arguments for atheism

[bilby]

 

[Learner]

Eric the god eater.

Can't prove either, so "technically" there is such a thing as gods?

 

[WAB]

Eric the god eater.

So there is such a thing as gods?

Egads.

Learner, don't...

Alright, just remember - I warned ya!

 

[Learner]

Noted WABS.

 

[WAB]

The big question is, can Eric eat a god so tremendously large that he couldn't digest it?

 

[bilby]

Eric the god eater.

Can't prove either, so "technically" there is such a thing as gods?

Liquorice dustbin lids

 

[skepticalbip]

What happened to all the thousands of gods in religious history that people no longer believe exist? Is there an old god graveyard somewhere in heaven? Did they just vanish when people stopped believing in them? Did they retire and now are living out their days in an old god retirement heaven. Did they ever actually exist other than in the minds of people who are no more? The same questions for fairies, trolls, ogres, jinn, sprites, etc.

 

[WAB]

What happened to all the thousands of gods in religious history that people no longer believe exist? Is there an old god graveyard somewhere in heaven? Did they just vanish when people stopped believing in them? Did they retire and now are living out their days in an old god retirement heaven. Did they ever actually exist other than in the minds of people who are no more? The same questions for fairies, trolls, ogres, jinn, sprites, etc.

Eric ate them.

 

[Jarhyn]

If skepticism can't find purchase against a belief, or if you can't find something to take it's place, then usually it's better to just keep believing.

Oh, no doubt. So say the faculty of Wheaton College, the Holy See of Vatican City, the LDS Office of the First President, the ulama class in Islam, and ten guys venerating a juju charm in Cameroon.

Yeah, see, skepticism finds purchase against all those beliefs. The belief that if I drop something towards a large mass that it will fall towards that mass? I can test THAT belief all day and never get anywhere with my skepticism

None of those guys you mentioned tolerate skepticism, and will tear down any belief they don't like regardless of whether there is something there.

It is also idiocy to throw away belief, even when you have impugned it's truth with skepticism, even when you are trying to figure out something better, so long as you don't have a better model to replace it with.

 

[bilby]

If skepticism can't find purchase against a belief, or if you can't find something to take it's place, then usually it's better to just keep believing.

Oh, no doubt. So say the faculty of Wheaton College, the Holy See of Vatican City, the LDS Office of the First President, the ulama class in Islam, and ten guys venerating a juju charm in Cameroon.

Yeah, see, skepticism finds purchase against all those beliefs. The belief that if I drop something towards a large mass that it will fall towards that mass? I can test THAT belief all day and never get anywhere with my skepticism

None of those guys you mentioned tolerate skepticism, and will tear down any belief they don't like regardless of whether there is something there.

It is also idiocy to throw away belief, even when you have impugned it's truth with skepticism, even when you are trying to figure out something better, so long as you don't have a better model to replace it with.

I disagree. It's better to say "I have no idea and am looking for absolutely any model that fits the observations" than to say "I believe X, until I find a model that better fits the observations".

Because humans are really shit at changing their minds, and super prone to promoting beliefs to certainties with no justification other than the passage of time.

 

[Treedbear]

OK, I have to revise that after listening to blastula and looking into what "Philosophy" has to say about the definitions. So I proceeded to the source. https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/atheism-agnosticism/

1. Definitions of “Atheism”
“Atheism” is typically defined in terms of “theism”. Theism, in turn, is best understood as a proposition—something that is either true or false. It is often defined as “the belief that God exists”, but here “belief” means “something believed”. It refers to the propositional content of belief, not to the attitude or psychological state of believing. This is why it makes sense to say that theism is true or false and to argue for or against theism. If, however, “atheism” is defined in terms of theism and theism is the proposition that God exists and not the psychological condition of believing that there is a God, then it follows that atheism is not the absence of the psychological condition of believing that God exists (more on this below). The “a-” in “atheism” must be understood as negation instead of absence, as “not” instead of “without”. Therefore, in philosophy at least, atheism should be construed as the proposition that God does not exist (or, more broadly, the proposition that there are no gods).

