I think we can make the positive claim that nothing like 'gods' exist

[bilby]

Absence of evidence rules out justified belief.

Playing Devil's Advocate, absence of evidence can precede scientific theory.

Maxwell predicted speed of light C without any ability to make an observation or test.

Ancient Greeks theorized that matter reduced to an irreducible element that had the properties of the macro object like a rock. The atom.

Without observation or understanding of physical principles?

I woud sau so. They had no ability to descern atoms. There were observed indirectly in the late 19th century by xray diffraction of a crystalline material. It shiowed a regular structure e quay spaced dots.

It was pure conjecture by the Greeks.

No purely conjecture. If something ground down to finer and finer particles, it's fair to assume that matter comes down to some fundamental particle as a building 'block' - their proposed "atomos."

Why?

Why would you assume that matter isn't continuous?

I can cut a lump of wax in half, and end up with two lumps of wax. Why would you assume that I couldn't keep doing that indefinitely (assuming the ability to manipulate arbitrarily small things)?

I don't think that's a 'fair assumption' at all.

It feels true to us, because we have grown up with the knowledge that it is true. But in the absence of that upbringing, it seems like it would be a highly counterintuitive idea.

"I can cut this in half thirty six times, but not thirty seven" sounds like the ranting of an idiot, in the absence of any experimental support for the claim. Particularly given that there's no obvious limit to how much stuff you can add - if I have two similar lumps of wax, I can join them to make one larger lump, and that's repeatable indefinitely, given a sufficient supply of wax. Why on Earth would it be intuitively obvious that the reverse process cannot continue indefinitely?

 

[DBT]

Absence of evidence rules out justified belief.

Playing Devil's Advocate, absence of evidence can precede scientific theory.

Maxwell predicted speed of light C without any ability to make an observation or test.

Ancient Greeks theorized that matter reduced to an irreducible element that had the properties of the macro object like a rock. The atom.

Without observation or understanding of physical principles?

I woud sau so. They had no ability to descern atoms. There were observed indirectly in the late 19th century by xray diffraction of a crystalline material. It shiowed a regular structure e quay spaced dots.

It was pure conjecture by the Greeks.

No purely conjecture. If something ground down to finer and finer particles, it's fair to assume that matter comes down to some fundamental particle as a building 'block' - their proposed "atomos."

Why?

Why would you assume that matter isn't continuous?

I can cut a lump of wax in half, and end up with two lumps of wax. Why would you assume that I couldn't keep doing that indefinitely (assuming the ability to manipulate arbitrarily small things)?

I don't think that's a 'fair assumption' at all.

It feels true to us, because we have grown up with the knowledge that it is true. But in the absence of that upbringing, it seems like it would be a highly counterintuitive idea.

"I can cut this in half thirty six times, but not thirty seven" sounds like the ranting of an idiot, in the absence of any experimental support for the claim. Particularly given that there's no obvious limit to how much stuff you can add - if I have two similar lumps of wax, I can join them to make one larger lump, and that's repeatable indefinitely, given a sufficient supply of wax. Why on Earth would it be intuitively obvious that the reverse process cannot continue indefinitely?

Yet they didn't, the Greeks stopped at 'atomos,' which they assumed were solid little balls of fundamental material.

 

[bilby]

Absence of evidence rules out justified belief.

Playing Devil's Advocate, absence of evidence can precede scientific theory.

Maxwell predicted speed of light C without any ability to make an observation or test.

Ancient Greeks theorized that matter reduced to an irreducible element that had the properties of the macro object like a rock. The atom.

Without observation or understanding of physical principles?

I woud sau so. They had no ability to descern atoms. There were observed indirectly in the late 19th century by xray diffraction of a crystalline material. It shiowed a regular structure e quay spaced dots.

It was pure conjecture by the Greeks.

No purely conjecture. If something ground down to finer and finer particles, it's fair to assume that matter comes down to some fundamental particle as a building 'block' - their proposed "atomos."

