London Bombings

[QED]

Soon after the news channels started covering the four bombings on the London Underground and Bus last week, all the media channels started wheeling-in Christian and Muslim spokesmen for comment.

What am I to make of this? I am always arguing the danger of letting people grow their own set of rules around imaginary concepts so making it a no-go zone for reason and logic. This I've pointed out provides a loophole through which fanatics are able to invade the minds of people accustomed to the unquestioned acceptance of whatever it is that they're being told by their spiritual leaders.

In every other sphere people are expected to justify their beliefs and actions. But this single exception is made for religion. I deplore this fact.

[harvey1]

Soon after the news channels started covering the four bombings on the London Underground and Bus last week, all the media channels started wheeling-in Christian and Muslim spokesmen for comment. What am I to make of this? I am always arguing the danger of letting people grow their own set of rules around imaginary concepts so making it a no-go zone for reason and logic. This I've pointed out provides a loophole through which fanatics are able to invade the minds of people accustomed to the unquestioned acceptance of whatever it is that they're being told by their spiritual leaders. In every other sphere people are expected to justify their beliefs and actions. But this single exception is made for religion. I deplore this fact.

When tragedy strikes, people want comfort. They don't want to hear atheists coming on interviews saying that life is meaningless anyway, so it really doesn't matter what happens in our infinitesimal portion of an infinite timeline. Of course, this is what a consistent atheist believes to be the case, but most people think that's just meaningless crap.

[QED]

When tragedy strikes, people want comfort.

Tragedy seems hardly adequate to describe the deliberate slaughter of unsuspecting humans regarded as fair game in a "holy" war conducted againsts infidel unbelievers.

They don't want to hear atheists coming on interviews saying that life is meaningless anyway, so it really doesn't matter what happens in our infinitesimal portion of an infinite timeline. Of course, this is what a consistent atheist believes to be the case, but most people think that's just meaningless crap.

To me you betray an awful lot in this statement. First you repeat your tired old story that justifies your dissociation with Atheism. This ridiculous caricature of a "consistent Atheist" as someone who goes around thinking that life is utterly meaningless so "anything goes" is utterly unrealistic. So much so that I can barely imagine you considering it to be true yourself. But having stuffed it full of straw you just can't help yourself but knock it to pieces in front of me.

You remind me of the ex-smoker who, once he has given up, takes a far more radical anti-smoking line in order to counteract the temptation drawing him away from his chosen new path. I wonder if this is what drives you to make such blatantly inflammatory remarks?

Your have failed to addressed my concerns here about people growing their own rules around imaginary concepts. This is the one area of debate that you consistently seem to avoid. How are we to trust, for example, that your own particular faith is not telling you to go out planting bombs? I've asked you before if you know what gods purpose is for your life. After all, you claim that there is purpose to the universe.

As I see it, you've set out a philosophical framework in which you paint a picture of a "god created" universe full of purpose and meaning. You actually manage to pluck this conclusion out of thin-air without resort to measurement or experiment to validate your idea. So what safeguards do we have to prevent you from going off at any old tangent?

I can see how in your case you could be steering yourself towards a personally comforting (and apparently harmless) scenario which promises you an extra degree of immunity from the harsh reality of existence and an eventual place in eternity, but this is your own particular utopian fantasy. Others have their own distinct variations on this theme, some of which have them carrying out gods will on the way there. I can easily picture your rationalization being applied by such people with disturbing consequences.

[harvey1]

They don't want to hear atheists coming on interviews saying that life is meaningless anyway

you repeat your tired old story that justifies your dissociation with Atheism. This ridiculous caricature of a "consistent Atheist" as someone who goes around thinking that life is utterly meaningless so "anything goes" is utterly unrealistic... I can see how in your case you could be steering yourself towards a personally comforting (and apparently harmless) scenario which promises you an extra degree of immunity from the harsh reality of existence and an eventual place in eternity, but this is your own particular utopian fantasy.

No sooner than than the words, "this ridiculous caricature of a 'consistent atheist' as someone who goes around thinking life is utterly meaningless..." do you say, "which promises you an... immunity from the harsh reality of existence and an eventual place in eternity...."

