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[Atheism] : ...Then Whence Cometh Evil?

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  • NyysjanNyysjan FinlandRegistered User regular
    Alazull wrote: »
    Nyysjan wrote: »
    Polaritie wrote: »
    Nyysjan wrote: »
    Ah, the good old atheism thread, where people annoyed at atheists telling them what they are, tell atheists what atheists believe.

    In my experience, most people calling themselves agnostic, are actually atheists who either do not understand the term, or wish to distance them from it (for number of reasons, some good, others less so), though there does exist a smaller set of people who are theists, but still use the word for whatever reason.
    And, for that matter, most reasonable atheists will admit to some level of agnosticism, even if only because certainty of, well, anything, as all but impossible.

    Atheist is just a label, a minor label, and in a perfect world, it would be an irrelevant label, but unfortunately we don't live in that world.

    Says a post telling agnostics what they believe.

    Ummm, where?
    At no point at my post, did i say that "agnostics believe this"
    I merely pointed out that, in my subjective experience, most people calling themselves agnostics, are atheists by some definitions of the word.
    Most agnostic theists tend to not adobt the label on its own, but some do, and i am not sure why.

    Anyway, i'm agnostic atheist, thought in my case the "believes there is no god" also fits, but that's not the definition of atheist or atheism (it is one (narrow) definition of atheist, but not the only one).

    The first bold sentence is incredibly smug, and the second bold and italicized sentence would be where you actually tell agnostics what they believe. The third sentence also bold and italicized is you doubling down on it.

    Your subjective experience is called an opinion, so stating it as a fact could be seen as telling someone what they believe.

    First bolded may be smug (i disagree, but whatever), but it is also accurate.

    Second does not tell anyone what they believe, it tells my subjective experience that people calling themselves agnostic, if questioned (and willing to answer the questions) will often be found to fit some definitions of atheist.
    That is not me telling anyone what they believe, that is me assigning label to peoples believes, or lack thereof, according to what they tell me that they believe (or not).

    Third one is me explaining what i had already stated.

  • jothkijothki Registered User regular
    Alazull wrote: »
    Nyysjan wrote: »
    Polaritie wrote: »
    Nyysjan wrote: »
    Ah, the good old atheism thread, where people annoyed at atheists telling them what they are, tell atheists what atheists believe.

    In my experience, most people calling themselves agnostic, are actually atheists who either do not understand the term, or wish to distance them from it (for number of reasons, some good, others less so), though there does exist a smaller set of people who are theists, but still use the word for whatever reason.
    And, for that matter, most reasonable atheists will admit to some level of agnosticism, even if only because certainty of, well, anything, as all but impossible.

    Atheist is just a label, a minor label, and in a perfect world, it would be an irrelevant label, but unfortunately we don't live in that world.

    Says a post telling agnostics what they believe.

    Ummm, where?
    At no point at my post, did i say that "agnostics believe this"
    I merely pointed out that, in my subjective experience, most people calling themselves agnostics, are atheists by some definitions of the word.
    Most agnostic theists tend to not adobt the label on its own, but some do, and i am not sure why.

    Anyway, i'm agnostic atheist, thought in my case the "believes there is no god" also fits, but that's not the definition of atheist or atheism (it is one (narrow) definition of atheist, but not the only one).

    The first bold sentence is incredibly smug, and the second bold and italicized sentence would be where you actually tell agnostics what they believe. The third sentence also bold and italicized is you doubling down on it.

    Your subjective experience is called an opinion, so stating it as a fact could be seen as telling someone what they believe.

    Two things. First, he isn't saying anything about agnostics. He's saying quite a bit about what a number of atheists believe, though.

    Second, all facts are opinions, so stating that something claimed to be a fact is an opinion demonstrates nothing other than providing evidence towards it being a fact instead of some other non-opinion construct.

  • KaputaKaputa Registered User regular
    edited September 2015
    Wyvern wrote: »
    Apothe0sis wrote: »
    What do you mean by free will?

    Why we have conscious/subjective experience is one of the deep problems of philosophy of mind and neuroscience in general.

    I don't have a perfect definition that slots in flawlessly with our current empirical model of the universe. I don't have a model that perfectly reconciles everything. That's the point.

