs, pimping prostitutes, defacing church buildings, burning crosses, etc.<

I never implied that they were. The atheists I have met have, for the most part, not been involved in any of this kind of stuff.

> And if they were to meet your God, they wouldn't flinch to tell them their thoughts, since supposedly God knows them all already, so what's to lose?<

I think that if this is their attitude then they haven't really understood what he is like. And I imagine that when they do meet him then they will have quite a different reaction.

>That is to suggest that nobody would ever leave their "comfort zone" unless God nudged them along. I don't agree.<

Neither do I. Again, I never made any suggestion whatever about what an unbeliever would do. I was simply pointing out that following Christ is not something one does in order to be comfortable, as would be implied by the notion that one becomes a Christian (in spite of it being false) according to Freudian, etc. explanations. Clearly there are non-believers of all types who exhibit self sacrifice, altruism, and any number of praiseworthy actions.

Alan

From BD to Alan Myatt

<< I prefer to challenge the atheist's rules at the outset. >>

Sure, discard reason and logic. Insist on allowing pure speculation as valid. Set your own foundation and then demand all accommodate it.

Barf.

From Alan Myatt to BD

I suggest you go back an reread my post since it appears you did not understand what I was saying. In the end I would claim that it is the atheist who will have to abandon reason and logic. But my objection to the atheist rules of the game is that he or she wants to begin with a set of presuppositions about the nature of reality that, if granted, rule out the possibility of Christian theism from the start. I simply do not accept the atheist's presuppositions and I challenge him or her to demonstrate that they are either reasonable or logical.

Alan

From FZ to Alan Myatt

Alan,
>> Now concerning the last statement here, my question for the atheist, at least most of the ones I've met anyway, is why should there be a need for any empirical evidence? <<

My first response would be "why not?" The empirical approach pays off better than any other approach in the acquisition of knowledge. Do you know any better way of gathering reliable information about the natural world/universe?

>> How is it that empirical knowledge is justified in a naturalistic universe anyway? <<

Umm, as above, do you know of a better way of gaining reliable knowledge?

>> What are the presuppositions underlying the demand that empiricism is the final court of appeal? <<

I don't know that there is a "final court of appeal." Empirical investigation, as part of the armamentarium of scientific methodology has the best track record so far in gaining understanding of the universe.

>> I don't know if you hold this view, but most atheists I have encountered seem to be in the empiricist camp. <<

Yeah, it kinda goes with the territory. I don't think I've ever met an atheist who wasn't an empiricist. We had a retro logical positivist a while back, but he went off to play somewhere else.<G>

While scientific thinking is not necessarily confined to atheists, all the atheists I've met have been oriented towards scientific, empirical thinking.

From Alan Myatt to FZ

Message text written by FZ
>> The empirical approach pays off better than any other approach in the acquisition of knowledge. Do you know any better way of gathering reliable information about the natural world/universe?<<

Hello F,

Let's see if we can unpack this statement a bit. By the empirical approach I am assuming that you mean something like the scientific method. I'll go one step further and include in that the basic assumption of empiricism, namely, that all knowledge begins in sense experience. That seems to represent the position of most atheists these days.

Now first of all you say that the method pays off. I suppose that means that it gets results. Now if we are talking about the method as a set of laboratory operations that produces useful results in the form of the manipulation of sensory phenomenon that allows us to construct useful technology, then I would certainly agree that the method pays off. However, I am most interested in that last phrase "in the acquisition of knowledge." It seems that the next sentence defines knowledge as "reliable information about the natural world/universe." I want to make sure that I am proceeding correctly here, so I understand "reliable information" to mean "truth" and I take it that "natural world/universe" limits the scope of possible knowledge. Since you think that there is nothing beyond the natural world/universe then it follows that what you mean is that empiricism provides truth about ultimate reality.

I should observe then that my original question >> How is it that empirical knowledge is justified in a naturalistic universe anyway? << to which you replied>Umm, as above, do you know of a better way of gaining reliable knowledge?< remains unanswered. You have simply begged the question. You have said that you know that empiricism provides knowledge because it pays off by providing knowledge. The issue is not whether or not I know a better way. The issue is whether or not your way can justify knowledge. Does it really tell you about the nature of things or is it built on a leap of faith, and a blind one at that?

The critical element, I think, of your statement is the notion that empiricism is connected with the nature of the universe or ultimate reality. And really that is what our discussion is about. Is the universe all there is? Or is there an infinite, personal, Triune God who created and governs the universe (I have no interest in arguing about the existence of generic deities by the way). For you to be able to rationally use the argument of lack of empirical evidence to argue against belief in God, then you have to show that empirical evidence can tell you something about the nature of ultimate reality, about the universe as it is in itself. But can empiricism do this? If it cannot, then it simply has nothing whatever to say about the existence of God and can offer no claim against it. In such a case the atheist who refuses to believe for lack of empirical evidence would simply be acting irrationally.