The article goes on to give a rationale behind the word agnostic and why it is properly considered to be the psychological state of the lack of a belief. Also that agnosticism is not an appropriate term since -isms typically concern systems of belief.

This pretty much comports with the use of agnostic as I previously understood it until several years ago when I was convinced that weak and strong atheists are useful concepts and were commonly viewed as such on this forum. And today I find out that weak, strong, and now "apathetic" agnostics can try to make sense of each other during a discussion. I've always used the word agnostic as a way to describe my view on any number of subjects, and it's always been the strong interpretation. A weak agnostic is basically the same thing as a weak atheist under that paradigm. It makes more sense to consider all three terms using their strong interpretation and adding qualifiers to specify the context. So I hereby admit that I'm not and have never been an atheist. On the subject of the existence of an actual god or gods I'm agnostic, i.e.; an agnostic. Not an apathetic agnostic. But maybe a weak apathetic agnostic.

Sorry to hear that, we lost one of the good ones. But if that's where you are, it's better to have that clarity.

I do think atheism is the more defensible position though and while I don't know the basis for your position, I would recommend reading this piece on this issue of whether it can be known that there is no god.

I Know There Is No God. | Daniel Fincke*

*Just substitute "agnostics" every time he says "agnostic atheists."

That's a good read, and thanks for the complement. I insist that objectively I haven't changed my position on the issue of theism. Just on how I categorize my worldview. I haven't abandoned the tribe. I'm just trying to refine my own way of thinking. I have nothing to defend but my own integrity. I always find it a pity that it's so difficult to know what theists, atheists, and agnostics mean and I would hope to keep these definitions as simple as possible. With so many posters taking part it seems hopeless. Having various degrees of atheists from strong to weak as if we were rating chili peppers is overlooking the obvious. Atheists, theists and agnostics are different vegetables.

On the article by Fincke, he says:

We should call people like this “agnostic atheists”. They are atheists because, they lack all belief in gods and don’t live as though there are gods, and so are “without gods” or “atheist”. The adjective “agnostic” here designates that they think the issue of gods is, either in principle or at least for the time being, not a matter for knowledge.

As I noted earlier I ended up describing myself as "agnostic on theism/atheism", since I agree with neither proposition. Why should I pretend to lean towards one or the other? The fact that I "don't live as though there were gods" would be to say I'm not religious or don't practice a religion. How one behaves is not necessarily related to what one believes exists. That should be obvious to many of the critics of theism. One might believe and still want nothing to do with any of it.

Finke's argument seems somewhat disingenuous to me in that he goes for paragraphs about how there is no evidence for a personal god, and then claims that as evidence there is no god, period.

SO, in that context, I feel quite confident in saying that I believe there are no personal gods intervening in the world. Better yet, the degree of evidence is so overwhelming against the gods hypothesis, that I have no hesitation in saying I know there are no gods.

Well that's very gallant of him, but I think the Deists would object that it places an unreasonable limitation on the god concept. He finally lays out all his cards in the last paragraph:

And an impersonal ground of all being is so profoundly irrelevant to all the things that people want from a “god” that if that’s all you mean by the kind of “God” that could exist, and if you know a personal God can’t? You essentially are an atheist who knows there is no God of the only socially relevant kind.

So just join me already in calling yourself a gnostic atheist, an atheist who knows there is no God.

Well that's all fine and it might be the strongest evidence there is that a god or gods in fact does not exist. But it's still not sufficient because many arguments for god go well beyond that. They don't need to have any fundamental "social relevance". I don't believe any of them are necessarily true. But I have no way to determine the probability that they are or are not. And since it's not about a god one can have a personal relationship with there is also no imperative to belief either way. I can afford to say I don't know, and leave my mind completely open to the possibility. That's not a "massively disproportionate overcorrection".