From your own words you show a meaninglessness to life. You do not dispute that our infinitesimal experience of time is on an infinite chain of one meaningless events followed by an infinite number of other meaningless events. You seem to only dispute that meaning can be found in a such a situation, but you give no reason to think that it is. An infinite chain of meaningless events do not produce a meaningful moment anymore than a meaningless "message" of infinite length produces one meaningful signal in that "message." It is all chatter. Every last bit of it.

You remind me of the ex-smoker who, once he has given up, takes a far more radical anti-smoking line in order to counteract the temptation drawing him away from his chosen new path. I wonder if this is what drives you to make such blatantly inflammatory remarks?

I never smoked, but I like the analogy of smoke as being similar to atheist ideology. It is an annoyance to those who don't smoke and it's cancerous too. Here's the rest of us, trying to carry on with a life full of meaning and significance, and here comes the atheists blowing out their smoke in other people's faces. And, sure enough, they get mad when "non-smokers" join together to keep their smoke out of public places.

Your have failed to addressed my concerns here about people growing their own rules around imaginary concepts. This is the one area of debate that you consistently seem to avoid. How are we to trust, for example, that your own particular faith is not telling you to go out planting bombs? I've asked you before if you know what gods purpose is for your life. After all, you claim that there is purpose to the universe.

You miss the point of there being meaning to the universe. If a message is embedded in the universe, and that message carries with it meaning, then it doesn't matter if you understand even one iota of the message. You might terribly misunderstand the message, but if you believe that you have deciphered some of the contents of that message, then you have what you believe to be a meaningful grasp on a series of what some see as a meaningless strand of 1's and 0's.

Now, you object to this approach to life because some few people find a message in those 1's and 0's which tell them to harm others. However, what you miss is that the interpretation of those messages are eventually pragmatic based, and therefore morality naturally develops in those interpretations which are consistent with the needs of society, including the minority and poor of that society. This is why free societies have naturally evolved within a mostly religious world (i.e., a world where they believe such meaningful messages exist in the world). When a society goes stray in an interpretation that produces more harm than good, eventually pragmatic issues bring them back in-line. Hence, evolution of ideas is gradually moving the world forward despite the occasional steps backward.

Atheism is contrary to this movement since it does not see the message as meaningful, hence life is whatever the individual wishes to place on it. There are no rules of behavior that an atheist should feel is more consistent with the message (e.g., a moral code). It is all subjective and who it is decides for the rest of everyone else is also subjective. I suspect strongly that this is part of the reason why atheist governments have been so totalitarian in their approach. When you throw away the meaning that people have found so important in their conduct in life (e.g., religious meaning), then you enter into a frontier where Stalin's and Lenon's and Mao's can put their own subjective concepts as law onto everyone else.

As I see it, you've set out a philosophical framework in which you paint a picture of a "god created" universe full of purpose and meaning. You actually manage to pluck this conclusion out of thin-air without resort to measurement or experiment to validate your idea. So what safeguards do we have to prevent you from going off at any old tangent?

Not so. Science itself by your definition is a conclusion out of thin-air without resort to measurement or experiment. It is based on a philosophy that looks for a meaningful outlook at the world, and this is the same notion that religion and other philosophies are based on.

Others have their own distinct variations on this theme, some of which have them carrying out gods will on the way there. I can easily picture your rationalization being applied by such people with disturbing consequences

You can always justify one's beliefs, but the majority are affected by those beliefs and they eventually resent the beliefs of a minority and overthrow them.

[McCulloch]

They don't want to hear atheists coming on interviews saying that life is meaningless anyway, so it really doesn't matter what happens in our infinitesimal portion of an infinite timeline. Of course, this is what a consistent atheist believes to be the case, but most people think that's just meaningless crap.

Please don't build up a strawman called a consistent atheist. I could just as easily say, "they don't want to hear christians saying that our time on earth is short and meaningless anyway, so long as we get to heaven. Of course, this is what a consistent christian believes to be the case, but most people think that's just meaningless crap. That is why even christians mourn their dead."
The consistent atheist or agnostic believes that all we may be assured of is the life that we experience. Therefore, whatever meaning we may have must be found in this life and it does matter.

