Principia

Not to beat a dead horse here. But color is a perceived phenomenon. A pigment has no inherent color, but rather what color it reflects into our eyes. A black pigment therefore reflects no color. Defining a color via the composition of its pigment renders the definition useless since the composition of a black pigment is not-unique.

So, how can black be the absence of color when it is defined in terms of color? I think the analogy is clear, linuxpup.

SC

Vorkosigan

Correct. Agnostics are either agnostic atheists or agnostic theists (or some variation on the latter). Agnosticism is a stance toward methodology rather than outcomes. What is an agnostic who concludes there's no way to tell, and then does not believe in god? A theist?

Vorkosigan

abe smith

Delayed, responding to initial thread-qy: {the answer is} Naw. And the more those who insist that they are rational insist that they are rational, the more dirt they-re trine to sweep under the rug. Abe.

LinuxPup

Why

That's my point, exactly... I'm glad we agree so far.

d'oh... I have a class in 5 minutes... I'll finish this up later...

D.H. Cross

Hey, do you believe in Mithra? Zeus? Odin? How about the thousands of gods in Hinduism? Are you "a-theistic" about these gods? Is there not a presumption of atheism, unless you speak of your own chosen deity?

How do you choose which is the correct one? I prefer to call myself a "non-theist" because I do not believe in the Christian conception of God. That says nothing of some other sort of being(s).

Autonemesis

That might have had something to do with the fire set beneath the atheist's feet by the theists who had lashed him to a stake.

LinuxPup

Typhon:

What my "tiger in the jungle" example shows is that evolution can freely except terrible, completely false belief/desires, and still allow the man to pass on his genes. Obviously if we had completely false belief/desires, we would not survive at all. Evolution can not guarantee your beliefs are correct, and since they are necessary for life, it seems much more reasonable to assume that our cognitive faculties were designed.

Presuppose a universe where only two or so things existed at any one time? Why?

Once again, however, if our cognitive faculties are purely the result of blind chemical reactions, then the chance of survival at all is pretty much zero, BUT, it's more likely that a false belief will grant us survival than a true one, just because there are infinitely more false beliefs than the single true belief. So the problem you have is still this: how can you trust your mind in an atheistic framework?


You're presupposing the man is able to reason, now of course I believe that we can do this, but my point is that evolution does not explain this. As long as the man runs, who cares what reason he had to run away.

Once again, you're assuming from the beginning the ability to reason logically. Why do you assume a bundle of compounds (like an organism) is more likely to NOT desire self-extinction than to desire self-extinction? You may say because it's ancestors obviously chose to not commit suicide, and were thus able to pass on their traits, while the ones who did desire to kill themselves were unable to. But once again you run into the problem of choosing the right belief to go with that. The organisms that did *NOT* achieve self-extinction may have desired to kill themselves, but believed the quickest way to kill themselves was to live a healthy, long life.

You are left with an Intelligent Designer based on consistency of truth within our cognitive faculties. If atheism were true the chance of our mind producing correct beliefs is next to none. You have failed to show otherwise, and my argument still stands.

D.H. Cross:

Atheism: "a disbelief in the existence of deity b : the doctrine that there is no deity"

If you're an atheist, you are excluding Hinduism, Christianity, etc. You can come up with your own definitions of atheism, but I'm only interested in the standard definition, which you find in pretty much every dictionary. Atheism is exclusive against *all* forms of theism: pantheism, monotheism, polytheism, etc. Your "non-theist" definition is clearly false, as that would mean Hindus, Muslims, and Jews are non-theists, which is false. Having said that, let me ask you a question: are there any "conceptions" of God that you do believe in?

[ May 10, 2002: Message edited by: LinuxPup ]</p>

Pomp

LinuxPup,

What my "tiger in the jungle" example shows is that evolution can freely except terrible, completely false belief/desires, and still allow the man to pass on his genes.