What are the basic claims of empiricism then? Basically, it is that all knowledge is in some form derived from sense experience and that these sensations become or contain data about the external world (the world outside our own minds) that we observe and that these sensations with their data then are transformed into ideas and knowledge. If empiricism is to provide real knowledge of the universe 'out there' then my senses must provide accurate information about an objective external reality. There must be a true correspondence between what is out there and what I sense in my mind. Now, most of us intuitively accept that such a correspondence exists. Indeed, on a first reading it seems perverse that anyone would object to this. However, that is exactly what the ancient Greek skeptics did. They demolished empiricism. David Hume finished off the job over two hundred years ago and ever since the empiricist Humpty Dumpty fell, no one has succeeded in putting him back together again. Let's look at some of the details.

I remember when I was in ninth grade science class we did an experiment of sorts where we taste tested a chemical substance to determine who could sense it and who could not. I don't remember what the stuff was called but I do remember that I tasted nothing remarkable and my friend Chuck immediately reacted with a horrible facial expression. He tasted something quite different. But would it be accurate to say that I tasted nothing? I did feel the sensation of the stuff in my mouth, but it was rather bland and otherwise unremarkable. So I did taste it. And if someone asked me what it tasted like I could have said that it is bland, being neither bitter nor sweet. Putting the same question to Chuck, however, would reveal a completely different interpretation. What does x taste like? Chuck might use a word that I cannot print here, based on his reaction. No doubt he would say it was bitter and disgusting and try to warn folks against ingesting x. So who is correct? Is there an objective sensation called "the taste of x" that relates to an external world that our sense of taste can use to tell us something about what x, in itself, is? We could say that x is a substance that provokes behavior y (from whence we infer sensation y) in those who possess genetic trait a and that provokes behavior z (from whence we infer sensation z) among those who possess genetic trait b, but have we actually said anything about the objective state of the external world? Can it be said that two people who taste something different are tasting the same thing?

If the same external reality (assuming that such a thing exists for the moment) provokes sensations so different among different people in the sense of taste, then why should we not suppose that the other senses are subject to the same thing? My Brazilian friends here in Rio find my complaints about the heat here to be amusing. For them 90 degrees is nothing as it often reaches above 100 for weeks at time. I think its funny when they start putting on jackets and coats when it gets down to 60 or so, which it does sometimes here in July. After living for many years in Colorado, I find that to be quite comfortable. So is there an objective definition of hot and cold that empiricism can reveal? Indeed, my wife and I often struggle at night over the fact that she likes a pile of cover on the bed, which makes me get too hot to sleep. And I always have to chuckle at Hollywood's depiction of couples taking long romantic showers together. How come in the movies they never show the couple in the shower arguing over how hot or cold the water ought to be? We could use a thermometer to measure the water temperature (thus relying on the sense of sight) and give an arbitrary definition of hot or cold to the various markings on the tube, but that would not resolve the quarrel. It seems that touch is not a consistently reliable guide for people to use in acquiring knowledge of the world nature/universe. It seems that the statement, "that is hot" is really a statement about me and my perception of the thing and not the thing in itself.

What about that sense of sight. I know someone who was turned down for flight training because he was color blind, even though he claims to see colors just fine. But according to the official test he does not perceive colors correctly, or the way the rest of us do (whatever that means) so he is not qualified by the air force definition. It turns out however, that there are lots of folks who don't so qualify, yet they are able to distinguish between normal colors the way most of us do. They just see them differently. So that leads us to something that I have often wondered about. Do you suppose that the sensation that I identify as red is the same as the sensation that others have when they say, "that is red." We could never know could we? Since people would consistently identify their own sensation it could appear that we are all in agreement when we say the ball is red, even though each of us is having a distinctively different sense experience. There are other problems with the sense of sight as well. Most of us, I think, can recount times when due to tiredness, chemicals ingested or smoked, darkness, stress and other factors, when we thought we saw something that turned out to not be there or did not see something that was there. The existence of successful sleight of hand artists is testimony to the unreliability of the sense of sight. Indeed, my wife remains amazed at my continuing inability to see my car keys sitting on a table in broad daylight! Sure our sense of sight usually works okay to get us through each day. It functions pragmatically. But some people have lost life and limb due to their failure to see something correctly. How many times have people crashed their cars into something or someone that they would have sworn wasn't there?

