The Arguments for Atheism

[Half Man Half Wit]

(Note: This has gotten a little long, and therefore, hard to read on a screen -- since I'm reluctant to break it down into even smaller paragraphs for fear of losing coherence, it may be a good idea to increase font size for easier readability; I believe in most browsers, hitting ctrl and + works, and ctrl and 0 resets it to standard)

I'm not sure how to start this thread -- perhaps I should best note straightforwardly that it is not my intention to change anybody's mind, i.e. convert people to atheism; I merely wish to illustrate why I think that, in attempting to form a consistent picture of the world, atheism is the only valid null hypothesis.

I also should mention that I use the word atheism probably somewhat different than most other people to, in two ways: one, for convenience, I use it as describing the absence of all faith, not merely the absence of faith in god, or gods; two, I use it as describing the absence of all faith, not the belief in the non-existence of a god, or gods (or related supernatural beings) -- some might accuse me of covertly advocating agnosticism instead of atheism with that last point, but the original meaning of agnosticism (which I'd like to stick to, because it is an important concept) is, in fact, a disbelief in the possibility of directly experiencing god (or more generally, deciding the truth value of a specific claim towards the existence of god, or a similar proposition), which essentially means that you can both be a theist and an agnostic, if you believe that god exists, yet not manifestly so/cannot be proven to in the physical realm.

Now that I hope to have made that position clear, let's get to the meat of this post, and start with what I like to call the argument from human fallibility. There are a great many faiths in this world, and there have been a great many more in the past; from there, it trivially follows that each faith's claim to be exclusively true is likely to be false, even if one of them should be right. Thus we can at least conclude that whether atheism is true or not, at least it isn't any more wrong than almost all religions. However, we can take this argument a little further, and derive a fundamental epistemological difference between atheism and religion: Every religion dies with its last follower; atheism exists independently of human belief.

To illustrate this, let's say that humanity gets wiped from the face of the planet, leaving no trace behind; eventually, in due time, perhaps another race of sentient beings develops, and takes reign over the Earth. While they may develop their own faiths and belief systems, it is negligibly likely that any of them will bear close resemblance to any human belief system in more than the most superficial of ways -- they may, for instance, develop a sun worshipping cult, but it is unlikely that they will call that sun god Ra, and have him ride a fiery chariot across the sky; however, they can develop atheism just as well, as a simple negation of all faith. They are unlikely to re-discover any tenets of any given faith, but the findings of reason are as accessible to them as they are to us -- just look at how nobody (well, except maybe for some fringe) today believes in the gods of the ancient Greek, yet Pythagoras' theorem is today as true as it was then.

Now, even if you say that the god of whatever faith you follow can just as well assert himself to the intelligences of the far future, that still does not remove the fundamental difference, for atheism requires no such assertion and can be arrived at by reason alone. This holds even if there really exists the one true faith.

There are even further consequences of this regarding the nature of knowledge in faith based and atheist world views: the atheist can always be wrong, with everything he knows, but he can at least be certain of the existence of logical truth (like Pythagoras' theorem -- independently, I should add, of the fact that it is only true in a specific geometry); for the believer, such truth cannot exist.

Any faith based knowledge exists only subject to that faith; for instance, the belief in the existence of an omnipotent god implies that every logical inference may be wrong if god wills it so. Thus, any form of logical reasoning is strictly invalid, or valid only under deferral to the tenets of faith. That, however, means that any increase in knowledge is strictly impossible within a faith based system; the believer cannot, strictly speaking, know that the sum of the squares of the sides of a right angled triangle equals the square of the hypotenuse, since god could will it otherwise. Of course, I am by no means insinuating that believers are idiots that can't do math, but in principle, in a faith based system, any rule is subject to exceptions and can have no absolute validity; in atheism, rules are at best not valid everywhere and in every case (as Pythagoras' theorem does not apply in hyperbolic geometry, for instance), but absolutely valid, fundamental rules may exist (and if they do, describe the world fully).

The last (parenthetical) statement can be taken to describe the 'closedness' of an atheistic world view: Everything is, in principle, accessible to reason (note that that doesn't imply that mankind will ever know everything). This is closely related to another argument I'd like to make, which will illustrate why I called atheism a 'null hypothesis' above: If, as some believers assert, there exists no evidence for god, i.e. if god's existence is unprovable, this implies that the universe, as a whole, is indistinguishable from one in which no god exists, since any difference could be pointed to as evidence for god's existence.

This, however, either means that god's existence, and therefore the question of belief vs. non-belief, is irrelevant, or that the hypothesis of god's existence can be treated as any other scientific hypothesis, i.e. we can look to prove it via evidence. And what's more, this means that in looking for proof of the existence of god, we have to take an atheistic point of view from the outset! This, again, illustrates why I view atheism as the more fundamental position: One ought to be naturally atheist until convinced otherwise.

Now I will deviate from my original intention to merely make the case for atheism a little and try to pre-emptively address a criticism of the logic in the previous paragraph that's likely to be raised by believers -- the special pleading, or claim for a special status of god/the supernatural. Most commonly, there will be assertions that god is extra-universal in some way, or that the metaphysical does not have to abide by physical laws. However, despite ostensibly rebutting scientific criticism of supernatural argumentation, it raises another, equally difficult to resolve, problem, which I call the interface dilemma. If a metaphysical agent is to effect any change of state in the physical world, it is unclear by what mechanism this could happen, or, in other words: How can a metaphysical process affect physical reality without itself necessarily being physical? Note that by physical, I mean describable by a finite set of laws; there is no requirement for the knowledge of a root cause; it was Niels Bohr who said: "It is wrong to think that the task of physics is to find out how nature is. Physics concerns what we can say about nature."

Thus, if this 'outside influence' happens according to rules, it is describable as (and indistinguishable from) a physical law; if it happens according to chance, there can at least statistical statements be made to describe it -- compare how, for instance, we can't exactly know position and momentum of a subatomic particle (and in fact, that information doesn't even exist in the universe), yet we can still make astonishingly precise statements about their behaviour. (As an aside, a 'mind', essentially, is just a rather complex set of rules.)

However, I freely admit that this is probably so far the weakest spot in my argumentation.

I'd like to take a step back now, in order to have a clearer view at the world as it is -- in fact, I shall attempt a brief outline of the construction of a world view using what I would call the principle of reasonable assumptions, and try to show how, using such reasonable assumptions, one will necessarily arrive at an atheistic view of the world.

The tool with which we can accumulate knowledge about the world is, trivially, observation. Now, some might contest that observation can mislead us; however, from such a solipsist position, it is impossible to arrive at valid conclusions, since everything can always be explained as me being a brain in a jar imagining everything else -- but that position is devoid of substance, and thus should be discarded; however, it is true that one has to accept that observation is not completely misleading (it need not be completely true, however, since any errors in observation can be corrected by repeated observation as long as there is at least an arbitrarily small nugget of truth in it) in an axiomatic way. While that at first seems to be at odds with my characterization of atheism as opposed to all faith, this axiom has to be accepted in any purported description of the world in order for it to be meaningful, i.e. communicable and of some substance.

On to the reasonable assumptions: First, for some definition, I consider a reasonable assumption to be one that's consistent with observation, and minimal in a kind of Occam's razor sense: if you observe a stone to fall down upon release, the reasonable assumption to make is that it will do so the next time it is being released; a non-reasonable assumption would be to expect it to grow butterfly wings and flutter away. Any supernatural assumption is always a non-reasonable one, since it is equivalent to infinitely many other supernatural assumptions: 'god did it' is the same as 'aliens/ghosts/underpants gnomes did it', or as postulating some acausal relationship, i.e. 'a rice sack falling in China caused it to happen'.

So, starting from observation, and using only reasonable assumptions (in the way I have defined them; I wouldn't want anybody to accuse me of equivocation), one will invariably arrive at an atheistic view of the world, because a supernatural view is not uniquely defined and equivalent to any other supernatural view, and what's even more, a sequence of reasonable assumptions eventually converges onto the truth, as much as it exists. To see this, consider how each successive assumption refines our picture of the world: each previously unobserved case is added to the total amount of knowledge, and, given even a finite amount of cases, ultimately leads to a complete picture; if we now also have laws governing all those cases, and a finite amount of those, the process merely works that much faster. In contrast, any view relying on non-reasonable assumptions has no explanatory power whatsoever, which harks back to the earlier point about the epistemological difference between faith-based knowledge and that arrived at by reason alone.