Yes, can. You have yet to show that it does. I can just as easily invent scenarios in which a trickster deity has designed us to have completely false beliefs, but it doesn't demonstrate anything other than my ability to invent unusual scenarios.

Also, to nitpick, there's no such thing as a "false desire."

Obviously if we had completely false belief/desires, we would not survive at all. Evolution can not guarantee your beliefs are correct, and since they are necessary for life, it seems much more reasonable to assume that our cognitive faculties were designed.

Are you asserting that, even though individuals with a tendency to arrive at false beliefs would be selected against ("would not survive at all"), the process of natural selection will not tend to lead to individuals with mostly true beliefs? Huh?

Presuppose a universe where only two or so things existed at any one time? Why?

Because, in order for your "arbitrary beliefs could lead to survival" theory to work, each new situation would require a brand new arbitrary belief and, once you get beyond one or two different situations, the odds of all your arbitrary beliefs allowing you to survive are vanishingly small. Let's say, for the sake of argument, that for each dangerous situation, a belief chosen arbitrarily about that situation has a 50% chance of allowing the individual holding the belief to survive. I think this is a very generous estimate. Thus, in a greatly simplified model, if A only encounters one dangerous situation in his lifetime, he has a 50% chance of surviving to pass on his genes. If he encounters two dangerous situations in his lifetime, he has a 25% chance of passing on his genes. Three situations, 12.5%, four situations, 6.75%, and so on. I think you'll agree that each of us encounters more than a few situations in our lifetime where the wrong decision will lead to our death. If we held truly arbitrary beliefs, then very few of us would be here.

If, on the other hand, our beliefs tend to be modeled on the real world, then we have a much higher chance of surviving to pass on our genes.

Note that our beliefs do not have to be true in any ultimate sense to produce survival, only modeled reliably on the real world. If I, for some reason, believed that tigers were jars of mayonnaise, but consistently attributed all the properties of tigers to them, and acted accordingly, my beliefs would be false, yet modeled on the real world sufficiently to allow my survival. Thus, your argument only applies to situations in which our beliefs are truly arbitrary, not to all situations in which they are false.

Once again, however, if our cognitive faculties are purely the result of blind chemical reactions, then the chance of survival at all is pretty much zero, BUT, it's more likely that a false belief will grant us survival than a true one, just because there are infinitely more false beliefs than the single true belief. So the problem you have is still this: how can you trust your mind in an atheistic framework?

Ignoring, once again, your strawman description of evolutionary theory ("our cognitive faculties are purely the result of blind chemical reactions"), your theory still doesn't hold up. You seem to be operating under the misapprehension that each of our beliefs is the product of a brand new "random" chemical process or, on other words, truly arbitrary, as described above. Evolutionary theory, however, holds no such thing. When I encounter a tiger, a variety of complex mental processes, all based on earlier processes, which are, at base, models of the world, determine my actions. I do not, as you seem to think, spin a mental roulette wheel and act according to the outcome.

You're presupposing the man is able to reason, now of course I believe that we can do this, but my point is that evolution does not explain this. As long as the man runs, who cares what reason he had to run away.

We're not presupposing that we are able to reason, we know that we are able to reason, because we have the experience of reasoning! Now, it could be claimed that we do not reason accurately. I'll address this in a moment. First, however, I need to point out that you are misapprehending the way that our minds work. We self-evidently do reason our way to a conclusion regarding what to do when confronted with a dangerous situation. I do not have a "running from tigers" instinct. In other words, when I encounter a tiger, I do not activate some internal script that says "All right, there's a tiger, run because it's dangerous" or "All right, there's a runner, beat him in a foot race" and, thus, run from the tiger. I actually consider the situation and decide on a course of action, based on my prior knowledge of tigers, their abilities, and the consequences of being caught by one.

