Tercel

(Please read the last paragraph before replying to this post)

There are lots of interesting arguments for and against the existence of God, but I am increasingly inclined to think that when you boil it all down, a person's belief in God or lack of it is directly dependent upon one thing, and one thing alone: Their acceptance or rejection of Materialism.

When I say "Materialism" I mean the belief that I see variously expressed as "The material world is all that exists" or "The natural world is all that is the case" or "Everything is ultimately explainable in terms of the material", all of which I see as expressing the same idea.
What exactly defines "the material" is perhaps more difficult... to define something "material" as being something that exists, for example, is fairly pointlessly trivial and circular (to say "Materialism is true" would then be the same as saying "That which exists, exists" - which would be true, but not worth saying)

Perhaps it is easier to understand Materialism by examining its opposite: Dualism.
A Dualist sees a fundamental distinction between two or more types of existing entities. I personally would divide the world into three types of entities: Physical, Information, Awareness.

By "Physical" (which I would also call "Material"), I mean any entity that can be described in terms of Mass or Motion, ie any entity which has Energy (in the physical science meaning of the word). Or more exactly, I mean any entity whos behaviour can be described by mathematical equations aka "Laws of physics". Such things as atoms, the desk in front of me, the sun, light etc fall into this category.

By "Information" (which I would also call "ideas" or "the abstract" or "the rational") I mean a piece of knowledge or a concept. These are thoughts, ideas, meanings, facts, concepts, logic, mathematical systems, physical laws, or descriptions of the way something is.

By "Awareness" (which I would also call "Perception" or "Intelligence" or "Self-Awareness" or S/A for short), I mean entities like us which are aware.

Now, as a Dualist I see a fundamental difference between these things. That is to say, that simply by considering the nature of each of these categories and considering the relationship between them I must conclude that they describe things which are fundamentally different insofar as the categories of Information and Awareness are not explainable entirely in terms of the Physical.

Consider a room, say the room you are in now... what would the state of the room be in one second, if for that second there were no physical laws governing the room? The answer would seem to be: Chaos / nothing, or more precisely: such a situation is inherently absurd. But what is making it absurd? It is the idea of having only Physical things existing without Information controlling it. The best definition of the "Physical" seems to be that which can be described by Physical law. And yet it seems non-sensical to describe Physical law itself in terms of the Physical. For if you did you produce only an infinite regress of absurdity and nothing is ever explained.

Neither does it seem possible to ever explain Information soley in terms of the Physical. For though an idea can be written down, described in a way such that an intelligent being (an Awareness) could comprehend the idea were it to read the instructions, the writing does not represent the sum total of the information. Consider two mathematicians arguing over a geommetry problem. Shapes are drawn on the blackboard, angles are marked in, complex formula get written across the board... and a mathematical ignoramus walks in and says "What are you two arguing over? It's only a bit of chalk. Only a few particules of calcium carbonate scattered across the blackboard." But is that right? Is it "only" that? Of course not. The argument concerns an idea, concepts, they are something more than simply their constituant Physical descriptions, something in their own right and never "only" Physical.

So if Information is not explainable in terms of the Physical, but the Physical requires Information to exist, where does that leave us in regard to the "First Existant"? It could not have been a Physical thing, unless Physical things and Information somehow existed at once together. If they did, then what reason is there for this wierd spontaneous "First" coexistence? And if they did not, and Information was the "First" thing, then how did the Physical come to exist? For Information does not seem to be capable of bringing things into being by its own volition. A concept does not go around bringing other things into existence! And if it does not then how did they get there? A curious problem...

But what of the nature of Awareness? I find it difficult to describe what exactly Awareness is. But hopefully all here understand what I'm talking about because we all possess it. It is that thing which allows us to state "I exist" and know absolutely the truth of that statement. Deny how we will out own existence, and we find only that we have proved it since we must exist to perform the action of denying our existence. Our Awareness is that thing which receives the sensory perception. That thing which exists and has knowledge that it does so. That which has a will, a volition. That which can "understand" or "comprehend". That which can manipulate or produce ideas...
All these things fall so far short, and yet hopefully they serve to give some small illustration of those things which we see awareness doing.