Why?

Why would you assume that matter isn't continuous?

I can cut a lump of wax in half, and end up with two lumps of wax. Why would you assume that I couldn't keep doing that indefinitely (assuming the ability to manipulate arbitrarily small things)?

I don't think that's a 'fair assumption' at all.

It feels true to us, because we have grown up with the knowledge that it is true. But in the absence of that upbringing, it seems like it would be a highly counterintuitive idea.

"I can cut this in half thirty six times, but not thirty seven" sounds like the ranting of an idiot, in the absence of any experimental support for the claim. Particularly given that there's no obvious limit to how much stuff you can add - if I have two similar lumps of wax, I can join them to make one larger lump, and that's repeatable indefinitely, given a sufficient supply of wax. Why on Earth would it be intuitively obvious that the reverse process cannot continue indefinitely?

Yet they didn't, the Greeks stopped at 'atomos,' which they assumed were solid little balls of fundamental material.

But that was pure conjecture.

 

[DBT]

Absence of evidence rules out justified belief.

Playing Devil's Advocate, absence of evidence can precede scientific theory.

Maxwell predicted speed of light C without any ability to make an observation or test.

Ancient Greeks theorized that matter reduced to an irreducible element that had the properties of the macro object like a rock. The atom.

Without observation or understanding of physical principles?

I woud sau so. They had no ability to descern atoms. There were observed indirectly in the late 19th century by xray diffraction of a crystalline material. It shiowed a regular structure e quay spaced dots.

It was pure conjecture by the Greeks.

No purely conjecture. If something ground down to finer and finer particles, it's fair to assume that matter comes down to some fundamental particle as a building 'block' - their proposed "atomos."

Why?

Why would you assume that matter isn't continuous?

I can cut a lump of wax in half, and end up with two lumps of wax. Why would you assume that I couldn't keep doing that indefinitely (assuming the ability to manipulate arbitrarily small things)?

I don't think that's a 'fair assumption' at all.

It feels true to us, because we have grown up with the knowledge that it is true. But in the absence of that upbringing, it seems like it would be a highly counterintuitive idea.

"I can cut this in half thirty six times, but not thirty seven" sounds like the ranting of an idiot, in the absence of any experimental support for the claim. Particularly given that there's no obvious limit to how much stuff you can add - if I have two similar lumps of wax, I can join them to make one larger lump, and that's repeatable indefinitely, given a sufficient supply of wax. Why on Earth would it be intuitively obvious that the reverse process cannot continue indefinitely?

Yet they didn't, the Greeks stopped at 'atomos,' which they assumed were solid little balls of fundamental material.

But that was pure conjecture.

They assumed a fundamental, material building block for the material world....If there is nothing there, it's 'turtles all the way down.'

 

[T.G.G. Moogly]

Neither side is provable. Trying to prove a god can not exist reduces to the same type of subjective argumnts made by theists. Subjective reasoning and logic.

I'm making a positive claim per the OP. I cannot prove you are not a brain-sucking alien transported here from Andromeda but I sure can make the positive claim that you are not. Proofs only happen in mathematics because it is an axiomatic system. In common parlance there is ample "proof" that you are not a brain-sucking alien from Andromeda. That's how communication works.

 

[Politesse]

Absence of evidence rules out justified belief.

Playing Devil's Advocate, absence of evidence can precede scientific theory.

Maxwell predicted speed of light C without any ability to make an observation or test.

Ancient Greeks theorized that matter reduced to an irreducible element that had the properties of the macro object like a rock. The atom.

Without observation or understanding of physical principles?

I woud sau so. They had no ability to descern atoms. There were observed indirectly in the late 19th century by xray diffraction of a crystalline material. It shiowed a regular structure e quay spaced dots.

It was pure conjecture by the Greeks.

