Atheism...your thoughts?

[Cygnus]

Someone once said, "It is far better to debate a question before settling it than to settle a question before debating it." While I cannot say that there arent some things which I have already settled within my own mind, there are many things I have yet to come to a conclusion on. Even so, there is no opinion which I hold that is not subject to evaluation. I have no desire to get into personal arguments with any of you, but rather discuss different ideas, their implications and hopefully be wiser as a result. For every dogmatic theist I have seen--and there are many-- I can point to an equally dogmatic atheist. None of us are as informed as we ought to be, nor do most of us care to be. It is simple truth that people on both sides have very little contact with any primary sources and simply take arguments, statistics and stories as we see fit. I know I have been guilty of this in the past. All of that having been said I would encourage you all to think about the following:

"Atheism, by definition is the doctrine or belief that there is no God. It is an affirmation of God's nonexistence. In postulating the nonexistence of God, atheism commits the blunder of absolute negation, which is self-contradictory. For, to sustain the belief that there is no God, the atheist has to demonstrate infinite knowledge, which is tantamount to saying, "I have infinite knowledge that ther eis no being in existence with infinite knowledge."

Pedantic as that argument may be there is no way to know that a god, not necissarily of any religion or even known for that matter, does not exist. I am not saying that it is impossible for there to not be a god, but simply that it is illogical to hold to that idea of God's nonexistence as fact. In my opinion, agnosticism has always seemed to be the more defendable view to hold. So my question is those of you who would still hold atheism as their identified belief, how would you philisophically defend such a claim against the above quote?

I will try to be as polite as I can and hope that you would all do the same so as to contribute to the most objective and therefore most productive discussion. I ask that neither theist, atheist, nor agnostic use statistics or "facts" that they do not have primary sources for. Such evidences are not helpful in comming to valid and firm conclusions of the truth and lead to faulty foundations for future beliefs. Although, I would prefer to discuss a priori arguments and ideas simply because they do not require experience and would help us get around the personal issues we may have with any perticular religion and theology or lack thereof.

[Cygnus]

Maybe I should just post a little about myself here too. My name is Grant, Im a student at U of M (yea.. M go Blow..I know ) studying philosophy. I am a theist, but love stimulating discussion on the topic. I am a firm believer that if one does not have his/her beliefs contested they run the risk of becomming dead dogma. At any rate, apart from some of the sniping comments I've seen here and there you all seem to be an intelligent group of people and hopefully in the presuit of wisdom. I am a very sincere person and think it is important that I say right now, that I have no intention of making any declarations of judgment or assumptions of what direction you should take in life. I simply enjoy debate. I look forward to engaging in thoughtful discussion with you all.

-Grant

[profdunebastard]

First of all, thank you very much Cygnus for your your very informed, sincere, non-judgemental stance. It is very much appreciated, and I at least will try to respond in kind. As for you being of the blue and maize persuasion, I personally could care less, being of the I-think sports and their rivalries are a complete waste of time and effort(no offense Seany-D-persuasion.

At this point, I do not have too much time to discuss, so I will be brief and will try to get back to you more in-depth at a later date. I am an atheist, although sometimes when considering such information that you brought up regarding the impossibility to know everything, I have agnostic leanings. I try to be as un-hypocrytical as possible and sometimes I have a problem with claiming I am 100% regarding the nonexistance of God.

What I do know, is that all the information I've seen, all the things I've researched, etc, is unsatisfactory in proving to me the existence of a God. I've done alot of thinking and digging, on all sides. I have read the bible and just do not see any evidence of a God, that works sufficiently for me anyway. The most theistic I can get is to claim I believe that the laws of physics, entropy, etc work throughout the universe. Math and science in all its forms interplay, creating, at least in my mind, something synomous to the concept of yin and yang. Order working in, against, out of, with, and through chaos. It is beyond my understanding, I must have faith in it. I do not see any evidence of an ultimate goal or purpose, my knowledge of how the universe works, how history has played out, shows no evidence of any sentience or guiding force being at play, except forces of physics we can meausure. Perhaps, in the core of it all, there is a God. I do not know. In my mind, science, math, everything interacts blindly, and I have seen no conclusive evidence satisfactory to disuade me, but my heart is not closed to it. I am always searching for answers, always learning. I have as yet, not to be convinced, but I am not stubborn enough to claim I never will be.