Is it possible to describe Awareness soley in terms of the Physical? I do not see how that question can even be taken seriously: Of course you cannot. It seems like comparing light and dark, black and white, two things so completely difference. The Physical is "dead" and banal, while Awareness is alive, volitile. But as CS Lewis observes in "Miracles" (his best book, I think, and it has lots of great thoughts on this subject, though I have not read the book in several months I strongly suspect much of my argument here has been influenced by it) the relationship between the Physical and the Awareness is not at all equal. Wherever an Awareness is allowed to act in the world it brings order, creates, manipulates according to its liking. While whenever the Physical where it has been left to its own acts upon an Awareness or that which an Awareness has ordered it tends to destroy or corrupt that order.
In short: The Physical obeys the Information which controls it, Awareness creates and manipulates Information. So neither it seems is Awareness explainable in terms of Information for how can something be explainable in terms of that which it creates? Unless of course it is the same thing and is creating more of itself - ie an Awareness is a type of Information which creates Information. But how can Information create Information? That would seem an absurdity. For a "concept" does not go around spawning other concepts or an idea spawning other ideas, these are not volitile things. Certainly an Awareness upon understanding one idea may conceive of another, but it is not the Information which multiplies on its own.

So if an Awareness is not explicable in terms of the Physical and Information... where then does that leave us? What came first? Something exists. From what ultimate sorce is that something derived? What is the first thing from which everything else comes? It seems it cannot be Physical, as the Physical is incapable of creating the Information or Awareness we observe. It cannot be Information for Information is incapable of creating the Physical or of explaining the existence of Awareness. Can it be Awareness? An Awareness would it seems be capable of explaining the existence of Information and the Physical. An Awareness would be capable of creative acts as it has a will and volition. An Awareness would be capable of creating ideas, logic, concepts. An Awareness would be capable of perception and hence other Awarenesses (such as us) could have the perception that Physical things exist. And presumably an Awareness might at least have the ability to create other Awarenesses... we have seen that Information and the Physical are incapable of this task and since we observe the task to have been down we must surely attribute the completion of this task to an Awareness.

What properties or attributes of this first Awareness can be deduced? Striking is the idea that it not limited. It is a single infinite Awareness... like a sea from horizon to horizon, an ocean without bounds... all that is. It must have a creative will, it must be responsible directly or indirectly for the creation of everything that exists. It must have created Information, created other Awarenesses etc.

(Also the idea of a single infinite Awareness would seem to make Occam's Razor very happy as opposed to having some miscellany of physical entities and laws (which mysteriously combine to give us this universe and possibly an infinite number of others, and which seem to have no real reason for existing together in such a combination) which seems to characterise average non-Christian thought on the first cause)

(Random "It says so in the Bible" interlude... (yeah I know it's pretty amazing for me as a committed errantist and "pure" logician to have the Bible anywhere near a logical argument)...
The Bible links Jesus, the second person of the Trinity (ie 2nd existent), with the "Logos" (which means "Word" or "Idea") and he is also call the "Wisdom" of God, and it says that through him all things were created and without him nothing that was created was created. This strikes me personally as a reference to Information. Christ seems to be, while also an awareness, some sort of channel through which information could be created.)


Anyway, back to the whole point of this thread. A Materialist, as I understand it sees the whole universe ultimately explainable in terms of the "material" or the "natural" (whatever they understand that to be? The Physical + Physical law perhaps?), while the Dualist sees one or more fundamental distinctions between different types of existents...

At a basic level I think we could split Believers and Non-Believers into the two categories that Believers think the most basic existent is Awareness (and are hence deists, pantheists or theists), while Non-Believers hold that the most basic existent is the Material (and are hence atheists or extremely liberal Believer whos "God" is some kind of naturally produced super-alien)).

And thus it seems that Dualists are going to fairly inevitably be Believers and Materialists are fairly inevitably going to be Non-Believers.

Thus I must wonder: Do all arguments for God basically boil down to how you view the world? Is belief in God (or lack of it) determined by what are almost a priori presuppositions based on considerations of the nature of the types of existents?


So is it effectively case of <strong>Atheist if and only if Materialist</strong>?

