Exposing Atheistic Myths

[Rhea]

The charge of navel gazing in this argument is so apt.

This philosophical mobius strip that Half-Life is trying to claim proves god is one of those ideas that has NO USE. He seems to be giddy in the assumption that this will “prove” something about his beliefs in “god”. KInd of comically giddy. Like, if we can’t do this puzzle, we’re all proof of his god.

But like his god itself, it’s just an idea with NO USE as far as I can see. A parlor trick that relies on definitions that it makes up to create the puzzle itself.

The way I see it, this claim that “everything is of the mind” has no use. If everything is of the mind, then I have control over it. And obviously I don’t. If everything is of the mind, then each person will have no link to what another person sees and no one will be able to agree on the physical artifacts of our world. If everything is of the mind and it requires one omni mind to tie this together, but the omni mind is inscrutable and unpredictable, then we would not have what we see today.

The way the world OPERATES is materially and reliably and under, as they say, the blind indifference of chance.

So this Berkeley, who considered himself so very clever because he made a what-if that defines itself as unprovable, has nevertheless made a puzzle that has exactly zero impact on life. Zero. It is useless. It is utterly useless.

No scientist can use it to any purpose. No business person, no government, can use this definition to predict or apply. No artist can use this to build upon the materialistic imagination. No engineer can build a bridge with it. No parent can guide a child with it.

It’s navel gazing at its most frivolous.

The only people who seem to think they can use it are religionists like Half-Life who thinks he can use this definition to prove aNOTHER definition that is useless and has no impact on the world.

Half-Life has giddily cried, again and again in this thread, “if you can’t disprove it, then IT PROVES a god!”
I mean, it doesn’t, at all. Unless you are trying to prove a god that is useless and immaterial. In which case, okay, yeah, you win, Halfie. I confess that you have proved a useless and immaterial god. Woot.

Carry on, world.

 

[skepticalbip]

^ ^

And it is quite amusing that Halfie claims to be a Christian and is pushing this philosophy that would mean that the Bible is full of nonsense. The Bible claims god created all sorts of material things (Sun, Moon, stars, animals, fish, trees, etc.) while Halfie asserts there are no material things. Jesus could not have been crucified because, according to Halfie, he had no body and there are no crosses.

 

[T.G.G. Moogly]

What kind of mind does a ghost have?

 

[Keith&Co.]

What kind of mind does a ghost have?

Used?

 

[abaddon]

But like his god itself, it’s just an idea with NO USE as far as I can see. A parlor trick that relies on definitions that it makes up to create the puzzle itself.

Which is why Berkeley was largely forgotten except as a puzzle in Introductory Philosophy classes to exercise student's brains. That we're the most directly aware of our own experience, and all else is indirect knowledge, is a trivial observation. The next most logical question is: how well do our mental representations match what is out there? And that's where Berkeley went off the rails because of his intent to prove God for everyone's moral un-edification. God has never been anything but a misdirection.

I gave a link earlier to a neuroscientist talking about whether our interior mental representation of the world matches a little or a lot with the exterior world. It was meant to show this is a puzzle that scientists (theists and atheists) think about. And they've got a relevant approach to the matter that isn't just armchair philosophy. Half-Life breezed over the point I'd made, as expected.

 

[Half-Life]

^ ^

And it is quite amusing that Halfie claims to be a Christian and is pushing this philosophy that would mean that the Bible is full of nonsense. The Bible claims god created all sorts of material things (Sun, Moon, stars, animals, fish, trees, etc.) while Halfie asserts there are no material things. Jesus could not have been crucified because, according to Halfie, he had no body and there are no crosses.

You guys keep showing me you don't understand his argument!!! Ignorance of the argument is not a refutation!!!

"The existence of what I see does not depend exclusively on my seeing it. Berkeley's central claim is that sensible objects cannot exist without being perceived, but he did not suppose that I am the only perceiver. So long as some sentient being, some thinking substance or spirit, has in mind the sensible qualities or objects at issue, they do truly exist. Thus, even when I close my eyes, the tree I now see will continue to exist, provided that someone else is seeing it."

"This difference, Berkeley held, precisely marks the distinction between real and imaginary things. What I merely imagine exists in my mind alone and continues to exist only so long as I think of it. But what is real exists in many minds, so it can continue to exist whether I perceive it or not. (That's why, unsure of the reality of what I seem to see, I may ask someone else, "Did you see that?") The existence of sensible objects requires that they be perceived, but it is not dependent exclusively on my perception of them."

http://www.philosophypages.com/hy/4r.htm

Immaterialism:
"Belief that only mental entities are real, so that physical things exist only in the sense that they are perceived. Berkeley defended his "immaterialism" on purely empiricist grounds, while Kant and Fichte arrived at theirs by transcendental arguments. "


I seriously implore you guys to read this page and stop with the knee-jerk reactions.

