New Atheists?

[KWED]

God does have a plan for you. He wants you to be happy, joyous and free, and to love your fellows.

Some gods, perhaps, but certainly not the big ones.

 

[Augustus]

It is implied by the construction of your sentence.
"The problem is that many atheists are ignorant of the fact their own ideology is also a crutch."

If you meant that whatever ideology an person who happens to be an atheist follows is a crutch you should have said something like...
"The problem is that many atheists are ignorant of the fact their own ideologies are also crutches."

No, it says "an atheist's ideology is a crutch".
Anywho, glad you have finally admitted that atheism isn't an ideology.

BTW, ideologies don't have to be crutches, so you were wrong there as well.

Good grief you are still trying to reframe the fact you misunderstood a post and took longer than everybody else to realise your mistake as some kind of intellectual triumph

Whatever floats your boat, dear...

 

[Augustus]

Speak for yourself.

And for the cognitive and biological sciences...

 

[RestlessSoul]

I don't see a plan there, just a hope. If there's a God, I hope the same for Him. It's in His interest and ours that He be happy and love his fellows, the ones He made. But I also don't have a plan for that - just a wish.

I have the same wish for my wife. I have an actual plan to facilitate that. I give her latitude, praise, and support. I have a different plan to effect that in my dogs. We don't strike them, we praise them, we give them toys and bones, and like this morning, we take them on walks in the park. I had such hopes for my children as well, and a plan to go with them that included encouragement and education. Those are plans. And that is support.

I have found happiness, but by my own plan for myself (and luck). My plan was to work hard and save, retire to a life of leisure relatively young, be the kind of person who is liked and respected and lives relatively guilt- and shame-free by being a person of integrity and a friend, to find and earn love, and finally, to relocate to a beautiful and tranquil place with happy people and good weather to live out my days slowly surrounded by music and art and making a difference in some lives (mostly children and animals). I never saw God's plan.

Sounds like you’ve been blessed.

I have been too, but I simply cannot take the credit for myself. It’s a miracle I’m not dead or in prison, and I don’t use the word miracle lightly.

 

[Augustus]

Oh dear. And I thought we'd made so much progress. Now you are not only claiming that atheism is an ideology, but that it is also a myth!

You are hallucinating again.

Never mind. I doubt correcting you for the 6th time would make any difference to your delusions.

 

[Sheldon]

We are incapable of seeing the world as it is

Forgive me, I'm a simple uneducated man after all, but it occurred to me that if that were true, how would you know it? I mean it seems like a paradox to me? Have I said that right, a paradox?

 

[lukethethird]

Augustus said: ↑
We are incapable of seeing the world as it is

Forgive me, I'm a simple uneducated man after all, but it occurred to me that if that were true, how would you know it? I mean it seems like a paradox to me? Have I said that right, a paradox?

Touché.

 

[Sheldon]

Some gods, perhaps, but certainly not the big ones.

I am finding myself drawn towards Macuilcozcacuauhtli, if I'm going to be ruled by an imaginary deity, why not the Aztec deity of gluttony after all.

 

[Augustus]

Forgive me, I'm a simple uneducated man after all, but it occurred to me that if that were true, how would you know it?

Same way we know many other things: the sciences

I mean it seems like a paradox to me? Have I said that right, a paradox?

You said it right, yes. It's not actually a paradox, but you did say it right.

 

[Sheldon]

Same way we know many other things: the sciences



You said it right, yes. It's not actually a paradox, but you did say it right.

So you mean the method(s) of science, for example, are a means to rigorously scrutinise ideas, and try to remove subjective perceptions? It then follows that without science, the world we see is constantly coloured by our own perception, and we ought to be cautious how much we trust them? Or have I strayed unknowing into scientism?

Not just science of course, but also the strict principles of validation in logic are also a toolkit for checking subjective perceptions?

Not infallible methods, obviously, but given their successes, one might be justified in saying they are the most successful we have in perceiving reality?

So far anyway...

I am reminded of a cartoon, depicting a witch doctor with his hands on his hips, and a sullen look on his face, standing over the corpse of a patient, surrounded by the patient's family. The caption read...