So, to provide a little digest of the preceding points, I am an atheist because:

• Atheism is independent of human cognition, i.e. nobody has to know about atheism for it to be a valid philosophical stance
• It allows for the existence of fundamental truths
• It allows for logical conclusions to be valid
• It allows for the increase of knowledge about the world
• It is unique in the sense that it isn't equivalent to any faith-based system, whereas all faith-based systems are equivalent to each other
• It holds explanatory, or at the very least descriptive, power

And as I said in the beginning, I am not out to convert anybody, I just want to make my case why I chose atheism over faith, and consider that a reasonable choice; however, any debate is obviously invited (or else I wouldn't have posted it in here). Also, to re-iterate, I have no explicit faith in the non-existence of any of the countless gods and supernatural entities so far devised, however, as I hope to have shown, I consider each of them to be a hypothesis either to be decided by evidence, or else wholly irrelevant.

Anybody is welcome to both add arguments, or argue against those that are already present or those yet to be brought up.

[ivan astikov]

If atheism is a denial of abstracts such as love and spirituality, I'm not sure where I stand? I have a 'gut feeling' that there is more to life than this physical husk, but nothing I have read or heard has managed to reinforce it. In the stark light of analysis though, I am less inclined to believe it. It's another one of those human abstracts "Hope", that makes those thoughts more bearable.


p.s. I hope that doesn't make me religious?
p.p.s. On second thoughts, if it does, I can live with that.

[Ruminator]

Originally Posted by Half Man Half Wit

it allows for the existence of fundamental truths

There was a period in my life where I read everything I could from the best atheist writers and also the premier thinkers of faith.

If there's one thing I got out of all that, it's that there is no fundamental Truth with a capital "T"

[Half Man Half Wit]

Originally Posted by ivan astikov

If atheism is a denial of abstracts such as love and spirituality, I'm not sure where I stand? I have a 'gut feeling' that there is more to life than this physical husk, but nothing I have read or heard has managed to reinforce it. In the stark light of analysis though, I am less inclined to believe it. It's another one of those human abstracts "Hope", that makes those thoughts more bearable.


p.s. I hope that doesn't make me religious?
p.p.s. On second thoughts, if it does, I can live with that.

Atheism doesn't diminish feelings of love or hope in the slightest; on the contrary, to me, it only reinforces their importance, because they are realized in the here and now, as opposed to some abstract after-world or spiritual domain. Also, those looking at this world in all its magnificence and claiming it is just a 'physical husk', those that expect 'something more' or 'beyond', either need glasses or are just unreasonably greedy. The universe ranges in size from 10^-35 to 10²⁶m, and every order of magnitude is full of countless wonders to marvel at; to merely look at this and say 'meh, is that supposed to be it?' seems a strange attitude to me.

Originally Posted by Ruminator

If there's one thing I got out of all that, it's that there is no fundamental Truth with a capital "T"

Well, I didn't capitalize it, and it's true that there's none we know currently, that we may never know it if it exists, and that it might not exist at all; however, there is also the possibility for a concise set of natural laws that govern all phenomena within the universe, and to discount it out of hand seems a bit rash.

[Ruminator]

Originally Posted by Half Man Half Wit

there is also the possibility for a concise set of natural laws that govern all phenomena within the universe, and to discount it out of hand seems a bit rash.

Yes, but all the natural laws described by any mathematics/physics can be always be explained as "God created the very mathematical tools you're using to describe His universe!" That type of answer has that ring of Gödel's incompleteness theorem to it. If you can't prove or refute a Higher Being's ultimate transcendence, where can the discussion go?

I've been meaning to start another debate thread about this topic but I'll mention some of the idea here. We are looking for metaphysical truths but we have no metaphysical toolkit to find it. We use "language/speech" and "mathematics" as a poor substitute. We fool ourselves into thinking they are metaphysical "flashlights" into the Truth hidden by darkness. I believe everybody on both sides Christopher Hitchens, Steven Dawkins, St. Augustine, Thomas Aquinas, etc suffers from this.

We've had 2000+ plus years of dialogue on atheist vs religion and I've seen zero progress on answering the metaphysical question. Each generation rehashes the same arguments... the only difference is updating it using contemporary language and contemporary analogies. (E.g. the old analogy was "watch" and then new analogy is "Boeing 747" -- it's the same argument with a different window dressing.)

Do you see it differently?

[Leaffan]

Funny, my 11 year old daughter said the same thing to me just yesterday.

Well, actually she said "I don't believe there's a God. I mean how could someone create all of this?" I played devil's advocate and told her that God isn't a person, but a deity, or an omnipotent presence, but she wasn't buying into it. Ahh, all that Catholic schooling gone to waste.

I'm proud of her using her own brain and coming to these conclusions actually.

Your OP was very long-winded, but essentially describes my views on religion and atheism.

[Half Man Half Wit]

Originally Posted by Ruminator

Yes, but all the natural laws described by any mathematics/physics can be always be explained as "God created the very mathematical tools you're using to describe His universe!"

However, to me, this would not be a reasonable assumption to make -- hence my arguing for atheism as a null hypothesis.

That type of answer has that ring of Gödel's incompleteness theorem to it. If you can't prove or refute a Higher Being's ultimate transcendence, where can the discussion go?

You can go and try to show that the non-existence of the higher being should always be the default stance -- that's pretty much what large parts of my argumentation were about.

Do you see it differently?

Well, to a certain extend, I think that there should not be a debate in the fashion that there is today -- I think that, unless evidence to the contrary emerges, the natural position to take is, once again, atheism.

[Half Man Half Wit]

Originally Posted by Leaffan

Your OP was very long-winded,

Yeah, I know; it just came out that way and I felt it necessary to deal with the matter with at least some stringency. And hey, other people have written whole books on the subject!

[Ruminator]

Originally Posted by Half Man Half Wit

However, to me, this would not be a reasonable assumption to make -- hence my arguing for atheism as a null hypothesis.

You see, this is my assertion. Phrases like "reasonable assumption", "null hypothesis", and "default stance" are language constructions that we hope will transfer from the brain of one human to all others to prove metaphysical truths. To an atheist, your statement is 100% logical and complete. To the person that's religious, your statement is incomplete and unconvincing. More words have been said but nobody's belief changes.

When I see the color RED, I label it "red". Maybe when you see the color GREEN, you also happen to call it "red". In the language domain, what sentence could we possibly construct to get to the Truth that our brains are actually "seeing" the same color? We could argue for 2000 more years on this and we would never know. If language is an inadequate tool to solve something as simple as RED/GREEN perception labels, how can it prove/disprove the existence God?

[Half Man Half Wit]

Originally Posted by Ruminator

You see, this is my assertion. Phrases like "reasonable assumption", "null hypothesis", and "default stance" are language constructions that we hope will transfer from the brain of one human to all others to prove metaphysical truths. To an atheist, your statement is 100% logical and complete. To the person that's religious, your statement is incomplete and unconvincing. More words have been said but nobody's belief changes.

Hmm, I guess I disagree here -- both concepts have a logical definition, and thus an unambiguous meaning. Their applicability is not part of a subjective picture of the world in the way the qualia of red and green are; besides, qualia are irrelevant since, even if what looks red to me I call green, as long as everybody else calls it green (no matter whether or not they're 'really' seeing blue, or pink, or whatever), there is no ambiguity in the concept. Also, for instance, the assertion 'it predominantly reflects light of a wavelength of around 550nm' isn't contested by anyone.

[Sage Rat]

I'll just note that the OP seems more an argument for humanism than atheism. Atheism has nothing to do with moral actions or how we interact with other humans.

[Half Man Half Wit]

Originally Posted by Sage Rat

I'll just note that the OP seems more an argument for humanism than atheism. Atheism has nothing to do with moral actions or how we interact with other humans.

I'm not sure I get what you're getting at here -- I don't believe I've said anything about morality in my post, or about human interactions? And I've given a, well, let's call it usage note for the word atheism that I've tried to abide by; also, humanism is most commonly associated with a certain kind of moral universalism, which I don't think the arguments in my OP are sufficient to derive.

[Sage Rat]

Originally Posted by Half Man Half Wit

I'm not sure I get what you're getting at here -- I don't believe I've said anything about morality in my post, or about human interactions? And I've given a, well, let's call it usage note for the word atheism that I've tried to abide by; also, humanism is most commonly associated with a certain kind of moral universalism, which I don't think the arguments in my OP are sufficient to derive.

Humanism simply says "Let's try and work out this whole thing (living on the planet together) logically rather than follow doctrine." Your OP is mostly saying, "Doctrine isn't a very useful tool compared to logic." So while your OP isn't concerned with morality per se, it is arguing for a rational approach to ones world view. But of what use is a world view besides for interacting with other people--AKA morality? So while I'd agree that your OP isn't explaining humanistic thought and morality, it is an argument for going down that road.

[Kinthalis]

Personally, I did not find the OP long winded at all. I think he took us through his logical arguments in a very concise and approachable manner.