What I am sure of, is that the bible was inadequate in providing me answers, and if I do change my philosophy regarding the existence of God, it will be on my terms, in things that satisfactorily explain it to me, that mesh with my scientific view of the world, and will be independent of anything found in any world religion, although some of the symbolic reasoning required for my mind to grasp such concepts of a god may coincide with certain archetypal symbols found among the panteon of world religions.

Again, thank you very much for your intellect, mature response. It is heartening to meet someone with a differing opinion that doesn't automatically judge or attack.

[Valvilis]

A student of philosophy, this should go well. As less of a mocking and more of a statement of observation, most of the theists who feel the need to come here aren't well versed in the intricacies of logical thought. I'm tempted to think you might not fit that mold, don't disappoint me.

As far as your actual argument:

There is a difference between being skeptical and being gullible. We can only know things with 99.999% certainty, even things such as gravity and the like. However, I think you'd agree that even with that given fractional percent of uncertainty inherent to every body of knowledge, we do ourselves no service in claiming that the knowledge we have of graivity, for the sake and clarity of the argument, is useless. We all understand the fact that sure, there is .001% chance that some god or another exists, there's a .001% chance that the universe was the result of the great dragon Tiamut's blood being spilt in her battle against Marduk, the sky lord. The problem is, until someone is ready to filter out what of that .001% is real and what is not (Jesus, Santa, unicorns, Mithra, Zeus, sprites, Gaia, mana, chi, voo-doo, ghosts, Allah, et al) then this information is best left classified outside of our bodies of actual knowledge.

Why do Christians believe in god? It's in the bible. Why should we beleive the bible? It is the word of god. Clearer cut circular logic cannot be found. And given the massive amounts of inaccuracies and contradictions in both books of the bible (and I don't even want to touch the book of mormon) the credibility of this circular hearsay is yet further reduced.

Anthropologists around the world have studied every religion to be found and they are formulaic. There are stages that one or a people as a whole progress through, and atheism is alway the end. Dieties serve the spychological and sociological function of filling in the gaps in human knowledge. The gaps we have today in cosmology and biology are no longer big enough for the super natural to fit into. The same way we outgrow the confusing metaphors we're fed as children when someone we know has died, we also outgrow our need for some grand orchestrator to relieve us of the complexities of our universe.

Advances in psychology have shown us, via MRI scans, where in the brain "religion" takes place. It can be stimulated and causes religious experiences. There is a lot of speculation on what function this adaptation serves, but it is clear that it can cause an artificial sense of ease during times of duress - an anti-stress measure of sorts. Most theists just call it "hope," but I couldn't think of a less accurate term. We are not slaves to our biology and we are not to be limited in our fields of knowledge. We've come too far to be set back another 2000 years like the last time Christianity got its talons into our flesh.

Cygnus, essentially what I'm going to ask of you is, "why god?" Children who are never taught about god never come up with the idea on their own, it is not something intrinsic to being human, in fact, nearly a third of the world's population today is atheistic, and doing just fine for it. Tell us why we need to add a god, for which you have no evidence for, to a consistant and logical, naturalistic world which in no way requires one. As it stands, no one has evidence of god, you are the one making the extraordinary claim, and the burden of proof is not on us to debunk your god(s), it is on you to prove it worth our time.

Give a logical argument for why a god is a sensible consideration while not opening the flood gates for the neccessary consideration of thousands of other gods, dragons, pixies, brownies, nymphs, satyrs, centaurs, gorgons, etc.

- Valvilis

[Cygnus]

Valvilis said:

There is a difference between being skeptical and being gullible. We can only know things with 99.999% certainty

I never said that you should or shouldnt believe anything. I merely showed the falacy in claiming to be atheist when the more defendable position is agnosticism. Furthermore, there must be a disctinction between knowledge and belief. To say that one knows (as knowledge or fact) that there is no god, versus to say one believes or is confident that there is no god are two very different statements. Furthermore to say that one can only have 99.999% certainty of any given fact which they hold to be true is not only a completely arbitrary number, but false. Case and point: 2+3=5. However "certain" one may be of any given "fact" has no bearing whatsoever as to the actual status of that "fact" being true or not. Certainty varies from person to person and should be, at best, based on pragmatic evaluation of the consequences of adhering to a said belief of any given fact.