[harvey1]

Please don't build up a strawman called a consistent atheist. I could just as easily say, "they don't want to hear christians saying that our time on earth is short and meaningless anyway, so long as we get to heaven. Of course, this is what a consistent christian believes to be the case, but most people think that's just meaningless crap. That is why even christians mourn their dead."

A consistent Christian in terms of morality is one who believes/follows the writings and traditions of the Christian Church in some significant capacity. This is by default since this is how we usually define morality within Christianity. In the case of atheism, there is no book that defines how an atheist must be moral. All we have is the belief that there is no ultimate meaning to the universe, and that meaning is subjective. Hence, morals are subjective. That is, dictated by the individual. The consistent atheist is one who accepts that they have the total control of their moral values and can subjectively decide what those morals are to be. They don't have to take the advise of other atheists, and they sure as heck don't need to take the instructions of Christians or whoever else. There is no absolute authority for moral beliefs or beliefs in terms of the meaning of life.

The consistent atheist or agnostic believes that all we may be assured of is the life that we experience. Therefore, whatever meaning we may have must be found in this life and it does matter.

Exactly! The consistent atheist only has to think in terms of their life and how they wish to experience it. So, if an atheist bankrobber believes they will find life more pleasant by robbing banks (i.e., they have a high level of confidence that they won't get caught), then they are being consistent with atheism by following suit with that experience. That is what makes them a consistent atheist.

[QED]

No sooner than than the words, "this ridiculous caricature of a 'consistent atheist' as someone who goes around thinking life is utterly meaningless..." do you say, "which promises you an... immunity from the harsh reality of existence and an eventual place in eternity...."
From your own words you show a meaninglessness to life.

My words simply admit to the harsh reality of existence -- which is that we are provided with a finite window in spacetime. That's all. It is you who brands this as meaningless. So when you say:

You do not dispute that our infinitesimal experience of time is on an infinite chain of one meaningless events followed by an infinite number of other meaningless events. You seem to only dispute that meaning can be found in a such a situation, but you give no reason to think that it is.

You can't resist misrepresenting me yet again by continuing to refer to "one meaningless event[s]" after another. You've already defined god as the only source of meaning, so by your definition no one else can get a look-in. Do you realise how selfish this looks to someone that has no problem seeing meaning in everything?

An infinite chain of meaningless events do not produce a meaningful moment anymore than a meaningless "message" of infinite length produces one meaningful signal in that "message." It is all chatter. Every last bit of it.

Only by virtue of your definition of meaning. What meaning is there in people extracting whatever they wish from a random sequence? As you were alluding to, any truly random sequence of infinite length is bound to contain every conceivable message so is of absolutely no value whatsoever. For every scrap of meaning there is something that cancels it out.

You miss the point of there being meaning to the universe. If a message is embedded in the universe, and that message carries with it meaning, then it doesn't matter if you understand even one iota of the message. You might terribly misunderstand the message, but if you believe that you have deciphered some of the contents of that message, then you have what you believe to be a meaningful grasp on a series of what some see as a meaningless strand of 1's and 0's.

Now, you object to this approach to life because some few people find a message in those 1's and 0's which tell them to harm others. However, what you miss is that the interpretation of those messages are eventually pragmatic based, and therefore morality naturally develops in those interpretations which are consistent with the needs of society, including the minority and poor of that society. This is why free societies have naturally evolved within a mostly religious world (i.e., a world where they believe such meaningful messages exist in the world). When a society goes stray in an interpretation that produces more harm than good, eventually pragmatic issues bring them back in-line. Hence, evolution of ideas is gradually moving the world forward despite the occasional steps backward.

I see it as people taking a Tarot reading. The message you speak of is so obviously interpreted in so many different ways that it betrays itself as noise. Like the white-noise of the cheap extractor-fan in my bathroom, I can hear whatever I like in it with very little effort.