I won't offer more commentary than that, for not only do I agree with him and thus would only be parroting his reasoning and conclusions, but I also wouldn't be anywhere near as eloquent as he in describing my own thoughts on why atheism is the logical, default position.

I will say, however, that I look forward to reading further discussion.

[Half Man Half Wit]

Originally Posted by Sage Rat

Humanism simply says "Let's try and work out this whole thing (living on the planet together) logically rather than follow doctrine." Your OP is mostly saying, "Doctrine isn't a very useful tool compared to logic." So while your OP isn't concerned with morality per se, it is arguing for a rational approach to ones world view. But of what use is a world view besides for interacting with other people--AKA morality? So while I'd agree that your OP isn't explaining humanistic thought and morality, it is an argument for going down that road.

Right, I can certainly get on board with that; however, the intent of my post was more along the lines of discussing what we can reasonably say about the world, and of what nature pure knowledge is when viewed from both a faith-based and atheistic perspective, independently of human interaction, and not how the results of this discussion ought to be applied.

[ivan astikov]

Originally Posted by Half Man Half Wit

Atheism doesn't diminish feelings of love or hope in the slightest; on the contrary, to me, it only reinforces their importance, because they are realized in the here and now, as opposed to some abstract after-world or spiritual domain. Also, those looking at this world in all its magnificence and claiming it is just a 'physical husk', those that expect 'something more' or 'beyond', either need glasses or are just unreasonably greedy. The universe ranges in size from 10^-35 to 10²⁶m, and every order of magnitude is full of countless wonders to marvel at; to merely look at this and say 'meh, is that supposed to be it?' seems a strange attitude to me.

I'm going to have to agree with you. Sometimes we need reminding of these things, and to try not to get too bogged down in the "Why?" of everything, maybe?

It's not like we are ever going to know ALL there is to know. Still, there's nothing wrong with setting your aims high, I suppose.

[YogSosoth]

As an atheist myself, I would have to give kudos to the OP for the post. Its certainly something that speaks to me and echoes my rejection of faith

Originally Posted by Ruminator

You see, this is my assertion. Phrases like "reasonable assumption", "null hypothesis", and "default stance" are language constructions that we hope will transfer from the brain of one human to all others to prove metaphysical truths. To an atheist, your statement is 100% logical and complete. To the person that's religious, your statement is incomplete and unconvincing. More words have been said but nobody's belief changes.

When I see the color RED, I label it "red". Maybe when you see the color GREEN, you also happen to call it "red". In the language domain, what sentence could we possibly construct to get to the Truth that our brains are actually "seeing" the same color? We could argue for 2000 more years on this and we would never know. If language is an inadequate tool to solve something as simple as RED/GREEN perception labels, how can it prove/disprove the existence God?

I'd have to disagree, obviously. It seems that you're trying to say that the problem of objective reality is eliminated once we realize that no human can ever objectively know something, the "brain in a jar" position that the OP alluded to, and as such to take a firm position on anything is foolish (you decry Truth because I could see green and you could see red).

But even when its a brain in a jar, certain positions can be said to be valid and others invalid. If you see Red but insist on calling it Yellow, while I see Green but recognize it as Red, then your position is inherently flawed because you know it as Red yet refuse to call it that. My position would therefore be valid, despite whatever objecti color that is, because what I recognize as Red I in fact call Red.

With religions its the same way, not just updated language. Within the confines of our understanding exists fundamental truths applying without exception to our sphere of understanding. Atheism violates none of that understanding. Religion, however, does, because by its very nature it assumes knowledge not within its sphere of understanding. It postulates things that its believers know 100% about things they cannot know, while atheism simply recognizes that limitation and acts accordingly.

Whatever real color that Red is, you'd be mistaken to call it yellow if you recognize it as red, and I would be correct if I recognize it as red even if its something entirely different

[Malthus]

I do not believe in any god, but this strikes me as a bad argument:

Now that I hope to have made that position clear, let's get to the meat of this post, and start with what I like to call the argument from human fallibility. There are a great many faiths in this world, and there have been a great many more in the past; from there, it trivially follows that each faith's claim to be exclusively true is likely to be false, even if one of them should be right. Thus we can at least conclude that whether atheism is true or not, at least it isn't any more wrong than almost all religions. However, we can take this argument a little further, and derive a fundamental epistemological difference between atheism and religion: Every religion dies with its last follower; atheism exists independently of human belief.

Surely this can be a proof that the details of any religion is likely not the "True" religion; but one could, just as easily, argue that there exists a Platonic ideal "true religion" that every existing religion attempts to approximate. Some get closer and some further.

Atheism doesn't exist "independently of human belief" any more than this Platonic ideal. Both are ways of conceptualizing the way the universe is organized, and consceptualization is, fundamentaly, a human (or at least a concious) act.

[Ruminator]

Originally Posted by YogSosoth

But even when its a brain in a jar, certain positions can be said to be valid and others invalid. If you see Red but insist on calling it Yellow, while I see Green but recognize it as Red, then your position is inherently flawed because you know it as Red yet refuse to call it that. My position would therefore be valid, despite whatever objecti color that is, because what I recognize as Red I in fact call Red.

You've misunderstood what I wrote.

I'm not talking about self-denial of a "correct" color so there's nothing to "refuse." I'm talking about 2 people perceiving the color red and never knowing through the use of language if they are even "experiencing/perceiving/internalizing" the same color even if they sat and talked it over for 1000 years. Language/speech/writing/words/sentences/symbols are an inadequate tool to figure this out. I'm sure there's a fancy science term for this and if I knew it, I'd put the wiki link instead of trying to explain it myself. I'm clearly not doing a good job articulating the nuances of this analogy.

[Thudlow Boink]

I admit, I didn't read the entire OP. But a couple of things stood out to me that I want to comment on.

Originally Posted by Half Man Half Wit

Every religion dies with its last follower; atheism exists independently of human belief.

This strikes me as being at least somewhat question-begging. If there is no God, then what you said is true. If, however, there is a God, and at least one of the religions was initiated by God or represents a genuine encounter with God, as opposed to being a purely human invention, then that religion can exist as long as God does.

Furthermore, even if humanity were to be wiped off the face of the planet, if religions that claim the survival of the soul beyond the death of the earthly body are true, religion would not necessarily die with the physical death of its adherents.

There are even further consequences of this regarding the nature of knowledge in faith based and atheist world views: the atheist can always be wrong, with everything he knows, but he can at least be certain of the existence of logical truth (like Pythagoras' theorem -- independently, I should add, of the fact that it is only true in a specific geometry); for the believer, such truth cannot exist.

Huh?

I've heard it argued the other way around: that the existence of logical truth is evidence for the existence of God. If our minds are just the random products of a universe that just happened, how can we trust what they tell us to be Truth? Or, here's a formulation by Peter Kreeft:

If there are unchangeable truths, and if truths must be in minds, and if human minds are changeable and therefore can't be the foundation for changeless truths, then some unchangeable mind must be the foundation for changeless truths. If there are eternal ideas, there must be an eternal mind.

I'm not sure whether I buy that, at least as stated, but it at least makes no less sense to me than your claim.

Any faith based knowledge exists only subject to that faith; for instance, the belief in the existence of an omnipotent god implies that every logical inference may be wrong if god wills it so. Thus, any form of logical reasoning is strictly invalid, or valid only under deferral to the tenets of faith. That, however, means that any increase in knowledge is strictly impossible within a faith based system; the believer cannot, strictly speaking, know that the sum of the squares of the sides of a right angled triangle equals the square of the hypotenuse, since god could will it otherwise.

Many theistic thinkers would assure you that God's omnipotence does not mean the ability to do the logically impossible (like creating a burrito so hot he could not eat it). As I think C.S. Lewis put it, nonsense does not cease to be nonsense just because you put the words "God can" in front of it.

[ITR champion]

First let me say that I appreciate the opening post, which is very thorough, logical and intelligent. Not surprisingly I disagree with almost all of it, but I find it an excellent example of how to talk about religion with politeness and respect.

Now that I hope to have made that position clear, let's get to the meat of this post, and start with what I like to call the argument from human fallibility. There are a great many faiths in this world, and there have been a great many more in the past; from there, it trivially follows that each faith's claim to be exclusively true is likely to be false, even if one of them should be right. Thus we can at least conclude that whether atheism is true or not, at least it isn't any more wrong than almost all religions. However, we can take this argument a little further, and derive a fundamental epistemological difference between atheism and religion: Every religion dies with its last follower; atheism exists independently of human belief.

