Freethought & Rationalism Archive

Philosoft · 05-01-2002, 06:17 PM

Quote:

Originally posted by Easy Be:
For the sake of the argument I concede to my theist friends that it's possible to have a concept of God even though I agree with you Philosoft.

I do the same. This kind of noncognitivism isn't something I'm entirely comfortable with yet, so I only pull this argument out around folks who will respond intellectually, be it positively or negatively. Ordinarily, I'm willing to concede that a god-concept exists.

Tercel · 05-01-2002, 09:18 PM

Hi Parkdalian,

Quote:

1 My belief is that God exists as an imaginary being (if we include the purely imaginary as part of an expanded reality) and a necessary corollary would be that religious people are simply mistaken or delusional as to the nature of God, not necessarily about God's "reality" in that expanded sense of the term. IOW I can't say "God does not exist" when I have just used the term "God" in a sentence. My concept of God is that it exists as an imaginary being but without objective existence. The only truly nonexistent things are those which have not been thought of by any (real) intelligent being.

My first thought here would be that you're splitting hairs insofar as language derives it's meaning from it's usage and if you say "God does not exist" people understand what you mean and everything's fine.
My second thought would be that I disagree with your idea that the concept of god does not obtain, but I'm a Christian so that's hardly suprising!
My third thought would be to wonder whether you're a platonist. You seem to be granting concepts an existence in reality in their own right as concepts. Now this is something I would agree with, but it's strange to see it coming from an atheist since most platonists feel their beliefs fit better in a theist or deist worldview. If you grant existence of concepts, you are all but granting the existence of a mind/conciousness/intelligence vs physical/material type dualism... a belief which more often belongs to the religious since it seems to imply god in some form or another.

Quote:

It is also true that details of events become distorted with time and oral tradition stories tend to become exaggerated.

I agree completely.

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2 Miracles generally decrease in scope in the biblical time scale and go from being "out of thin air" miraculous (creation of the universe) to mechanistic (the rain-god of "The Flood"), down to today's parlor tricks.

Hmmm "Creation of the world" is a special case. Genesis has the longest timespan between the events it depicts and it's writing of any book in the Bible, given your point above is it then suprising that it records the biggest (and most bizarre) miracles? Often a lot of "decrease in scope" of miracles can be correlated directly to decrease in timespan between the event and the writing as well as well as to an increase in thoroughness of research on the authors part.

But how are today's miracles "parlor tricks"? The main reason I believe in biblical miracles (indeed, the Christian God altogether) is the miracles in the present day within the Christian tradition.

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3 Consciousness is severely affected by radical injury to the brain so how could it survive death.

Be a little more careful here: Consciousness as it can be observed by us is severely affected by radical injury to the brain. How to we observe it? By its actions via the human brain. If the consciousness is okay, but the brain is damaged and the consciousness acts through the brain, what will the results of the system be? Damaged, right? Hence the observation of brain damage causing system malfunction can't be taken validly as implying damage to the consciousness itself. (Whatever that might be exactly when it's at home)

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4 Theism and religion represent an attempt to complete a world-view, while scientific atheism acknowledges maybe not all questions are or can be answered.

I beg to differ. In my estimation a religion which attempts to answer everything is a religion made up by men for their own comfort. My religion has plenty of questions with no revealed answers, and that is something I, for one, appreciate. -Although it gets annoying when atheists start demanding answers to every question under the sun.

We don't know everything, and that is something I can live with.

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5 Beliefs are not universal (Millions have lived and died without the opportunity to learn of Christianity or other monotheistic beliefs).

Agreed. Is there more to this thought...?

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6 Religions and associated beliefs are manipulative, coercive (rewards and punishments).

Well sort of. Okay, yes what you say is generally true, but many things fall under this category and are no worse for it. Eg the belief that the existence of the world has rewards and punishments. If I believe the world exists, I'll be able to manipulate the world in ways to make me happy (reward), and if I truly don't believe it exists - say I'm a solipsist - I'm probably going to spend a lot of my time hurting myself by walking into walls

etc (punishment). Hence, it is extremely pragmatic to believe the world exists though we can't actually prove it isn't an illusion such as the matrix etc. And so the vast majority of people do believe it, and fair enough too.
Of course when I try to apply the same pragmatic logic to the question of religion (called "Pascal's Wager"), the atheists around here suddenly start going into denial on me...

(To the galleries: No, I don't particularly want to hear 2000 reasons why you don't like Pascal's Wager)

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7 Mostly, people have particular cultural and religious beliefs because of their indoctrination in childhood.

I agree completely. Atheism is included in this, of course.
On the other hand, many people do think sincerely about their religious beliefs, and lots change them at least once in their lives.

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8 Religion originated with primitive, ignorant, even if intelligent people.