No doubt plenty of people will have serious issues (It would be a first if no one did) with my beliefs and/or logic explained in defense here and want to discuss them: (ie tell me at length why I am wrong) If they could please start another thread for that (link to this thread if you like). Can we please save this thread for the Atheists here who are not Materialists. That is the point of this post (the rest is just meant as helpful background explaining how I see the issue). So Atheists here who are not Materialists (assuming there are some), reply here: Can you explain how your beliefs on these issues are consistent? Or is everyone completely agreed on the "Atheist if and only if Materialist" idea? Or do people understand Materialism to mean something completely different to them than it does to me?

Goliath

Tercel,

I am an atheist, but not a materialist. Therefore your assertion of the equivalence of atheism and materialism is demonstrably false.

As far as my beliefs are concerned, here is a complete and total list of my beliefs regarding the origin of the universe, as well as a complete and total list of my beliefs regarding anything supernatural:

Nothing.

Sincerely,

Goliath

99Percent

Tercel: You pose some excellent questions I have been thinking myself lately.

The main problem that I see is that how did information come about from purely physical world? After all information is nothing but an interpretation. For example life itself is nothing but a bunch of molecules that happen to be tied together in a specific pattern, what it might seem at first glance, extraordinarly coincidental.

Same with awareness, which to me seems like information itself realizing that it exists.

The answer I think lies in the fact that physical laws of nature allows information to persist and to propagate. For example genetic code which is information generates life can exist due to the very possibility that nature allows it. A bunch of relatively complex molecules tended to repeat itself and even grow more complex through time because the natural circumstances and the necessary time allowed it. No God was necessary.

Over even more time, this information (genetic code), allowed for brains that can generate thought information. Then human appears that allowed for this thought information to propagate external from genetic codes. Then consciousness arose that allowed information to see itself.

Its amazing at first glance that we can be self-aware and have reason, but it took eons and the right natural circumstances. I don't think its ultimately mysterious and requires a god to explain it.

Besides, if we couldn't reason and aren't self-aware we wouldn't be trying to answer this question anyway.

Jayhawker Soule

As a monist, I'll stay on the sidelines as requested, except to applaud Tercel for an interesting thread.

Clutch

I am an atheist and not a materialist. At least, I am not a materialist to my knowledge, since I am unclear what, exactly, the doctrine is supposed to entail nowadays. I am not a physicalist, at least, since I believe there exist numbers, Saturdays, and at least three ways of tying shoelaces;and it's my considered (defeasible) judgement that these expressions are not reducible to a physical lexicon.

On the other hand, materialism is often shorthand for a very specific negative doctrine: No ghosts! I incline to agree with this, though on methodological/explanatory grounds rather than metaphysical grounds.

I am an atheist because I have never encountered a concept of a god that was clearly defined, logically non-contradictory, and supported by evidence. This fact is pretty much orthogonal to my views on fundamental metaphysics, however.

Vorkosigan

Tercel:

There is NO information in the world. There is information only in the minds of beholders.

"Information" is just a shorthand term for how thinking beings construct the world around them, or as you put it, "descriptions of the way something is."

And yet it seems non-sensical to describe Physical law itself in terms of the Physical.

Quite correct, but not relevant, since humans do not describe the physical in terms of the physical. A description of physical law is encoded in arbitrary and standardized systems that humans have developed so that they can convey information to each other. However, the law itself, which is not information, exists independently of our description of it. Information is only what we know about the law.

Your discussion boils down to the complaint that the mind has properties -- including the ability to represent the physical world to itself -- that you think cannot be accounted for under naturalism. This is a common complaint, and one that has gone by the boards, I think, as the cognitive sciences advance.

I like your analysis of the materialism issue, though, as it follows the same path mines does, conceiving of the problem of materialism as really a problem of consciousness.

Vorkosigan

Jamie_L

I'm an atheist and a materialist, but I promise I am not about to hijack this thread.

I wanted to point out that I did not come to my atheism as a result of my materialism. In fact, I came to my atheism before I had really figured out what my philosophy was with respect to issues materialism. In theory, I could have been a non-materialist atheist if things had gone differently.

