ARHCIVE: The impossibility of atheism ...

[jjjg]

Heusens, your view of the world is the one turned upside down.

It is what is in the mind that is true. We start with sense perceptions, but it is our abstractions that bring us to the essence of what things are which is the spiritual. It is through the abstractions that we question the ultimate reality. The mind is a faculty of the soul. It is not the brain.

 

[heusdens]

jjjg:

The world exists in two distinct ways:

The world exists OBJECTIVELY in the form of matter
The world exists SUBJECTIVELY in the form of consciousness

Now which one of these (matter or consciousness) is PRIMARY (in the sense that it is not dependend on something else).

Now, if you say that consciousness is primary, then please tell me without reference to any source outside of your consciousness, how did your consciousness originate.
And if you say and state that consciousness is primary, then it must mean that the material world came into being also (as a consequence of) consciousness.
But since you don't have awareness about any other consciousness then your own, this is like saying that the world came into existence when you were born.

Do you think that is plausible?

And if not, then it must mean that something that is outside, apart from and independend of your consciousness must have caused and formed your consciousness.

 

[heusdens]

Originally posted by jjjg
Christianity were the scientists. Who do you think Descartes, Copernicus, Mendel were? The church had huge institutions of learning.

[/b]

In those days, everything was dominated by the Christian institutions, all of politics, lawmaking, industry and indeed also science.

So it is no wonder that the first scientists were christians. As long as they did not present ideas that could in any way invalidate the Bible, they could perform science.
But this was not always the case, as we know from history.and the persecution of Galileo Galilei by the Roman Catcholic Church.

 

[jjjg]

Galeleo is a complex subject and it really had nothing to do with his theories but with the Protestant reform at the time.

Consiousness is "primary" as we cannot know anything about the world including what is objective but by our thinking.

What really exists on its own objectively are the objects we perceive. Matter is something we abstract from the sense perceived objects especially atomic theory which is all mathematical models in our mind.

 

[Mr. Ben]

The distinction "primary" and "secondary" is meaningless unless they are defined a little more clearly.

Under the definition "what do we directly experience.. reality, or a model of reality constructed by our minds". Under this definition, we seem to experience a constructed "model" of reality produced by the circuitry of our minds. The perceptual signals we receive seem to go through a lot of processing before our consciousness gets a crack at it.

If you are asking on the other hand, does consciousness "produce" or "originate" reality, or does it "perceive" an external reality that exists independent of it, the answer is quite different.

In all testable ways, consciousness does not seem to be able to produce reality. The reality we perceive seems to be independent of our thought. We do not seem to be able to affect reality with our minds, but our minds are constantly being affected by regular activities in what we percieve as the external world.

Our commensurable experience and our perception of that commensurability indicates that reality exists independent of our minds in all empirically testable and verifiable ways.

 

[Hilston]

Another epistemic conundrum?

Another epistemic conundrum?

Hi Heusdens,

Jim wrote: You keep asserting that, but you fail miserably to demonstrate or to prove it. God did not "happen," and every assertion you make, every predication that comes through your keyboard further points to His eternal existence. No other worldview can account for the many and the one, unity and diversity, contingencies and laws, and your every utterance affirms both, but you cannot account for it. The Triune God, the ultimate Many-and-One, exclusively gives meaning and intelligibility to our experience.


Heusdens writes:

No other worldview? Realy? How many "worldviews" did you study in your life?

Quite a few. After a while, they all start demonstrating the same problems.

Heusdens writes:

Your worldview (theism) does fact not even consider that there in fact is an objective reality.

That's false. Christian Theism establishes objective reality on the basis of objective truth that reflects the nature and characteristics of God.

Heusdens writes:

It is not to be argued that we can only know about the world in a subjective way, but this does not contradict the fact that an objective reality has to exist, we can partly and in a relative way know.

You have an epistemological dilemma on your hands. How do you, with your subjective conscious, ascertain objective reality? Is your claim about the difference between objective matter and subjective consciousness an objective claim? Or is it subjective?

Heusdens writes:

Have you ever read anything about dialectical-materialism as a philosophical worldview?

I have. Is that your view? Do you line up with Engels and Marx on this, or have you modified it to accommodate your own subjective consciousness?