    If intelligent design as a model has zero validity, evolutionary biology as a model has perfect validity, and a purely materialistic, deterministic model of the universe has perfect validity, then conscious experience utterly defies explanation. But conscious experience exists. It exists with greater certainty than anything else we think we know about. The only reasonable way to deal with this discrepancy is to accept that our various models of the universe are limited tools which do not fully describe the universe as it exists. To accept that there is room for our models to grow and change significantly, or that there is room for new models to emerge.
    Why? What about consciousness defies a materialist explanation? Thoughts are/consciousness is electrochemical reactions occurring in the brain. I'm not saying that consciousness is caused by these electrochemical reactions, but that they are one and the same. Sensory data, memories, physical characteristics of the brain itself, and external factors like brain injuries or drug use determine the nature of these thoughts/this consciousness. Our modern knowledge of neurology only makes the physicalist explanation for consciousness stronger; we can directly see what sort of mental activity results from different stimuli to the brain.

    And it's worth nothing that determinism is a position held by basically no materialist since the advent of quantum mechanics. Probability is regarded a core feature of the universe, so even if you somehow knew the exact details of all the matter and energy in the universe, predicting its next state would be impossible, since there are multiple possible options. edit - this leaves no more room for individual agency, however, since decisions made by a dice roll are no more "free" than decisions arising from a predetermined state.

    Kaputa on
  • WyvernWyvern Registered User regular
    Kaputa wrote: »
    Wyvern wrote: »
    Apothe0sis wrote: »
    What do you mean by free will?

    Why we have conscious/subjective experience is one of the deep problems of philosophy of mind and neuroscience in general.

    I don't have a perfect definition that slots in flawlessly with our current empirical model of the universe. I don't have a model that perfectly reconciles everything. That's the point.

    If intelligent design as a model has zero validity, evolutionary biology as a model has perfect validity, and a purely materialistic, deterministic model of the universe has perfect validity, then conscious experience utterly defies explanation. But conscious experience exists. It exists with greater certainty than anything else we think we know about. The only reasonable way to deal with this discrepancy is to accept that our various models of the universe are limited tools which do not fully describe the universe as it exists. To accept that there is room for our models to grow and change significantly, or that there is room for new models to emerge.
    Why? What about consciousness defies a materialist explanation? Thoughts are/consciousness is electrochemical reactions occurring in the brain. I'm not saying that consciousness is caused by these electrochemical reactions, but that they are one and the same. Sensory data, memories, physical characteristics of the brain itself, and external factors like brain injuries or drug use determine the nature of these thoughts/this consciousness. Our modern knowledge of neurology only makes the physicalist explanation for consciousness stronger; we can directly see what sort of mental activity results from different stimuli to the brain.
    Would you argue that Google's search algorithm is a conscious experience that its servers undergo whenever they get input? If not, why not?

    Switch: SW-2431-2728-9604 || 3DS: 0817-4948-1650
  • zakkielzakkiel Registered User regular
    So, this made me kind of sad. Apparently Richard Dawkins is floating ideas about Ahmed Mohamed having deliberately created the clock fiasco to get attention. You know, in a "I'm-not-saying-but-what-if" type way. Perhaps he and Sarah Palin should have a little get-together about their shared views.

    Account not recoverable. So long.
  • EncEnc A Fool with Compassion Pronouns: He, Him, HisRegistered User regular
    edited September 2015
    zakkiel wrote: »
    So, this made me kind of sad. Apparently Richard Dawkins is floating ideas about Ahmed Mohamed having deliberately created the clock fiasco to get attention. You know, in a "I'm-not-saying-but-what-if" type way. Perhaps he and Sarah Palin should have a little get-together about their shared views.

    While it's entirely possible (and likely) he created the clock to get attention, I't extremely doubtful the type of attention he was looking for was "psycho bomber" rather than "cool and smart kid with homemade clock."

    Dawkins is still and usually terrible.

    Enc on
  • Apothe0sisApothe0sis Have you ever questioned the nature of your reality? Registered User regular
    edited September 2015
    It is simply true that self-described agnostics who do not hold positions of indecision and those who insist on weak atheism only describe distinctions without a difference or selectively inconsistent epistemologies.

    These distinctions are not reflected in the psychological literature - in terms of terminology or epistemology - and are not consistently applied through the rest of their statements about the world (except for the rare radical sceptic, but then they're are still burying that lead and being inconsistent if they wade in holding forth on agnosticism specifically).

    If we are concerned with allowing people to label themselves, then fine, they are agnostics. But frankly that is a worthless virtue. Clarity of communication and soundness of argument are far more important and that actively interferes with both.

    It is simply a brute fact that if you'real trying to force this distinction then you are almost certainly using idiosyncratic meanings of words like 'know' and 'possibility' or relationships of certainty to knowledge or confusing "I am certain" with "I could not be persuaded otherwise.