Valvilis said:

The problem is, until someone is ready to filter out what of that .001% is real and what is not then this information is best left classified outside of our bodies of actual knowledge.

That statement is based on a bridge you made between Certainty and fact. What one person is certain of ( eg. a five year old being 99% certain Santa existst) and its actual truth are quite different. Similarly, before the discovery that the earth revolved around the sun people were 99% certain that the sun revolved around the earth. Does that mean that the Objective fact that the earth revolves around the sun was only 1% likely to be true? I didnt articulate that very well, but I think you can get the gist of it.

Valvilis said:

Anthropologists around the world have studied every religion to be found and they are formulaic. There are stages that one or a people as a whole progress through, and atheism is alway the end.

I couldnt agree more that RELIGION, has been found to me formulaic. One can clearly see how different religions have evolved and declined over the history of civilization. However, to extrapolate the end being atheism in all instances is a bit of a stretch and unless you can substantiate that claim, you are doing yourself a great disservice in holding it as fact. Why? because although atheism may be a stage in the progression of religious thought, there is no way to claim it as the end result. For all we know ( and im not claiming any facts here)the development religious thought may very well be cyclical in nature, with increasing and decreasing levels of spirituality and complexity over time.

Valvilis said:

Advances in psychology have shown us, via MRI scans, where in the brain "religion" takes place. It can be stimulated and causes religious experiences. There is a lot of speculation on what function this adaptation serves, but it is clear that it can cause an artificial sense of ease during times of duress - an anti-stress measure of sorts. Most theists just call it "hope," but I couldn't think of a less accurate term. We are not slaves to our biology and we are not to be limited in our fields of knowledge.

Im not really clear what your point is here other than a "religious experience"(not sure what that is supposed to mean) can be emulated by stimulating the brain.

Valvilis said:

We've come too far to be set back another 2000 years like the last time Christianity got its talons into our flesh.

Again, I dont know what you are referring to, but as i said before, I would much prefer religion not get into a discussion of theism, however tightly you view the relationship between the two they are not mutually exclusive. I will however add that an evaluation of progress and setback must be related to what one values. And furthermore, only time will what the consequences of "real atheism" will be on society. I say real atheism becaus I dont believe that any of you are truly atheists..but that is a claim which is a bit of a strech for myself seeing as I really dont know you that well yet.

Valvilis said:

Cygnus, essentially what I'm going to ask of you is, "why god?" Children who are never taught about god never come up with the idea on their own, it is not something intrinsic to being human,

That is a clear contradiction. If children who were never taught about god, never come up with the idea on their own.. then where did the idea come from in the first place? The law of infinite regression makes your statement implausible, unless of course you believe that people have been around to indoctrinate little children since the beginning of time...I kid..I kid.. but seriously if you intend to make claims such as those without a primary source or any study, use them on someone else because that is somewhat insulting.

Valvilis said:

nearly a third of the world's population today is atheistic, and doing just fine for it. Tell us why we need to add a god, for which you have no evidence for, to a consistant and logical, naturalistic world which in no way requires one.

As I stated earlier, I had no intention of telling you why you should believe what I believe. My intention is for friendly discussion, not conversion.

[the anti-myrmidon]

Cygnus,
In the spirit of avoiding redundancy, I will say that I agree with much of what previous replies have said, and add only a few extra points.

This frequently comes down to an issue of semantics, but if theism means "belief in a god or gods," then atheism is better described as being without theism, or "lacking a belief in a god or gods" and not "the belief that there is no God" per se. Granted, many atheists do indeed feel that there is no god, but I would state that makes up but one view that atheism may take. For an illustrative comparison, Christianity, Islam, and most religious views mean many different things to their many adherents.

But even taking atheism as the belief that there is no God, that still does not mean that the atheist requires omniscience for their view to be valid. Belief and knowledge are two separate domains. I can believe that Ouija boards channel (or don't channel) spirits, but not have any certain knowledge of whether it is true. Whether or not this is a valid belief is another matter, but I was simply trying to illustrate the distinction that I feel needs to be made regarding knowledge and belief (this plays further into my leanings as an agnostic atheist, but I don't feel like getting into that at the current moment).