Thanks,
Jim

 

[heusdens]

Re: Another epistemic conundrum?

Re: Another epistemic conundrum?

Hi Jim,

Originally posted by Hilston
That's false. Christian Theism establishes objective reality on the basis of objective truth that reflects the nature and characteristics of God.

The true nature about the material world itself is though that it is an objective reality, providing us the possibility to exist as subjective entities, having free will, intend and purpose.

Christian theism reflect on the nature of God as a subjective and consciouss entity, which has a will, purpose, intend.

Such characteristics are however not attributable to the material world itself. It is perhaps a human way of thinking, to attribute to matter things like consciousness, will and intend, and reflect on matter as if it is something personal and as if we have a personal relationship with matter. These attributes are just human projections. The concept of God is defining matter in human terms and personalize it. But since those viewpoints are alien to the material reality itself, we better abstain from these kind of viewpoints.

You have an epistemological dilemma on your hands. How do you, with your subjective conscious, ascertain objective reality? Is your claim about the difference between objective matter and subjective consciousness an objective claim? Or is it subjective?

I think I have explained that. I state from my own consciousness, that that what exists outside, apart and independend from my consciousness as the objective material world.
We are able of knowing the world, although we can never know the world in total.
I would not see this as a dilemma. Knowing the fact that consciousness is in an essential way subjective (we have a viewpoint, an identity, a goal, will, intend and purpose) does not contradict the fact the the material world has no such viewpoint, identity, intend, will or purpose. We can never claim objectivity for our selves, although we can approximate it, without reaching it.

What about the dillema's that accompany Christian theisms?
Do you think that Christian theism goes without dilemma's?

Just shortly I saw a documentary on christians, who struggle for bringing their christian worldview in accordance with objective reality, with the results of science and evolution theory.
They struggle with a lot of facts that science presents, since they conflict with their worldview.
Some of them, the fundamentalists/creationists, desperately try to refute all of these science facts, and hold on the literal interpretation of the Bible.

I think the dilemma's that accompany the christian worldview, are much more severe then for materialists.
Science in the last couple of hundreds of years has only confirmed that materialism is more fruitfull approach towards reality.
And I am convinced, that new science developments, only will confirm it even more.

Honestly, how do you think that the Christian worldview, given the development of science and the influence on society, could overcome these dillemma's? Would Christianity be able to adapt itself to this, bringing belief in accordance with science?

I have. Is that your view? Do you line up with Engels and Marx on this, or have you modified it to accommodate your own subjective consciousness?

Thanks,
Jim

Marx and Engels have prodived a profound system of thought, grounded on philosophical materialism, and developed this into dialectical and historical materialism, and which are, together with the critique on the capitalist economy and the theory of the class struggle, intergral parts of what is known as Marxism, of which they were founders. Worth mentioning also is the contribution of Lenin (state and revolution) to Marxism.
I have not read all the works of Marx and Engels.
It is noteworthy that marxism as a philosophical outlook, in particular as a critique on the capitalist economy, still inspirers many who seek for a more just social/political order, and that the mechanism on which the capitalist economy works and brings forth economic crisis, is still a basically correct outlook, and valid up to today (we are in the middle of one such crisis; the war on Iraq stands in connection to this crisis).

I don't think one needs to accomodate marxism for one's own subjective outlooks, but can learn a great deal when studying the works of marx and engels on how social development take place.

 

[Mr. Ben]

Marx and Engels have done little more than to construct a teetering philosophical structure based - as ususal - on the overloading of empirical evidence and the reification of their own abstractions.

Since most philosophical structures do the same, it's no wonder that people can't see it for what it is. I guess it's a human failing to latch onto a few simple empirical hypotheses that sound reasonable, and build a fantastical teetering overly reified philisophy around them that nicely explains WORLD+DOG.

The problem comes when you have to compare the "predictions" of this overarching edifice of reification with the real world. When, as inevitably happens, it doesn't match up.. then you're left with the task of reinterpreting reality such that it does. Once you've bought into such a philosophy (be it theistic or secular like marxism), you spend the rest of your time scrambling around trying to explain all of the contradictory evidence.