 

[Keith&Co.]

I seriously implore you guys to read this page and stop with the knee-jerk reactions.

i seriously implore you, Halfie, to justify why i would abandon a basic premise you have not disproven.

 

[skepticalbip]

Immaterialism:
"Belief that only mental entities are real, so that physical things exist only in the sense that they are perceived.

And "I seriously implore you" to read for comprehension your definition of Immaterialism. "Only mental entities are real" means that no physical entities exist as reality. "physical things exist only in the sense that they are perceived" means things only exist in the mind, not outside the mind. One person, no matter who, or many people 'sensing' something does not make it real in a physical world - but only in their mind.

Immaterialism means that there is nothing material... no matter how many people hold a mental sense of it.

 

[Lion IRC]

Isn't Bruce Jenner a female mind trapped in a mans body?

Where does the female mind come from? How do you think mind is formed?

Mind. Soul. Free will. Autonomy. Call it what you like.
I think these are the product of God's creativity.

 

[Keith&Co.]

You guys keep showing me you don't understand his argument!!! Ignorance of the argument is not a refutation!!!

And you seem ignorant of the fact that a dozen posts explaining why no one needs to refute the argument are not meant as a refutation. But ignoring those posts does not constitute an argument.

 

[skepticalbip]

You guys keep showing me you don't understand his argument!!! Ignorance of the argument is not a refutation!!!

I understand Berkeley's argument, as nonsensical as it is. Your argument is another matter as it's only consistency is that it is consistently self-contradictory.

ETA:
Rather than watching a Jack Chick type youtube cartoon or reading some blog, maybe you should read what Berkeley himself wrote:
https://www.maths.tcd.ie/~dwilkins/Berkeley/HumanKnowledge/1734/HumKno.pdf

 

[Half-Life]

Immaterialism:
"Belief that only mental entities are real, so that physical things exist only in the sense that they are perceived.

And "I seriously implore you" to read for comprehension your definition of Immaterialism. "Only mental entities are real" means that no physical entities exist as reality. "physical things exist only in the sense that they are perceived" means things only exist in the mind, not outside the mind. One person, no matter who, or many people 'sensing' something does not make it real in a physical world - but only in their mind.

Immaterialism means that there is nothing material... no matter how many people hold a mental sense of it.

Right and you believe in materialism, which you have yet to prove that things ARE made of material substances called matter.

This is why materialism requires MORE EVIDENCE than immaterialism. Evidence you can't ever provide.

 

[skepticalbip]

Immaterialism:
"Belief that only mental entities are real, so that physical things exist only in the sense that they are perceived.

And "I seriously implore you" to read for comprehension your definition of Immaterialism. "Only mental entities are real" means that no physical entities exist as reality. "physical things exist only in the sense that they are perceived" means things only exist in the mind, not outside the mind. One person, no matter who, or many people 'sensing' something does not make it real in a physical world - but only in their mind.

Immaterialism means that there is nothing material... no matter how many people hold a mental sense of it.

Right and you believe in materialism, which you have yet to prove that things ARE made of material substances called matter.

This is why materialism requires MORE EVIDENCE than immaterialism. Evidence you can't ever provide.

Hey, I'm OK with you believing that the Bible is full of nonsense, that Jesus (your god) couldn't have possibly been crucified. You just got there by a different route than I did.

 

[DBT]

Isn't Bruce Jenner a female mind trapped in a mans body?

Where does the female mind come from? How do you think mind is formed?

Mind. Soul. Free will. Autonomy. Call it what you like.
I think these are the product of God's creativity.

These are just words. When you say 'soul,' what exactly are you talking about? What is the composition of this thing called 'soul?' Spirit stuff?....What is Spirit? How does Spirit interact with matter?

Did the Female spirit/soul accidently inhabit a male body in your example?

 

[Keith&Co.]

This is why materialism requires MORE EVIDENCE than immaterialism. Evidence you can't ever provide.

How can you demand evidence for something that cannot be proven? Seems futile.
Why would i adopt a futile philosophy?

 

[abaddon]

This is why materialism requires MORE EVIDENCE than immaterialism. Evidence you can't ever provide.

Materialism versus immaterialism doesn't matter.

I am VERY aware that I have no direct experience of anything but "my" mind.

But I don't see how God isn't just a 'placeholder' kind of non-solution for such conundrums. Everything theists and theologians say to prove God only confirms that for me. So while I disagree with anyone who might think your conundrum is word games from start to finish, I do agree that it's word games at the finish - using God as an easy solution, just because that's a traditional use for that word.

It's not because I don't want God to exist; that's a lame ad hom on your part. I actually do a lot of the work for you and other theists (way too much, really) trying to figure out what theists might be trying but failing to convey in their arguments. So it's not an aversion towards "God". It's that I won't believe things without good reasons to believe them.