Despite overwhelming evidence to the contrary , I don't think that being from U of M makes you any worse than anyone else. I was basically a coin toss away from being a Wolverine myself, and I might darn well be one next year depending on how grad school applications go (such as my desire to become a graduate Buckeye). In any case, I think that there are great benefits to meaningful and logical discussions, so welcome to the forum.

[FishBait]

this might repeat a bit of what some of the other people have said, but darn it i read your first post and immediately thought of discussing my certainty that there is no god in comparison with my certainty of gravity, but i guess i would sum up with saying that though i cannot be certain there is no god, i believe that there is no god, and am fairly sure that one would not exist based on my own logic, if this makes me more of an agnostic atheist than an atheist than so be it, but if you define an atheist as one who is absolutely certain there is no god i doubt you'll find many who would still call themselves atheists, in fact it might be just that reason that many would call themselves agnostic atheist i have just given to dropping the agnostic part because i would consider myself closer to that viewpoint being my fairly sureness, as far as the thing jason (valvillis) mentioned earlier about the fact that children raised without god do not create/find god, i will back this up with my own case study, i was essentially raised without religion by my parents who would most likely call themselves athiest/agnostic (dad-atheist, mom-agnostic) i at some point in my life tried to believe christianity (i've also looked into some other religions too) but found it too hard to believe, and as far as your response to his claim, i see where you would disagree with his statement that in general a child raised without religion doesn't become religious, because without saying anything else that would be very easy to contradict, i think the part he might have missed would be to say that in our current culture this most likely holds true (i won't say with certainty for all cases because i cannot back this up except with my own personal experiences) but in earlier cultures when science was less advanced there were many questions about life and the world around us that were left to be answered so one raised without religion would be likely to create some idea and without much science the best answers many could come up with was an idea of a god or being that oversaw life and was responsible for all unexplainable forces
i've probably forgotten a few things

[Ram234]

I skimmed a fair portion of the thread thus far because I'm pressed for time and really hungry, but here's what needs to be said that hasn't already.
Atheism and agnosticism are not mutually exclusive. I assert that there is no god, but I also assert that I may be wrong. It's important though, that I assert the latter for everything. As myrm mentioned, there's that tiny % that I might be wrong, but really, what's the point of it? I don't KNOW that the sun is going to rise tomorrow, but damned if my day isn't better for assuming it is. It should be noted by the by, that I do not have faith in the sun raising tomorrow. Nor do I have faith in anything else. The logic in my assumption that the sun will rise lies in the fact that it's done so every single day for all of human memory. It's a much more complicated issue than that, but it's been too long since my intro to logic course for me to remember.
Anyhow, your presentation of atheism is VERY strawmanned. There exists both positive and negative atheism, and as mentioned before, they are in no way mutually exclusive with agnosticism. We do not need to demonstrate infinite knowledge, and to propose so is absurd. You could as easily say that "Even though God himself just appeared before me, caused an earthquake, a volcano, and a plague of locusts (all while singing my favorite showtunes) I cannot believe he exists because to do so would require absolute knowledge". It's pretty goddamn absurd isn't it? I believe I've already driven my point into the ground about no knowledge being completely absolute, so I'll just go away now.

[Cygnus]

I did not discuss the breadth of that absolute or infinite knowledge because it is quite narrow. Claiming whether a given thing is fact or fiction, is claiming absolute knowledge of/on/with/or regarding to its state of truth. There need not be infinite knowledge of all things to know whether any single thing is real or ficticious, just infinite knowledge of one aspect of that thing, that one aspect being "Yes it exists", or "No, it does not". I hope that clears up the little point at the top about atheism. I think I need to say (again? not sure if ive said it already) that I am not saying that this means atheists are wrong. They could be right on target, but it is without question that an atheist can never know if he is wrong or not. The theist is not in the same boat simply because "if" s/he was correct then there COULD be a possibility of him/her comming to knowledge of this "truth". I will make no such case for myself, but just submit that the atheist cannot know definitively whether a god exists or not.


