RogerLeeCooke

No, David, you seem to lack the elementary ability to read. What was very clearly stated is that atheists are not claiming "a complete worldview." Please tell me one of two things: (1) where in this thread it was stated that someone is not claiming that atheism is rational; or (2) how you get from the disavowal of a complete worldview to a disavowal of rationality.

RogerLeeCooke

I'm glad this thread was started. I've been an atheist most of my life, since the age of 10 (I'm now 60), with a few interruptions by attempts to believe what my parents taught me and to give my children the benefit of a Christian upbringing. (As usual in such cases, it "took" with my daughters, but not with my son. Girls tend to be more docile than boys, and more inclined to accept a view if the society around them inculcates it, independently of rational evidence. Sorry if that sounds sexist, but my whole life's experience convinces me that it's true. Biology isn't politically correct.)

I've just today reread a nice essay by Bertrand Russell on the relation between politics and philosophy, in which he laid it down as a general rule that skeptical and rational philsophers tend to be Lockean empiricists, while conservatives tend to be Kantian idealists. I myself am a mixture of political views but (like most middle-aged people) inclined toward conservatism. Yet I'm a radical skeptic of the Humean variety. I don't believe morality has any meaning independent of human desires for a particular kind of society (usually the kind one has been raised to appreciate), but, unlike Hume, I don't see why everybody can't just live with that knowledge: I do, and knowing that my principles are subjective hasn't in any way changed the kind of society I want.

Kent Symanzik

I know that this topic is specifically about atheist worldview but I hope you don't mind if I express my worldview as a Christian theist.

Several people have wondered if they even have a worldview or what a worldview is. We all have worldviews but it does not mean our worldviews are not changing. They may change alot over the course of our lives. A worldview is just simply our network of beliefs that define how we relate to the world.

I think many of you are correct in pointing out that there is no one atheist worldview. But, atheism is a common component of your various worldviews and I think it has a substantial effect on a worldview. Just as God has a substantial effect on my Christian worldview.

Another aspect of a worldview is that it contains presuppositions that form its foundation. These are core beliefs that are unproven and taken as a starting point for all of our thinking. We all must start our thinking somewhere. The strict empiricist may have a foundational belief that all knowledge comes from empirical observation. Of course, he cannot prove that statement, rather it is presupposed as the basis for all further reasoning. Likewise, I as a Christian have God as my starting point. He is the ultimate authority by which all things are measured and from which all reasoning takes place. And of course I cannot directly prove my starting point either.

Hopefully, I have not muddied the waters.

Kent

Keith Russell

Kent:

Yes, all philosophies begin with premises that cannot be proven.

But, some premises are self-validating; others are utterly arbitrary, and ultimately self-defeating.

Starting with the premise that one knows God, knows what God wants, and that what one believes God wants is right, is not a self-validating premise.

It has never been shown to me to be anything but a dogmatic, arbitrary premise.

If you believe it to be otherwise, would you mind explaining any evidence you have which supports your view?

Sincerely interested...

Keith.

Kent Symanzik

Hi Keith,

I agree that some presuppositions are self-validating, some arbitrary and some self-defeating. For instance, the empiricism I used for an example is self-defeating. The presupposition is that all knowledge comes from observation but it defeats itself because the presupposition itself does not meet its own criteria. The presupposition did not come from observation.

Other presuppositions are not self-defeating and must be shown to be valid or invalid in other ways. Mainly, a presupposition must be shown to be coherent and consistent otherwise it ends up simply being arbitrary as you said.

I would not describe my Christian presupposition exactly the way you did. My Christian presupposition is the Christian God as revealed in scripture. My knowledge of him is by his revealing himself in scripture and secondly in nature. God is self-authoritative in that there is no higher authority than himself. Simply stated, who could he possibly appeal to for authorization? If he did appeal to anyone else he would not be God.

I do not expect you to accept this claim without proof. The proof of this claim is that one cannot reason, differentiate good from evil, or have a foundation for science without first presupposing the Christian God. [Please note: I am not trying to make anyone mad here, Keith asked me what my view was]

I have found all other presuppositions that I know of to lead to irrationality or inconsistency.
I have only found that Christian theism provides a foundation for these things (rationality, ethics, science) and that other presuppositions do not comport with actual experience.

Kent

[ August 08, 2002: Message edited by: Kent Symanzik ]</p>

Philosoft

Hi Kent and welcome,

A few questions:

How do you account for perceived naturalism with a presup worldview that allows miracles?

How do you deal with the Euthyphro dilemma?

Thanks for your time.

Synaesthesia

Kent,
Have you ever seen those cool little puzzles where there’s a sentence like this: This sentence contains __9’s,__8’s,__7’s,__6’s,__5’s,__4’s, __, 3’s, __2’s, ___1’s? You have to fill in the blanks for the outcome to be true. They vary in content and complexity but there’s a really cool trick to them. Fill in the blanks randomly, and then count the numbers in that sentence. Construct a new sentence and put the values that you previously counted into the new one. Count THAT one, etc. etc. Eventually, you very often get the right answer (or an infinite loop, but I won’t go into that.)

As I see it, an assumption is a lot like the random initial values. It’s not necessarily a good starting-point, but it is A starting point. The key to it’s usefulness, however, is that we modify it. We can actually use our assumptions as a starting base for finding better assumptions.

