Atheism - How can one lack belief?

[theleftone]

I am looking for someone to explain to me (a) the concept of "lacking a belief in the existence of any deities," and (b) how one can truly maintain a position once coming into contact with the concept of a deity. Thus, my questions would be as follows.

1. What does it mean to "lack belief in the existence of any deities?"
2. Is it possible for one to have such a "lack of belief?"
3. Is it possible for one to maintain such a position after being introduced to the concept of a deity?
4. If so, to number 3, how?

[theleftone]

Interesting, Harvey seems to be getting a little short on patience and tselem is coming in straight for the jugular!

Why beat around the bush? Heh, will I didn't really mean to come at you that way. I apologize if it seemed as such.

Calm down guys, after all we're only being asked how one can lack belief -- as though this is an absurd sort of thing to do.

I wouldn't call it absurd. I would call it incomprehensible. This is where I stand because I have still, as of yet, not figured out how one can take the intellectual action to lack belief. It's willfully choosing to remain in a state of lack of belief which I have a hard time with. The reason for this is that I know people have prejudices. Even if we choose to suspend judgment, we still have prejudices which influence us. I consider these prejudices to be accepted beliefs, even if one a subconscious basis.

I think my question has been kind of misunderstood though. I am not asking the why (i.e., why people claim they lack belief), but rather how they can lack belief. I am not looking for an atheist apologetic, but rather an explanation of how it's possible to maintain such a position. This is what I struggle with, and would like to finally put to rest.

Again, not specifically to QED, but to anyone else who might respond as well. I am not looking for a defense or justification of the position. It's not this which matters to me. I am looking at possibility of, not plausibility for.

And if I have misunderstood this form of atheism, please by all means explain to me where I have. Don't just tell me I have.

BTW tselem, I'm always curious when I see it written; what aspects of His image are we meant to be made in? I hope you appreciate that it would be absurd to be in appearance.

That's one of those concepts I'm still exploring. I tend to accept attributes like creativity, freedom, the ability to reason, etc. Regarding appearance, it would depend on if were referring to God Proper or God Trinity.

[Grumpy]

tselem

I wouldn't call it absurd. I would call it incomprehensible. This is where I stand because I have still, as of yet, not figured out how one can take the intellectual action to lack belief. It's willfully choosing to remain in a state of lack of belief which I have a hard time with.

A state of only accepting that for which you have valid evidence is the default position. It is the mindset that accepts the existence of that for which there is no evidence that is incomprehensible to me. There is no incentive to accept the existence of a supernatural being, BECAUSE there is no convincing evidence of it's existence and we see no events in nature which require a supernatural explanation. Atheists accept that the natural world is the only world, Theists who contend there is a spiritual world above and beyond reality have the burden of supplying positive scientific evidence supporting their position, which they have so far failed to do.

Grumpy 8)

[Bugmaster]

Humans are a species descended from primates. I don't think the universe was specifically designed for humans, primates, etc. any more than I think that flying requires Boeing 747s.

Ok, so humans are just another kind of animal, and the Universe was not specifically designed for them. I agree. But then, what about your argument that the Universe is fine-tuned ? Fine-tuned for... what ?

Sorry, but I disagree with your assertion that all rationality comes directly from God. Thus, I have never stated that the world is "irrational", whatever that means.

I didn't say this is what you said, but this is what you said reduces to being.

And I think your reasoning on this point is faulty.

for similar reasons I reject the notion that the First Uncaused Cause (tm) is the Christian God... I wasn't making an argument, I was merely attempting to illustrate my worldview to you by analogy.

If your belief is based on "similar reasons" which as I showed is based on a logical fallacy, then why isn't your belief based on a logical fallacy?

No, I was merely pointing out a logical fallacy in your reasoning. You use a line of reasoning to dismiss the Easter Bunny, but when I use the same exact reasoning to dismiss God, you tell me I'm wrong. That's a fallacy.

I might add, that I have supported each of my beliefs with reasons, but all you provided have been agnostic arguments and arguments for the identity theory of mind which is irrelevant with regard to whether atheism is true.

Ok, so your reasoning is sound, but mine is flawed by definition, because it's "agnostic" and "irrelevant" ? Sorry, that's not very persuasive. Furthermore, note that it is you who is proposing a positive statement ("God exists"); therefore, the burden of proof is on you. You can't give me an irrational task to fullfill (to prove a negative), then claim victory when I'm unable to fullfill it.

The IPU argument does not demonstrate that God could not have very mild to moderate properties that are quite reasonable to postulate.

