The “consensus” view among atheists seems to be that atheism is reasonable and that religious beliefs are not.
So why are atheists angry at God?
We can become incensed by objects and creatures both animate and inanimate. We can even, in a limited sense, be bothered by the fanciful characters in books and dreams. But creatures like unicorns that don’t exist ”that we truly believe not to exist” tend not to raise our ire. We certainly don’t blame the one-horned creatures for our problems.
The one social group that takes exception to this rule is atheists. They claim to believe that God does not exist and yet, according to empirical studies, tend to be the people most angry at him.
I’m trying to remember the last time I got angry at something which did not exist. It’s been a while since I last played World of Warcraft, but that might be a candidate.
But atheists angry at God? That’s absurd. Assertions that there are empirical studies to that effect? Simply ludicrous. By definition, atheism is a lack of belief in God or gods. It is simply a matter of logical impossibility that atheists should be angry at God.
fifth,
You’re forgetting that omniscience only encompasses those things it is logically possible to know. Is it logically possible for the Father to know, absolutely, that the Son and the Holy Spirit are God? I don’t think so.
Look at it from the Father’s perspective again. How does he know that the Son and the Holy Spirit aren’t illusions being presented to him by a greater God or demon, or a mistake caused by his own cognitive fallibility?
Woodbine:
🙂
fifth,
I keep answering your questions and you keep ignoring my answers. Do me the small courtesy of actually reading and considering this one.
Knowledge is not the same thing as absolute certainty. If you asked me “Do you know where your truck is?” I’d answer “Yeah, it’s in the driveway.” Am I absolutely certain of that? Of course not. It could have been stolen, or it could have somehow rolled into the street, or it could have spontaneously vanished in a flash of gamma rays. I judge all those things as unlikely, however, so I answer that I do know where my truck is.
Are you willing to grant the legitimacy of saying that I know where my truck is, despite not being absolutely certain?
If you are, then we can move on to my next point.
Remind me how you “know” that again? Is it direct experience, or words in an old book?
You talk about this but never actually explain how you know. Belief is fine, but you talk about it like it’s verifiable fact.
Christianity is unique in that it has a “hell with no chance of a reprieve” or so it seems. No other religion has such hell.
I entirely disagree with KN’s statement that Christianity had a connection with philosophy “from the beginning” while other religions are more centred on “orthopraxis” as if without philosophy. In truth, Buddhist and Hindu scriptures are quite philosophical – that’s the scriptures themselves I’m talking about, not theological commentaries. The scriptures themselves argue their case in philosophical terms, and have done so from the very beginning.
The Bible contains no philosophy at all, never did. So, when philosophical theology was tacked onto Bible mythology by Christians (as a matter of necessity, because there were educated people surrounding the first Christians), an incoherent mess came out that is Christian theology with its trinity, transsubstantiation and the like, which left the door open to “back to the roots” Protestantism that represents a closer reading of the Bible, which in turn opened the door for skeptical criticism of the scriptures.
Philosophy is entirely an unfortunate afterthought in Christianity. Other religions have a much better balance of logical philosophy, speculative theology, and religious practices.
Indeed! To quote the Dalai Lama (again):
The Universe in a Single Atom: The Convergence of Science and Spirituality
How do I know my wife is a real person. That is simple. It’s possible that my wife only exists in my mind. However it is impossible that she is not a real person.
She is not me. That much is obvious
If I can know anything I can know that.
Maybe we both utilize the same Boltzmann brain but we are two people not one.
Maybe she is a projection of my imagination but she is still a real person with a different consciousness than mine. She has different wants and needs and perspective than I do.
The same goes with the members of the Trinity
peace
absolute certainty has nothing to do with it
knowelege is justified true belief
If I believe that my truck is in my driveway when it is in fact not I do not have knowledge.
I have Justified belief but I don’t have justified true belief
no truth no knowelege
peace
The “mistake” is nothing but using a stronger version of omniscience than the one you have defined above. And I don’t think Christians would accept the weaker concept you provided as being sufficient for their deity. What you’ve done is take human knowledge, which is (I agree) fallible, and say that God has all of that that there is or could be. What that does is make everything God thinks s/he/it (from now on ‘IT’) knows (epistemically) possibly mistaken. I don’t think God’s knowledge is customarily taken to be limited or fallible in that way. It’s considered qualitatively as well as quantitatively superior to that available to us schlubs.