My atheism grew out of questions about religion. This lead me first to a somewhat agnostic stance where I disbelieved all religions, but not necessarily the concept of God in general. I eventually abandonned that concept when I just came to the conclusion that it was an unneeded assertion that seemed to be created entirely out of human superstition and wishful thinking. My obervations and knowledge of the universe needed no God-explanation, and my intuitive Occam's Razor (though I didn't call it that at the time) left me feeling that it was silly to postulate something as fantastic as a god with no good reason.

Materialism came later for other reasons - some related to my reasons for atheism, some not. It is true that this did weave into my atheism and bolster it, but I don't think those reasons drove my preceding atheism.

Jamie

Philosoft

Tercel, excellent stream-of-consciousness post. One question: How do you go from awareness the process to awareness the thing? How do you decide that awareness is capable of existing without a physical medium?

Foxhole Atheist

Tercel:

Very interesting questions you pose.

I am an atheist and also a materialist. I believe that consciousness, or life if you will, is an emergent property of matter, or the material. I believe that given enough time and the proper energy input, biological constructs will emerge. Because of the environmental conditions in this open system we call planet earth, this emergence was inevitable, as it is also most likely elsewhere in the cosmos.

Information, a product of consciousness, can only form given the correct arrangement of the material. There is no necessity for the supernatural for this to occur. Self-replicating entities can exist in the prebiotic environment awaiting only the proper combination to be “mixed”, from the thermal imbalances that play upon our small world.

Without the material, there is no consciousness.

Koyaanisqatsi

My two cents (and I enjoyed your post, by the way):

Setting aside the "awareness" and inside/outside the mind paradox for a second, ultimately you seem to be reducing everything down to a fundamental divergence; that of a "necessary designer" (by inference, I would argue) and that of "no-designer." Is that a fair assessment?

Further, the designer you posit appears to be anthropomorphic to some degree; i.e., homocentric.

Here's why I make these observations prior to addressing any of the lesser points you make: I can certainly agree that the universe appears to have been designed, but there is no necessity for a designer and that's the main problem. Isn't it more likely that the appearance of design is only because we seek out design; i.e., an inherent quality of evolved intelligence?

It's a necessity for our survival, for example, that we have sought out patterns of behavior in animals and plants in order to hunt more effectively and garden more effectively. Likewise, we have had literally millions of years to incorporate structural design into our thinking in order to build better, more protective houses.

In other words, we see chaos (forest) and make order (housing developments), according to the most basic, ancestral, survival oriented operant conditioning. It's really not that mysterious at all, once it's broken down.

Think of the fact that our eyes are in the front facing foward, a trait most predators share, and that they do not operate independantly of each other. I know it sounds somewhat silly, but there are literally millions of creatures on this planet that do not share this trait.

This ability literally forces us to process the world around us in largely spatial grids, overlaying those guidelines onto natural environments that don't actually have those spatial grids; we impose those grids as a necessary means to navigate effectively while hunting.

Just take a look at a map. There are no actual borders anywhere in the world, yet we all behave (the operant word, if you'll pardon the pun) as if there are out of necessity; of social, pack animal ancestry.

So, again, isn't it more likely that you have simply stood on the shoulders of millions of years of evolution and said, "Because I can see design in the universe, therefore there is a designer," and if so, isn't that simply the result of hubris; of homocentrism rearing its ugly head?

Harmony does not necessarily require a designer, but it certainly can be interpreted that way if one chooses to interpret it that way; but that's not the question, is it? The question is, must there be a designer, simply because you or I can see a design?

The answer is, of course, "no."

Since that answer is "no," what then is the compelling argument for positing a designer to begin with, other than as irrelevant (but enjoyable) folklore/mythology?

Do you see what I'm asking? You are, in essence, saying, "I can see a design, therefore there must be a designer," but that isn't necessarily so.

Since that isn't necessarily so, what salient rebuttal or counter argument can you offer that compells us past that block?

I ask that sincerely in response to your carefully thought out post, because the rest of your content can all be easily applied to either "side" of the issue, which means, of course, that until you can provide an answer to this basic question, anything we all posit is, ultimately, moot.

By the way, I am an atheist, but not necessarily a materialist. That does not equate, however, with an ipso facto necessary designer.

[ September 03, 2002: Message edited by: Koyaanisqatsi ]</p>