To begin with, "each faith's claim to be exclusively true" is somewhat suspect. Some religions make many claims in that direction, some make few, some make none at all. There's a tremendous amount that could be said about the relationship between the various religions, much more than could be said here. I might point you to authors like Thomas Merton and E. F. Schumacher, both of whom were devout Catholics but also practitioners of other religions to some extent. What we can say about all religions is that they all believe in the existence of beings 'higher' than humanity, and the ability of humans to reach higher levels. That there would be both a large set of higher beings and a variety of methods for humans to climb upward is hardly illogical. That most religions appear to hold contradictory viewpoints is again suspect. Many things appear to be contradictory only because of ignorance or unawareness. For example, light being a particle and a wave was once contradictory, but only because of our limited knowledge.

(The definition of 'higher' I intentionally left out since it would take to long, but I can discuss that if you like.)

In any case, I don't agree with the assessment that atheism "isn't any more wrong that almost all religions". Consider classical music as a metaphor. I may feel that Mozart is the greatest composer, while others would name Beethoven, Haydn, Schubert, or any number of others. But while all but one of us may be wrong, a person who dismisses all classical music as worthless would be a great deal more wrong than any of us.

[ITR champion]

To illustrate this, let's say that humanity gets wiped from the face of the planet, leaving no trace behind; eventually, in due time, perhaps another race of sentient beings develops, and takes reign over the Earth. While they may develop their own faiths and belief systems, it is negligibly likely that any of them will bear close resemblance to any human belief system in more than the most superficial of ways -- they may, for instance, develop a sun worshipping cult, but it is unlikely that they will call that sun god Ra, and have him ride a fiery chariot across the sky; however, they can develop atheism just as well, as a simple negation of all faith. They are unlikely to re-discover any tenets of any given faith, but the findings of reason are as accessible to them as they are to us -- just look at how nobody (well, except maybe for some fringe) today believes in the gods of the ancient Greek, yet Pythagoras' theorem is today as true as it was then.

The conclusion here begs the question, "what is reason?" You give the Pythagorean theorem as an example but certainly if the materialist worldview were right then nobody knew the Pythagorean theorem before humanity came along. No chimpanzee knows it. It's unique to humans. This suggests that reason is unique to humans.

More importantly, most people would agree that most of what they call "reason" is stuff that deals with humanity, and depends upon the uniqueness of humanity. Hence if you look at the works of Aristotle or Confucius or Aquinas or most other great reasoners, they focused most of their thinking on human topics. The idea that one can be a great thinker owing through only the hard sciences is unique to a small part of the world in modern times.

So by meaningful standards, in your scenario, this future sentient race could not rediscover reason because it would die with humanity. Any speculation about this race's ways of thinking is pure speculation and we really have no idea what they would believe, think, or do.

[woodstockbirdybird]

Originally Posted by ITR champion

In any case, I don't agree with the assessment that atheism "isn't any more wrong that almost all religions". Consider classical music as a metaphor. I may feel that Mozart is the greatest composer, while others would name Beethoven, Haydn, Schubert, or any number of others. But while all but one of us may be wrong, a person who dismisses all classical music as worthless would be a great deal more wrong than any of us.

Except that classical music is able to be experienced by everybody with functioning ears, and God is not.

[Malthus]

Originally Posted by woodstockbirdybird

Except that classical music is able to be experienced by everybody with functioning ears, and God is not.

Those who believe in a god sometimes state that [he] can be experienced by just about anyone with a functioning brain - and indeed mystic states can be induced through prayer, fasting, meditation, drugs, etc. Some even experience this by listening to classical music ...

Of course whether such states = direct experience of God is debatable. I myself think they do not, but are, rather, an experience which is filtered through the particular culture of the perceiver. But there is no question that lots of people "experience" God in some form or another (though again I'm not arguing they are correct in their analysis of what they perceive, just that this objection to the analogy does not work).

[Kinthalis]

I think his point was that the analogy is absolutely not equivalent.

That these composers existed is scientifically and objectively verifiable. That music can be heard and experienced too is a scientific question which delves into how sound waves travel through a medium and are interpreted through the biological machinery that is our ear and nervous system.

You can't seriously be telling me that if you changed the names from Beethoven to Krishna and Schubert to YHWH the analogy holds, can you?

[Bryan Ekers]

Originally Posted by ITR champion

The conclusion here begs the question, "what is reason?" You give the Pythagorean theorem as an example but certainly if the materialist worldview were right then nobody knew the Pythagorean theorem before humanity came along. No chimpanzee knows it. It's unique to humans. This suggests that reason is unique to humans.

It does? I can easily imagine a sentient species on a planet far from Earth, or whatever sentient species might replace humanity, discovering mathematics and realizing that 3² + 4² = 5² because this is always true and observable, even if the symbols for the numbers are different. It's entirely unclear that any form of theism meets this standard.

The Pythagorean theorem didn't create the relationship that exists between the sides of a right-angle triangle on a plane, it merely describes it. This relationship existed long before humanity and will exist long afterward.

More importantly, most people would agree that most of what they call "reason" is stuff that deals with humanity, and depends upon the uniqueness of humanity. Hence if you look at the works of Aristotle or Confucius or Aquinas or most other great reasoners, they focused most of their thinking on human topics. The idea that one can be a great thinker owing through only the hard sciences is unique to a small part of the world in modern times.

Certainly, they can observe and write on subjects about human behaviour, but this behaviour is itself the offshoot of a lengthy and laborious evolutionary process. Were bees the first species to achieve sentience, I'm sure they would have great bee philosophers as well, writing on the social structure of hives which may be as alien and incomprehensible to humans as, say, our JudeoChristianity would be to them. But whatever mathematical discoveries they make (I'm sure they'd consider the hexagon to be nature's perfect shape) could translate.

So by meaningful standards, in your scenario, this future sentient race could not rediscover reason because it would die with humanity. Any speculation about this race's ways of thinking is pure speculation and we really have no idea what they would believe, think, or do.

You're using "reason" in a very unreasonable fashion. While philosophies are, no doubt, species- and culture-specific, I don't see how math, physics and chemistry could be.

[Malthus]

Originally Posted by Kinthalis

I think his point was that the analogy is absolutely not equivalent.

That these composers existed is scientifically and objectively verifiable. That music can be heard and experienced too is a scientific question which delves into how sound waves travel through a medium and are interpreted through the biological machinery that is our ear and nervous system.

You can't seriously be telling me that if you changed the names from Beethoven to Krishna and Schubert to YHWH the analogy holds, can you?

I'm raising a specific objection to his objection. Lots of people "experience god", it isn't really all that uncommon, and the state of mind of "experiencing god" is certainly scientifically and objectively verifiable.

http://cnn.health.printthis.clickabi...partnerID=2012

[Thudlow Boink]

Originally Posted by Kinthalis

You can't seriously be telling me that if you changed the names from Beethoven to Krishna and Schubert to YHWH the analogy holds, can you?

I think the way his analogy was meant to work was more like you change the names from Beethoven to Roman Catholicism and Schubert to Zen Buddhism; so that just because there are many different religions and people disagree about which one is "best," this is no more an argument against religion per se than the fact that there are many different composers and people disagree over which one is best is an argument against classical music. Is that your point, ITR? (I'm not necessarily endorsing it, just trying to clarify it.)

At any rate, the religions of the world have matters on which they agree (or overlap) and matters on which they disagree. Some of their differences are true incompatibilities, where if one is right, another must necessarily be wrong. Others are just seeming differences: they're using different symbols or metaphors or language to try to express the same underlying reality.

[ivan astikov]

I'm more inclined to go with this.

Scott Atran doesn't consider himself an atheist, but he says the brain scans offer little in terms of understanding why humans believe in God. He is an anthropologist and author of "In Gods We Trust: The Evolutionary Landscape of Religion."

Instead of viewing religion and spirituality as an innate quality hardwired by God in the human brain, he sees religion as a mere byproduct of evolution and Darwinian adaptation.

Let's have it right; if man hadn't spread the word, there would be no religion.

Unless you want to point to an instance where a religious artifact has appeared in nature?

And don't say look at our wonderful universe. By all current accounts, the universe is a cold, lifeless expanse, the size of which either renders us totally insignificant, or the most important thing in it.

If it is the latter, I don't put that down to some invisible deity.

[Malthus]

Originally Posted by ivan astikov

I'm more inclined to go with this.


Let's have it right; if man hadn't spread the word, there would be no religion.

Unless you want to point to an instance where a religious artifact has appeared in nature?

And don't say look at our wonderful universe. By all current accounts, the universe is a cold, lifeless expanse, the size of which either renders us totally insignificant, or the most important thing in it.

If it is the latter, I don't put that down to some invisible deity.

I certainly believe that religion (and religious perception) is a byproduct of evolution. That doesn't mean it has no insights to offer, though again I do not believe in the literal existence of any god.