The best philosophy is that of skepticism of large scale philosophical systems and their attendant nonsense. Justified belief in well supported philosophical hypotheses is determined solely by the success of their correspondence to reality. They are closely associated with what they represent, they can easily be followed back to first principles, and they do not depend on large numbers of reified terms that do not correspond to tangible evidence.

 

[heusdens]

Mr Ben:

The studies of Marx and Engels should not be just seen as theortical predictions about reality, but inquiry methods for researching (social) reality.

It is not a finished system, with fixed (unchanging) ideas about social reality.

 

[Mr. Ben]

It seems pretty fixed to me.

It predicted the inevitable collapse of capitalism.. and that hasn't happened. It predicted that humans would build a utopian world where each contributed according to his means and received according to his needs. This was.. to say the least.. a little naive. It predicted large scale class struggle between the borgoise and the proletariat in industrial societies. That never happened. It makes claims about the worth of goods and services that do not seem connected to reality. It makes claims about the nature of private ownership that also do not seem to be very workable. It even makes specific predictions about human nature that have turned out to be wrong. Dialectical materialism is only "one" of many incorrect postulates of Marxism that have turned out to be either naive or flat out wrong.

In short.. marxism failed on practically every level. Note, the emphasis is on "failed". Marxism is about as healthy a worldview today as the Greek Pantheon is as a religion.

In any case, when you have a philosophical system that is so fundamentally flawed at the core.. it's best just to toss it and start with something else.

 

[heusdens]

Mr Ben:

In what way do you think the marxist idea of the inevitable collapse of capitalism failed?

If you look at the history, we see that capitalism has met deep and serious crisis again and again, that lead to the first world war and second world war.

And also, the socialist october revolution has lead to some drastic changes in the capitalist system in other countries.
Much of the workers rights and social security were built up, precisely because of that, the socialist october revolution.
The capitalist countries had to give in and built many social regulations into the system, else they would face a revolution in their own countrie.

We see now also the other side of this, after the collapse of the Soviet-Union, al these state interference and social security regulations are under attack.

The world today shows every signs of a world wide crisis. The gap between the most rich countries and population and the most poor countries and people, has never been as big as today.

Market reforms and capitalist globalisation lead to the current world crisis, and again capitalism has no other alternative then going into war with another nation.

The world today is exactly as what Lenin described in 'Imperialism: the highest stage of capitalism'.

Former social systems and structures, like antique slaveholders societies and feudalism, which predated capitalism, have lasted several hundreds, sometimes even much more time.
Capitalism is not old, and it has never been said that it would collapse or transform into socialism within let's say a hundred years or so. Not all changes from capitalism go in the form of revolution, sometimes slow and gradual changes occur.

Investigate all developed capitalist countries, you will see that many have already been reformed from the inisde, to provide for labour rights, provide basic social security and sociale services, which of course would not have been there without class struggle and social reforms.

On the outside it still looks like a market like capitalism, but that is not always as what it looks from the inside.

Of course, nobody knows what the tendency will be for the next hundred years or so, wether capitalism succeeds in overcoming it's own crisis of overproduction, wether the US will be able to keep the position of strongest economic and military force in the world, etc.

The signs of today are leading in another direction. Past ten years capitalism celebrated their victory over socialism, and capitalist market reforms have since then domonated the world scene.
But this victory has not lasted long, it in fact lead to a serious economic crisis, and also to the war against Iraq.

There will be a counter reaction on this, the working class will see that their interests are not safe in a capitalist economy, and will struggle for social reforms of capitalism. This is inevitable.

History is never going in a straight course, so we never know where this may lead to.

 

[LightSon]

Originally posted by Mr. Ben
Justified belief in well supported philosophical hypotheses is determined solely by the success of their correspondence to reality.

Well said.
Christianity comforms to reality.

After a time, the clear thinking you have articulated, along with a measure of God-given faith, will lead you to embrace Christ as presented in the Bible.

 

[heusdens]

Originally posted by LightSon
Well said.
Christianity comforms to reality.

There is nothing in reality though that conforms to Christianity.

 

[Hilston]

Shuck n' jive ...

Shuck n' jive ...