Now, I am curious how one can have probabilities of being correct about some given fact. If you assert that you may be wrong about everything then on what basis do you establish precedent for creating probabilities of the knowledge you hold to be fact or not? One cannot say that, "based on past experience, I have been right X% of the time" because, as you already said you may be wrong about everything.. even what % of the time you are right. A couple of you have used this so far and I think I need some explination so I can better understand what it is that you mean.

[AnonymousUser]

Well, as it seems to be my job here, i'll bring in a quantum physics perspective.

The uncertainty principle states that there is a small chance that EVERYTHING will happen, given enough time. I.E. "when monkey's fly out of my butt" is a valid timeframe for something, since eventually, monkey's will spontaneously for in my ass and then procede to fly out.
Therefore, everyone is right, even those people that say everyone is wrong and that everything is just a figment of their imagination.

the only thing that can really be argued are the relative chances of each thing happening.

[Cygnus]

I like the monkey-butt analogy, but that still doesnt provide a basis for coming up with the probabilities themselves.

[Rama234]

Stating something as a fact is in no way implying or directly asserting that there is no likelihood of your being wrong. It merely asserts that from your point of view, you see it as not being incorrect. It says nothing of the potential for error on yours or anyone else's part.
For instance, if I'm walking down the street with you and a corvette drives by, causing me to comment "That grey corvette sure looks nice" I am in no way also stating "there is absolutely no chance that I might be color blind and that that car could actually be red".
This is even more true when speaking in the realm of philosophy. Because everything we 'know' is based on the signals and stimuli that we interpret and respond to, it is ALL subjective. As this is the case, I may recieve one set of information and interpret it radically different from the way in which you might. This is subjectivity, and it applies (in my opinion) the best to morality. I'd hazard a guess that most of the high ranking Nazi's didn't think killing dirty inferior thieving greedy lazy genetically polluted jews was a sin. In fact as I'm sure we all know, Hitler rode to power championing Christianity. You cannot say he wasn't following christianity, you can only say he was not following the traditional interpretation of Christianity.
Get it?
I'm not rejecting the possibility that I might be wrong simply because EVERYONE might be wrong. If you want another dumbed down analogy, just go watch the Matrix.

[Cygnus]

Thats absolutely correct i couldnt agree more, but I feel like my question is still unanswered. When someone says theres a 99% likelyhood they are correct about a certain fact, upon what basis do they establish that said probability?

[AnonymousUser]

99% certainty proves nothing. Gravity is still just a theory. a counter-theory to that is that everything in the universe is instantaneously doubling in size, thus giving the illusion of gravtiy and the change cannot be detected because it is a universally uniform change.

The probability of a certain event occuring can be determined by a set of equations i believe, but im not a physics PHD so im not sure. Either way, the uncertainty principle applies and eliminates any chance of certainty in anything.

[Rama]

The percentages (and I'd hoped this was painfully clear) are always without fail arbitrarily picked from the speaker's netherregions. When discussing the probabilities of monkeys forming in my anus and flying hence to terrorize the population is obviously SIGNIFICANTLY lower than 1%, because it's absurdly and infinitely close to 0. Operating under the assumption that it's impossible allows us to lead ordinary lives, but we still always of course admit we're wrong (perhaps a less absurd example could have been used, eh?), and this is shown by our random and arbitrary selection of %'s.
I'm giving you directions and say "Turn left at the next stop light and you'll get there, I'm sure of it" is not denying the agnosticism of my own locational memory, because there's obviously the chance that I've made a mistake, or perhaps the building picked up and moved down the street without my knowing, or maybe I'm speaking some bizarre dialect of english where "left" means "right"?
Anyhow, agnosticism and atheism cover two sides of the same coin. They're not mutually exclusive, and in fact don't really make much sense if not found together. One of the primary characteristics of nontheistic thought is that there is no absolute right or wrong. This, obviously, is built on the observation that we live in a world which is completely subjective at its lowest levels. We interpret sensory input which we receive, and that is the only way we know anything. You might be colorblind, and instead of that red shirt you see it as a grey shirt. With an acknowlegement of a subjective reality you must have an acknowledgement that there is nothing we truly know (because everything we know is based off of inputs that can be mis-sent or mis-interpreted).
I forget what point I was trying to make, but I'm sure I already did. I hope this post makes sense, but I'm not making any promises.