doubtingt

"Atheist if and only if materialist?"

No.
In fact, one could be a materialist and still believe in God, and one could be a non-materialist and be an atheist. There is no reason why a God could not have an observable and testable effect upon the material world. In fact, it requires tremendous contortions of reasoning and excuses to claim that most theistic conceptions that people hold would not have observable implications. Also, there is no reason to assume that God's themselves are not material.
Similarly, one could believe that there is something other than the material, but that need not constitute anything resembling a "God".
Also, non-materialists could still be empiricists and acknowledge that anything that does not have
observable material implications, is inherently unfalsifiable and thus can never be accepted except upon blind faith. These non-materialists may therefore assume that there is a non-material relm, but there adherence to principles of reason prevent them from holding any specific beliefs about what that relm might consist of.

The core problem with your argument is that you mischaracterize what it means to be a materialist.
Most materialists simply acknowledge that non-material entities without any impact on the material world are inherently unverifiable. Thus,
to believe in a non-material relm or in any specific aspect of it requires blind faith in an idea that one can never determine is a reality or wishful thinking.
It is true that nearly all theists are non-materialists. However, this is simply because
belief in a "other world" serves the same psychological desires that motivate theistic belief. The two ideas are not logically dependent, they simply correlate due to a similar
psychological basis.
The issue that separates theists and atheists is that there is no observable evidence that validates theism, thus it requires blind faith in unveried ideas, and this is true regarless of where one stands on materialism.

Non-praying Mantis

Tercel,

Although I am not directly quoting from you post, I think that the summarized gist of your post was that (correct me if I am wrong):

Physical depends on Information, which depends on Awareness, and therefore God must exist, as an awareness to analyze information to sort the physical.

IMHO, I think that you have the physical/ information/ awareness situation reversed:

You state that the physical world would be chaos without the physical laws which "govern" it. However, I see physical laws as an aspect of the physical world. Gravity affects only particles which have mass, in fact, it is a property of mass. Similar too are other forces that affect physical matter, such as electromagnetic energy, and the strong nuclear force, for example. These are also properties of the physical world.

If the laws of physics stopped working, then the physical world would not exist as we know it, not because information was not being applied to the physical world. Physical properties would be different, or even changing over time, or perhaps even time might be inoperative. I still consider this part of the physical world.

Information is impossible without the physical world, not the other way around. Without the physical world, information (the organization of matter into low-entropy states) would not exist. I see information as an epiphenomenon of matter. Information can exist in a variety of forms, but all of these are physical states, including the information stored in our brains.

IMHO, the same is true for awareness, however, here we are talking about arrangements of information (specific types of information, not just large amounts of it). Awareness has the property of being able to generate new information spontaneously (that is organize matter into new states, which allows for information to be reorganized).

There are many levels of awareness, and remember, humans are not the only animals that are self-aware!

Physical laws would exist without awareness, and so does information (in the form of DNA, RNA, and other possible storage forms), and information does not even have to exist, only the physical.

NPM

Jobar

You'll see perpetual change! - Yes

Marvelous thread. Thank you, Tercel.

I'm a pantheist/atheist. My philosophy is idealistic monism- I see the world as most like idea, as opposed to matter; a unity, as opposed to a dualism.

I know that there are lots of people here who are familiar with physics- so let me use a physical example. Consider a beam of light. It consists of an electric field and a magnetic field, which mutually interact, and mutually arise. You cannot have light without both; they support each other.

Consider the head and tail of a coin. Can you show me a headless or a tailless coin? Well, you can show me a coin cut in half through its narrow dimension; but then you have two coins, one with a blank head, one with a blank tail. You simply can't have a one-sided coin; such a thing can't exist.

All pairs of opposites arise mutually. Matter-energy, good-bad, sound-silence, figure-ground, mind-body, self-other... all such things are at root inseperable, impossible without both.

This inseperability is the basic explanation for my monism.