Combined reply to Flash and Mr. Ben.

To Flash,

Flash writes:

I have a piece of paper in my hand on which I have just written "Hilston knows that Mickey Mouse exists, and is accountable to him. His default condition is to believe in Mickey Mouse and Donald Duck." Now the burden is back on you.

Fine. Can the existence and attributes of Mickey Mouse provide for me the necessary preconditions for the intelligibility of human experience? If so, please explain.

Flash writes:

Your claim is that God exists. Can you justify this claim?

Yes. The proof of the Christian God is that without Him you cannot account for the intelligibility of human experience.

Flash writes:

Asserting that atheism cannot account for induction is hardly a proof of a deity.

It's not intended to be. Read the thread title. It's not called "The Proof of a Deity."

Flash writes:

You are a long way from proving that God exists, and, frankly, I don't think that you are up to the task.

How do you know the task hasn't been completed, and that your reasoning faculties are not up to the task of discerning the proof when it's staring you in the face? Really -- how do you know, Flash? It's an epistemological question. How do you know your own stipulated and presumably autonomous standard of reasoning and evidence isn't seriously flawed? How would you go about testing them?

Flash writes:

My challenge to you is to present a proof of the deity. Only then will you have shown that Atheism is impossible.

As I stated, and you already recognize, without the existence of God, the concept of "one" would have no meaning, the concept of "many" would have no meaning, to say nothing of bringing them together in any cohesive way, for both are required for anything to have meaning. Without the existence of God, existence itself makes no sense, let alone anyone having existence that is intelligible. Have you ever considered this: What if (I'm not saying this is the case; I'm trying to make a point here) what if the proof you require of the existence of a transcendent God is not in the purview of your of 5 senses? If He is, as some say, "super"-natural, why should you expect that the proof His existence would be found in the natural realm and perceptible by the 5 senses? I have an answer to this question, but I wonder if you've adequately considered whether or not that which you demond of God (physical proof) is not given because God is not physically omnipresent.

Jim wrote: On the Christian theistic worldview, the usefulness and function can be accounted for, and the use of it justified. On the materialist worldview, induction is taken for granted without warrant. Thus, the materialist actually must borrow from the Christian worldview in order to make sense of it, and in order to count on induction to hold in future cases.

To Mr. Ben:

Mr. Ben writes:

Actually, I don't need to borrow from the "christian" worldview to justify reality.

Prove it. Anything you say can and will be held against you when you commit epistemological grand larceny.

Mr. Ben writes:

My niece attributes every event to Santa Claus. I think her justification works just as well as yours.

Can Santa Claus account for induction? If so, then he is doing much better than the atheist position, who blindly and irrationally place their faith on induction without justification or proof of its verity.

Mr. Ben writes:

If you do not know the answers to these questions then "you" are relying on my nieces "Santa" worldview.

Prove it. Don't just make asinine assertions, Mr. Ben. Respect the debate, or else pick up your marbles and go home.

Mr. Ben writes:

Does this sufficiently illustrate the preposterous nature of your argument? If it doesn't, I can spell it out for you.

If anything, it demonstrates how utterly puerile a God-hating human can be when he is forced to confront the tough questions and has no answer. Rather than be honest and admit that you don't have an answer, you resort to your "your view is no better than these others" tripe. As a matter of fact, your Santa illustration does more to expose you own inability to directly address the issues and your need to abandon your own arguments out of fear that their inadequacy will be exposed. I see this quite often. When the atheist position is exposed as untenable, the atheist then resorts to invoking other people's beliefs, as if to hide in a quagmire of conflicting views and uncertainty. So far, you've brought up the Islamic religion, leprechauns, unicorns, Santa Claus, the Necronomicon, etc. And every time you have done it when the heat was on your position and you had no adequate answer. I'm embarrassed for you, Mr. Ben.

Jim

 

[heusdens]

A 'proof' that proofs nothing

A 'proof' that proofs nothing

Hilston:

"Without the existence of God, existence itself makes no sense, let alone anyone having existence that is intelligible."

Your reasoning is a bit as follows:

p - God exists
q - Existence makes sense and is intelligble

So, your reasoning is that:

p -> q ( p implies q )

Now, the only thing we can state the truthvalue of is q.