No purely conjecture. If something ground down to finer and finer particles, it's fair to assume that matter comes down to some fundamental particle as a building 'block' - their proposed "atomos."

Why?

Why would you assume that matter isn't continuous?

I can cut a lump of wax in half, and end up with two lumps of wax. Why would you assume that I couldn't keep doing that indefinitely (assuming the ability to manipulate arbitrarily small things)?

I don't think that's a 'fair assumption' at all.

It feels true to us, because we have grown up with the knowledge that it is true. But in the absence of that upbringing, it seems like it would be a highly counterintuitive idea.

"I can cut this in half thirty six times, but not thirty seven" sounds like the ranting of an idiot, in the absence of any experimental support for the claim. Particularly given that there's no obvious limit to how much stuff you can add - if I have two similar lumps of wax, I can join them to make one larger lump, and that's repeatable indefinitely, given a sufficient supply of wax. Why on Earth would it be intuitively obvious that the reverse process cannot continue indefinitely?

Yet they didn't, the Greeks stopped at 'atomos,' which they assumed were solid little balls of fundamental material.

Indivisible, immutable, and of universal inertia. Matter had atomos, but so did things like perception, the soul, and the color blue.

 

[Jarhyn]

Neither side is provable. Trying to prove a god can not exist reduces to the same type of subjective argumnts made by theists. Subjective reasoning and logic.

I'm making a positive claim per the OP. I cannot prove you are not a brain-sucking alien transported here from Andromeda but I sure can make the positive claim that you are not. Proofs only happen in mathematics because it is an axiomatic system. In common parlance there is ample "proof" that you are not a brain-sucking alien from Andromeda. That's how communication works.

The response is "prove thats even a real thing. Show me a brain sucking Andromedean, and I might accept that I may be one of those."

I can prove that gods of universes are things that can exist with relation to those universes. I can prove it unequivocally!

The question is whether this god has one or more such things, and the answer to any claim of "there is" is "produce it for me, then!"

"Zero" remaining one of the possibilities means that "or more" has zero leverage on any statements or requirements of us or each other or any thing. And has been discussed, understanding "or more" as a concept allows one to conceive of many other useful ideas like "ethics for each other", despite divine decree or even threat of hell.

But also, asking "what is it people are trying to talk about when they talk about something they call 'god'" as relates the OP's use of 'like'.

 

[AdamWho]

A hit and run thread?

Still haven't heard how science proves gods can not exist. I await a response with great anticipation.

I am happy to talk, it is just this forum doesn't have a lot of activity, so I don't check in that often

As outlined in the OP, there are categories of gods who are ruled out of existing.

1. Logically impossible gods. The Abrahamic god and the VAST majority of worshiped gods

2. Gods which violate well understood physical law. Any god-like simply cannot have omniscience or omnipotence in this universe. And those who cite science fiction as counter examples are not better than

3. Gods who are equivalent to non-existent. Deist gods, gods outside of space/time who don't interact with the universe.

4. Redefinition of Gods into things that exist is just dumb. "My coffee cup is god, therefor god exists", "Nature is god, therefor god exists"

****

Besides after reading this thread, there really isn't anything substantive to reply to.

Arguments from imagination/fantasy/fiction....
Word redefinition games...
Purposeful misinterpretations/misunderstanding just for the point of arguing.
Focus on minutia instead of ideas....
Irrelevant tangents.

After almost 25 years in this forum (in one form or another), it is always the same.... How much time do you think I should invest to steer the conversation?

 

[Jarhyn]

Redefinition of Gods into things that exist is just dumb.

Redefinition of it into things that necessarily are nonsense is dumb.

The definitions, as used to apply to things that DO or CAN -- even if those things did not exist exactly as the models which used the term "god" described -- no more changes their existence or the geometry of how they may exist.

It's a No-True-Scotsman and a Straw-Man.

