"God does not exist"? Debating explicit Atheism and its implications

[bishblaize]

I need a little help. I've been an Atheist most of my life and since I've been on RF I have realised how little I know about the argument for belief in god. I simply have not been exposed to religion that much beyond maybe as a kid in primary school.

I am currently on the border between implicit Atheism (no belief in god) and explicit Atheism (believing there is no god). I would like to become an expicit atheist and know that for me at least I have put my mind at rest, but in order to do so I feel I have to at least examine the arguments and the possibility more deeply.

For those who don't know, the difference between implicit atheism and explicit atheism is considerable. The New Atheists are implicit atheists in so far as they argue that atheism is an unreasonable position to hold based on scientific evidence and therefore have no belief in god. it therefore has similarities with agnosticism and is more a question of degrees. Most Atheists on this forum would appear to be implicit atheists.

An explicit atheist goes much further and would argue that the non-existence of god is a scientific fact as did the Communists in the Soviet Union. In other words, in explicit atheism the burden of proof falls on the Atheist to prove "god does not exist". I've been sympathetic to the Communist position, but have felt deeply uncertian about it and some of it's implications.

To some extent explicit atheism changes the very definition of proof- and its the latter than interests me since that has implications of free thought which I may or may not be familar or comfortable with. It also changes the definition of science as well. The ethical implications are also extreme as this is where problems of nihilism, relativism come in as god has historically been the source of objective ethics. I think we'll get to that eventually. Given the scope, I welcome contributions from both atheists, theists and agontiscs to see if this position really holds up to scruitiny.

I don't know what the outcome will be and half expect to lose horribly, but I'm pretty certian it will be clear just how difficult such a position is to accept which I hope will be interesting to believers and non-believers alike. I'm comfortable holding an unpopular position, but I want to be sure it is right and exactly how I know it is right and where it's weaknesses are. I'm going to have to look up the finer points as a I go along, so yeah, I'm asking for trouble- here it goes.

I am a dialectical materialist. I would therefore argue that God does not exist because consciousness is a property of matter and can therefore only be a property of the brain as an organ of thought. If God is a Consciousness that does not originate from matter, God cannot therefore be real and can only ever be the product of thought; man therefore created god.
As a philosophy, Materialism is the basis of our understanding for the objective world in contrast to idealism. A Materialist position can therefore be considered to be 'real' as a reflection of that objective reality and therefore a scientific fact. (Edit: As there is no god, Man is the only source of ethics).

Personally I'm what you call an explicit atheist. I actively believe there is no god. Indeed I "know" it as much as I know I love my own son, as much as I can know anything.

I don't do so on the basis of evidence (or lack thereof) but simply because, having spent a long long time reaching inside and reflecting on what apparently makes me tick, there is simply no shred of a god in there. My atheism is an article of faith, you might say.

I totally understand however why people believe in god. If they reach into that place and they receive a sign that tells them they should believe in god, well, I appreciate just how powerful that must be.

 

[George-ananda]

Yeah, sorry. it was late. Dialectical Materialism is crazy but often very insightful.

We all start with our own ideas and try to fit the evidence into them, so what you say is true. being willing to be open to something that conflicts our ideas is a reall challange. What ideas or experiences changed your world view and how? (PM me if it's easier as I realise discussing the paranormal doesn't get a great reaction even on RF).

What changed my worldview was not any strong personal experiences but an objective study of a body of like experiences analyzed for likelihood of normal and paranormal explanations. I objectively concluded that the classic materialist 'there is always a normal explanation' viewpoint is not based on thorough consideration but an attachment to a worldview. Basically, I learned we live in a universe far stranger than 'materialists' are aware of or acknowledge.

 

[JRMcC]

Sorry I'm so late to this party.

In some ways I'm using the idea of a monothestic 'god' as a blanket term to cover virtually all supernatural phenemena as a form of alienated consciousness (that is consciousness without attributable cause originating from a brain and therefore matter i.e. philosophical idealism). The issue with explicit atheism is that it is not simply a rejection of one religious tradition but all of them.

If "consciousness without a material cause" is the concept you're arguing against, I might be an explicit atheist like you. The theistic concept that George-ananda is talking about might be the most abstract (and in my opinion plausible) that I know of. However, I agree with you that consciousness is a product of the brain, and that's not just an intellectual conclusions, that's taking into account experiences I've had in deep meditation. I also think the claim that there's a consciousness that is independent of matter is a questionable one.