Oh, I fully agree. It's much more probable that some localized mini-God (such as Pan or Old Man Thunder) exists, than that the Christian uber-God exists. It's still very, very unlikely, but not as unlikely as the Christian God. But... I thought you believed in a global, omni-everything deity, and not in a minigod who amounts to nothing more than a powerful alien ? After all, your God has the power to create universes and to craft the laws of physics...

In other words, you may be 100% right, but without a valid, sound argument, you are powerless to convince anybody. That's the major weakness of faith, IMO.

I have provided a number of arguments. To date, very few atheists have commented on these arguments. Only QED has nibbled at them, but he has not raised his hand in class multiple times, so he's still approaching those arguments only very slowly.

I don't know if you realize this, Harvey, but I already have a full-time job. Answering your arguments is not it, even though it does take me several hours a week. I'm sure you have tons of arguments that I haven't read, but they aren't persuasive to me, because I haven't read them. I will if I have more time, but don't hold your breath. Sorry.

I don't recall where you've addressed many of these arguments beyond a very superficial manner.

Geez man, our threads are on page 16 by now ! What more do you want ? A Ph.D. thesis ?

If I happened to use a logical fallacy in my argument, then it's my own fault. I thought it through, and that's what I arrived at. If it is a fallacy, it is a fallacy that I committed. This isn't true for those who use the IPU fallacy.

That all depends on how you use it. As I've said above, I believe that my usage of the IPU is perfectly reasonable. I can no more prove that your God does not exist, than that IPU does not exist (because one can't prove a negative), but that doesn't mean that God or IPUs actually do exist.

I didn't say that. I said that atheists have trouble with abstract concepts that are what I would call spiritual concepts.

No, I specifically recall you saying that atheists are "in rebellion" against God, because they're in league with "The Darkness". Ok, granted, you didn't reference Satan by name, maybe there's some other Darkness that you had in mind.

That's why I try to discuss issues from the point of a beginning using an atheist's perspective. I think it leads to absurdities, and that's why I think it is important to really think through these issues.

I am acknowledging your effort, but I think you fail at it. All of your arguments ultimately presuppose that God exists, or that the Universe has been created with a purpose in mind, or that people have souls, etc., etc., though you never state these assumptions explicitly. I know you will deny this, but this is the impression I have of you. Maybe it's just miscommunication, I don't know.

The real problem is that I can't get you to think the way even atheist philosophers think. For example, you're stuck in your behaviorist views, yet there are no atheist philosophers who ascribe to that view.

Sorry, I don't care about the other "atheist philosophers", I only care about my own views. The beauty of philosophy is that appeals to authority are irrelevant, because each argument can be examined on its own merits. So far, your analysis of my arguments has not been very compelling.

I will gladly challenge any other philosopher -- atheist or not -- who disagrees with my views; in fact, I'm doing so right now on my Singularity thread. If their arguments prove persuasive, I will concede my point. That's how debate works.

Calling my views "outmoded", or "unpopular", is just a red herring; in fact, it's a red herring that C.S.Lewis himself rails against in The Screwtape Letters (ok, technically he's railing for it, seeing as Screwtape is a demon and all). You are free to say "your views are rubbish because they're old" and walk away, but don't expect me to be convinced. I have never said "your religion is 2000+ years old, and therefore it's wrong"; please extend to me the same courtesy.

I don't think that the world is ultimately rational, as you well know. I do think that the world most probably operates according to some rules...

Those two sentences contradict each other.

It depends on what you mean by "rational". All I meant was that the rules of logic are made up by humans, and are not necessarily a fundamental law of nature. If you want to define "rational" as "operating by some rules which may or may not be unknown to us", then I'd agree that the world is "rational".

You never responded to my argument that if the decisions of the Self is determined solely by quantum mechanics, then how do you justify that your decisions are any better than those of the late David Koresh.

You've never advanced this argument, until now. In the past, you were claiming that I am a zombie with no free will -- and I countered by pointing out that your notion of free will is fallacious. Your new argument focuses more on morality, since my actions are (presumably) good, and David Koresh's actions are evil. I'll be happy to debate this issue with you in a separate thread.

Physics cannot put a value of your decisions as being in anyway better than his decisions (when he was alive).

That depends on what you mean by "better". For example, if I want to live in a lasting society where I won't get randomly murdered, I have to give up my freedom to randomly murder people; thus, the prohibition against murder is perfectly reasonable, and needs no supernatural explanation. But let's take this discussion to another thread (I'll let you start it, since I've started so many already).

This would mean that you are not justified in arguing that atheists are right and that theists are wrong.