[woodstockbirdybird]

Originally Posted by Malthus

I'm raising a specific objection to his objection. Lots of people "experience god", it isn't really all that uncommon, and the state of mind of "experiencing god" is certainly scientifically and objectively verifiable.

http://cnn.health.printthis.clickabi...partnerID=2012

And yet, lots of people don't. Not the case with classical music - if it is being played within earshot, you will experience it. I don't see how the analogy holds.

[Sage Rat]

Originally Posted by Malthus

I'm raising a specific objection to his objection. Lots of people "experience god", it isn't really all that uncommon, and the state of mind of "experiencing god" is certainly scientifically and objectively verifiable.

http://cnn.health.printthis.clickabi...partnerID=2012

But amazingly--or at least 99% of the time--only seems to happen to people who were raised in religious households. (Or at least those are the only people who consider temporary euphoric states as being divinely inspired.)

[Wolverine]

Atheism is independent of human cognition, i.e. nobody has to know about atheism for it to be a valid philosophical stance

God or god's existence is independent of cognition. Either God exists or she doesn't; human cognition doesn't enter into it. Atheism might be the first type of cognition (null-state) but it is still an mental state and falls under the umbrella of cognition. It still disappears when there are no cognitive agents around.

It allows for the existence of fundamental truths
It allows for logical conclusions to be valid
It allows for the increase of knowledge about the world

So does religion. Of course, when those truths are counter to what they claim to be true, they start looking foolish, but don't confuse that with not allowing the search of truth. I have yet to meet a Christian, Muslim, or other that vehemently denies the Pythagorean theorem or length x width = area. There have been many people (e.g. Thomas Aquinas and other naturalist theologians) that would argue your claim that religion is counter to any search for truth.

It is unique in the sense that it isn't equivalent to any faith-based system, whereas all faith-based systems are equivalent to each other

This one I'll agree to.

It holds explanatory, or at the very least descriptive, power

I agree in principle. When attempting to describe a physical world, one should only use physical properties. Metaphysical properties would be outside the realm of a scientist because otherwise they would have discernible physical observances. Atheism does lack descriptive power to describe an actual miracle though.

[Half Man Half Wit]

Originally Posted by Malthus

Surely this can be a proof that the details of any religion is likely not the "True" religion; but one could, just as easily, argue that there exists a Platonic ideal "true religion" that every existing religion attempts to approximate. Some get closer and some further.

That would, however, lead to a faith whose only tenet is basically to have faith, since that does seem to be about all the various faiths have in common; and a lot of faiths even explicitly deny this possibility by making some sort of uniqueness claim. And even if we collect all the various poly-, mono-, and pantheistic faiths, throw in a dash of folk beliefs from all over the world to arrive at some vague notion of there being 'something ineffable' about the world, I believe my reasoning holds: In this case, the hypothetical future race might re-discover this notion, vague and of little substance as it is; however, it also might not, in which case they'd basically be atheists. Atheism still would be the more natural position to adopt, at least in the absence of evidence to the contrary.

Atheism doesn't exist "independently of human belief" any more than this Platonic ideal. Both are ways of conceptualizing the way the universe is organized, and consceptualization is, fundamentaly, a human (or at least a concious) act.

However, some conceptualisations are preferred over others, which I've attempted to show with the 'reasonable assumptions'-argument: if you start down the path of incorporating faith-based notions into your world view, it's difficult to see where it'll lead, how to tell 'true belief' from 'false belief', how to tell different gods from one another, or even the 'ineffable something'; however, if you keep your assumptions reasonable, you might err, but that's eventually self-correcting.

Originally Posted by Ruminator

You've misunderstood what I wrote.

I'm not talking about self-denial of a "correct" color so there's nothing to "refuse." I'm talking about 2 people perceiving the color red and never knowing through the use of language if they are even "experiencing/perceiving/internalizing" the same color even if they sat and talked it over for 1000 years. Language/speech/writing/words/sentences/symbols are an inadequate tool to figure this out. I'm sure there's a fancy science term for this and if I knew it, I'd put the wiki link instead of trying to explain it myself. I'm clearly not doing a good job articulating the nuances of this analogy.

I believe his point was more along the lines that the internal experience of seeing the colour red matters very little, as long as both call it red, because if that's given, everyone knows exactly what's being talked about. This assumes an underlying objective reality of which our subjective perception is at least an approximation, i.e. that the object whose colour is being talked about exists and indeed reflects light in a given frequency range; but not permitting that assumption means not being able to reason about the world in any meaningful way (and furthermore, it's also a reasonable assumption).

Originally Posted by Thudlow Boink

I admit, I didn't read the entire OP. But a couple of things stood out to me that I want to comment on.This strikes me as being at least somewhat question-begging. If there is no God, then what you said is true. If, however, there is a God, and at least one of the religions was initiated by God or represents a genuine encounter with God, as opposed to being a purely human invention, then that religion can exist as long as God does.

I've allowed for that in my OP; however, that god would still have to assert himself again, and lay down the rules for worship and the tenets of faith, which still makes for a fundamental difference to atheism, since the latter is entirely rediscoverable by reason. In other words, even if there were the one, true religion, nobody would know about it unless having been told.

Furthermore, even if humanity were to be wiped off the face of the planet, if religions that claim the survival of the soul beyond the death of the earthly body are true, religion would not necessarily die with the physical death of its adherents.

There'd still be no way to assert its truth from the physically accessible realm, and I'm uncomfortable with all the extra-universal stuff for other reasons I've attempted to illustrate (I've called it the 'interface dilemma' in the OP).

I've heard it argued the other way around: that the existence of logical truth is evidence for the existence of God. If our minds are just the random products of a universe that just happened, how can we trust what they tell us to be Truth?

Well, they're all we have, right? I mean, the same reasoning applies to any 'scriptural' truth, and again leads us only down the path of solipsism.

Many theistic thinkers would assure you that God's omnipotence does not mean the ability to do the logically impossible (like creating a burrito so hot he could not eat it). As I think C.S. Lewis put it, nonsense does not cease to be nonsense just because you put the words "God can" in front of it.

This sort of 'logical' god runs into a whole host of other problems I did not go into in the OP, though, such as having himself (by the way, I intend no disrespect by consistently choosing the male form of address, it's just for convenience and seems to be the most widely spread custom) the need for a creator and on and on; I tried to limit myself to the most general notion of god, or rather the supernatural, which to me includes the possibility of entities not governed by logic, which I think is all my argument needs. Furthermore, if you want a logical universe, I'd dispute the notion that there's anything supernatural about it at all, since anything following by mere logical inference would appear to be governed by physical laws.

Thus my reasoning that if you want a supernatural universe, logical deduction is not necessarily valid within it, and knowledge has a fundamentally different, completely uncertain basis -- essentially saying that, for any statement 'if A then B', supernatural interference could always make it so, that B doesn't follow.

Originally Posted by ITR champion

First let me say that I appreciate the opening post, which is very thorough, logical and intelligent. Not surprisingly I disagree with almost all of it, but I find it an excellent example of how to talk about religion with politeness and respect.

Thanks, it's good to see that my efforts are appreciated.

To begin with, "each faith's claim to be exclusively true" is somewhat suspect. Some religions make many claims in that direction, some make few, some make none at all.

That's a given; however, I need only for some to make such a claim, and for different faiths to exist, for my reasoning to be valid, I think.

What we can say about all religions is that they all believe in the existence of beings 'higher' than humanity, and the ability of humans to reach higher levels. That there would be both a large set of higher beings and a variety of methods for humans to climb upward is hardly illogical. That most religions appear to hold contradictory viewpoints is again suspect. Many things appear to be contradictory only because of ignorance or unawareness.

However, many things also appear contradictory because they are contradictory. The reasonable assumption to make when encountering things that appear different is that they are, in fact, different; you may be wrong with that, and will have to correct your assumption in the light of contradictory evidence, but still, to assume them to not be different from the outset would have been unreasonable; so, it's natural to assume contradictory religious tenets to be, in fact, mutually exclusive until evidence to the contrary comes to light.

For example, light being a particle and a wave was once contradictory, but only because of our limited knowledge.

Just as an aside, I wish people would stop with this wave/particle duality thing; there is no duality, the photon always behaves like a quantum object, and does so nice and orderly. The supposed paradox only comes from trying to shoehorn its behaviour into familiar categories, i.e. assuming there's any need for the photon to behave like either wave or particle. But that's really not germane to the discussion.

In any case, I don't agree with the assessment that atheism "isn't any more wrong that almost all religions". Consider classical music as a metaphor. I may feel that Mozart is the greatest composer, while others would name Beethoven, Haydn, Schubert, or any number of others. But while all but one of us may be wrong, a person who dismisses all classical music as worthless would be a great deal more wrong than any of us.