That being said I'm not sure about the last sentence in your quote here. I consider myself an atheist, and the main reason is that I think "theism" implies the belief in a supreme being. And I think if you're talking about something that isn't conscious you're no longer talking about a being. Most mainstream religions do believe in a supreme being, but there is also the term "transtheism" which is loosely defined, but I think your argument is ignoring it. There was an interesting thread a while back about whether Taoism is a theistic or transtheistic religion.

Anyway, I could go a number of directions with this, but let me just say this: I think there are some God concepts that aren't necessarily illusions. It's not that people over the years have been experiencing something that is totally unreal, but that they've believed it to reside in the wrong place because of their lack of scientific understanding.

I hope this will help get my point across: "In the secret cave of the heart, two are seated by life's fountain. The separate ego drinks of the sweet and bitter stuff, liking the sweet, disliking the bitter, while the supreme Self drinks sweet and bitter neither liking this nor disliking that. The ego gropes in darkness while the Self lives in light. So declare the illuminated sages and the householders who worship the sacred fire in the name of the Lord." - Katha Upanishad 3.1

So I understand this secret cave of the heart to be the brain. A possible answer to the problem of Qualia is that there is a part of our brain that bears witness to the rest of it, and personally I think of this part of the brain as Shiva. The way I understand it, associating with the ego and the senses leads to confusion and sometimes suffering, while associating with Shiva allows one to see the world's divinity and access the supreme/infinite joy ect. that literature like the Upanishads talk about.

I don't think the belief in anything supernatural is necessary for this to be true. Sorry for posting such a fat comment

 

[Laika]

Sorry I'm so late to this party.


If "consciousness without a material cause" is the concept you're arguing against, I might be an explicit atheist like you. The theistic concept that George-ananda is talking about might be the most abstract (and in my opinion plausible) that I know of. However, I agree with you that consciousness is a product of the brain, and that's not just an intellectual conclusions, that's taking into account experiences I've had in deep meditation. I also think the claim that there's a consciousness that is independent of matter is a questionable one.

That being said I'm not sure about the last sentence in your quote here. I consider myself an atheist, and the main reason is that I think "theism" implies the belief in a supreme being. And I think if you're talking about something that isn't conscious you're no longer talking about a being. Most mainstream religions do believe in a supreme being, but there is also the term "transtheism" which is loosely defined, but I think your argument is ignoring it. There was an interesting thread a while back about whether Taoism is a theistic or transtheistic religion.

Anyway, I could go a number of directions with this, but let me just say this: I think there are some God concepts that aren't necessarily illusions. It's not that people over the years have been experiencing something that is totally unreal, but that they've believed it to reside in the wrong place because of their lack of scientific understanding.

I hope this will help get my point across: "In the secret cave of the heart, two are seated by life's fountain. The separate ego drinks of the sweet and bitter stuff, liking the sweet, disliking the bitter, while the supreme Self drinks sweet and bitter neither liking this nor disliking that. The ego gropes in darkness while the Self lives in light. So declare the illuminated sages and the householders who worship the sacred fire in the name of the Lord." - Katha Upanishad 3.1

So I understand this secret cave of the heart to be the brain. A possible answer to the problem of Qualia is that there is a part of our brain that bears witness to the rest of it, and personally I think of this part of the brain as Shiva. The way I understand it, associating with the ego and the senses leads to confusion and sometimes suffering, while associating with Shiva allows one to see the world's divinity and access the supreme/infinite joy ect. that literature like the Upanishads talk about.

I don't think the belief in anything supernatural is necessary for this to be true. Sorry for posting such a fat comment

no probs.

My use of language is pretty poor in defining the concepts I'm using, as I am confusing 'atheism' to mean 'materialism'; that is the rejection of philosophical idealism (in which consciousness is the cause or is 'primary')- which entails the rejection of all belief in the supernatural, since if matter is primary- there can be no creaton and therefore no creator. Nor can there be a consciousness divorced from a physical being. Free will would go as well. Marxism turns knowledge into a house of cards and things unravel pretty quickly.

I'm using specifically Marxist arguments which originated from the rejection of Christianity as a monotheistic religion. (Marx got the foundations for his Atheist ideas from Ludwig Fuerebach's The Essence of Christiainty). Most of my interest has been in Russian Communism, so I know little about how Communists approached eastern religions (beyond the Destructiveness of the cultural revolution in China).

At a guess, I would say a Transtheist position will not be compatable with philosophical materialism (as a definition for atheism). But, there is some lee way in the Marxist approach to religion.