But your statement only makes sense if:

~p therefore ~q ( not p implies not q )

This of course can not be tested for.

In any case, without a direct evidence for the truth value of p, all such reasonings do not realy mean anything.

Since however all 'evidence' that p is true, is only based on other properties that are both known to be true and can not in a possible way be false, it is very much so that that is what God is defined to be.

If I would state that a Big Onion created the universe, the fact that we know that there is a universe, does not provide us any indication of the truth about the Big Onion. Therefore the statement that the existence of the universe is in any way related to the existence of the Big Onion, can not in any way be verified.

The non existence of the Big Onion would need us to accept that the universe would not be there. If that implication would not be the case, then our initial statement can be show to have no correspondence with the outcome, and would therefore be false.

Can a universe in fact 'not be there' ? No, it can't. A universe can not fail to exist. Even when one would conjecture that in pure speculative theory it could be that the universe would not exist, this ain't very meaningfull either, cause then nobody could exist either that could state anything about any truth at all.

In no possible way this has however anything to do with there being or not being a 'Big Onion'.

So the statement, in which it is said:

p -> q

and in which we know that q must be true always and cannot be false, are therefore nonsense statements, cause it could be used to 'proof' the truth of any p, even those that are known to be false.

If q can not be false, then there is no way to falsify the negative of the implicated truth ( ~p -> ~q ). So the truthvalue of p can then be anything, but it is unrelated to the truthvalue of q.

This means the proposition itself is false.

And since the proof of God is only built up on these kind of propositions, and no other form of objective proof has ever been provided, this leads to the conclusion we better reject the truth of the existence of God also.

 

[Hilston]

"Invention of the Wheel" analogy?

"Invention of the Wheel" analogy?

Hey Aussie Thinker,

I was hoping you would rejoin my response to your "invention of the wheel" analogy. It may have gotten buried in a flurry of posts. I just thought I'd call your attention to it in case you missed it.

Cheers,
Jim

 

[Hilston]

Flash: The ultimate authority and arbiter ... ?

Flash: The ultimate authority and arbiter ... ?

Hi Flash:

You write:

... it is trivial to construct worldviews.

Who is constructing worldviews?

Flash writes:

These worldviews are nothing but large scale "god-of-the-gaps" arguments.

How so?

Flash writes:

They begin with an assertion granting ultimate authority to something or other (this is the presupposition). To remain in that worldview, you only need to stay away from that ulimate assertion. ...

Who begins that way? What worldview? What are you talking about?

Flash writes:

For example, for my presupposition, I will choose myslef as the ultimate authority and arbiter of all things. Now, try and refute my worldview.

It is refuted by the fact that such a view of personal autonomy is internally incoherent and undermines human reason and experience. In other words, you can claim this to be true, but you don't live this way. You can't. You cannot, on such a presupposition, make cogent statements about particulars, let alone asserting authoritative generalities that anyone needs to take seriously. In fact, everything you do, every sentence that you make, your every act of dependence upon the principle of induction and the uniformity of nature affirms the Christian worldview, again proving that you must tacitly borrow from the Christian theism to make sense of your experience.

Jim

 

[Aussie Thinker]

Jim,

In response to your response the “wheel analogy”.

[quote}In I like your analogy. It is a bit rough around the edges[/quote]

I would have said SMOOTH .. hence a “wheel”

But now mankind finds himself in a debate over the nature of existence, human experience and induction. One of the disputants brings into the debate the concept of the newly-discovered wheel-axle machine, and how its discovery speaks to the existence of transcendent laws (universals) that apply repeatedly in their contingent experience (particulars). They then press the question of whether or not certain worldviews can sufficiently account for the consistent usefulness of the wheel. In order to do so, it is challenged that he must be able to adequately and cogently provide for the preconditions of the physics that explain how the wheel-axle machine works, and be able to justify the expectation that the wheel will continue to function in the future as it has in the past.

The only logical answer to why the wheel will work again is because it did every other time we tried it and we know the physics behind it.