Classical music, however, doesn't require faith; the contradictory position, that classical music doesn't exist, isn't valid. The analogy would be more pertinent if nobody had ever heard any classical music, and people still would discuss the relative merits of Beethoven and Schubert. (Wait, 'nobody' isn't quite correct in the last sentence, at least not that I can prove; there is always the possibility that there are genuine religious experiences, however, those experiences are, if they exist, ineffable, whereas classical music isn't.)

Originally Posted by ITR champion

The conclusion here begs the question, "what is reason?" You give the Pythagorean theorem as an example but certainly if the materialist worldview were right then nobody knew the Pythagorean theorem before humanity came along. No chimpanzee knows it. It's unique to humans. This suggests that reason is unique to humans.

Well, it's realisation in the form of the Pythagorean theorem is human; the fact that the squares of the triangle's sides sum to the square of the hypotenuse in a right-angled triangle is not. Humanity did not invent this result of geometry, we merely discovered it.

More importantly, most people would agree that most of what they call "reason" is stuff that deals with humanity, and depends upon the uniqueness of humanity. Hence if you look at the works of Aristotle or Confucius or Aquinas or most other great reasoners, they focused most of their thinking on human topics. The idea that one can be a great thinker owing through only the hard sciences is unique to a small part of the world in modern times.

Hard sciences are themselves unique to modern times, and represent a development that stems, in my opinion, from the rigorous application of a succession of reasonable assumptions, which is really just saying 'scientific method' with different words.

So by meaningful standards, in your scenario, this future sentient race could not rediscover reason because it would die with humanity. Any speculation about this race's ways of thinking is pure speculation and we really have no idea what they would believe, think, or do.

I disagree; they could rediscover the same rules for doing geometry, for doing analysis, for algebra, and even for basic logic. They would probably formalize them differently, but the fundamentals remain the same, independently of either them or us.

Originally Posted by Wolverine

God or god's existence is independent of cognition. Either God exists or she doesn't; human cognition doesn't enter into it. Atheism might be the first type of cognition (null-state) but it is still an mental state and falls under the umbrella of cognition. It still disappears when there are no cognitive agents around.

But it is the same thing for any potential cognitive agent, other than any specific gods barring their self-assertion.

So does religion. Of course, when those truths are counter to what they claim to be true, they start looking foolish, but don't confuse that with not allowing the search of truth. I have yet to meet a Christian, Muslim, or other that vehemently denies the Pythagorean theorem or length x width = area. There have been many people (e.g. Thomas Aquinas and other naturalist theologians) that would argue your claim that religion is counter to any search for truth.

Well, I've tried to give some justification to my argument that knowledge rests on a fundamentally different basis in a faith-based system -- basically, in a nutshell, an omnipotent god can void any reasoning you might undertake, and thus all knowledge is automatically called into question.

I agree in principle. When attempting to describe a physical world, one should only use physical properties. Metaphysical properties would be outside the realm of a scientist because otherwise they would have discernible physical observances. Atheism does lack descriptive power to describe an actual miracle though.

This is the 'special pleading' I've referred to in my OP, the claim that the supernatural exists 'outside' the scientific domain; I've tried to outline with two arguments why I consider it to be invalid, one being that the supernatural is either evidence based or irrelevant (since if there's no evidence for it, the universe is indistinguishable from one in which it doesn't exist), the other being that I believe it only shifts the dilemma to how the interface between the supernatural and the natural should look like, if it is extra-universal. (This is, by the way, not an argument from ignorance in the form 'I don't know how the two should interface, so they can't' -- that they can't is merely the reasonable assumption to make in the absence of evidence that they do.)


--------------------------------------------

Whew, this is getting like work! However, I'm greatly enjoying the discussion so far, both the support of my arguments and the challenges to them. Now I'll need to shift mental gears and attend to some real world stuff, though.

[Liberal]

Originally Posted by Half Man Half Wit

However, we can take this argument a little further, and derive a fundamental epistemological difference between atheism and religion: Every religion dies with its last follower; atheism exists independently of human belief.

Hoo boy. Lotta stuff.

1. You went to great pains to define atheism with some specificity as the absence of all faith in supernatural things. You're right that the definition is unusual since it necessarily includes faith in ghosts, ESP, and a host of other phenomena unrelated to gods. It's all the more strange since the "theism" part of "a-theism" specifically points to gods. It seems more to me like you're talking about materialism (or physicalism) than atheism, but okay. I'm pretty generous when it comes to definitions of terms as long as we all understand what they mean. This, of course, implies that it is important you don't change or refine the meaning as our discussion progresses. If you mean something other than what you've said, clear it up now rather than waiting until we've gone two pages talking past each other.

2. You stopped short of defining what you're contradicting. Ordinarily, atheism and theism would be opposites, but in this case a theist would be someone who believes in complex numbers or anything else they couldn't touch. It would be good if you would define exactly what you say isn't true or doesn't exist.

3. Until (2) is cleared up, we're in the awkward position of conflating empiricism with reason. You appeal to both, but in an equivocal way. While they may both be used, they're not the same. Reason may draw premises, but not inferences, from empiricism. And empiricism may appeal to reason, but may not draw conclusions from it. It is certainly reasonable that 2+2=4, and we can prove it deductively. But empiricism will never give you more than an inductive assurance, depending on how assured you are by drawing generalities from specifics.

4. You've divided religion up into subgroups of differing tenets, but you've lumped all atheists together into one big Borg collective. It has been my experience that atheists don't like that. They normally insist that they are independent thinkers. Even within your own definition, there is room for difference. An atheist as you describe him may completely lack faith himself, but that doesn't mean that he demands faithlessness from everyone else. But another atheist might. There, already, are two different kinds, and by your assertion the latter dies right along with the believer.

5. Your premise is rather bizarre in that it concedes that rocks and trees are atheists. You tied religion to humans, but did not do so with atheism. This sort of error — a category division — usually points to a circularity in reasoning. And sure enough, you've concluded that atheism is the null hypothesis by asserting that atheism must be the null hypothesis. It's almost a claim that atheism is everything conceivable plus everything that isn't.

6. If we are to derive our premises from empirical observation, then we have to concede that man seems to be hardwired for religious faith. Studies and experiments by neurological researchers have shown that the brain's limbic system clearly has the capacity to produce religious experience. What the experiments cannot tell us the source of that production. It may be that man invents a god in his temporal lobe, but it may just as well may be that the temporal lobe is the instrument by which a god contacts man.

[Half Man Half Wit]

Originally Posted by Liberal

1. You went to great pains to define atheism with some specificity as the absence of all faith in supernatural things. You're right that the definition is unusual since it necessarily includes faith in ghosts, ESP, and a host of other phenomena unrelated to gods. It's all the more strange since the "theism" part of "a-theism" specifically points to gods. It seems more to me like you're talking about materialism (or physicalism) than atheism, but okay. I'm pretty generous when it comes to definitions of terms as long as we all understand what they mean. This, of course, implies that it is important you don't change or refine the meaning as our discussion progresses. If you mean something other than what you've said, clear it up now rather than waiting until we've gone two pages talking past each other.

I consider gods merely a special case of the supernatural, thus I have broadened the definition of atheism somewhat, yes. However, the concept of a god is not all that well defined in itself -- consider the differences between the Greek gods, who were much like men, and the Christian god as an omnipotent spirit of some sort (yes, I know that definition is far from complete, and probably not strictly correct, however, that's of little relevance to my argument). So, for instance a belief in fairies may well be called a theistic belief, with the fairies playing the role of 'gods'. There's no fundamental difference between the two, hence I consider my choice of broadening the definition of atheism as being opposed to all faith a reasonable one.

2. You stopped short of defining what you're contradicting. Ordinarily, atheism and theism would be opposites, but in this case a theist would be someone who believes in complex numbers or anything else they couldn't touch. It would be good if you would define exactly what you say isn't true or doesn't exist.

This puzzles me somewhat -- I have certainly never used 'the ability to be touched' as a criterion for anything having reality, because that would be silly. In fact, I have repeatedly used a quite untouchable example, i.e. the Pythagorean theorem, as having existence independent of human cognition. And I don't get where you're going with the complex numbers example at all -- they're as real as any mathematical concept, faith isn't involved in the slightest.

3. Until (2) is cleared up, we're in the awkward position of conflating empiricism with reason. You appeal to both, but in an equivocal way. While they may both be used, they're not the same. Reason may draw premises, but not inferences, from empiricism.

I'm not clear on what you're trying to say here -- what would an inference drawn from empiricism look like, anyway? Inferences can be drawn from knowledge, and knowledge can come from empiricism, as I see it.

And empiricism may appeal to reason, but may not draw conclusions from it.

Again, I'm not sure if I catch your meaning here. Empiricism can support or disprove a conclusion, but how can you use it to draw one?

It is certainly reasonable that 2+2=4, and we can prove it deductively. But empiricism will never give you more than an inductive assurance, depending on how assured you are by drawing generalities from specifics.