So did counting, talking, writing, art etc. Shall we scrap those too?

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However, there is no substitute for experience and we were younger as a species back then. Just like a child who once felt he was the center of the universe, we have adjusted our world view, realizing we are not special, and we are not protected by a parental figure anymore.

Uh... We are now all atheists? A huge proportion of the world still is religious you know.

Tercel

HRG · 05-02-2002, 03:59 AM

Quote:

Originally posted by Coljac:


The concept of God exists just as much as the concept of unicorns exists. But to equate the existence of the concept with the existence of the thing it describes is incorrect.

I once read a paper - I think it was by W.V. Quine - that put forward the idea that nouns were the cause of the problem. He preferred that descriptions of things, like the pegasus, would rather refer to "a thing that pegasizes" where "to pegasize" meant to have all the attributes associated with a pegasus. Thus rather than having to presuppose such a thing as a pegasus to begin a discussion of its existence, we can just ask, "Does anything that pegasizes exist?"

Does anything that Godiates exist? I don't think so.

Colin

Good point. As long as the existence of an object with certain specific properties has not been shown, it should not receive a proper name.

Correspondingly, people shouldn't say that "God has property P", but "for all x, if God(x) is true, then P(x) is true too".

Regards,
HRG.

Tristan Scott · 05-02-2002, 06:28 AM

Easy be's definition of exist:

Quote:

ex�ist Pronunciation Key (g-zst)
intr.v. ex�ist�ed, ex�ist�ing, ex�ists
To have actual being; be real.

New Websters definition is a bit different:

-to have real being whether material or spiritual...

There are many things that are not corporeal that exist.

Mathematics exists
Beauty exists
Dreams exist
Thoughts exist
Ideas exist
Love exists

Whether or not gods are actual entities is kind of a moot point. They manifest their being through their followers and it is there that they derive all their power and actually influence our existence.

[ May 02, 2002: Message edited by: Tristan Scott ]

Philosoft · 05-02-2002, 07:53 AM

Quote:

Originally posted by Tristan Scott:
New Websters definition is a bit different:

-to have real being whether material or spiritual...

There are many things that are not corporeal that exist.

Mathematics exists

As an abstract. 'Mathematics' is not said to be an entity capable of performing transitive actions.

Quote:

Beauty exists

I disagree. 'Beauty' is just a heuristic noun form of an adjective.

Quote:

Dreams exist
Thoughts exist
Ideas exist

As collections of electrochemical impulses. Unless you subscribe to dualism, of course.

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Love exists

Debatable. Unless you believe 'love' is a self-existent force and not simply a collection of emotions and behaviors.

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Whether or not gods are actual entities is kind of a moot point. They manifest their being through their followers and it is there that they derive all their power and actually influence our existence.]

Now this I agree with.

Easy Be · 05-02-2002, 08:51 AM

Tristan Scott,

I think you missed my point. I was referring to abstracts of the imagination. They simply cannot exist. I could imagine an albino tiger, but it wouldn't exist. There are actually albino tigers but the one I imagined doesn't exist.

Saying God is imaginary is no different than saying God doesn't exist.

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Whether or not gods are actual entities is kind of a moot point. They manifest their being through their followers and it is there that they derive all their power and actually influence our existence.

Yes, and they drive me crazy always bugging me to go worship, pray, sacrifice, ....

Tristan Scott · 05-02-2002, 09:15 AM

Easy Be,

I guess I didn't realize you were making a point with that post since you were just asking questions. I guess they were pointed questions, eh?

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There are actually albino tigers but the one I imagined doesn't exist.

I disagree, I contend that the tiger indeed exists in your mind.

Tristan Scott · 05-02-2002, 09:17 AM

Philosoft,

I disagree with you and contend that beauty indeed exists, even if it is subjective.

Philosoft · 05-02-2002, 09:23 AM

Quote:

Originally posted by Tristan Scott:
Philosoft,

I disagree with you and contend that beauty indeed exists, even if it is subjective.

I do not know what it means to 'subjectively exist.' Please clarify: You assert that beauty is an actual thing that exists independent of any other thing. Is this an accurate portrayal of your position?

[ May 02, 2002: Message edited by: Philosoft ]

Philosoft · 05-02-2002, 09:27 AM

<Double posted>

[ May 02, 2002: Message edited by: Philosoft ]

05-02-2002, 09:27 AM	#20
Philosoft Veteran Member Join Date: Feb 2002 Location: Southeast of disorder Posts: 6,829	<Double posted> [ May 02, 2002: Message edited by: Philosoft ]</p>

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05-02-2002, 09:17 AM	#18
Tristan Scott Veteran Member Join Date: Mar 2002 Location: Southwest USA Posts: 4,093	Philosoft, I disagree with you and contend that beauty indeed exists, even if it is subjective.

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