Now let's think about matter. All the matter we are familiar with- the things that actually make up our day-to-day existence- comes in the forms of electrons, protons, and neutrons. Take an electron (or proton or neutron) and try to squeeze it- it is far, far too small to feel. Look for it, it can't be seen. The only way we can perceive it at all is through our most subtle instruments- and we only see readings from those. A needle moves, a counter clicks, a readout changes. We perceive the electron only as information.

A rock is the sum of vast numbers of atoms- we can perceive it directly, through our senses. We need no instruments. But can you imagine a rock which does not pass on any information? Not just to a conscious being like a human- say we make a rock which passes no information to anything else in the universe. What is it like? Will another rock bounce off it if the two collide? No; a non-informative rock will not share its properties of solidity or momentum with the other rock, so they simply pass through each other. Can we see our n-i rock? No; light waves will not exchange any energy with the surface and will pass right through. Will this rock fall to the ground? Again no; gravitational waves will not pull on it.

All physical interactions involve information exchanges, to the point where an informationless entity is a meaningless phrase- not an entity at all. Thus, I call myself an idealist; the world of reality is more information-like, pattern-like, idea-like, than it is matter-like.

In other places I have spoken about my atheism/pantheism; Tercel, if you are interested, I will expound more on this.

Toto

I have been an atheist since my early teens, before I understood about materialism. I became an atheist because Christianity was absurd and obviously based on old myths, and was also psychologically oppressive.

Since then, I have gone back and forth with believing there was some grand intelligence behind the world, or "the Universe". For a while I played around with New Age ideas and Eastern mysticism, but I came up empty handed. I started reading Deepak Chopra with interest, and finally decided he was just a huckster; and after years of looking for the truth behind the hucksterism, I decided it was all worthless.

I think that the essense of your argument is that since the world is complex and full of information, a higher intelligence must have created it. I think this is wrong as a matter of logic. We have many examples from evolution and computer programming and economics where a simple rule can create a complex system (the subject of Steven Wolfram's recent book.)

But I do find it interesting that you quote gJohn to identify Jesus with the Logos, since Logos is sometimes translated as the organizing principle of the physical world. I have known materialists who decided they had to be Christian, and identified "God" with the laws of physics.

excreationist

I think it would be more helpful to find out if there are atheists who prefer a belief in dualism (with the physical realm and an *independent* mind/experiencer realm)...
If dualism is true, then rocks could be conscious and there could be reincarnation, etc.
Or maybe there are some atheists who believe that all things are pure consciousness or something... ?

Though on the other hand, for atheists who consider dualism and ideas like that to have merit, there would be interesting reasons as to *why* they think that way...

Those who reject physicalism (that physical matter and energy is all that probably exists and no additional substance is required for consciousness) could be atheists, but I think in general, atheists would be less likely to favour non-physical explanations for things - like the origin of life - or the mechanics of consciousness.

Tercel

What I am questioning is not so much whether there is someone who is an atheist but not a materialist, but whether it is possible for such a person to have consistent beliefs.

Your case in which you claim to believe nothing on the relevant issues, would obviously appear to be consistent though. I was really thinking of people who actually had beliefs when I phrased the question.

Tercel

99Percent,
It seems to me you'd avoided your own question here. Allowing information to persist and propogate is all very well (and I'd agree with you here), but how is that an answer to your first question about it's origin of existence - "how did information come about from purely physical world?". And it still does not seem to resolve the difficulty of the difference between matter and information.

I would not class genetic code as Information. (Information Theory, I suppose, would classify the genetic code as "Information", but when I use the word in the Dualistic/Materialistic context I am refering to concepts, ideas and meanings) Genetic code is a physical thing - molecules arranged in a certain way. Certainly we can have all sorts of symbolic representations of it. But the molecules themselves are not ideas or concepts etc and thus not Information as I see it.