It is argued that God is the product of abstraction, that in seeking to find an 'original cause' for phenemoena whilst believing in idealism, we seek therefore to logiclly explain the origin of pheneomena in a 'first cause'; a god or creator. The existence of god, is in this sense rejected by marxism as an illusion. This aspect is more widely known and familar in understand why communists were so passionately anti-religious. it was believed that the existence of a god was not only a product of man's powerlessness over nature, but as a belief reinforced man's powerlessnes to control his own social relations; the struggle for atheism, and for a rational and (highly debatabely) "scientific" worldview, was therefore seen as a necessary part of the struggle for socialism as man's conscious mastery of nature and society.

There was another aspect however; that whilst god may be an illusion, the source of these illusions remained in the material world and is a reflection of them. This particular aspect of Marxism actually works in favour of preserving a considerable portion of knowledge that was reasoned out by religion, but in a explicitly non-religious form. This side was almost completely lost in the process of waging a "class struggle" against beliefs that were not considered compatable with socialism/communism and in my mind demonstrates the crudity of Marxism as a political ideology as well as highlighting its brutality as a political system.

There were a group of Marxists, known as the "god-builders" who tried to turn Marxism/Communism into a religion, because they believed there were innate psychological drives at work that produced religion. There were elements of their ideas around in the 1920's, but they were rejected by Lenin and 'purged' Stalin, when state atheism and anti-religion became the orthodoxy. I actually sympathise more with the 'god-builders' than the Stalinists on this, as psychological needs are conditioned by socio-economic systems, but there remains an innate element that is consistent through-out human history and belief systems. it is hard to define however.

So, I would say that as a Marxist I still have alot to learn from religious people, since religion is merely a way of organising knowledge as an ideology; the knowledge contains within it is still of value and worth preserving. It is possible for example, for the study of meditation as a practice developed over human history in a religious context, to inform scientific understandings of the brain and individual psychology. I am personally open to the idea that mysiticism as an understanding of the workings of the mind does have something of value to say. it is also true, that early cultures used herbal remedies and whilst these may be ascribed to supernatural or spiritual properties, the knowledge contained in these beliefs remains valid in a scientific context. it is also true, that morality derived from a religious context says something about the pattern of socio-economic organisation and some of the relatively more consistent features of human behaviour (.e.g prohibitions on murder and rape. Theft is an intresting one as you can only steal if something is privately owned).

If any of these are demonstrated to be true outside of a religious context, I'd say there is an obligation not to loose that knowledge to history in a flurry of 'revolutionary fervour'. communism must necessarily be creative, rather than destructive as the expression of human freedom.

 

[JRMcC]

since if matter is primary- there can be no creaton and therefore no creator.

So you believe that matter always existed? That whole concept is actually very confusing. Do you accept the big bang theory? As far as I know, this theory says that all matter/energy in the universe once existed at a single point, and I believe its proponents are saying that time was created when this point expanded. If this is true then it doesn't make sense to say that it went from not being into being. As for whether or not it always existed, I'm just not sure. I haven't read it, but Lawrence Krauss wrote a book called "A Universe from Nothing," the title of which seems to imply that the matter of this Universe didn't always exist.

It is argued that God is the product of abstraction, that in seeking to find an 'original cause' for phenemoena whilst believing in idealism, we seek therefore to logiclly explain the origin of pheneomena in a 'first cause'; a god or creator. The existence of god, is in this sense rejected by marxism as an illusion.

The whole "first cause" argument for God is related to what I put above this quote. I've studied Indian religion more than any other kind, but I think I can say with some certainty that all major world religions maintain that the supreme reality (Whether it's Allah or the Tao) is beyond time. If this is the case, then I don't see how it would be necessary to make the "first cause" argument. That argument seems to imply that there was time passing by before some deity decided to create the Universe, so there's an apparent contradiction here. At the moment I'm only remembering the first cause argument coming from people with a very theistic view of things (Muslims, Christians, certain types of Hindus).

Anyway there are certain conceptions about a possible supreme reality that wouldn't be falsified if it were proven that this existence has no creator. At least one type of pantheism that I know of is completely compatible with the atheist-materialist view. So my point is that the philosophy you adhere to does a good job arguing against a great majority of God concepts, but there are some conceptions of a supreme reality that it hasn't struck down, and some of these might be entirely impossible to disprove scientifically or philosophically.

So, I would say that as a Marxist I still have alot to learn from religious people, since religion is merely a way of organising knowledge as an ideology; the knowledge contains within it is still of value and worth preserving. It is possible for example, for the study of meditation as a practice developed over human history in a religious context, to inform scientific understandings of the brain and individual psychology. I am personally open to the idea that mysiticism as an understanding of the workings of the mind does have something of value to say. it is also true, that early cultures used herbal remedies and whilst these may be ascribed to supernatural or spiritual properties, the knowledge contained in these beliefs remains valid in a scientific context. it is also true, that morality derived from a religious context says something about the pattern of socio-economic organisation and some of the relatively more consistent features of human behaviour (.e.g prohibitions on murder and rape. Theft is an intresting one as you can only steal if something is privately owned).