You can analogize this with the Cartesian cogito. Many believe that however fallible I might be otherwise, when I believe “I think,” I could not be wrong–the thought alone makes itself true. I take it that, in a similar way, if there were a God, IT would have to know everything in such a way that IT (epistemically) could not be mistaken.
My sense is that if there could be no such knowledge as that, then there could be no such thing as God as understood by the traditional Christian. In other words, if the only type of omniscience that there could be is what you defined above, then there can be no Christian God. But if there is the type of omniscience that Christians typically ascribe to God, then your argument that God couldn’t know IT’s God is no good.
Hardly. You’ve just said the equivalent of: I am a man. Men sometimes wear hats. Therefore it is possible to travel to the moon.
But why does the universe have to be “fully comprehensible” (whatever that means exactly–I not that you still have not told us)?
The same way I know anything. Revelation
there are two kinds of revelation
General revelation– that is revelation available to everyone. (sensory data, testimony etc)
and Special revelation– that is revelation that is exclusive in some way (the testimony of the Holy Spirit etc)
each are equally valid and reliable
The two types of revelation will never conflict and therefore can serve as a check and verification of one another
peace
FWIW, I was very impressed with the subtlety and acuity of the arguments in some of the Buddhist sutras. Either the Buddha was really smart or his followers were. I’m not sure that a ton of progress has been made since then in discussions of such matters as personal identity and the implications of mortality. (Parfit has a nice discussion of this in his book.)
Because if it is not comprehensible I can know nothing. If the universe is only partially comprehensible whatever I think I know might turn out to be gibberish. 2+2 might equal 4 now and 7 in the next second.
here is a definition from Webster
fully- completely or entirely; to the furthest extent.
comprehensible-able to be understood; intelligible.
peace
fifthmonarchyman,
You really don’t have a good grasp of logic.
The truth of Christianity is your hypothesis (for a broad definition of that word). You can support it with evidence and reason. It can be disproved with evidence and reason. Neither requires assuming its truth or falsity at the outset. In fact, doing so is completely unwarranted.
if Christianity is a hypothesis I have already conceded the argument
no Christianity is a presupposition by which I test hypothesis.
the way to evaluate presuppositions is to compare them to other presuppositions. That is what I’m doing when I ask you how you know stuff in your worldview
peace
I don’t understand. Why would the incomprehensibility of some things (say over in another galaxy) have to make all other things incomprehensible too?
I’m sensing that you are taking “fully comprehensible” to mean what I would mean by “at least partly comprehensible.” I can see that the universe must be at least partially comprehensible, but I don’t know how you get any further than that.
That’s why I gave my more limited suggestion for your start (which may actually be sufficient for your needs–I’m not sure). That was my post that suggested something like “There is knowledge.” I think that may be better than starting with something as controversial as full comprehensibility. I mean, the fact of any knowledge at all is pretty mysterious–and I note that that’s all Descartes thought was necessary.
I probably should let Fifth speak for himself, but I think the response he’s going for is that the notions of things like “evidence,” “reason” and “truth” themselves require support from something. (Or something like that.) You want to start with those, as some kind of “givens”–he doesn’t want to let you.
walto,
Going a bit further on this, Patrick, when you say, “Give us your evidence!” you are relying on such things as induction and non-contradiction. Fifth says, in essence, if the universe weren’t sensible, nothing would be evidence for anything else. And he claims that such sensibility is available only from his deity (and at a special discount this week only!)
FMM:
It all does create a sort of sealed capsule. No accident. Once you’ve crawled in and secured the door, nothing gets in, neither evidence nor reasoning over evidence, so long as you maintain the seal.
Of course, there is again a tu quoque response: the “unbeliever” (what a homely word), insisting upon reasoning over evidence seals him or herself away from “revelation,” which provides no evidence.
That’s why these discussions are invariably futile. These are utterly incommensurate systems of knowledge and justification. The tools of one aren’t capable of prying at the other.
Nice day, eh?