It is better to describe the things people call "god" with more words, and more accurate words. Ideally, use words that capture the reality of what they are while shoving away the dogma and the unnecessary bits while recognizing the absurd but extant ones for the lesser ideas of "god"; and the ethical implications (or lack thereof) as well as the moral ones elsewise.

At least understand exactly what it is they are thinking about.

 

[skepticalbip]

...

Redefinition of Gods into things that exist is just dumb.

Redefinition of it into things that necessarily are nonsense is dumb.

Exactly, and yet that is precisely what religions do. OTOH, sophists redefine "god" to mean something that has nothing to do with the arguments against the gods of religions just so they can argue a nonsense position.

 

[Jarhyn]

...

Redefinition of Gods into things that exist is just dumb.

Redefinition of it into things that necessarily are nonsense is dumb.

Exactly, and yet that is precisely what religions do. OTOH, sophists redefine "god" to mean something that has nothing to do with the arguments against the gods of religions just so they can argue a nonsense position.

Exactly why I don't argue nonsense positions. I don't argue that there are zero, I don't argue that there are more than zero, I argue that there are zero or more.

Understanding how ethics is separate from the potential edicts of any such thing is has value and is not nonsense.

Understanding how some things perceived of as gods by ancient people's exist as real effects and systems, so as to better understand and even correct problems in those systems, has value and is not nonsense.

Pretending that certain forms of relationship cannot exist so as to blind oneself to game theory around such concepts, and the implications of that game theory? That's some nonsense.

I want to see GOOD arguments levelled against the gods of religions, or against religion as a concept itself.

The god of the world I created?

They prefer ATHEISTS. There's pascal's wager right out the window.

That 'god' is also most certainly not even approaching 'good'.

I can say such things to anyone telling me creator god is a thing to worship, and they know the truth of it:

"There is no requirement that the thing that creates a universe is good, that they understand ethics, or any other such thing, and there is no requirement anywhere in any of this that they will put you in some other form of existence when you die. There is no requirement at all even that such a thing exists."

"You should be glad that they may not because I also know for a fact that downright evil people may create universes. There is no requirement though that they even understand that 'a universe' is what they created."

"No book in the majority of created universes I have seen in any way is capable of having documented the actual creator of it, most being filled with myths about things and systems the people in it do not understand well."

"Nothing I have ever seen or heard of worshipped as a god was well understood by the people worshipping it, and no such thing as observed under modern understanding is worthy of such worship."

"There are rules and game theoretic principles that may be derived by observation, logic, and understanding which show us why and how to love our neighbors. 'Divine revelation' is not necessary, and is in fact a problem as it fails to show it's work and allows 'later revelation' and 'dogma' to corrupt anything of ethical worth."

 

[DBT]

Absence of evidence rules out justified belief.

Playing Devil's Advocate, absence of evidence can precede scientific theory.

Maxwell predicted speed of light C without any ability to make an observation or test.

Ancient Greeks theorized that matter reduced to an irreducible element that had the properties of the macro object like a rock. The atom.

Without observation or understanding of physical principles?

I woud sau so. They had no ability to descern atoms. There were observed indirectly in the late 19th century by xray diffraction of a crystalline material. It shiowed a regular structure e quay spaced dots.

It was pure conjecture by the Greeks.

No purely conjecture. If something ground down to finer and finer particles, it's fair to assume that matter comes down to some fundamental particle as a building 'block' - their proposed "atomos."

Why?

Why would you assume that matter isn't continuous?

I can cut a lump of wax in half, and end up with two lumps of wax. Why would you assume that I couldn't keep doing that indefinitely (assuming the ability to manipulate arbitrarily small things)?

I don't think that's a 'fair assumption' at all.

It feels true to us, because we have grown up with the knowledge that it is true. But in the absence of that upbringing, it seems like it would be a highly counterintuitive idea.