I appreciate that you realize religion has a lot of valuable things to offer; atheist-materialists rarely see this. I have to assume that you see it because of a combination of both your personal wisdom and your philosophy's wisdom. These are Karl Marx's ideas you're talking about? I didn't know Marxism dealt with such a wide variety of things.

 

[Laika]

So you believe that matter always existed? That whole concept is actually very confusing. Do you accept the big bang theory? As far as I know, this theory says that all matter/energy in the universe once existed at a single point, and I believe its proponents are saying that time was created when this point expanded. If this is true then it doesn't make sense to say that it went from not being into being. As for whether or not it always existed, I'm just not sure. I haven't read it, but Lawrence Krauss wrote a book called "A Universe from Nothing," the title of which seems to imply that the matter of this Universe didn't always exist.

For philosphical reasons, I come down against the Big Bang because it so closely resembles a creation theory (effect without cause). This would almost certianly have a knock on effect on other scientific disciplines as the Soviets scientists struggled to reconcile scientific evidence with the party's materialist-atheist ideology. I can just about hold this position because I think science is ideological and therefore can contain illusions but it's pretty tenous. if you know the science this would be something really good to talk about just to see what happens.

The whole "first cause" argument for God is related to what I put above this quote. I've studied Indian religion more than any other kind, but I think I can say with some certainty that all major world religions maintain that the supreme reality (Whether it's Allah or the Tao) is beyond time. If this is the case, then I don't see how it would be necessary to make the "first cause" argument. That argument seems to imply that there was time passing by before some deity decided to create the Universe, so there's an apparent contradiction here. At the moment I'm only remembering the first cause argument coming from people with a very theistic view of things (Muslims, Christians, certain types of Hindus).

Nice point. I think both Marx and Engels believed Time and Space were permamant. Relativity caused some problems for Marxism because it may or may not have projected our subjective perception of time as an objective reality (Time dilation I think). However, the fact that space-time was proven to warp by demonstrating that light bends (Eddington took photographs of the stars during a solar eclipse to see this) means this position contradicts the evidence. It was revivsed but to what I'm not sure.

Anyway there are certain conceptions about a possible supreme reality that wouldn't be falsified if it were proven that this existence has no creator. At least one type of pantheism that I know of is completely compatible with the atheist-materialist view. So my point is that the philosophy you adhere to does a good job arguing against a great majority of God concepts, but there are some conceptions of a supreme reality that it hasn't struck down, and some of these might be entirely impossible to disprove scientifically or philosophically.

I appreciate that you realize religion has a lot of valuable things to offer; atheist-materialists rarely see this. I have to assume that you see it because of a combination of both your personal wisdom and your philosophy's wisdom. These are Karl Marx's ideas you're talking about? I didn't know Marxism dealt with such a wide variety of things.

Marxism comes in a large number of shapes and sizes. Marxism-Leninism is a world view or philosophical system that originated from the USSR/Russia and is the one I'm closest to intellectually (politically it's hard to stomach). I found several key books that introduced me to the ideas and I was (rather nievely) hooked.
Western forms of Marxism (such as the Frankfurt School) don't have this property, and still argue that marxism dealt specfically with social science, whereas Russian Marxism applied it to both social science and natural science. This is why there was problems with the politicisation of science in the USSR with trying to get scientific findings to fit party dogmas. It was something that specifically came out of Russian Marxism and was then exported world-wide as the blueprint for other forms of communism. As such, it 'totalises' knowledge to try and fit within the system, which is feature of a totalitarian mindset (opps), but is also common to some religions.
Marxism is a common 'root' in thinking about history from a materialist standpoint, but spawned a huge number of tendencies and factions through out it's history. Whilst the general perception of Marxism is that it is monololithic (and this is to some extent true of Soviet Marxism where everyone was expected to toe the party line), there is also a vast amount of diversity if you know where to look.

So trying to fit 'everything' in to it is a significant part of me being a 'Marxist', plus it's kind of fun as it means nothing is off limits so long as I respect my own ignorance in subject areas. Why stop at being subversive only in one discipline? there are so many to be corrupted!
I am using roughly the same ideas from Marx, but I'm a heretic because I want to get to the truth rather than simply repeat party dogmas especially given how often they fell down in practice. There are also certain holes in the systems well (individual psychology is a big one). I try to stay as loyal as possible to the original ideas, but then just apply them in different ways. The Soviets would not approve as this is an incredably 'liberal' and 'indivdiualistic' position. In other words...