Reciprocating Bill,
I think you’re right that arguments sort of come to an end here. I mean, I have this sense that maybe one could put together a decent argument to the effect that any partial comprehensibility entails full comprehensibility, but even if one could, the ball wouldn’t really be advanced. To the extent that one is willing to concede that human beings are fallible, that everything reasonable could nevertheless be wrong, I don’t think one can derive anything too exciting even from full comprehensibility of the universe (again assuming one could demonstrate that).
Anyhow, it all gets pretty far beyond me at that point. FWIW, I think ‘rationalist theists” like Fifth rely on–and perhaps derive some comfort from–that sort of obscurity (or to be more charitable, difficulty/complexity).
If you do not assume the law of non-contradiction, you have nothing to argue about. If you do not assume the principles of sound reason, you have nothing to argue with. If logic is not assumed to be a causally independent, authoritative arbiter of true statements, there’s no reason to apply it. If you do not assume libertarian free will, you have no one to argue against. If you do not assume morality to be an objective commodity, you have no reason to argue in the first place. If you do not assume mind is primary, there is no “you” to make any argument at all.
Virtually all of science proceeds as if ID is true – it seeks elegant and efficient models; it reverse engineers biological systems; it describes evolution in teleological terms; it refers to natural forces and laws as if there is some kind of prescriptive agency guiding matter and energy; it assumes that the nature of the universe and human comprehensive capacity have some sort of truthful, factual correspondence.
No matter how much one insists that science progresses because it only accepts materialist explanations, the fact is that science only came to exist and only advances because it rides on ID assumptions. Take away those assumptions and all science can be is personal feelings and politics, because it has no foundation upon which such things as “facts” and “inferences” and “reasonable conclusions” have any significant meaning.
No reasonable definition of any non-theistic worldview can provide for that which science requires as assumptions: independent observers, objective measurements, and a reliable system of inference. That frame of reference requires at least a classical deity and a set of theological, existential assumptions upon which to rest.
Define “ID”.
William “I don’t know anything about science and I am not qualified to judge” is talking about facts now?
Laughable.
How do you know your hallucinations are inspired revelation rather then just hallucinations?
Plenty of people think Jesus talks to them, and we only lock some of them away.
Me, please!!!
ID is whatever you need to presuppose to be able to claim that virtually all of science proceeds as if ID is true.
Why must there be God or ID for the Priciple of Non-contradiction (e.g) to be necessarily true? Would a God be required to have made it contingently or necessarily false?
Neale Donald Walsch seems to have done well out of it.
It’s almost worse than that.
According to FMM, we all have “worldviews”, and in all cases these worldviews rest on “presuppositions”.
(I think both claims are false — I don’t think there “worldviews” and I don’t think there are “presuppositions,” either.)
But, suppose FMM were right about the basic claim. Suppose that I hold worldview X which relies on presuppositions P, Q, and R. I am then asked to consider worldview Y, which relies on presuppositions A, B, and C. How might I evaluate A, B, and C?
If I could adopt a neutral standpoint and consider the logic and evidence for both {P, Q, R} and {A, B, C}, then {P, Q, R} would not be presuppositions but rather more like hypotheses, as FMM has conceded above. The only criteria I have for evaluating {P, Q, and R} are those presuppositions themselves — and the only criteria I have for evaluating anyone else’s presuppositions are simply my own presuppositions.
If we cannot suspend our commitment to our presuppositions, and if we cannot help but evaluate everyone else’s worldview through the lens of our own, then we are in a situation of “relativistic dogmatism”: everyone is aware that there are alternatives to one’s own worldview, but no one is able to take them seriously or learn from them.
This dissolves the epistemic community — the community of inquirers – into a non-unifiable patchwork of epistemic sub-communities, each with their own self-enclosed “worldview,” and none of which can enter into meaningful dialogues with any of the others. And without the possibility of mutual criticism and correction, there is always the danger of losing one’s grip on the distinction between knowledge and belief — each epistemic sub-community would consist of people who all believe the same “presuppositions”.
In short, the disintegration of the epistemic community is really the disintegration of the possibility of knowledge itself, and relativistic dogmatism becomes epistemic nihilism. Presuppositionalism destroys knowledge in order to save it.