But you want to delve into the philosophical WHY ! I argue that humans do not question your sort of WHY unless they are LOOKING for a purpose. A purpose immediately implies an intelligent overseer. So in asking your question you are already assuming a God !

You have NEVER yet explained why we have to ask this sort of why. The sort I use completely answers the question.

One claims to have a view that is able to coherently describe existence and induction in terms of their use and application of wheel. He asks, Why should we expect the wheel to work next time as it did the last time? How is it that these universal invariant laws repeatedly apply to our particular changing experiences? The materialist tries to answer, but on the materialist worldview, the universals cannot be accounted for.

These universals are what we perceive.. they are man made concepts to describe and ordered universe. The universe seems to have order and universals to us because we are products of it.

Instead, they are blindly assumed, with no way of testing or proving them. He can use it, and hope that future experiences will be like the past.

Not blindly assumed, tested, experimented experienced and confirmed. Not hope future experiences will be like the past KNOW they will be. If they weren’t then you might start looking for supernatural explanations.

He can assume that law-like constraints can be relied upon, but he has no warrant for it.

Yes we do.. we made up the explanation for the “laws” we observe and experiment to assure ourselves how we conceive they work. Then we rely on them.

Without being able to account for it, he cannot justify his reliance upon it.

We can account for it.. we invented it. Our reliance follows from our own testing of our invention. You invented God and now rely on him.. it the same thing its just I avoid inventing something supernatural to explain it.

The wheel-axle is a helpful device. On the Christian theistic worldview, the usefulness and function can be accounted for, and the use of it justified. On the materialist worldview, induction is taken for granted without warrant.

No it isn’t you just say it is. The wheel is just as much and invention as any of our concepts.. before it was first made it was an idea in our heads.. just like every other man made concept .. including God.

Thus, the materialist actually must borrow from the Christian worldview in order to make sense of it, and in order to count on induction to hold in future cases.

Jim I used to feel a bit sorry for anyone stuck in a small idea like the “Christian” wordview. But I can see clever people like you just declare that everything sensible is in the CW wether it is or isn’t. The Christian wordview is a cobbled together view from a 1,000 other theistic ideas. When it doesn’t dabble into mysticism, myth and fantasy it actually mostly holds together. It is way short however of encompassing everything like the atheist materialist worldview does.

Steve, it really makes you look utterly silly to make such statements, as it certainly does not represent the view of anyone so far who is debating the existence of God or the impossibility of atheism on this thread. God is no more a "big wheel" than He is the "laws of logic." These universal laws reflect His nature and character. God did not create them. God's existence is the reason for them.

The “big wheel” was a joke (albeit not a terribly good one) merely stating that you make your God whatever you want him to be.

It seems amazingly ironic to me that the fact that man can reason, fantasise and think is the very reason he was able to invent Gods in the first place. You know turn this around and say this ability was passed on to us from a fantasy which stemmed from it.

 

[Aussie Thinker]

Jim,

While you keep saying this I will have to keep posting a dispute of it.

In regard to Flash declaring he is the Ultimate authority

It is refuted by the fact that such a view of personal autonomy is internally incoherent and undermines human reason and experience.

You state this over and over but saying it doesn’t make it so. It is entirely coherent (why would a reasoning person hold to something that isn’t)

In other words, you can claim this to be true, but you don't live this way. You can't. You cannot, on such a presupposition, make cogent statements about particulars, let alone asserting authoritative generalities that anyone needs to take seriously.

Yet you make EXACTLY the same assertions about your God. Flash actually wields far more authority than your God and that is easily proven. I bet Flash could post another item on this thread.. your God can’t. However small Flash’ influence on this world is it is fare greater than a fantasy.

In fact, everything you do, every sentence that you make, your every act of dependence upon the principle of induction and the uniformity of nature affirms the Christian worldview, again proving that you must tacitly borrow from the Christian theism to make sense of your experience.

Jim in your fantasy world EVERYTHING affirms the Christian worldview. In the real world the Christian worldview covers enough issues to live out a reasonable existence. It is terribly inferior to an atheist materialist worldview that allows on eht freedom to abandon myth and superstitious nonsense.

 

[Aussie Thinker]

Oops.. removed post from the wrong topic...

Too many at once..

Have a nice day !