A presupposition suggests that something is above modification, that’s a notion which I think is intrinsically self-defeating. Of course any statement can be held to be true ‘if sufficient changes are made elsewhere in the system’. I think that the judgement about these other systematic changes very often have enough import to make it worthwhile modifying what we previously took for granted.

There are some important problems with presuppositions even if they are supposedly self justifying, self contradictory or any other sort. No ‘self-justifying’ presupposition can be overturned from within the system. In other words, a ‘self-justifying’ presupposition can lead to contradictions, absurdities and be totally useless. Being a presupposition, however, it cannot be overturned. We are stuck with it’s strengths and limitations.

One of my presuppositions is that my assumptions have to be overturned in light of a better theory or new evidence. As far as it goes, that’s the only presupposition I’m really dogmatic about.

Only fools not deserving your attention would get mad at you for simply stating your position.

That being said, I think it would be fun to go over these arguments again. I can almost guarantee that everyone has seen the basic form of your argument multiple times, but new people always bring a new angle.

My intuition is that there is something to this. However, I think the importance of the actual belief (or non-belief) in a god is secondary to the reasons for your position. My philosophy is in many respects much closer to my parents (who are theists) than to many of my friends who are atheist.

Regards,
Synaesthesia

Kent Symanzik

Hi Philosoft,

I take it that by "perceived naturalism" you mean the uniformity that we find in nature. If this is not what you meant please correct me. My response is that the uniformity of nature cannot exist without the foundation of Christian theism. If God does not exist we have no reason to believe that nature is uniform. I'm sure you are aware of David Hume and Bertrand Russell who have shown us philosophically why this is the case.

As far as miracles are concerned, they can only be a problem if your worldview supports the uniformity of nature. But, not really much of a problem since, as the nature of the term miracle implies, they do not happen often.

Thanks for introducing me to the Euthyphro dilemma. I have not studied much of Plato. For others who were uninformed as I was, I found this to be helpful, <a href="http://www.faithnet.freeserve.co.uk/euthyphrodilemma.htm" target="_blank">http://www.faithnet.freeserve.co.uk/euthyphrodilemma.htm</a>

My answer to the Euthyphro dilemma is that morality is not an entity that is outside of God himself. It is part of his very character. It defines who he is. Therefore, the basis of morality cannot be changed as it is not something that God made up but rather it is who he is. Just as God is holy he is moral.

I think the dilemma made a lot more sense to Socrates because he was talking about the morality of a plurality of gods. Therefore morality was something totally other than the gods themselves. This actually describes the situation we have if the Christian God does not exist. All moral systems would be completely arbitrary and there would be no way to differentiate between good and evil because actual good and evil would not exist.

Hopefully I explained my position a little better. I would be happy to discuss it more if you like.

Kent

Synaesthesia

I take it that by "perceived naturalism" you mean the uniformity that we find in nature. If this is not what you meant please correct me. The philosophers you mention demonstrated that induction was never to be logical assurance. That does not, however, mean they supported or proved the idea that we "have no reason to believe" that nature is uniform. We can in fact describe nature highly reliably as being systems of regularity.

"When people thought the earth was flat, they were wrong. When people thought the earth was spherical, they were wrong. But if you think that thinking the earth is spherical is just as wrong as thinking the earth is flat, then your view is wronger than both of them put together."
-- Isaac Asimov, "The Relativity of Wrong" (1989)

What we cannot do, as good old Hume showed, is be absolutely certain that our descriptions will not be shown to be wrong at some point. That's no suprise, in fact, it's good to know that surpises are around corners you don't yet see.

Miracles are something of a problem if we accept them as arbitrary violations of nature's regularity without any substantive reason to think that any regularity was in fact violated or unpercieved.

The idea of natural anomolies is not beyond the pale of my thinking. Establishing that an event really cannot be recociled in a principled way with the workings of nature is highly problematic, however.

Kent Symanzik

Hi Synaesthesia,

I think I see the distinction you are making btw assumption and presupposition. I think the definitions of the two can be very similar. The key is that when an assumption is modified it really just becomes a different assumption. I understand that you are describing the process of developing a worldview. Modifying your assumptions as you learn more.

I do not understand how a presupposition is intrinsically self-defeating. A presupposition may be shown to be invalid but this is usually done by showing how it renders the entire system of belief incoherent, inconsistent, and irrational. Maybe you can explain this more.

I do understand what you are saying about changing the system in order to maintain the presupposition. But, I don't think the system can usually be changed. The system is after all, our experience in the world, our reasoning, ethics, use of science, etc. Most of us are not willing to change these things nor do I think we should. But, when our presupposition does not provide a valid foundation for these things we need to change our presupposition as you have said.

But, this is where it gets difficult. Most people are not willing to change their presuppositions. This is especially true when it comes to changing an atheistic presupposition to a Christian theistic presupposition or the other way around. For an atheist to change his presupposition to Christian theism he/she must become a Christian (born again, regenerated, etc). For a Christian to change his presupposition to an atheistic one he must reject Christianity. There is no in between.

And this is why many people hold on to their presuppositions even when it has been sufficiently shown that the presupposition results in absurdity.

You may wonder if I would give up my Christian theistic presupposition if I was shown that it was irrational, incoherent, or inconsistent. I suppose I would have to. But, I'm sure it would be difficult as I would probably doubt my own understanding of the problem first. It may be the same with many atheists. But, so far, I have not seen any really difficult challenges to my Christian worldview. And I have not found any other worldview that does not result in absurdity.

Kent