These presuppositions have nothing to do with ID and ID has nothing to do with these presuppositions. ID suggests that in some cases some design caused something intelligent, so, ID says nothing scientifically interesting. Nor philosophically.
I explained all that in my post above. There are a bevy of metaphysical assumptions that are required for arguments to have any significant form or value. You can ignore them and get by just fine, but that’s what you would be doing – ignoring the unspoken, unexamined assumptions upon which your debate rests, not resolving them. They are only sufficiently resolved by postulating a god that satisfies those logical requirements.
As I said: If you do not assume the law of non-contradiction, you have nothing to argue about. If you do not assume the principles of sound reason, you have nothing to argue with. If logic is not assumed to be a causally independent, authoritative arbiter of true statements, there’s no reason to apply it. If you do not assume libertarian free will, you have no one to argue against. If you do not assume morality to be an objective commodity, you have no reason to argue in the first place. If you do not assume mind is primary, there is no “you” to make any argument at all.
Yes indeed. Classical theism is one thing, and design theory is quite another — as classical theists like Hart and analytic theologians like Plantinga are at pains to stress. For that matter, this distinction is also stressed by he advocates of design theory who insist that their theory is strictly based on the evidence and has no metaphysical implications at all.
That’s not what I asked you. Take another look at my question.
When you make an argument for the first time, does that mean you will then actually start to exist?
It’s nice that you’ve found a bit of text that you can respond to any argument with. How’s that working out for you?
“If you do not assume the principles of sound reason, you have nothing to argue with.”
137 hits for that exact phrase. You are becoming BA77, you do see that right?
Hall called that the “categorio-centric predicament” and discussed it at length in his book Philosophical Systems: A Categorial Analysis. He’s not quite as hopeless about the effect of this predicament as you seem to be here–but he doesn’t offer anything that is precisely a road out. FWIW, I spend a lot of time on the issue in my paper “The Various Cognitive Predicaments of Everett W. Hall” which can be found in my book on Hall.
This description of the norms of rational dialogue rests on a persistent conflation between concepts and conceptions: the general concept that plays the requisite transcendental role, and the specific conception that fills it in more precisely. That is morally problematic, as I shall attempt to show.
If we resolve to describe the semantic & epistemic situation at the transcendental level, and ‘bracket’ all the specific conceptions whereby the transcendental roles get specified, what we find is rather something like this:
The difference between Murray’s way of specifying the conditions of rational dialogue and my way of doing so is that his way is tailored to the metaphysics of classical theism, and mine is not.
On my way of specifying the conditions of rational dialogue, they involve very “thin” or “sparse” metaphysical commitments. One advantage of doing so is that theists and naturalists can both find their own way of accepting, endorsing, and justifying these conditions from within the explanatory resources of their respective metaphysical systems.
(The main reason I am intrigued with Wilfrid Sellars is that he is the first philosopher to almost succeed in showing how a naturalist can do precisely that. The rest is just filling in the details. I hope to have that done before I go up for tenure.)
By contrast, Murray’s way of specifying the conditions of rational dialogue already contains within it the specifications of theism. Hence non-theists are precluded a priori from being permitted to play the game of giving and asking for reasons.
The question then is: should one’s ability to play the game of giving and asking for reasons depend on the metaphysical views that one adopts?
I cannot see how, based on the following analogy.
The arguments for a secular political sphere, from Spinoza through to Rawls, all turn on the idea that the state should be neutral with regard to what Rawls calls “comprehensive doctrines”. The state shouldn’t play favorites; it should give all citizens the opportunity to develop a rational life-plan for themselves in accordance with whatever comprehensive doctrine they accept. The laws of a state must be binding of all citizens, regardless of their comprehensive doctrine, which means that laws of a just state cannot be grounded in any specific comprehensive doctrine — if the laws were grounded in a specific comprehensive doctrine, then that doctrine would be imposed (via the coercive power of the state and the threat of violence) on those who do not share it.
I think the same general point applies to the norms of rational dialogue: the norms of rational dialogue are, as the norms that all are committed to, independent from any specific metaphysical doctrines that one accepts.