"Well, there's still so much we don't know."

 

[RestlessSoul]

Forgive me, I'm a simple uneducated man after all, but it occurred to me that if that were true, how would you know it? I mean it seems like a paradox to me? Have I said that right, a paradox?

It’s the only logical conclusion that can possibly be drawn from the truism that we are in the world looking out at it, while simultaneously holding an image or idealisation of it in our minds. Our perception is always a function of perspective, the subjective paradigm by which we harmonise our inner and outer realities.

Further, it is quite impossible for us to observe the world neutrally, as it would appear were we not observing it; the act of observation is itself an interaction, making the observer an integral part of the observed phenomenon. Quantum physicists call this the measurement problem.

 

[Augustus]

I don't agree. I don't see any intrinsic meaning to events. When I attribute meaning to an event, I am aware that the meaning is coming from me.

There are no intrinsic meanings to events, but the subjective meanings we ascribe accumulate and influence our future perceptions.

Every time we interpret a certain set of events in a particular manner, we influence all future interpretations.

Our basic senses, even what we see with our eyes, are impacted by our past experiences and are a mixture of accuracy, efficiency and utility rather than being true representations.

Everything we perceive influences us to some degree, and we do not control this process fully. Often the tail is wagging the dog.

Our brains are full of heuristics and cognitive biases that serve to better our chances of survival and reproduction, and drive us towards self-serving self-deception. Sometimes the tail wags the dog.

Instead of admitting they are jealous of someone's wealth, one person may convince themselves that wealth is immoral and they are the righteous one. Another person might convince themselves that they are wiser than the rich person, and knowledge is the true wealth.

Both of these people will be completely unaware they are doing this and will experience their jealousy as righteousness as it makes them feel better.

We all do this to some extent, how it manifests itself obviously depends on the person in question. And the person in question will never know all of the ways they do this. They might realise some of them every now and again, but out with the old, in with the new (self-deception).

I am pretty sure that as social animals that the activities and attitudes required for socialization are part of our base nature. Just like all the other social animals.

All the other social primates live in the kind of small groups that we started off in. The kind that can be maintained by kin and direct personal relations.

To expand these groups we constructed myths of fictive kinship to allow ever more people into our in-group, these eventually evolved into religions which were very powerful unifying forces. Combining the myths with reinforcing rituals was a very effective way to build common bonds and encourage pro-social behaviour in group (and clearly delineate the out-group)

Other forms of ideology, identity and ritual have developed to supplement or replace these.

What are your views on how we got to 'here' from our 'default' state of living in small groups like other primates.

Sure, but they are not random. Those values are pretty well defined by a bell curve; hence normative behaviors.I tend to view morality as ethologists do. That social animals are born with the attributes of the values of fairness, empathy, reciprocity and cooperation. Expressed differently in different species, but as a normative distribution in every species. And that is good enough for nature.

Fairness, empathy, reciprocity and cooperation to those we deem sufficiently "like us", also loyalty and respect for legitimate authority.

But in a species who evolved in a very uncertain environment where it paid to be safe rather than sorry, suspicion of outsiders and prejudice against them, a propensity for violence to protect our interests, etc.

In almost all historical societies, warriors have been among the most highly regarded.

What is desirable depends on the environment.

No doubt. But this would be the case even if we had a method to measure Absolute Truth.
I don't think that moral systems has a truth value. While I am not much of a Harris fan, I do think that he is correct in that our implicit goals comport with well being - in various scopes.

Again well being for the in-group which often comes at the cost of the out-group.

How do we make that in-group ever bigger without the use of myth (in the sense of a story told to justify values that is not objectively true)?

The reason that I do not like religious moral systems is that 1) they are not systems, but merely codes, and 2) as such they demonize change in light of new information. I have no doubt that any given secular humanist will be resistant to change, but a doctrine of immutability supporting that resistance is expressly denied by the system. Which is a step forward.

While that may be true in some cases, I'd say it is not an overall accurate portrayal of religion, even the scriptural ones.