    We hear things like "I am an agnostic atheist/weak atheist because I acknowledge the possibility that I could be wrong". Which has strange implications - do they think that the camp who argue there is no difference are of the belief that they could not be wrong? That is demonstrably false. As it turns out pretty much everyone has an epistemology that incorporates the possibility of being proven wrong, convinced otherwise or having one' skins changed. So that doesn't highlight a difference or communicate anything useful. On the other hand, the fact that the proponents of the distinction choose to bring it up DOES communicate something, specifically that there is something noteworthy about it (i.e. that it has unique epistemological properties). If I instruct someone to "point out the four-sided shapes" then the clear implication is that there may also be shapes which are not four-sided, on the other hand if I say "point out the four-sided squares" it is either semantically anomalous because it is redundant - in which case it should be abandoned - or it is semantically anomalous because it communicates a spurious distinction that there are or may be squares without four sides - but that is wrong and should be abandoned.

    So too it is for our proponents of distinction, you are either insisting on something useless or wrong, distinctions that aren't actually distinct. If your sole refuge is that you prefer the label then that is some scant protection because I don't care about your feelings as they have no place on discussions of epistemology and the propensity for confusing terminological complexity for conceptual sophistication is inevitably obnoxious.

    tl;dr - I'll happily tell "agnostics" what they are, they ought not tell atheists what we believe

    Apothe0sis on
  • Apothe0sisApothe0sis Have you ever questioned the nature of your reality? Registered User regular
    edited September 2015
    Wyvern wrote: »
    Apothe0sis wrote: »
    What do you mean by free will?

    Why we have conscious/subjective experience is one of the deep problems of philosophy of mind and neuroscience in general.

    I don't have a perfect definition that slots in flawlessly with our current empirical model of the universe. I don't have a model that perfectly reconciles everything. That's the point.

    If intelligent design as a model has zero validity, evolutionary biology as a model has perfect validity, and a purely materialistic, deterministic model of the universe has perfect validity, then conscious experience utterly defies explanation. But conscious experience exists. It exists with greater certainty than anything else we think we know about. The only reasonable way to deal with this discrepancy is to accept that our various models of the universe are limited tools which do not fully describe the universe as it exists. To accept that there is room for our models to grow and change significantly, or that there is room for new models to emerge.

    There is a common tendency among reductive atheists (and I've been getting a strong sense of this from your posts) to hold as a premise that the current scope of our deterministic, materialistic model of the universe is perfect and beyond reproach. If an idea emerges which is not perfectly consistent with the current model, it must be twisted into something unrecognizable which would fit the model, or it must be rejected out of hand no matter how much validity it looks like it has. I don't see this as hugely different from a theist that holds as a premise that God must exist in a certain form, and any controversial ideas must either be tortuously contorted into something that fits their conception of God or must be denied even if it's obviously true.

    We don't have a Unified Theory of Everything. We KNOW that we don't. So we have to accept that our knowledge is limited and that we shouldn't constrain the possibilities for every unknown based on the limited boundaries of our current models. It's better to accept the universe as a vast and loosely-understood thing than to reject the universe wholesale and replace it with a false edifice which is small enough for us to pretend that we hold it fully within our grasp.

    I am not asking you for a perfect mechanism explanation of free will. I am asking what it is you mean when you say it. As I have mentioned it isn't clear, and usually is simply a collection of connotation and an incoherent on at that. What would be different if we did or did not have free will? Sketch out what you mean. Holding forth about an undefined term is a pointless exercise, on the other hand if it isn't a coherent concept then we lose or gain nothing because we cannot lack something that is incoherent because it isn't anything, there is nothing to lack (or gain).

    It is certainly not an established fact that conscious experience is incompatible with materialism and the current picture of the universe. It IS a fairly hotly contested topic within academia - if you could demonstrate that it is as you say then you would certainly make a name for yourself.

    And intelligent design has nothing to do with it - the opinions aren't "created by a deity" vs "current model of universe and its development"/materialism - if there us some sort of mind stuff that makes up conscious experience that doesn't fit with materialism it could equally arise by means other than the influence of a deity.

    I don't know what the rest of what you'real talking about refers to or has to do with anything, so until you clarify I shall withhold response.

    Apothe0sis on
  • Apothe0sisApothe0sis Have you ever questioned the nature of your reality? Registered User regular
    Apothe0sis wrote: »
    Alazull wrote: »
    Golden Yak wrote: »
    I've always felt that whatever the source, free will clearly operates within limits. You can will which direction you go when you walk, but you can't will yourself to fly up into the air, or blast the moon out of the sky with sheer willpower. So whatever the case free will is constrained by the limits of reality, whether it's produced by God or by a structure of evolved biology. I'd argue that free within limits is still free - if you feel limited free will isn't really free will then free will doesn't exist.