 

[Jarhyn]

Yeah, see, skepticism finds purchase against all those beliefs. The belief that if I drop something towards a large mass that it will fall towards that mass? I can test THAT belief all day and never get anywhere with my skepticism

None of those guys you mentioned tolerate skepticism, and will tear down any belief they don't like regardless of whether there is something there.

It is also idiocy to throw away belief, even when you have impugned it's truth with skepticism, even when you are trying to figure out something better, so long as you don't have a better model to replace it with.

I disagree. It's better to say "I have no idea and am looking for absolutely any model that fits the observations" than to say "I believe X, until I find a model that better fits the observations".

Because humans are really shit at changing their minds, and super prone to promoting beliefs to certainties with no justification other than the passage of time.

So, because humans are bad at changing their minds... We shouldn't work to get better at it?

It's a trained skill. You are proposing letting people get off without training it.

 

[bilby]

Yeah, see, skepticism finds purchase against all those beliefs. The belief that if I drop something towards a large mass that it will fall towards that mass? I can test THAT belief all day and never get anywhere with my skepticism

None of those guys you mentioned tolerate skepticism, and will tear down any belief they don't like regardless of whether there is something there.

It is also idiocy to throw away belief, even when you have impugned it's truth with skepticism, even when you are trying to figure out something better, so long as you don't have a better model to replace it with.

I disagree. It's better to say "I have no idea and am looking for absolutely any model that fits the observations" than to say "I believe X, until I find a model that better fits the observations".

Because humans are really shit at changing their minds, and super prone to promoting beliefs to certainties with no justification other than the passage of time.

So, because humans are bad at changing their minds... We shouldn't work to get better at it?

It's a trained skill. You are proposing letting people get off without training it.

No, I am proposing that people should avoid attempting something they are unskilled at, without adult supervision.

People who don't know how to drive shouldn't be encouraged to just hop in a car and get out on the highway, for the same reason that people shouldn't be encouraged to believe any random shit rather than just admitting ignorance.

 

[Keith&Co.]

for the same reason that people shouldn't be encouraged to believe any random shit rather than just admitting ignorance.

I see you've never run for office.

 

[Jarhyn]

So, because humans are bad at changing their minds... We shouldn't work to get better at it?

It's a trained skill. You are proposing letting people get off without training it.

No, I am proposing that people should avoid attempting something they are unskilled at, without adult supervision.

People who don't know how to drive shouldn't be encouraged to just hop in a car and get out on the highway, for the same reason that people shouldn't be encouraged to believe any random shit rather than just admitting ignorance.

The difference being humans literally cannot function without belief before they are roughly 15-16 and usually not even for many years after that, if ever.

This is kind of like Health and Human Development classes and sex: you cannot prevent belief, at best you can (and must, if you want good outcomes) educate people in the application of process based skepticism.

Operation in a model vacuum is always going to fuck you over, and attempting to produce a model vacuum for believers is just going to get you nowhere.

You can rail all you like about why people shouldn't believe in god or whatever, but the fact is, the universe itself is agnostic about whether it was created, as the nature of creation is external and trivial metadata, and all we have is the data itself. There is no way to selectively argue FOR atheism over "gnostic agnosticism", the latter of which states that the universe is created by all things that instantiate it, and none of them; that the data, given an absence of the accessibility of wider context, just doesn't encode an answer.

To that end, there is little to offer, by atheists, to theists, which will free them of their shackles that bind them to the book.

This is why I'm always arguing that "If there is a god, he wrote the relationships which require ethics of wise actors for their own sake, and if there isn't a god, those relationships are still no less real and applicable to the aforementioned actors". It doesn't take a position on god but rather a position on the facts of the universe: being good to each other works, and regardless of whether that's by intent or merely a requirement of any universe that operates in a way describable by math (and these are not mutually exclusive...), We should probably pay heed and "do what works".