No finite amount of observation ever proves a generality, that's not a shocker. It's also not needed for any part of my argument; what's needed is merely that, unless contradicted by evidence, the reasonable assumption is that any empirical proposition is general -- i.e. from the observation of one white sheep, the assumption that all sheep are white is reasonable, however soon contradicted by the observation of black sheep.

4. You've divided religion up into subgroups of differing tenets, but you've lumped all atheists together into one big Borg collective. It has been my experience that atheists don't like that. They normally insist that they are independent thinkers. Even within your own definition, there is room for difference. An atheist as you describe him may completely lack faith himself, but that doesn't mean that he demands faithlessness from everyone else. But another atheist might. There, already, are two different kinds, and by your assertion the latter dies right along with the believer.

I merely required of atheists that they do not have faith, which is in line with the 'usage note' of the word atheism I've given in my post.

5. Your premise is rather bizarre in that it concedes that rocks and trees are atheists. You tied religion to humans, but did not do so with atheism. This sort of error — a category division — usually points to a circularity in reasoning. And sure enough, you've concluded that atheism is the null hypothesis by asserting that atheism must be the null hypothesis. It's almost a claim that atheism is everything conceivable plus everything that isn't.

No; I concluded atheism to be the null hypothesis because every faith depends on non-reasonable assumptions, and their elimination leads naturally to atheism.

Try the converse: could people today be Christians if the gospels had never been written? Could they be Muslims if Mohammed had never been born? No. Every faith needs tradition to proliferate, and believers to exist. Atheism can be arrived at in a total vacuum from pure reasoning. I did not tie atheism to humanity because it does not depend on humanity; it is, in fact, of a different category than faith. That was the whole point of my post. There is no need to even assume the existence of 'something ineffable' without evidence for it; the default position has to be atheism.

What you're basically trying to do is to get faith back on the same level as atheism; I, however, contend that atheism is the more fundamental position of the two, and that's basically the central thesis of my post. Why I think that is easily said -- atheism, though it may be based on assumptions, always contains at least one less assumption than even the most basic faith, which I've previously called the belief in 'something ineffable' (that assumption is obviously the existence of something ineffable). Also, if you have one faith, the belief in something ineffable, you immediately have to admit infinitely many other faiths, the beliefs in some other ineffable thing. This schism naturally occurs with faith, and it is impossible to choose one faith over another. Atheism does not suffer this schism, since not having faith is a well defined and unique position.

6. If we are to derive our premises from empirical observation, then we have to concede that man seems to be hardwired for religious faith. Studies and experiments by neurological researchers have shown that the brain's limbic system clearly has the capacity to produce religious experience. What the experiments cannot tell us the source of that production. It may be that man invents a god in his temporal lobe, but it may just as well may be that the temporal lobe is the instrument by which a god contacts man.

And there are probably good evolutionary reasons that the brain has the capability to incite what we call religious experiences, they are however beyond the scope of this discussion. However, I'm curious as to how you cannot count this as evidence that there is, in fact, no god? The existence of those structures in the brain, and the fact that they can be artificially stimulated -- for instance, by strong magnetic fields -- to create seemingly religious experiences seem to point strongly to a naturalistic explanation of those phenomena. If those structures didn't exist, and people still had those experiences without outward cause, and without them being easily replicable in the lab, then there might be something to thinking about whether possibly 'god did it'.

[Wolverine]

But it is the same thing for any potential cognitive agent, other than any specific gods barring their self-assertion.

True, any idea needs a "thinker" in order to exist. Atheism just doesn't get the special protection you wanted to give it. It might be the first in the order of philosophical stances. If, however, God exists, then belief in God would have the same necessity as no belief in the super-natural.

Well, I've tried to give some justification to my argument that knowledge rests on a fundamentally different basis in a faith-based system -- basically, in a nutshell, an omnipotent god can void any reasoning you might undertake, and thus all knowledge is automatically called into question.

Not if the world is like a computer program (I shouldn't be dragging the Matrix into this) and God is the programmer. The program runs fine on its own except where God makes changes. Those changes can affect the program retroactively so that code and solutions from one place will change with the whole system. Within the system it wouldn't be noticeable and everything will have stayed consistent (and "lawful"). Searching for the code of the system would not be pointless, just sometimes frustrating. Unless movies have lied to me about how programmers work and then dismiss my analogy.

[Quartz]

Originally Posted by Half Man Half Wit

Now that I hope to have made that position clear, let's get to the meat of this post, and start with what I like to call the argument from human fallibility. There are a great many faiths in this world, and there have been a great many more in the past; from there, it trivially follows that each faith's claim to be exclusively true is likely to be false, even if one of them should be right. Thus we can at least conclude that whether atheism is true or not, at least it isn't any more wrong than almost all religions.

Let me don the asbestos...

Unfortunately this position needs a little work. Firstly, there have been multiple religions that believe in the same deity - trivially Judaism, Christianity, and Islam today. Secondly, religions were not necessarily exclusive - the Greeks had an altar to the 'unknown god'. Thirdly, you ignore the possibility that at their base, they are all correct. That last sounds very odd, but consider that everyone experiences everything uniquely, and an experience of the Divine is going to be very unique indeed. Compare with crime and accident witness reports.

[Half Man Half Wit]

Originally Posted by Wolverine

True, any idea needs a "thinker" in order to exist.

See, I don't think I'd agree here -- any idea needs a thinker to be thought, but not to exist; it doesn't even need a thinker to be right or wrong. To abuse the example some more, would the Pythagorean theorem be any less true if nobody ever thought of it?

Atheism just doesn't get the special protection you wanted to give it. It might be the first in the order of philosophical stances. If, however, God exists, then belief in God would have the same necessity as no belief in the super-natural.

Not unless god asserts himself; even in a world where some god or something similar exists, atheism would be the default stance. It would, however, be wrong; but that can only be recognised in the face of evidence for god's existence.

Not if the world is like a computer program (I shouldn't be dragging the Matrix into this) and God is the programmer. The program runs fine on its own except where God makes changes. Those changes can affect the program retroactively so that code and solutions from one place will change with the whole system. Within the system it wouldn't be noticeable and everything will have stayed consistent (and "lawful"). Searching for the code of the system would not be pointless, just sometimes frustrating. Unless movies have lied to me about how programmers work and then dismiss my analogy.

Even in this case, knowledge before the change of programming would be different from knowledge afterwards, even though you wouldn't notice and firmly believe that yes, Oceania has always been at war with East Asia. Every knowledge you have now might be undone by a change in programming at any point.

Originally Posted by Quartz

Unfortunately this position needs a little work. Firstly, there have been multiple religions that believe in the same deity - trivially Judaism, Christianity, and Islam today. Secondly, religions were not necessarily exclusive - the Greeks had an altar to the 'unknown god'. Thirdly, you ignore the possibility that at their base, they are all correct. That last sounds very odd, but consider that everyone experiences everything uniquely, and an experience of the Divine is going to be very unique indeed. Compare with crime and accident witness reports.

But I don't require for all faiths to claim to be (or actually be) mutually exclusive, only for a sizeable proportion; from there, it follows that there obviously are wrong religions (or belief systems in general -- barring the 'they're all right' case, which I'll come to later), and from there, it follows that all of them could be wrong even if there exists a right one, and from there, that there are infinitely many mutually exclusive possible beliefs that are wrong (all the gods nobody's thought up yet).
The 'in fact, they're all the same'-case just leads back to the watered-down belief in the 'ineffable something', that each faith attempts to grasp differently. But even this most general of all possible faiths is not unique: it can, because the ineffable something is not exclusively defined, always be contrasted with a belief in some other ineffable thing, which in turn leads to a possible belief in yet another ineffable thing, and so on, so that you again can construct a limitless amount of mutually exclusive, possible faiths that are almost all wrong.

[ITR champion]

Originally Posted by Woodstock

Except that classical music is able to be experienced by everybody with functioning ears, and God is not.

Originally Posted by Kinthalis

That these composers existed is scientifically and objectively verifiable. That music can be heard and experienced too is a scientific question which delves into how sound waves travel through a medium and are interpreted through the biological machinery that is our ear and nervous system.

I disagree with both of these assessments. Classical music is not able to be experienced by anyone. Before a person can experience classical music, he or she must be willing to listen to it, be willing to give it serious attention, and be willing to approach the process of listening in a sophisticated and intelligent way. If a street punk refuses to listen to Mozart, he can't experience Mozart. If he listens to Beethoven but has decided beforehand to scoff at it, he can't experience Beethoven. If he listens to Haydn but won't give the music as much effort as it requires, he can't experience Haydn. Listening to music is an intellectual experience that goes far beyond the physical fact of sound waves hitting the eardrum. In order to experience a piece of music as meaningful, memorable, and sublime, the listener must make a conscious choice to give the music a certain amount of mental effort. (Nor, obviously, do music conoisseurs care about the ear and nervous system. It's the music that matters, man.)