To make matters worse, it seems that not only do different people see things differently, but also the same thing appears different to the same person at different times. To use Bertrand Russell's famous example, the table at which I am sitting appears before me as a collection of colors and shapes organized into a coherent whole. As soon as I get up and move away from the table its shape appears to change. At present it is extended in front of me and my mind organizes it into a rectangle, from where I am sitting the side closest to me appears to be longer than the one farthest away. From the other room it has the opposite appearance. As the sun sets the colors red and yellow in the table cloth change, revealing different tints and shades. Which is the actual color? We could, of course, simply deny that there is really an objective thing called color since as we begin to examine the table on a molecular and atomic level we see that the color is only an appearance presumably produced by the particular wavelengths of light that are reflected. So we assign particular wavelengths to particular sensations that we have. Yet somehow reducing the color to a mathematical construct, an abstraction, seems to separate us from the elusive thing to which the color is supposedly attached. Anyway, the perception of light waves (secondarily through the use of instruments by means of which we infer their existence) is subject to the same problem. It is a sense experience. I seem to know that I have a particular sensation of manipulating and seeing the instrument, but given the already dubious status of sight as a reliable source of data, this could be mistaken as well.

The ancient Stoics replied that there are self-authenticating experiences. Indeed, we could simply say that common sense tells us that we see what we see and hear what we hear, etc. But common sense is also a culturally conditioned concept. What makes sense to me does not necessarily make sense to someone of another culture. I have dealt with this in a real way since coming to Brazil. Acting on my American cultural assumptions has put me in an embarrassing position more than once. Anyway, the idea of common sense as a basis for trust in sense experience merely begs the question. But more specifically, the Stoic position was attacked with the observation that,"Even in dreams, in drunkenness, or in insanity, the recipient of a sensation believes it to be a correct representation of an object. Later he may decide he was mistaken; but during the sensory experience he cannot distinguish it from true sensation. Then is it possible now to be certain of our sensations? Obviously at any time we may be mistaken, for we do not recognize that we are dreaming, or that we are drunk, or, if we know we are ill, we do not know how much the fever affects our receptivity. Put more simply: illusions while they last are as convincing as allegedly true sensations." (Gordon H. Clark, Three Types of Religious Philosophy, pp 65-66).

This was vividly illustrated in the case of the fellow who thought he was Jesus Christ and, hence, wound up in the psych hospital where my wife was a nurse. All of his own sensory data told him that this was true. Based on the empirical evidence available to him, he felt justified in this belief. Obviously his family did not, so they had him committed. The doctor decided it was a chemical imbalance in the brain that was causing the sense experiences which led the man to believe he was Jesus. He could be treated with Haldol. It seemed to help. Within two days he had given up on being Jesus in favor of declaring himself to be the fifth Beatle. A few more days of Haldol and he was back to his normal self, able to go home to his family and return to work. Now, if this fellow was able to have sense experiences that appeared totally real to him, but were entirely due to the state of the chemistry of his brain and not due to any external reality, then on what basis do we make the claim to know that our own sensations tell us something of an objective reality "out there" in the "real" world? It is the scientific view (empiricism) that tells us that our thoughts are indeed a function of the chemical state of our brains. Why then, do the majority of us who have one interpretation of reality based on our senses get to decide for folks like our would be messiah which one is normal and which one requires psychiatric treatment? How on the basis of empiricism could this be determined in anything but an arbitrary and pragmatic way? As one philosopher put it, if my thoughts are the result of the motion of particles in my brain (chemical or electrical) then on what basis do I suppose that the motion of the particles in my brain corresponds to an external reality and hence, on what basis do I suppose that there are particles moving in my brain? Or as Darwin is alleged to have said, if my thoughts are just the thoughts of an advanced monkey brain then why should I trust them, and then on what basis can I know that my brain is an advanced monkey brain? There is no way, on the basis of empiricism, that it can be shown that such internal events as sensations tell us anything about an external objective reality.

Hume goes on, of course, to not only demolish any supposed link between sensation and the external world, but to show that on the basis of empiricism we can have no consciousness of a unified entity that we call the Self. Since our sense impressions are constantly changing, this state of flux cannot be the basis of the idea of the self. Yet any reflection on the idea of a self finally reduces to a series of sense impressions, as Hume said, "I never catch myself at any time without a perception..." Selves then "are nothing but a bundle of perceptions which succeed each other with an inconceivable rapidity." There can be no simplicity at any one moment and no unity of identity in different moments. So empiricism not only deprives us of the external world, it deprives us of a coherent internal self.