    Again, free will as the theological concept would be in the long form, "freedom to ignore the will of God." The story of Lucifer kind of highlights this, in that (to paraphrase) he is pissed off because no matter how awesome he is and how powerful he is he is fundamentally unable to go against the will of God while humans who are these insignificant specks of dust to him are able to do whatever they want. Also, if an angel goes against God they will be destroyed or cast down while a human can be sinful all their life and recant their sins before dying and be welcomed into Heaven. Essentially, Lucifer rebels because he sees God as not being all He's cracked up to be and thinks he's getting a bum deal compared to these human assholes.

    Nowhere in the theological concept does it say that free will gives us super powers over reality. In many ways, the story of Lucifer is supposed to be a cautionary tale of why someone so powerful would need to be limited so greatly. What it is is the right given to us by the Creator to do as we wish in our lives within the limitations of our humanity.

    The idea itself is actually pretty awesome depending on the source talking about it. We are free to choose to live however we want, not subject to the divine will if we choose not to be. There may be punishments--and those punishments ebb and flow in severity depending on the source telling you about them--but we are allowed to do as we wish in our lives. So if you do good it is your choice to go and make the world a better place, and if you choose to do evil then it is your choice to make it worse. Realistically, most of the reason it gets focused on is to justify the existence of evil in the world when there is an all-powerful all-knowing being supposedly watching over it.

    But, as I showed, that's not even a coherent concept - what would it look like if we didn't have freedom from the will of god? Whether we a vice choosing or virtue choosing is a function of what we are and the properties of those things that make us up. God choose one configuration or another, it doesn't make a difference in terms of changing the deterministic chain of our behavior - whether it is grounded in soul-stuff or quantum wriggling. Our fundamental capabilities do not change, we just have different parameters, our behaviour is no more uncertain, no more unbound from either the universe or the preferences of our creator.

    Of course, this only serves to be further exploded by the idea that God is outside the universe and the fact that time is a property of our universe so any creation is of a 4D object - that conatains the beginning, end and everything in between.

    The way its often framed often seems like it assumes humans are in some sort of neutral state, where free will allows us to choose between two or more options without anything affecting our judgement when this is clearly not the case. Everything from culture to biology affects how we make choices, humans are not perfectly rational actors. So, as you say, why this particular set of physical instincts and chemical signals? If god so discourages premarital sex, he could have made the choice easier for people especially young people by not making hormones and chemicals so strongly influence behavior, if he wanted us to be more charitable he could have changed how strongly we feel attachment and the amount of people we can feel an emotional attachment to at any given time, and it would not necessarily have removed free will. Why is the way our bodies and minds are, why is the way we have evolved/born/created to be right now the way we are now somehow more conducive to truly "free" will than any number of other ways we could have been made to be.

    What I am saying is that there is no distinction between our identity/self and "the personal properties and external influences, and physical mechanisms by which our minds emerge and our decisions are made". That doesn't influence our choice it IS our choice. We aren't forced to act one way rather than the other because there is no neutral state.

    And other than that terminological difference our positions are identical.

  • BaalorBaalor Registered User regular
    I think there is a difference between knowledge and belief. It is completely possible to know something, as in make your rational decisions based on the truth of that thing, yet still believe in its opposite.

    Belief is not a rational thing and not everybody can quantify theirs with a simple yes or no.

  • Apothe0sisApothe0sis Have you ever questioned the nature of your reality? Registered User regular
    That is an idiosyncratic view

  • BaalorBaalor Registered User regular
    People are not rational beings.

    Why do people play the lottery? They must believe they will win. But they do not know that they will win. In fact most of them decidedly do NOT act like people who are expecting to be rich soon.

    What is the correct answer when you ask one "do you think you will win the lottery?"
    Is the answer yes before they buy the ticket and then no after? Or is it just not that simple.

  • JuliusJulius Captain of Serenity on my shipRegistered User regular
    Baalor wrote: »
    People are not rational beings.

    Why do people play the lottery? They must believe they will win. But they do not know that they will win. In fact most of them decidedly do NOT act like people who are expecting to be rich soon.

    What is the correct answer when you ask one "do you think you will win the lottery?"
    Is the answer yes before they buy the ticket and then no after? Or is it just not that simple.

    Nobody who plays the lottery believes they will win. People aren't that stupid.

    What people think is "It is better to play and not win than not play and miss out" or "The potential reward outweighs the known costs". And while the latter is irrational, it has nothing to do with a difference between belief and knowledge. People belief it, and they claim to know it.

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