[ITR champion]

Originally Posted by Bryan Ekers

It does? I can easily imagine a sentient species on a planet far from Earth, or whatever sentient species might replace humanity, discovering mathematics and realizing that 3² + 4² = 5² because this is always true and observable, even if the symbols for the numbers are different. It's entirely unclear that any form of theism meets this standard.

The Pythagorean theorem didn't create the relationship that exists between the sides of a right-angle triangle on a plane, it merely describes it. This relationship existed long before humanity and will exist long afterward.

Certainly, they can observe and write on subjects about human behaviour, but this behaviour is itself the offshoot of a lengthy and laborious evolutionary process. Were bees the first species to achieve sentience, I'm sure they would have great bee philosophers as well, writing on the social structure of hives which may be as alien and incomprehensible to humans as, say, our JudeoChristianity would be to them. But whatever mathematical discoveries they make (I'm sure they'd consider the hexagon to be nature's perfect shape) could translate.

You're using "reason" in a very unreasonable fashion. While philosophies are, no doubt, species- and culture-specific, I don't see how math, physics and chemistry could be.

I think you're missing the basic point of my argument. In every civilization until quite recently, it was agreed that the proper pursuits of the human mind were topics that related to humans: philosophy, theology, art, music, literature, poetry, morality, ethics, education, politics, law, justice, and so forth. For these topics, conclusions are specific to humans. Bee ethics would be very different from human ethics. Chimpanzee poetry would have nothing in common with human poetry, if it existed at all. Hence reason means almost exclusively thinking about human topics, according to the definition that almost all intellectuals have used at almost all times. Limiting it to math and the hard sciences is highly arbitrary, and only a few people would do so.

Besides which, math and the hard sciences are culture-specific. Members of some cultures are unable to count past ten or twenty or one hundred, but we are. We believe that negative numbers exist. Ancient mathematicians did not. We believe that zero exists. Ancient mathematicians did not. We believe in complex numbers, an invention of the last few centuries. Modern mathematicians believe in thousands of abstract concepts that were invented recently. Did cobordism classes exist before mathematicians started using them? What about Coxeter groups? What would "exist" even mean for such mathetmatical objects, without human minds being invovled? There's certainly no way to know which of these varying mathematical systems would be used by another species.

The same is true for hard sciences. We believe in 92 elements (plus some artificial ones) differentiated by the number of protons in the nucleus. Aristotle believed in only four elements: earth, water, air, and fire. If we get wiped out and another species comes along, will their science follow our approach to elements, or Aristotle's, or a different one entirely? There's no knowing.

[Kinthalis]

Of course there is "knowing"! That's the point. These things you mention are ALL objective points of data: systems, available, observable to any reasoning species. Our table of elements, our mathematical constructs, these are all DESCRIPTIONS of what we observe in our universe. We do not "believe" in 92 elements. We observe 92 elements in the universe and thus describe them. Any species that came to use the scientific method would find the exact same phenomena and would thus describe it.

[Ruminator]

Originally Posted by Bryan Ekers

I can easily imagine a sentient species on a planet far from Earth, or whatever sentient species might replace humanity, discovering mathematics and realizing that 3² + 4² = 5² because this is always true and observable, even if the symbols for the numbers are different. It's entirely unclear that any form of theism meets this standard.

The Pythagorean theorem didn't create the relationship that exists between the sides of a right-angle triangle on a plane, it merely describes it. This relationship existed long before humanity and will exist long afterward.

Just to muddy up the waters a bit...

There's still ongoing philosophical debate among mathematicians whether mathematics is transcendent and "discovered" or an invention of the human mind to understand the universe.

I love mathematics and the Pythagorean Theorem has undeniable staying power but I'm skeptical that it can be used as metaphysical evidence to prove/disprove God.

[ivan astikov]

Originally Posted by Ruminator

Just to muddy up the waters a bit...

There's still ongoing philosophical debate among mathematicians whether mathematics is transcendent and "discovered" or an invention of the human mind to understand the universe.

I love mathematics and the Pythagorean Theorem has undeniable staying power but I'm skeptical that it can be used as metaphysical evidence to prove/disprove God.

I'm with you all the way. You can do some funny/strange and clever stuff with maths, but if there is an equation for god, it's because we have made it to fit the 'evidence'. 'Maths', like that other construct 'time', is meaningless without the presence of humanity.

[Duhkecco]

Half Man Half Wit, you start with this:

I also should mention that I use the word atheism probably somewhat different than most other people to, in two ways: one, for convenience, I use it as describing the absence of all faith, not merely the absence of faith in god, or gods; two, I use it as describing the absence of all faith, not the belief in the non-existence of a god, or gods (or related supernatural beings)

Then, a few paragraphs later, you say this:

So, to provide a little digest of the preceding points, I am an atheist because:

• Atheism is independent of human cognition, i.e. nobody has to know about atheism for it to be a valid philosophical stance
• It allows for the existence of fundamental truths
• It allows for logical conclusions to be valid
• It allows for the increase of knowledge about the world
• It is unique in the sense that it isn't equivalent to any faith-based system, whereas all faith-based systems are equivalent to each other
• It holds explanatory, or at the very least descriptive, power

Atheism, according to you, is "the absence of all faith". Your points, then, become:

• The absence of all faith is independent of human cognition, i.e. nobody has to know about the absence of all faith for it to be a valid philosophical stance
• The absence of all faith allows for the existence of fundamental truths
• The absence of all faith allows for logical conclusions to be valid
• The absence of all faith allows for the increase of knowledge about the world
• The absence of all faith is unique in the sense that it isn't equivalent to any faith-based system, whereas all faith-based systems are equivalent to each other
• The absence of all faith holds explanatory, or at the very least descriptive, power.

Is that what you mean?

All of these statements sound strange. How does the absence of anything do anything, or how is it anything?

[woodstockbirdybird]

Originally Posted by ITR champion

I disagree with both of these assessments. Classical music is not able to be experienced by anyone. Before a person can experience classical music, he or she must be willing to listen to it, be willing to give it serious attention, and be willing to approach the process of listening in a sophisticated and intelligent way. If a street punk refuses to listen to Mozart, he can't experience Mozart. If he listens to Beethoven but has decided beforehand to scoff at it, he can't experience Beethoven. If he listens to Haydn but won't give the music as much effort as it requires, he can't experience Haydn. Listening to music is an intellectual experience that goes far beyond the physical fact of sound waves hitting the eardrum. In order to experience a piece of music as meaningful, memorable, and sublime, the listener must make a conscious choice to give the music a certain amount of mental effort. (Nor, obviously, do music conoisseurs care about the ear and nervous system. It's the music that matters, man.)

Who said anything about experiencing it as "meaningful, memorable and sublime"? Whether they're receptive to it or not, they will, verifiably, experience it in a concrete manner. Nobody said anything about it being a powerful, life-changing, or even positive experience. Just a factual, observable experience. The same is not even close to being true for "experiencing" God.

[Malthus]

Originally Posted by woodstockbirdybird

And yet, lots of people don't. Not the case with classical music - if it is being played within earshot, you will experience it. I don't see how the analogy holds.

That's not a relevant objection, since it is a mere reception problem - a deaf person will not, for example, experience classical music.

It is true that fewer experience mystic states than have functioning ears, but that is hardly the point. Both are experiences which have verifiable and objective existence.

Naturally, the interpretation of the experience differs.

[Malthus]

Originally Posted by woodstockbirdybird

Who said anything about experiencing it as "meaningful, memorable and sublime"? Whether they're receptive to it or not, they will, verifiably, experience it in a concrete manner. Nobody said anything about it being a powerful, life-changing, or even positive experience. Just a factual, observable experience. The same is not even close to being true for "experiencing" God.

You are factually wrong in this (again, making no claims as to the substance of the "experience").

[Malthus]

Originally Posted by Sage Rat

But amazingly--or at least 99% of the time--only seems to happen to people who were raised in religious households. (Or at least those are the only people who consider temporary euphoric states as being divinely inspired.)

You have proof of this?

[woodstockbirdybird]

Originally Posted by Malthus

That's not a relevant objection, since it is a mere reception problem - a deaf person will not, for example, experience classical music.

It is true that fewer experience mystic states than have functioning ears, but that is hardly the point. Both are experiences which have verifiable and objective existence.

Naturally, the interpretation of the experience differs.

Even a deaf person can feel the vibrations of the music. And nobody doubts people "experience" mystical states. As you said, the question is one of interpretation. I personally prefer the least crazy-sounding interpretation, but I realize I'm in the minority there.