 

[abaddon]

The OP's more about the reasons for a nontheistic stance towards reality than about the various terms, or about postchristian ("secularist") goals for humanity.

Is there a metaphysical argument that establishes Atheism (or let's say "nontheistic thought" if that helps avoid excess focus on the a-word) as a "true" description of the universe?

A thought experiment, maybe, is an interesting way to approach it:

Imagine you're presented with two universes that look alike, but one is a god-made universe and the other a self-made (or 'godless') universe. How do you tell the difference?

For this thought experiment, please don't assume that the maker of the god-made universe thinks like an engineer and aims for a perfectly engineered universe with no apparent (to human eyes) "mistakes" in it. Try to allow that God might be very different from what Abrahamic fundies present to you. Maybe it's even a trial-and-error god.

 

[Politesse]

Imagine you're presented with two universes that look alike, but one is a god-made universe and the other a self-made (or 'godless') universe. How do you tell the difference?

That was in fact what I thought I was asking, in the original quoted post.

For this thought experiment, please don't assume that the maker of the god-made universe thinks like an engineer and aims for a perfectly engineered universe with no apparent (to human eyes) "mistakes" in it. Try to allow that God might be very different from what Abrahamic fundies present to you. Maybe it's even a trial-and-error god.

Or several in overt argument with one another, some even deliberately sabotaging the effort as in many mythologies. There is quite a lot of diversity implied by "every theistic religious perspective"!

 

[abaddon]

I would say that if two universes are so alike they'll inevitably be explained with the same cause-effect patterns. If we see evolution happening in both, evolutionary explanations will be preferred to any spiritual explanations because it's "multiplying entities" in introducing gods as explanations.

In the end, "because mythologies" is an appeal to tradition. 'Longstanding traditions all around the world, beliefs held by billions' isn't a good reason to go on considering "maybe, just maybe" that they're right and that it's 'epistemic assumptions' by nerdy people that makes it unapparent to those nerdy people.

If one of the underlying assumptions in the question is that a person should know with 100% certainty that no gods are present in a universe before saying it's a godless universe, then I disagree. The absence of evidence is evidence of absence. It's more than sure-enough that all possible god-conceptions will never describe anything else than mythological characters. The more abstract holisms ("all that is" or a purported "creative force" or other) also merely appeal to old mythological traditions; there's no other reason to call such abstractions "God".

 

[Jarhyn]

The OP's more about the reasons for a nontheistic stance towards reality than about the various terms, or about postchristian ("secularist") goals for humanity.

Is there a metaphysical argument that establishes Atheism (or let's say "nontheistic thought" if that helps avoid excess focus on the a-word) as a "true" description of the universe?

A thought experiment, maybe, is an interesting way to approach it:

Imagine you're presented with two universes that look alike, but one is a god-made universe and the other a self-made (or 'godless') universe. How do you tell the difference?

For this thought experiment, please don't assume that the maker of the god-made universe thinks like an engineer and aims for a perfectly engineered universe with no apparent (to human eyes) "mistakes" in it. Try to allow that God might be very different from what Abrahamic fundies present to you. Maybe it's even a trial-and-error god.

My point is that you can't tell the difference, particularly if my particular views on God would be considered at all reasonable -- namely that such a being must have goals that on some level make sense, that those goals are constrained by the same metaphysical constraints that we generally recognize as being apriori, and that the relationships that exist with the universe as a function of intent by said creator.

In this way, creations must constrain their creators within the class of things that would create the result.

It's by no means necessary for the creator to exist. In fact, any species under any metaphysics that allows for strategy to exist and converge might see such convergent strategy similarly. It may be water in a puddle seeing the shape of it fit them, not realizing they are the water that conforms. Perhaps all universes look 'created' for this reason.

That said, we just can't know, and ultimately it doesn't matter. Some people have a need to feel loved by the universe (by themselves, really), and being an atheist won't help those people.

 

[T.G.G. Moogly]

But if there's both a god and a universe how would one know which came first?