They lasted so long precisely because they are flexible and adapt to new information, yet are conservative enough to preserve traditions that were effective.

No doubt. But even if we had access to absolute truth, we would still do that.

Of course, myth making is perhaps the defining human characteristic.

 

[Sheldon]

It’s the only logical conclusion that can possibly be drawn from the truism that we are in the world looking out at it, while simultaneously holding an image or idealisation of it in our minds. Our perception is always a function of perspective, the subjective paradigm by which we harmonise our inner and outer realities.

Further, it is quite impossible for us to observe the world neutrally, as it would appear were we not observing it; the act of observation is itself an interaction, making the observer an integral part of the observed phenomenon. Quantum physicists call this the measurement problem.

That doesn't mean we should abandon all attempts to square our subjective perception with reality, and just believe what cheers us up.

Subjective or objective are not binary conditions, they are more like a scale, with any claim or belief starting from entirely unevidenced subjective opinion at the bottom, and rising from there with whatever objective evidence can be demonstrated to support it.

 

[RestlessSoul]

That doesn't mean we should abandon all attempts to square our subjective perception with reality, and just believe what cheers us up.

Subjective or objective are not binary conditions, they are more like a scale, with any claim or belief starting from entirely unevidenced subjective opinion at the bottom, and rising from there with whatever objective evidence can be demonstrated to support it.

Of course we shouldn’t abandon our efforts to improve our understanding of objective reality, if such a thing can reasonably be said to exist. Our unconscious minds will in any case always find ways to reconcile our inner world with the outer. But ultimately, questions about how we conceptualise the world, how we decide what is real, and what we believe, will be decided on the basis of what works.

In truth, we see very little of what surrounds us. Half way in scale between the atoms and the stars, we play out the drama of our lives. We have access only to the limited amount of information, even from our immediate physical environment, that our senses have access to, and that our brains are capable of interpreting. @Augustus observation that we are incapable of seeing the world as it is, is therefore logically irrefutable.

 

[rational experiences]

And for the 20th time: I fully accept that that is an accurate statement of your belief.



Seeing as you failed to grasp this simple point the last 19 times, let's try another example.

Bob thinks he has directly experienced God and that this is good evidence God exists.

Sheldon believes that Bob has experienced some kind of unusual cognitive state (or uncharitably, a delusion) that can be explained rationally and scientifically and does necessitate the existence of God.

Sheldon can accept that Bob thinks he experienced God, without agreeing that he actually experienced God. Sheldon doesn't think Bob is lying, he has a different perspective on the cognitive science of mystical experiences.

What we disagree on is the cognitive science of belief (or perhaps the cognitive science of lacking a belief) and whether it is actually possible to have a 'lack of belief' regarding a concept we can comprehend. I have presented peer-reviewed scientific evidence in support of this position which you always ignore in favour of your trusty strawman.

If you don't agree, make a case against the science that supports my view, or if the scientific arguments don't interest you then just agree to disagree, rather than repeating the same inane strawman ad nauseam

The status scientist self idolisation egotism of just humans as men brothers was first. I know everything existed before he practiced his theism.

His theism machine controlled by his theist ideals worked. He controlled attacking earths substances.

Congratulations destroyer.

So after he took oxygenated water microbiology up into the sky abduction says consciousness innocent of machine design. Machine reaction. Not a part of natural conscious awareness.

Reasoned in reaction. Percentile of water mass shifted from two natural places. In stones body in earths gas support.

As he theories from water consciousness about gases only known via water consciously. Ignored as usual.

All other humans whose consciousness says...what the.

Then you make a mockery out of our life attack claiming we should know better.

The documents written to be read constantly became a vow to preach self reviews by meditative entrainment versus sciences caused evil mind attack. Documents stating do not self idolise.

Easy to achieve when a phenomena entity manifests out of your own life water losses.

You introduced a false radiating constant. Mind entrainment exercises introduced as a medical term.

As the conditions loss of life water biology owned. Phenomena is real what you ignore. So the human owns difficulty in the presence of an entity manifested.

We get chemically brain mind changed to see a half manifested in water entity. So we know it's real as it burns out masses of micribiome in water.