Atheism is contrary to this movement since it does not see the message as meaningful, hence life is whatever the individual wishes to place on it. There are no rules of behavior that an atheist should feel is more consistent with the message (e.g., a moral code). It is all subjective and who it is decides for the rest of everyone else is also subjective. I suspect strongly that this is part of the reason why atheist governments have been so totalitarian in their approach. When you throw away the meaning that people have found so important in their conduct in life (e.g., religious meaning), then you enter into a frontier where Stalin's and Lenon's and Mao's can put their own subjective concepts as law onto everyone else.

Yawn. This argument is totally out of touch. I live in the UK, within a highly secular society. Some 800 years of democracy have shaped our laws, the Government takes great pains to distance itself from religion (thank goodness) so nothing you say here rings true. Again you must be defining religion as objective, that the universe itself is stamped with moral codes imprinted by god himself. What evidence do you have for this?

As I see it, you've set out a philosophical framework in which you paint a picture of a "god created" universe full of purpose and meaning. You actually manage to pluck this conclusion out of thin-air without resort to measurement or experiment to validate your idea. So what safeguards do we have to prevent you from going off at any old tangent?

Not so. Science itself by your definition is a conclusion out of thin-air without resort to measurement or experiment. It is based on a philosophy that looks for a meaningful outlook at the world, and this is the same notion that religion and other philosophies are based on.

Now you confuse me - how did I define science in the way you suggest?

You can always justify one's beliefs, but the majority are affected by those beliefs and they eventually resent the beliefs of a minority and overthrow them.

I don't see any guarantees that this steers us on a non-chaotic course. I can't believe that a scholar such as yourself can be so blind to the destruction and misery left in the wake of religiously inspired actions throughout history. You talk about persecution inflicted by totalitarian regimes, but these are a but a drop in the ocean and the linkage to Atheism is at best shaky and would be better described as non-existent. Not something that can be said of the holy conflicts of the last few thousand years.

[harvey1]

My words simply admit to the harsh reality of existence -- which is that we are provided with a finite window in spacetime. That's all. It is you who brands this as meaningless... You can't resist misrepresenting me yet again by continuing to refer to "one meaningless event[s]" after another. You've already defined god as the only source of meaning, so by your definition no one else can get a look-in. Do you realise how selfish this looks to someone that has no problem seeing meaning in everything?

It's not my selfish definition. Meaning comes from intent, otherwise it is not meaning. When you are talking to someone and you understand what they mean, this is to say that you understand what they intended for you to think about such and such. For example, if I type the word "apple" you know immediately what I mean because I purposely choose those particular letters in that particular sequence so that you would immediately gain the meaning that I intended for you to have. If I had no intent, I might just have typed another 5 letter word such as: "ayret" and then in that case you would have no meaning because I didn't intend for there to be any meaning in that 5-letter "word."

Similarly, if the universe has no intent, then all the interpretable sequences that arise from the universe are also meaningless. We might be able to assign meaning to those sequences just for the heck of it, but that doesn't make them meaningful in itself. It is fully meaningless, every last bit of data. If you think otherwise, then please explain to me how a meaningless sequence can acquire any real meaning.

Only by virtue of your definition of meaning. What meaning is there in people extracting whatever they wish from a random sequence?

There is none. That is my point. A random sequence provides no information other than the fact that it is a random sequence.

As you were alluding to, any truly random sequence of infinite length is bound to contain every conceivable message so is of absolutely no value whatsoever. For every scrap of meaning there is something that cancels it out.

And, this is how the consistent atheist would consider any attempt to assign meaning to their existence. They realize that there is no inherent meaning to their life simply because all the meaning cancels itself out.

I see it as people taking a Tarot reading. The message you speak of is so obviously interpreted in so many different ways that it betrays itself as noise. Like the white-noise of the cheap extractor-fan in my bathroom, I can hear whatever I like in it with very little effort.

You take the extreme case where meaning is placed on randomness (e.g., Tarot cards as they are turned over) to show that there is nothing but noise, however all this shows is that meaning can be misconstrued. This example does not show that meaning does not exist. Take the laws of physics for example. We have good reason to believe that the laws are not noise. Our reason is because we can make effective predictions using those laws on the path that nature will take. If we could effectively predict the way nature would go with Tarot cards, then surely this would be a meaningful way to extract information about the universe. However, there's many other effective ways to extract meaning of the universe that provide good insight into benefiting human existence (e.g., morals). Morality is very common in world religions, and we can use those morals to predict successful means by which to enjoy life better. It's not because we invented those morals that this happens, it is because certain good morals actually have a relation with bad morals which make them better. There is nothing subjective about those morals. They are better and the pragmatic outcome of living by good morals clearly demonstrate this.