I see two problems here. Firstly since I see information as relating to thoughts, ideas etc I do not see how it is possible for a non-conscious brain to "generate thought information". Certainly a non-conscious brain can evolve to do all sorts of fancy physical processing and produce suitable responses based on the survival value of that response. But I'd have to agree with Vork that Information "only exists in the minds of the beholders", by whom I presume he means conscious beings.
My second problem is "then consciousness arose": how exactly can something as fundamental as the difference between being a purely physical machine and having an awareness inside it simply "arise". And if you think awareness is some sort of basic property of the universe which only needs the right physical structure to manifest itself, doesn't that make you a pantheist?

I wasn't trying to deny either of those things!

Tercel

Could you explain what you mean by "process" and "thing" further, an example would be helpful.

I can see no a priori argument for awareness requiring a physical medium. There is the (rather weak IMO) inductive argument that no universally accepted phenomina that gives evidence of a non-material awareness (this is somewhat significantly weakened IMO by the dual consideration that 1. it is not really suprising that non-material awarenesses would need some sort of special structure (such as the brain) to operate through in the material world and 2. there exist numerous and widespread accounts of ghosts, demon possessions and other numerous activities of non-material awarenesses).

Given the apparent dependency of the Physical upon Information and of Information upon Awareness, I conclude that the Physical is dependent upon Awareness. Since I see no strong reason to think that Awareness is dependent upon the Physical, I find Occam's razor in favour of a non-double dependence as a each of Awareness and the Physical being dependent upon each other would require both to initially exist together (which as I understand it is the view of Process Theology), however it seems to me that this view unecessary complicates things.

Answerer

I think the combined wave and particle behaviour of quantum world is the best example of a non-duality nature of our 'reality'. Next is the combined spacetime and energy-mass in relativity, so must I still need to show more evidences about our non-duality universe?

excreationist

Tercel:
Well I think information is about physical symbols that refer to patterns of physical systems or behaviours... e.g. the word "cat" is a physical symbol - it is shapes that are on the screen - it is transmitted using electronics. It is also associated with sound patterns. This written and spoken symbol refers to a pattern of physical system which involves a creature that usually is capable of meowing and usually has four legs and is fairly small, etc.
Information also involves a physical decoding system which translates the symbol into a different form. e.g. translating shapes that form the word "cat" into the spoken word and the associated memories of cat-type things.
Information usually involves an encoding system too... i.e. books need authors need know how to write in that particular language. But sometimes we can try and get information from things where that information wasn't encoded... e.g. trying to read about your future by looking at the stars.
Information can also be thought of as "messages" or "signals". These are little things that are transmitted. They are dynamic - I don't think information can exist in a closed static universe.
Our brains are good at learning symbols. As I said, symbols involve one thing representing another thing. i.e. they are associated together. So if you hear the sound "cat", memories of cat-type memories would be triggered, and if you see a thing you recognize as a dog, dog-type memories would be triggered, possibly including the sound "dog" and/or the visual word "dog".
I think memory is kind of like a battery... batteries rely on chemical reactions to work. You could have a mechanical generator to generate electricity to store in the battery. Then later, the battery could be used to power an electric motor. In a similar way, processed sensory data from our interaction with the physical world (neural signals), etc, can be stored as memories, and later those memories can be translated back to neural signals in ways that allow the brain to interact with the world competently... over time the brain learns how the world works and builds up an internal framework (symbolic representation) of it. Rather than manipulating the world directly it can reason using the framework first... On the other hand, things like single-celled organisms just follow their programming without really knowing what's going on... they don't predict the future internally... (we can anticipate the likely outcomes of hypothetical courses of action, etc)
As far as the difference between matter and information goes, information involves a complex physical system (i.e. non-static) as I explained earlier. If message or signal is used as a synonym, information seems to be a process... that means it's kind of like rotation or the process of chemical energy being converted into heat energy...

[ September 05, 2002: Message edited by: excreationist ]</p>