Now, regarding the possible charge that we do reason, but not accurately, all that can be said is that we reason accurately enough to survive within the self-consistent worlds that we perceive ourselves to exist in. Asking whether or not these perceived worlds accurately map onto some "real" world is, as far as I am concerned, an epistemic dead end. We simply have no way of knowing. Your charge is, essentially, that we maintain the belief that our reasoning does, in fact, reflect such a world without sufficient reason to think that it does. My answer is that, no, we don't or, at least, those of us who have thought deeply about the subject do not.

Your own position suffers from much the same defect. Assuming that we are designed, you have no sufficient reason to suspect that the designer endowed us with the ability to reason accurately. You have no grounds on which to conclude that the designer was not a supernatural trickster. You try to avoid this issue by starting with the presupposition that the designer created accurately reasoning beings, but you stand on no firmer ground than one who starts with the presupposition that our perceived worlds accurately map some "real" world.

Why do you assume a bundle of compounds (like an organism) is more likely to NOT desire self-extinction than to desire self-extinction? You may say because it's ancestors obviously chose to not commit suicide, and were thus able to pass on their traits, while the ones who did desire to kill themselves were unable to. But once again you run into the problem of choosing the right belief to go with that. The organisms that did *NOT* achieve self-extinction may have desired to kill themselves, but believed the quickest way to kill themselves was to live a healthy, long life.

Irrelevant. The organisms that have survived are those that acted as though they desired to survive. What they actually desired is epiphenomenal, as far as selection is concerned. As far as human beings go, each of us can only speak for our self, but I certainly do desire to live, and it is contradictory to ask myself if I am actually alive, so it seems inescapable to conclude that my beliefs have led me to successfully pursue the goal of living. The point is, even if our ability to reason is not accurate, it is accurate enough, again, within our self-consistent perceived worlds, to allow us to survive.

You are left with an Intelligent Designer based on consistency of truth within our cognitive faculties. If atheism were true the chance of our mind producing correct beliefs is next to none. You have failed to show otherwise, and my argument still stands.

Not at all, because there is no reason to assume that our cognitive abilities are absolutely reliable. We only need assume that they are reliable within our perceived realities, and evolutionary theory easily explains that degree of reliability.

Vorkosigan

You are left with an Intelligent Designer based on consistency of truth within our cognitive faculties. If atheism were true the chance of our mind producing correct beliefs is next to none. You have failed to show otherwise, and my argument still stands.

Your argument is groundless. Evolution does not act on beliefs, but on our information gathering and processing machinery. Specific beliefs are ephemeral and cannot evolve.

Additionally, you seem to confuse "atheism" and "metaphysical naturalism." There are many brands of belief -- pantheism, Buddhism, Confucianism -- that advocate supernatural entities but do not believe in gods.

Vorkosigan

D.H. Cross

You wrote: "Atheism is exclusive against *all* forms of theism: pantheism, monotheism, polytheism, etc. Your "non-theist" definition is clearly false, as that would mean Hindus, Muslims, and Jews are non-theists, which is false. Having said that, let me ask you a question: are there any "conceptions" of God that you do believe in?
---------------------------------------------

You are not a believer in the malleability of language I see. If it make you happy then I will state that I do not believe in gods with personalities or desires, gods that are like people. I reserve judgement concerning a nonpersonal "force", but I would not ascribe to such a force any human characteristics.

However, be careful when you demand that we stick to your defintions. I agree it is useful to do so when debating a subject, but remember that language refers only to itself, rather than to any sort of "extratextual" reality. Any word has multiple conflicting interpretations depending on context. Don't turn your battle for the reality of God into a semantic debate, because that is a cheap shot.

But, if it makes you happy, I'll avoid the word atheist. I'll just say that I am a non-Christian. I BELIEVE that Christianity is false. HOw's that?

Now please define rationality for me, as YOU would like. I'll try to work within your preferred interpretations. If I feel a word ought to be interpreted differently, perhaps we can agree on a different word, okay?

With that out of the way, list the reasons (actually list them if you can) why one cannot have the capacity for reason without the Christian God.

[ May 10, 2002: Message edited by: D.H. Cross ]</p>