Yawn. This argument is totally out of touch. I live in the UK, within a highly secular society. Some 800 years of democracy have shaped our laws, the Government takes great pains to distance itself from religion (thank goodness) so nothing you say here rings true. Again you must be defining religion as objective, that the universe itself is stamped with moral codes imprinted by god himself. What evidence do you have for this?

I'm sure you think our secularized society has improved in every respect over the more religious societies of the past. I don't think it has. I see a great many negative trends that I think are largely caused by secularization which I think spell danger for Western society. Don't get me wrong, I would rather live now than 100 years ago, but that's because society keeps improving in major aspects despite the drift toward secularization. Soon, however, it may not be that way. The effects of secularization will begin to denigrate the quality of life and society may be move into a more chaotic phase. Getting off the point a little, what happens, I think, is that secularization causes a loss of religious meaning and people try and re-coup that loss of meaning by seeking the sensational aspects to life. The more agnostic and/or atheistic they become, the more apt they are to live for the moment and this effect is experienced by society as a whole. The religious view begins to be viewed as fanatical (especially the more fringe aspects of religion) and this causes conflict between secular forces and fanatical forces. Anyway, all mayhem results (cats and dogs having sex and stuff even worse than that).

As I see it, you've set out a philosophical framework in which you paint a picture of a "god created" universe full of purpose and meaning. You actually manage to pluck this conclusion out of thin-air without resort to measurement or experiment to validate your idea. So what safeguards do we have to prevent you from going off at any old tangent?

Not so. Science itself by your definition is a conclusion out of thin-air without resort to measurement or experiment. It is based on a philosophy that looks for a meaningful outlook at the world, and this is the same notion that religion and other philosophies are based on.

Now you confuse me - how did I define science in the way you suggest?

If you use your definition that theism is a conclusion based on a view that is not accompanied by measurement and experiment, then by the same definition you'd have to say the same about the philosophy of science. The philosophy behind science doesn't have measurement and experiment to validate it. The philosophy behind science is based on good philosophical foundations. The same is true of theism. It is based on good philosophical foundations.

I don't see any guarantees that this steers us on a non-chaotic course. I can't believe that a scholar such as yourself can be so blind to the destruction and misery left in the wake of religiously inspired actions throughout history.

I also see the destruction and misery brought as a consequence of globalization, however that doesn't mean that humanity has made a terrible mistake by reaching out over the globe. We have to learn from our mistakes, but that doesn't mean that the mistakes should dominate our belief about the goodness that comes about because of our religious nature (or our nature to spreadout and globalize the world in which we live).

You talk about persecution inflicted by totalitarian regimes, but these are a but a drop in the ocean and the linkage to Atheism is at best shaky and would be better described as non-existent. Not something that can be said of the holy conflicts of the last few thousand years.

Atheism is a recent phenomena, and it has very little to show for itself but totalitarianism written all over it. I know that atheists would like to disassociate themselves from the mistakes of their anti-religious brothers, but how long before even the most die-hard atheist must see that their beliefs lead to negative consequences for society? I'm afraid the answer is that humans would destroy themselves before even a hundred atheists could see the consequences of their belief. It's a shame, but people who want to divorce the world of religious meaning are blinded by the destruction their desire brings upon people.

[ST88]

No sooner than than the words, "this ridiculous caricature of a 'consistent atheist' as someone who goes around thinking life is utterly meaningless..." do you say, "which promises you an... immunity from the harsh reality of existence and an eventual place in eternity...."

From your own words you show a meaninglessness to life. You do not dispute that our infinitesimal experience of time is on an infinite chain of one meaningless events followed by an infinite number of other meaningless events. You seem to only dispute that meaning can be found in a such a situation, but you give no reason to think that it is. An infinite chain of meaningless events do not produce a meaningful moment anymore than a meaningless "message" of infinite length produces one meaningful signal in that "message." It is all chatter. Every last bit of it.