I am, of course, fully aware that skepticism has been criticized and discounted as being internally contradictory. There is something to be said for this, although a true skeptic would simply reply, "see even my own world view is irrational, and that confirms my point that no knowledge is possible." George Smith, in his book, makes this argument, and having shown that skepticism is self-contradictory, discards it as being false. In the meantime he simply ignores the need to establish a positive justification for empirical knowledge. So he proceeds to make the Case Against God, as his book is subtitled, without ever establishing an epistemology. He just dogmatically assumes it without ever answering the criticisms. This is an important point. It isn't sufficient to point out difficulties with skepticism. In order to maintain rationality what is required is a demonstration that validates empiricism. But in any case, I am not proposing an argument for absolute skepticism. I am simply saying that empiricism cannot on its own basis establish that any knowledge is possible.

The final result of empiricism is really the ultimate fragmentation of the individual and the world into an unrelated set of particulars. This fragmentation follows quite naturally due to the fact that philosophical materialism opts to resolve the One and Many problem by declaring that ultimate reality is found in the Many, the particulars. The One and Many problem has bedeviled human thought at least since Heraclitus declared that all is flux (you cannot step into the same river twice) and Parmenides declared that all is One (change is illusion). This is another key philosophical question, that leads to the further unraveling of philosophical materialism and empiricism, but we will leave that for a future discussion. For now suffice it to say, that the fundamental epistemological assumptions of atheistic naturalism/philosophical materialism degenerate into irrationalism, destroying the objective validity of the scientific method by which it supposedly has shown that God either does not exist or is not needed. But if the method of the atheist is invalid then so are its results. God remains whether the atheist likes it or not, while in the end the materialist loses both the world and himself. The history of 20th century philosophy has thus headed farther and farther into irrationalism, with postmodernism now merrily deconstructing everything in its path. The resulting relativism is absolute, like an acid eating away at everything it touches. All of reality is fragmented and there is no purpose beyond what we can create. So we are all like Woody Allen in the movie Everybody Says I Love You, confronting a series of fragmented, disjointed experiences in which all roles are in flux, in a futile attempt to find love, stability and meaning. And superimposed on this is the romanticized impression of a musical style harking back to a day when such stability presumably existed. But we now know that that is untenable, since the universe is ultimately absurd. So this is what we are left with. How depressing. And how unnecessary. Perhaps we could consider the alternative that the atheistic assumption is incorrect, go back to the beginning and start again.

So in answer, finally to the question >> Do you know any better way of gathering reliable information about the natural world/universe?<< I would respond, perhaps if we start with God and his revelation, then that revelation will give us the truth we need. And from there maybe we can get to the rest of the natural world/universe. At least it's worthy of consideration.

A lengthy response I know, but you asked!<G>

Alan

FOOTNOTES********************
(1) Here we see the underlying irrationalism of atheism breaking through. The issue of truth is dismissed as not being worthy of worrying about, followed immediately by the admission that he can't tell the difference anyway. But if this is the case, then the entire exercise of the scientific method, which the atheist prizes so deeply, is nothing more than a sham. We will see that this particular writer is involve in an irresolvable contradiction in that he argues that science provides knowledge and yet ultimately, truth is unknowable. What then is knowledge if it does not involve at least some degree of certainty about truth? And of what value is a world view, like philosophical naturalism, if it has no means of determining what counts as true knowledge and what doesn't? And where does the naturalist get off making a sweeping universal truth claim about the nature of ultimate reality (there is no God) if he can't establish a valid basis for knowing. Indeed, as it became clear in the discussions, if the atheist cannot establish a valid basis for knowing, then his complaint that "there is no evidence for God" is vacuous, because he cannot establish a basis to make any rational comments about the status of the evidence whatever.

(2) Again, why is it reasonable to assume or believe it if there is no possible way to determine whether or not it is true. It then becomes nothing more than a dogma, believed on the basis of blind faith, for no rational reason whatever. It seems rather odd that the atheist here states that the evidence supports the notion that theism evolved from primitive beliefs to explain nature, and yet when pressed on the point, he asserts that there is no need to offer any proof that such evidence either exists or can be properly interpreted in this manner. In fact, this theory is not considered to be very persuasive in contemporary academic circles that specialize in the study of religion. It is too simplistic and reductionistic and leaves a great deal of religious and cultural phenomena unexplained.

(3) Such evidence, by its very nature, could not be limited as a part of the universe itself. It would rather be related to the nature of the universe itself, i.e., is the universe of such a nature that it could be self-existent or does the evidence point to its necessary dependence upon a reality other than itself. Some of the best work in this area is being done by those involved in research on intelligent design, c.f. Michael Behe Darwin's Black Box, William A. Dembski, Intelligent Design , Dean L. Overman, A Case Against and Self-Organization, William A. Dembski, Mere Creation: Science, Faith & Intelligent Design . (BTW Dembski has PhD's in both mathematics and philosophy).

Alan Myatt, Ph.D.
www.pobox.com/~myatt