 

[skepticalbip]

Right and you believe in materialism, which you have yet to prove that things ARE made of material substances called matter.

This is why materialism requires MORE EVIDENCE than immaterialism. Evidence you can't ever provide.

Neither is provable in a philosophical sense. The 'dispute' is only useful as a mental masturbation exercise.

However materialism allows us to form models that allow us to understand and predict future observations, chemical reactions, medicine, radioactive decay, internal combustion engines, chemical reactions, etc. etc. etc. In effect materialism is necessary to make scientific and engineering progress to improve the standard of living for humanity.

ETA:
Materialism also allows Christians to not reject a great deal of the Bible.

 

[Half-Life]

This is why materialism requires MORE EVIDENCE than immaterialism. Evidence you can't ever provide.

How can you demand evidence for something that cannot be proven? Seems futile.
Why would i adopt a futile philosophy?

So you admit materialism has no evidence. Thanks, Keith.

So now I must ask: Why do you believe in materialism?

 

[Half-Life]

Right and you believe in materialism, which you have yet to prove that things ARE made of material substances called matter.

This is why materialism requires MORE EVIDENCE than immaterialism. Evidence you can't ever provide.

Neither is provable in a philosophical sense. The 'dispute' is only useful as a mental masturbation exercise.

However materialism allows us to form models that allow us to understand and predict future observations, chemical reactions, medicine, radioactive decay, internal combustion engines, chemical reactions, etc. etc. etc. In effect materialism is necessary to make scientific and engineering progress to improve the standard of living for humanity.

I keep telling you guys to READ THE WEBPAGE, and you don't.

Science without Matter

"Even if we accept it as common sense, is Berkeley's immaterialism compatible with modern science? Certainly Galileo's astronomy, Newtonian mechanics, and the chemistry of Boyle all took for granted the existence and operation of physical objects. But Berkeley maintained that natural science, if properly conceived, could proceed and even thrive without assuming that bodies are material substances existing outside the mind.

Astronomy and optics seem to suppose that what we see exists at some distance from us. But Berkeley argued in his New Theory of Vision that our apparent perception of distance itself is a mental invention, easily explained in terms of the content of visual ideas, without any reference to existing material objects. In fact, Berkeley held, our visual and tactile perceptions are entirely independent. What we see and what we touch have nothing to do with each other; we have merely learned by experience to associate each with the other, just as we have learned to associate the appearance, the taste, and the smell of an apple. There is no reason to suppose that all of these qualities inhere in a common material substratum.

It follows that Locke was mistaken in supposing that our ideas of primary qualities have a special status because they arise from more than one of our senses. Although the corpuscularian hypothesis has yielded interesting results so far, Berkeley believed that science will soon enough outgrow it, learning to rely more directly on what we perceive for its hypotheses about what new experiences we rightly anticipate.

As we've already seen, Berkeley accounted for the persistence of bodies in terms of god's continuing perception of them. The causal regularities we observe in the natural world rely upon the same source. God's mind is an orderly one, and the apparent structures of space, time, and causality are nothing more than our awareness of the divine provision for our welfare. Natural science has plenty to do even in the absence of material objects, then: it is nothing less than a systematic exploration of the mind of god. (Here Berkeley came very close to the philosophy of Malebranche.)

More significantly for us, he also correctly anticipated much of the physical science of the twentieth century. Like Berkeley, we believe that the solidity of bodies is merely apparent, that a proper cosmology depends upon our capacity to conceive it, and that the role of science is to gather and correlate the independent observations of human perceivers. It is not surprising that physicists like Mach expressed an appreciation for the thought of Berkeley."

http://www.philosophypages.com/hy/4r.htm

I shouldn't even have to post it this many times. I figured you guys would engage in good faith and hopefully refute the points one by one.

You haven't.

 

[skepticalbip]

Right and you believe in materialism, which you have yet to prove that things ARE made of material substances called matter.

This is why materialism requires MORE EVIDENCE than immaterialism. Evidence you can't ever provide.

Neither is provable in a philosophical sense. The 'dispute' is only useful as a mental masturbation exercise.

However materialism allows us to form models that allow us to understand and predict future observations, chemical reactions, medicine, radioactive decay, internal combustion engines, chemical reactions, etc. etc. etc. In effect materialism is necessary to make scientific and engineering progress to improve the standard of living for humanity.

I keep telling you guys to READ THE WEBPAGE, and you don't.
... snip ...
You haven't.

I started then stopped because, as I explained to you earlier, I prefer to go to the source and read what the original said and why, not what someone says Berkeley said. Also, I am not arguing with a web page because they can not respond to my criticism of their take.

You are claiming that you are arguing Berkeley's position... You are not.

Perhaps you need to read Berkeley himself rather than someone's take on it in a blog:
https://www.maths.tcd.ie/~dwilkins/Berkeley/HumanKnowledge/1734/HumKno.pdf