You're not making the correct distinction between the meaninglessness of a situation and applying meaning to a situation. In the case of the bombings -- or of any situation, really -- you can take two stances. Either A) the meaning of the situation is in a grand plan of which we are not aware, but can trust that it is all for a higher purpose, or B) the meaning of the situation is that which we give it. Now take these to their applied theory of conclusion. Scenario A) encourages passivity through reassurance. We are supposed to trust in the universal intelligence that there is a plan and it is being carried out. There is no need to take action unless you feel it is a part of the plan. This scenario encourages you to "stay the course" along with your president, who invokes this higher intelligence whenever he can so that you will shut the he** up about (your children being killed).

Scenario B) implies that you, yourself will have to come up with a good reason for why these events occurred. And not only will you need a good reason, you will need to apply this reason toward your next move. If you feel the (war) is just, then you support the effort even more strongly than you already have. This is taking action based on the meaning you have assigned to the event. If you feel, however, that the (war) itself is a mistake, then you can oppose it with all the faculties you have.

The meaninglessness you dislike is from the event's inherent importance in the grand scheme of things. History will not be able to put these events in context until much later, when further events indicate a pattern and when consequences will be clearer. And many of these consequential decisions will be made by Us the People (colored, of course, by various propaganda machines).

[harvey1]

You're not making the correct distinction between the meaninglessness of a situation and applying meaning to a situation. In the case of ... Either A)... or B)...

I think the world is more complex than this ST. Humans produce meaning not be inventing it as they go, rather humans look for a comprehensive explanation of events, and when one of those explanations becomes clear (e.g., the New Deal, monetary policy, etc.), they naturally cling to those new explanations until they fail. In the case of the war on terrorism, it looks very similar to the Cold War strategy which worked (we're here, right?). Unfortunately humans are slow to adapt to new paradigms until the old strategies are clearly failing. That's when they become open to new paradigms and are willing to "vote" a new group into power who provides hope of a new strategy. If those strategies pay off, then they become part of the sacred writ of the culture (and this even includes the scientific culture).

Scenario A) encourages passivity through reassurance. We are supposed to trust in the universal intelligence that there is a plan and it is being carried out. There is no need to take action unless you feel it is a part of the plan. This scenario encourages you to "stay the course" along with your president, who invokes this higher intelligence whenever he can so that you will shut the he** up about (your children being killed).

Of course, people trust those who provided answers to the old paradigm. Once they lose that confidence (e.g., Vietnam war, Watergate, etc.), a new paradigm comes into power. This could have been the case for atheism had it provided answers starting with Lenin, but as history proved out, those atheist paradigms (or, if you insist, the paradigms of atheist philosophers) failed miserably.

Scenario B) implies that you, yourself will have to come up with a good reason for why these events occurred. And not only will you need a good reason, you will need to apply this reason toward your next move. If you feel the (war) is just, then you support the effort even more strongly than you already have. This is taking action based on the meaning you have assigned to the event. If you feel, however, that the (war) itself is a mistake, then you can oppose it with all the faculties you have.

No one doubts that we must assign meaning to a message. The question is whether there is actually a message or whether we are assigning meaning to gibberish. If the consistent atheists are right and the ultimate meaning of the universe is gibberish, then we are just wrong in assigning any meaning to the universe. It's everyone for themselves: live today because we die tomorrow.

The meaninglessness you dislike is from the event's inherent importance in the grand scheme of things. History will not be able to put these events in context until much later, when further events indicate a pattern and when consequences will be clearer. And many of these consequential decisions will be made by Us the People (colored, of course, by various propaganda machines).

Of course history does not unfold like that except in the mind of some in academia. For example, Reagan's success of pushing for the tearing down of the Berlin wall will always be associated with Reagan himself despite a few academic folks who will deny that his vision had anything to do with it. Are those academic folks right in saying that Reagan was irrelevant to the fall of the Soviet Union? Maybe. However, history will not record it that way. To this day, Roosevelt is given much of the credit for quite a few successes in the 30's and 40's of American history. Perhaps much of that credit is debatable.