"I can cut this in half thirty six times, but not thirty seven" sounds like the ranting of an idiot, in the absence of any experimental support for the claim. Particularly given that there's no obvious limit to how much stuff you can add - if I have two similar lumps of wax, I can join them to make one larger lump, and that's repeatable indefinitely, given a sufficient supply of wax. Why on Earth would it be intuitively obvious that the reverse process cannot continue indefinitely?

Yet they didn't, the Greeks stopped at 'atomos,' which they assumed were solid little balls of fundamental material.

Indivisible, immutable, and of universal inertia. Matter had atomos, but so did things like perception, the soul, and the color blue.

In essence, a material basis for a material world even though they got many of the details wrong, including the nature of atoms?

 

[bilby]

...

It was pure conjecture by the Greeks.

No purely conjecture. If something ground down to finer and finer particles, it's fair to assume that matter comes down to some fundamental particle as a building 'block' - their proposed "atomos."

Why?

Why would you assume that matter isn't continuous?

I can cut a lump of wax in half, and end up with two lumps of wax. Why would you assume that I couldn't keep doing that indefinitely (assuming the ability to manipulate arbitrarily small things)?

I don't think that's a 'fair assumption' at all.

It feels true to us, because we have grown up with the knowledge that it is true. But in the absence of that upbringing, it seems like it would be a highly counterintuitive idea.

"I can cut this in half thirty six times, but not thirty seven" sounds like the ranting of an idiot, in the absence of any experimental support for the claim. Particularly given that there's no obvious limit to how much stuff you can add - if I have two similar lumps of wax, I can join them to make one larger lump, and that's repeatable indefinitely, given a sufficient supply of wax. Why on Earth would it be intuitively obvious that the reverse process cannot continue indefinitely?

Yet they didn't, the Greeks stopped at 'atomos,' which they assumed were solid little balls of fundamental material.

Indivisible, immutable, and of universal inertia. Matter had atomos, but so did things like perception, the soul, and the color blue.

In essence, a material basis for a material world even though they got many of the details wrong, including the nature of atoms?

What we call 'atoms' today aren't much like what they meant by 'atomos'.

The idea was that they would be the smallest indivisible parts of anything, but that description is analogous to many different levels of subdivision that are recognised today.

If you cut a piece of wood into smaller and smaller parts, when does it stop being a piece of wood?

Based on the modern understanding of what constitutes 'wood', the ability to divide further without the products being 'wood' probably comes at the level where at least one of every different molecule found in wood is still present.

Another candidate for 'atomos' is the single cellulose molecule, though that's arguably not 'wood' anymore, but a mere component of wood. If you collect together only pure cellulose, you cannot make it into wood - you need traces of other molecules (mainly, but not exclusively, water).

If we allow subdivision to the molecule level, and ignore that we are no longer strictly dealing with 'wood', then we can go deeper - Cellulose can be broken down into (modern) atoms, of carbon, hydrogen and oxygen.

But why stop there? If a molecule isn't 'atomos', why is an atom? We can keep cutting, to get electrons, protons and neutrons.

And those can be further divided into leptons and hadrons.

Which can be divided into quarks.

We don't know whether further divisions are possible yet; It all gets a lot complicated at this scale. But modern physics describes everything as fields, or strings, or other continuous objects that at least hypothetically can be divided indefinitely.

The question of whether reality is continuous at arbitrarily small scales isn't resolved; And according to Planck, it may be impossible to ever observe scales below a certain limit, which may or may not imply that objects below that size don't exist at all.

Despite our modern adoption of 'atom' to mean the smallest possible amount of a given chemical element, we have yet to determine whether an uncuttable 'atomos' is a reality; We can, however, say with absolute confidence that 'atoms' aren't it - just ask the people of Hiroshima.

They didn't "get many of the details wrong"; We have arbitrarily stolen their word and used it to mean something rather different. If anything, it's the modern word 'atom' that's wrong.