Being our water energy food inside our bodies.

Men by presence body plus mind is consciousness causes a phenomena condition.

As you haven't had the experience you don't reason correctly yourself. Those entities can physically cause physical touching.

The teaching our fathers image became manifest in the God heavens was after science caused it. Only a teaching to explain why it occurred.

Actually. It depended on a correctly informed natural equal human to explain. As it's just a book after all.

 

[Sheldon]

Of course we shouldn’t abandon our efforts to improve our understanding of objective reality, if such a thing can reasonably be said to exist. Our unconscious minds will in any case always find ways to reconcile our inner world with the outer. But ultimately, questions about how we conceptualise the world, how we decide what is real, and what we believe, will be decided on the basis of what works.

Well it's reasonable to assert that the sciences have outstripped all other methods in that regard.

In truth, we see very little of what surrounds us. Half way in scale between the atoms and the stars, we play out the drama of our lives. We have access only to the limited amount of information, even from our immediate physical environment, that our senses have access to, and that our brains are capable of interpreting.

Without methods like science, yes.

@Augustus observation that we are incapable of seeing the world as it is, is therefore logically irrefutable.

Again without methods like the sciences that does seem to be our nature, but luckily we have created those methods. As of course Augustus also said, when I questioned how we know there is more to reality than we perceive.

Same way we know many other things: the sciences

So we know there is more to reality than what we perceive because the sciences enable this.

 

[RestlessSoul]

Well it's reasonable to assert that the sciences have outstripped all other methods in that regard.




Without methods like science, yes.



Again without methods like the sciences that does seem to be our nature, but luckily we have created those methods. As of course Augustus also said, when I questioned how we know there is more to reality than we perceive.



So we know there is more to reality than what we perceive because the sciences enable this.

Perhaps you should consider moving your post to the Scientism on Wikipedia thread, because repeated use of the words “the sciences” in this manner looks exactly like an incantation normally associated with religious ritual.

 

[Augustus]

So we know there is more to reality than what we perceive because the sciences enable this.

Yes, although we also know there is more to reality than we perceive via experience and observation of that which we can perceive.

Not infallible methods, obviously, but given their successes, one might be justified in saying they are the most successful we have in perceiving reality?

I'd be quite careful of using the term 'reality' in this context.

The natural sciences are the best tool we have to better understand many aspects of the world we live in, sure.

Hopefully they enable us to understand enough to be useful, even when not strictly 'true' or even explicitly wrong (like Newtonian physics).

We are not 'neutrally' observing and measuring reality though, but interpreting limited data and information using a range of technical, conceptual and theoretical frameworks that we hope map on to reality sufficiently to be useful.

Just like out vision and hearing is limited, in the sciences, we don't take into account things we are ignorant of and are thus not looking for.

The sciences can help 'expand' our senses, but they are still not showing us reality, just a more detailed, yet incomplete, snapshot of a much larger dataset.

You can't understand disease well without understanding germs and viruses, but it's only quite recently we have been looking for these.

There are still countless areas where we are living in the equivalent of the "pre-germ theory" world.

 

[Mock Turtle]

I got that but plugging a leak has me feeling alarmed

An aspect of being partly agnostic.

 

[lukethethird]

God does have a plan for you. He wants you to be happy, joyous and free, and to love your fellows.

I'm sure if God existed He would take much pleasure in tossing me into a lake of fire for having my doubts and for not worshiping Him. God is like that, He gets offended ever so easily and He's always in constant state of non-existence because He just can't handle any facts.

 

[Audie]

It’s the only logical conclusion that can possibly be drawn from the truism that we are in the world looking out at it, while simultaneously holding an image or idealisation of it in our minds. Our perception is always a function of perspective, the subjective paradigm by which we harmonise our inner and outer realities.

Further, it is quite impossible for us to observe the world neutrally, as it would appear were we not observing it; the act of observation is itself an interaction, making the observer an integral part of the observed phenomenon. Quantum physicists call this the measurement problem.

If i choose not to perceive there's a rock
in my sandal there wont be. Or perhaps its s lizard