You are now shifting the argument from morality to epistemology. I claim that it does not matter what powers our beliefs -- quantum interactions, souls, dualistic minds, whatever. If what we believe corresponds to what the real world is like, then we're right; if not, we're wrong. Of course, there's no way to know for sure whether we're right or not, but that's where ontology comes in (and science with it).

Inicidentally, this is what I meant earlier, when I said that you could not fathom what it's like to lack faith. You seem to be unable to imagine a worldview where there is no separate "self" that controls my atoms, or vice versa -- and yet, this is exactly the worldview that I subscribe to.

As kids grow up they seek independence from their parents, and as they become teenagers many rebel against some of the things that the parents stand for.

Kids have a mountain of evidence to justify a belief in their parents' existence. This is not the case with God -- unless God takes human form (again), and starts walking on water casting miracles left and right, which so far hasn't happened. Your analogy is false.

Again, remember that while God may be perfectly real to you, he's a mythological creature from my point of view. Kind of like a unicorn.

I can obviously see that difference, but I can tell that atheists do not grasp certain concepts because they do not provide a counterargument, nor do they even address the issue.

Example, please. Show me an argument you have raised that I have read, but not addressed at all. Arguments that I haven't read are inadmissible, and arguments that I have not addressed to your satisfaction are inadmissible, as well -- since you're claiming that I have not addressed them at all.

Of course, I don't speak for all atheists, I just speak for me.

Subjective means that one cannot establish that view by objective means, right? That means that an atheist can subjectively deny that there is a miracle. So, for the record, I never stated that miracles prove that there's a God.

Then what's the point in discussing miracles at all ? Surely, you had something in mind when you brought them up ?

Actually, you haven't dealt with many of my arguments. You've denied platonism, but you left those discussions to discuss your 1935 version of behaviorism.

As I recall, you suggested that we focus on one thread at a time, in the interests of reducing our workload. I will return to the discussion of your 800BC version of religion as soon as I can.

I was demonstrating how subjective interpretation is hard to put into objective terms when it comes to miracles. The arguments I'm presenting for God are objective in that we can all look at the reasoning processes to make sure the conclusions necessarily follow. If they do, then it's hard to deny the truth of the matter.

Agreed. However, so far, you have not presented a convincing "reasoning process" that goes from "the universe exists" to "god exists"; as soon as you do, I will concede my point.

Ok, it sounds like you're defining "miracle" as "any old thing that happens". That's an empty definition, which renders the concept of "a miracle" meaningless. ...

I'm not defining miracle as any ole' thing that happens.

Then what did you mean by this ?

Then every event is a miracle if that is your definition of a miracle. There are no "natural causes" (minus God) as you have in mind.

Can you define for me what you mean by "miracle" ?

[Bugmaster]

I think a very good comparison is the issue of whether nature actually has laws that determine its behavior (call it a prescriptive interpretation), or whether nature has behavior which we describe using laws (call it a descriptive interpretation).

Assuming that we are part of nature, then what's the practical difference ? Nature operates according to some rules, and we strive to discover these rules. Our current understanding of these rules is only probably correct.

Where's the platonism, not to mention theism ?

[Bugmaster]

This is where I stand because I have still, as of yet, not figured out how one can take the intellectual action to lack belief.

Actually, I agree. I can't take an intellectual action to believe or disbelieve in anything, by will alone (though I'm sure I could hire some ex-CIA guys to brainwash me into anything). My disbelief in God is as basic as your disbelief in Santa Claus -- I simply do not see enough evidence to support it. I'd love to believe in a loving, caring God (sorry, YHVH, that's not you :-) ), but I can't do that while remaining intellectually honest with myself.

[QED]

If I was exaggerating your position then what the heck is this "mind behind physics"?

As I've said, the mind that I am talking about is akin to Hawking's Chronological Protection Conjecture (CPC). There's nothing paranormal about it.

Well this is where neither of us has been particularly clear. Any mind existing outside of a biological organism is, by most peoples standards, a supernatural (paranormal) thing. Now I'm all for arguing that minds are evolved collectives of neurons and their states, and that mind can emerge by degree in any suitable analog -- but it's still something that's so complex that it can only be hard-won by billions of years of evolution or deliberate assembly entailing vast amounts of resources.

Hence we ought to be clear about the degree of mind and the sort of purview we expect for it. The CPC is a device for paradox avoidance and arises from a necessity under certain assumptions i.e. that time travel into the past is possible. But all your examples of cosmic censorship keep on banging up against my concepts of "degrees of freedom". My way of putting things makes them sound like mechanical constraints -- yours sounds like willful interventions. But I think you're doing your best to maintain a divide in the world between the material and immaterial to keep our polar positions in place. I really don't think this divide is justified which is why I refer to things like the holographic principle to demonstrate that any assumptions about the material nature of things might be wrong. This then leads us to the sort of experimental surprises that you like to offer as proof of mind operating in the universe.