The Greek philosophers discussing 'atomos' weren't wrong, they were talking about something completely different. In much the same way that the old understanding of 'elements' isn't a wrong description of chemical elements as we understand them today; It's a very good description of physical states of matter, with some (incorrect) speculation that these physical states are the fundamental determinants of the chemical properties of macroscopic materials.

Earth, air, fire and water are simply an archaic way to say solid, gas, plasma and liquid; I think we can reasonably forgive our forebears for not knowing about Bose-Einstein condensates.

 

[Politesse]

Absence of evidence rules out justified belief.

Playing Devil's Advocate, absence of evidence can precede scientific theory.

Maxwell predicted speed of light C without any ability to make an observation or test.

Ancient Greeks theorized that matter reduced to an irreducible element that had the properties of the macro object like a rock. The atom.

Without observation or understanding of physical principles?

I woud sau so. They had no ability to descern atoms. There were observed indirectly in the late 19th century by xray diffraction of a crystalline material. It shiowed a regular structure e quay spaced dots.

It was pure conjecture by the Greeks.

No purely conjecture. If something ground down to finer and finer particles, it's fair to assume that matter comes down to some fundamental particle as a building 'block' - their proposed "atomos."

Why?

Why would you assume that matter isn't continuous?

I can cut a lump of wax in half, and end up with two lumps of wax. Why would you assume that I couldn't keep doing that indefinitely (assuming the ability to manipulate arbitrarily small things)?

I don't think that's a 'fair assumption' at all.

It feels true to us, because we have grown up with the knowledge that it is true. But in the absence of that upbringing, it seems like it would be a highly counterintuitive idea.

"I can cut this in half thirty six times, but not thirty seven" sounds like the ranting of an idiot, in the absence of any experimental support for the claim. Particularly given that there's no obvious limit to how much stuff you can add - if I have two similar lumps of wax, I can join them to make one larger lump, and that's repeatable indefinitely, given a sufficient supply of wax. Why on Earth would it be intuitively obvious that the reverse process cannot continue indefinitely?

Yet they didn't, the Greeks stopped at 'atomos,' which they assumed were solid little balls of fundamental material.

Indivisible, immutable, and of universal inertia. Matter had atomos, but so did things like perception, the soul, and the color blue.

In essence, a material basis for a material world even though they got many of the details wrong, including the nature of atoms?

Perhaps a philosophical basis for positing a material world. They did not think of things in terms of what we would call Cartesian dualism, but the early atomists were certainly dealing with strongly Idealist philosophies that were skeptical of materiality on a very fundamental level. By demonstrating that material "stuff" could be the basis of a rational system of explaining the world (even if it did include some things that we would ironically consider immaterial concepts or emergent properties now) they ultimately contributed a very important notion to the philosophy of science, freeing up a path for a fully non-Idealist approach to epistemology to eventually emerge.

 

[DBT]

Absence of evidence rules out justified belief.

Playing Devil's Advocate, absence of evidence can precede scientific theory.

Maxwell predicted speed of light C without any ability to make an observation or test.

Ancient Greeks theorized that matter reduced to an irreducible element that had the properties of the macro object like a rock. The atom.

Without observation or understanding of physical principles?

I woud sau so. They had no ability to descern atoms. There were observed indirectly in the late 19th century by xray diffraction of a crystalline material. It shiowed a regular structure e quay spaced dots.

It was pure conjecture by the Greeks.

No purely conjecture. If something ground down to finer and finer particles, it's fair to assume that matter comes down to some fundamental particle as a building 'block' - their proposed "atomos."

Why?

Why would you assume that matter isn't continuous?

I can cut a lump of wax in half, and end up with two lumps of wax. Why would you assume that I couldn't keep doing that indefinitely (assuming the ability to manipulate arbitrarily small things)?

I don't think that's a 'fair assumption' at all.

It feels true to us, because we have grown up with the knowledge that it is true. But in the absence of that upbringing, it seems like it would be a highly counterintuitive idea.