If the norms of dialogue are grounded in some specific metaphysical view, as Murray has been arguing, it is a kind of “normative violence” — not the material violence of the state, but the normative violence of “you don’t get the right to speak!” — the same kind of normative violence that for centuries men have wielded against women, heterosexuals against LGBT persons, white people against black and brown persons.
In short, Murray’s view that the norms of rational dialogue presuppose his own metaphysics is an inherently oppressive and unjust view. I therefore urge him to abandon it in the name of basic human decency.
KN,
That’s right. There are few (if any) ironclad assumptions that must be made before thought and investigation can proceed. There is a danger in committing oneself to an assumption prematurely, because you may be committing yourself to a falsehood. Far better to make your assumptions tentative and provisional, so that they can be jettisoned or revised if necessary. Making them “non-negotiable” is pure silliness.
It’s why I keep stressing that absolute certainty is mythical. If absolute certainty is unattainable, then ironclad and non-negotiable assumptions are foolish.
walto,
No, the mistake is that you were arguing that an omniscient God could not be fooled, when that isn’t a point of disagreement:
That is not my view.
I am arguing that while an omniscient God cannot be fooled, he cannot know that he is not being fooled.
KN said:
No. The conditions I described (which are not just necessary for rational discourse, but for any form of coherent, intelligible existence) are not themselves “tailor made” for theism, but rather are simply necessary for proper discourse and proper sentient existence. Where we differ lies rather in the pursuit towards the justification for those conditions follows two entirely different paths.
You wish to satisfy those conditions as mere “norms”. If those conditions are mere norms, then they are not even worth debating. Who gives a crap if a “norm” is served or not? What difference does it make? It’s all semantics, customs, rituals and traditions. We might as well be playing word games because that’s what norms reduce debate to: word games that do nothing but move thoughts around without any actual facts or truths that can judge them.
“Norms” are not a justification for rational discourse and proper life; they can only be a justification for pretending one is engaging in rational discourse and pretending one is leading a proper life, because there are no such actual things.
Without god, again, it’s all ultimately pointless and meaningless – including whatever norms one is employing to use as an existential blinker.
The difference between KN’s path and mine towards justification of the conditions of rational discourse and proper living is that mine includes the possibility that god exists; KN’s doesn’t. God satisfies the need for those conditions to be actual, not mere, self-deceiving norms. Thus, God is the better, more efficient, more satisfying, more intuitive answer, whereas norms were basically just invented to find a way to avoid needing god as an existential premise for the conditions necessary for existence.
KN said:
When your only recourse is to abandon the logic, attack the politics of an argument and then resort to emotional/rhetorical pleading, you’ve admitted defeat.
The conditions for rational discourse and proper living are logically inescapable; referring to that fact as “oppressive” and “unjust” is just deconstructivist, post-modernist whining. Truths and facts don’t go away just because you don’t like what they imply.
Would that be the god that does not matter if it exists or not to you? The one that you don’t care if it exists or not as long as you act as if it does?
William J. Murray,
Two quick comments:
(1) I talk about “norms” here to avoid the regress of rules problem that Wittgenstein, Kripke, Sellars, and Brandom all examine in minute detail;
(2) My view of rational discourse is perfectly compatible with the possibility that God exists; I just don’t think that the existence of God is presupposed by an specification of the norms of rational discourse themselves.
William’s god is too weak to make a universe where people can communicate without knowing for sure if god exists or not.
Again, I believe you mean something weaker by “omniscient” than the classical theist generally does. That God would know if IT were being fooled (which, of course, IT can’t be).
That’s an interesting post, KN. Thanks. Is this something you’ve discussed in any published stuff?
Okay, then; I said it was invented to avoid it – or rather, allow one to avoid it if they wanted to. Understanding the necessary conditions inexorably leads to theism; all that “norms” do is allow one to park before they get to the end of the line and say “I don’t need to go any farther than this to justify my participation in rational discourse and hold that I am living a proper life.”
You park there not because your views are incompatible with god, but because for whatever reason you just don’t want to park your car at the end of the road in the theistic camp. Norms are a pallid, self-deceiving diversion. Only theism satisfies the necessary conditions.
It doesn’t, actually. That’s precisely where you go wrong.
Nope; that argument is presented here at TSZ for the first time today. If we decide it has merit I’ll put in my next article.