I think dividing the world into the material and immaterial is radical. Anyone having this radical worldview is always going to wind up with one or other of your well-thought out labels. This doesn't satisfy me though.

[QED]

Calm down guys, after all we're only being asked how one can lack belief -- as though this is an absurd sort of thing to do.

I wouldn't call it absurd. I would call it incomprehensible. This is where I stand because I have still, as of yet, not figured out how one can take the intellectual action to lack belief. It's willfully choosing to remain in a state of lack of belief which I have a hard time with...

...I think my question has been kind of misunderstood though. I am not asking the why (i.e., why people claim they lack belief), but rather how they can lack belief. I am not looking for an atheist apologetic, but rather an explanation of how it's possible to maintain such a position. This is what I struggle with, and would like to finally put to rest.

Again, not specifically to QED, but to anyone else who might respond as well. I am not looking for a defense or justification of the position. It's not this which matters to me. I am looking at possibility of, not plausibility for.

And if I have misunderstood this form of atheism, please by all means explain to me where I have. Don't just tell me I have.

Surely you've heard how it's possible to see ambiguities in the many observations leading to faith? This is where the possibility for lack of belief comes from -- simple as that.

BTW tselem, I'm always curious when I see it written; what aspects of His image are we meant to be made in? I hope you appreciate that it would be absurd to be in appearance.

That's one of those concepts I'm still exploring. I tend to accept attributes like creativity, freedom, the ability to reason, etc. Regarding appearance, it would depend on if were referring to God Proper or God Trinity.

Have you given any consideration to how such attributes would arise? I think you should be asking yourself why we look and act the way we do. I think you'll find this is a product of the planet and everything else that lives on it with us. How could it be then that God shares all these attributes unless he has a similar history? This is certainly one of those thought experiments that tells me the popular concept of God is out of whack.

[bernee51]

Interesting, Harvey seems to be getting a little short on patience and tselem is coming in straight for the jugular!

Why beat around the bush? Heh, will I didn't really mean to come at you that way. I apologize if it seemed as such.

Calm down guys, after all we're only being asked how one can lack belief -- as though this is an absurd sort of thing to do.

I wouldn't call it absurd. I would call it incomprehensible. This is where I stand because I have still, as of yet, not figured out how one can take the intellectual action to lack belief. It's willfully choosing to remain in a state of lack of belief which I have a hard time with.

Perhaps it's simply because those that do not believe in any god simply see the evidence believers interpret as proof of a god's existence in a totally different light.

Personally I see god belief as an anthropocentric view of the cosmos. It assumes a'special place' for homo sapiens when no such place can be proven.

The reason for this is that I know people have prejudices. Even if we choose to suspend judgment, we still have prejudices which influence us. I consider these prejudices to be accepted beliefs, even if one a subconscious basis.

And it is these prejudices which give meaning and legitamacy to our existence. For many it is a religious belief. For others a more philosophical view of 'god'.

...I am not asking the why (i.e., why people claim they lack belief), but rather how they can lack belief. I am not looking for an atheist apologetic, but rather an explanation of how it's possible to maintain such a position. This is what I struggle with, and would like to finally put to rest.

How is 'non-belief' maintained? Simply because nothing has been shown to me that would move me in a direction of belief. On the contrary - self-enquiry has moved me further from belief or rather further from any likelihood that I would accept a god belief.

BTW tselem, I'm always curious when I see it written; what aspects of His image are we meant to be made in? I hope you appreciate that it would be absurd to be in appearance.

That's one of those concepts I'm still exploring. I tend to accept attributes like creativity, freedom, the ability to reason, etc.

I see these as human attributes, brought about by evolution - not 'divine'

Regarding appearance, it would depend on if were referring to God Proper or God Trinity.

What does 'god proper' look like as opposed to 'god trinity'?

[theleftone]

Reading the above responses to my post, it seems either no one is getting what I am asking or I have poorly communicated it. I have opted to accept the latter, and placed the blame upon myself. Thus, I have taken the time to rephrase the question I am asking, but in a more general sense not dealing specifically with the concept of God.

Q: What action(s) do you use to refrain from any conviction of the validity or non-validity of a given notion?

[theleftone]

What does 'god proper' look like as opposed to 'god trinity'?

The person of God as opposed to the Triunity of God which includes Christ, the Holy Spirit, and God.