"I can cut this in half thirty six times, but not thirty seven" sounds like the ranting of an idiot, in the absence of any experimental support for the claim. Particularly given that there's no obvious limit to how much stuff you can add - if I have two similar lumps of wax, I can join them to make one larger lump, and that's repeatable indefinitely, given a sufficient supply of wax. Why on Earth would it be intuitively obvious that the reverse process cannot continue indefinitely?

Yet they didn't, the Greeks stopped at 'atomos,' which they assumed were solid little balls of fundamental material.

Indivisible, immutable, and of universal inertia. Matter had atomos, but so did things like perception, the soul, and the color blue.

In essence, a material basis for a material world even though they got many of the details wrong, including the nature of atoms?

Perhaps a philosophical basis for positing a material world. They did not think of things in terms of what we would call Cartesian dualism, but the early atomists were certainly dealing with strongly Idealist philosophies that were skeptical of materiality on a very fundamental level. By demonstrating that material "stuff" could be the basis of a rational system of explaining the world (even if it did include some things that we would ironically consider immaterial concepts or emergent properties now) they ultimately contributed a very important notion to the philosophy of science, freeing up a path for a fully non-Idealist approach to epistemology to eventually emerge.

Isn't the proposition of a material world supported by the material things in the world around us?

 

[DBT]

...

It was pure conjecture by the Greeks.

No purely conjecture. If something ground down to finer and finer particles, it's fair to assume that matter comes down to some fundamental particle as a building 'block' - their proposed "atomos."

Why?

Why would you assume that matter isn't continuous?

I can cut a lump of wax in half, and end up with two lumps of wax. Why would you assume that I couldn't keep doing that indefinitely (assuming the ability to manipulate arbitrarily small things)?

I don't think that's a 'fair assumption' at all.

It feels true to us, because we have grown up with the knowledge that it is true. But in the absence of that upbringing, it seems like it would be a highly counterintuitive idea.

"I can cut this in half thirty six times, but not thirty seven" sounds like the ranting of an idiot, in the absence of any experimental support for the claim. Particularly given that there's no obvious limit to how much stuff you can add - if I have two similar lumps of wax, I can join them to make one larger lump, and that's repeatable indefinitely, given a sufficient supply of wax. Why on Earth would it be intuitively obvious that the reverse process cannot continue indefinitely?

Yet they didn't, the Greeks stopped at 'atomos,' which they assumed were solid little balls of fundamental material.

Indivisible, immutable, and of universal inertia. Matter had atomos, but so did things like perception, the soul, and the color blue.

In essence, a material basis for a material world even though they got many of the details wrong, including the nature of atoms?

What we call 'atoms' today aren't much like what they meant by 'atomos'.

The idea was that they would be the smallest indivisible parts of anything, but that description is analogous to many different levels of subdivision that are recognised today.

If you cut a piece of wood into smaller and smaller parts, when does it stop being a piece of wood?

Based on the modern understanding of what constitutes 'wood', the ability to divide further without the products being 'wood' probably comes at the level where at least one of every different molecule found in wood is still present.

Another candidate for 'atomos' is the single cellulose molecule, though that's arguably not 'wood' anymore, but a mere component of wood. If you collect together only pure cellulose, you cannot make it into wood - you need traces of other molecules (mainly, but not exclusively, water).

If we allow subdivision to the molecule level, and ignore that we are no longer strictly dealing with 'wood', then we can go deeper - Cellulose can be broken down into (modern) atoms, of carbon, hydrogen and oxygen.

But why stop there? If a molecule isn't 'atomos', why is an atom? We can keep cutting, to get electrons, protons and neutrons.

And those can be further divided into leptons and hadrons.

Which can be divided into quarks.

We don't know whether further divisions are possible yet; It all gets a lot complicated at this scale. But modern physics describes everything as fields, or strings, or other continuous objects that at least hypothetically can be divided indefinitely.

The question of whether reality is continuous at arbitrarily small scales isn't resolved; And according to Planck, it may be impossible to ever observe scales below a certain limit, which may or may not imply that objects below that size don't exist at all.

Despite our modern adoption of 'atom' to mean the smallest possible amount of a given chemical element, we have yet to determine whether an uncuttable 'atomos' is a reality; We can, however, say with absolute confidence that 'atoms' aren't it - just ask the people of Hiroshima.

They didn't "get many of the details wrong"; We have arbitrarily stolen their word and used it to mean something rather different. If anything, it's the modern word 'atom' that's wrong.

The Greek philosophers discussing 'atomos' weren't wrong, they were talking about something completely different. In much the same way that the old understanding of 'elements' isn't a wrong description of chemical elements as we understand them today; It's a very good description of physical states of matter, with some (incorrect) speculation that these physical states are the fundamental determinants of the chemical properties of macroscopic materials.

Earth, air, fire and water are simply an archaic way to say solid, gas, plasma and liquid; I think we can reasonably forgive our forebears for not knowing about Bose-Einstein condensates.

Yes, I'm disputing that, or what we understand about the atom, QM or physics.

My point was simply that the Greeks observed that objects in the world, matter, can be reduced to finer and finer particles, and their proposed finest particle of all, their 'building block' of the material world, they called the 'atomos.' That's all.

 

[abaddon]

Isn't the proposition of a material world supported by the material things in the world around us?

You have it backwards. The notion that you perceive "material things" is from the assumption of a material world.

 

[DBT]

Isn't the proposition of a material world supported by the material things in the world around us?

You have it backwards. The notion that you perceive "material things" is from the assumption of a material world.

We experience the world regardless of any assumptions about it. 'Material' relates to our experience of substance, that the world is composed of things with which we interact, that have their own qualities, that our assumptions, whether right or wrong, unless acted upon have no effect upon the world .

 

[abaddon]

We experience the world regardless of any assumptions about it. 'Material' relates to our experience of substance, that the world is composed of things with which we interact, that have their own qualities, that our assumptions, whether right or wrong, unless acted upon have no effect upon the world .

You called the world you experience "material" though, which is an idea and not an experience.

What is "material" in your experience?

Remember, we're talking about daily-life experiences and not modern physics here. You wanted to talk about how Greeks came up with the idea of a material world (for whatever reason that came up). Well, those folk were going by first-person experience. So, I just want to be clear... let's stick with first-person experience when answering this question: What in your experience is 'material'?

In my experience, nothing is. I have no first-person experience of "matter" at all. NONE. And I think you don't either. And the Greeks didn't either.

The reason it seems intuitively obvious that "objects" are made of matter is because you already have a materialist metaphysics installed into your head. It seems "obvious" because you probably never deliberated over it so you incorrectly assume that "material objects" is the starting place and not itself a conclusion. That's why you want to leap from "material objects" (which you seem to imagine are experienced as "material") to the "proposition of a material world", though you never established that there are material objects.

How are they "material" objects and not "mental" objects? (Again, from the first-person POV)?

 

[DBT]

We experience the world regardless of any assumptions about it. 'Material' relates to our experience of substance, that the world is composed of things with which we interact, that have their own qualities, that our assumptions, whether right or wrong, unless acted upon have no effect upon the world .

You called the world you experience "material" though, which is an idea and not an experience.

Infants interact with people and objects in the world before they are able to form ideas or make epistemological assumptions.

They respond to whatever happens to within their vicinity without understanding the nature, scope or scale of the world around them.

First they experience, then they learn.

What is "material" in your experience?


How are they "material" objects and not "mental" objects? (Again, from the first-person POV)?

Evidence tells us that the world exists and does whatever it does regardless of our beliefs or assumptions about it. The moon is there regardless of someone believing it isn't. A brick wall remains an obstacle whether you see it or disregard its presence.

Our brains acquire information from the external world and construct our subjective representation of it.