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.
Gee, maybe to think that we evolved to deal with the world’s regularities. Not so hard, really.
Follow the rules that work in this world.
You do use logic, even though you do not do it well, at least not in these matters. But I should define “well” for the statement above, because I mean “well” as in trying to get to the truth. Logic may also serve a person well by rationalizing a person’s viewpoint as if it were superior to another’s in getting to the truth when it is not. Indeed, humans have often been rather better at the latter purposes than in getting to truth, because human interests often diverge from cross-cultural “truth.”
Of course it doesn’t, because there are various, often contrary, purposes served by logical argumentation. You are thinking logically without doing so altogether well, thereby furthering your own goals. You have to argue using logic, since humans inevitably think about such things by applying logic in part, but you clearly do not have to think thoroughly logically, nor do you.
But of course evolution did not produce only logical thought, it produced emotions and responses to human needs for which logic is often merely a tool.
Since you don’t follow logic consistently with regard to theism, you’re wrong about theism–but only according to logic. I mean, you’re still right at UD and other places where logic is used for ends other than getting at the truth, which mostly seems to be satisfying enough to you.
Your use of logic follows a common error on the part of people everywhere, which is that for you logic has to be absolute and certain, following the human desire for a certainty that has never been achieved (or at least can’t be shown to have). But logic is merely a tool shared by humans, and is neither certain in an absolute sense nor even necessarily tied to any real truth in its use, for it may be used to produce entirely erroneous results, other than to those accepting the “truths” (premises) of a particular person or group.
Yes, but it’s your problem.
Glen Davidson
No one, or everyone (at least a little). More to the point, we find out what works.
Obviously not, because it keeps changing, often according to the persons and situations involved.
Utter tripe. I would never claim, and have never claimed, that logic is whatever patterns of thought evolution produces. A host of patterns of thought has no basis in logic whatsoever.
Wrong in context. You are not wrong in your faulty logic if you just admit that you’re using logic for your own purposes.
Ever heard of computers?
Right, we have to follow your particular preferences, or it isn’t logic.
No, I know something about how intersubjective agreement occurs, how people can come to consensus over certain rules of thinking and about world regularities.
Science only worked when it gave up on theistic assumptions and realized that logic is a tool, not something that can provide all of the answers we want and need.
Glen Davidson
What the hell is “proper living” anyway? William, do tell!
I’m not sure where you see absurdity. To me, it seems almost right.
I expect that we didn’t evolve to have a particular way of formalizing logic. But we did evolve to be able to think. I suggest you look at “norms of logic” as norms as to how we put a formal structure around that kind of thinking.
If ignoring theism is a successful strategy, maybe you should try it.
Neil,
🙂
The way you do it is not as different as you think it is.
I think it is self evident that we have evolved in such a way that having put our hand in a fire we make no connections. Logic smogic.
Ah, but fire only burns if you acknowledge the theistic underpinnings of the flame!
GlenDavidson said:
If it is not absolute and certain, from what grounds comes your judgement of error? You have no capacity to judge another’s logic, other than to simply point out it’s different from your own.
Neil and Glen contradict themselves with every post where they argue that logic “is” this, or “is” that, or that certain arguments are “not logical”, yet insist there is no absolute standard, that it is a mere “norm”, etc, dependent upon how one conceptualizes and interacts with reality,
Glen would have to make a case about how my version of logic is non-reconcilable with how I conceptualize and interact with reality (according to his own explanation of logic) – and he’d have to do so using my own internal concept of logic.
Yet, he does none of that any judges my logic flawed.
It’s utter madness.
William J. Murray,
Where absolute certainty is needed for knowledge, knowledge is not found.
Glen Davidson
None of that is needed for pompous pronouncement.
Keep your priorities straight.
Glen Davidson
I think the fire is Jesus speaking directly to us.
That is where you are mistaken. You are judged on your works. What works has your “logic” produced?
The “logic” of someone who thinks that smells cause disease can be judged on their ability to prevent disease. If removing the smell does not prevent disease, their logic is faulty.
What “test” have you put your logic to that elevates it above “mere evolved logic”?
GlenDavidson said:
If there is no assumed external arbiter of what is logic and what is not, and no assumed access to it, then you have the fox guarding the henhouse. All you have is your evolution and physics-produced idiosyncratic pattern of thoughts calling another idiosyncratic pattern of thoughts “illogical”, while those patterns of thoughts call your pattern of thoughts “irrational”.
Appealing to intersubjective consensus doesn’t resolve the problem, it only attempts to hide it.
And therein lies the problem, one you’ll never be able to understand. Science is about consillence. You don’t even know what the word means.
You almost have stumbled on the idea of survival of the most useful there! Keep pushing, not far to go now till you realise…
If this “external arbiter” does not actually arbitrate then all we have is your word that your logic is the “right” logic.
Oh High Priest, what other words do you claim god has whispered in your ears?
If there is an “external arbiter” then why don’t you simply ask it’s opinion on if you or GlenDavidson is correct?
William J. Murray,
Still doesn’t compel argumentation. What’s the consequence of not bothering? Particularly given that you clearly haven’t got anywhere here in several years of trying. Sticking ‘madness’ at the end of every post is a new tactic; I’m sure that will provide the vital key. This is what is so endearing about theists. They Have The Answer. Bless ’em.
By what standard do you judge that the others need ‘correction’ in their metaphysical principles? Beyond your own opinion, that is.
I think the way to think about this is to try to consider the predicates in isolation. What does it (or would it) mean for something to be omnipotent? If it required that omnipotent beings would have to be able to create something they couldn’t lift, that would mean that there would be something they couldn’t do–lift that thing. That is, it would be a contradictory property: if something had, it wouldn’t have it.
Presumably, no theist wants to require God to have a contradictory property. Thus, smart people (like Leibniz) said, in effect “What omnipotence is, is being able to do all (but only) those things that it is logically possible to do.” (Leibniz had the problem of showing that he wasn’t making everybody omnipotent with that definition, because of his odd views of personal properties–but I think he likely succeeded.)
Omniscient entities, too, can only be expected to know what it is possible to know. keiths has claimed that nothing can know of itself that it is not somehow being deceived. I don’t see why, myself, but suppose it’s true. (BTW, this issue is discussed expertly in James Van Cleve’s excellent paper “The Cartesian Circle”). Now we have to weaken our definition of omniscience as follows:
From this:
S is omniscient =df. For all propositions p, if p is true, then S knows p.
To this:
S is omniscient =df. For all propositions p, if p is true and p is such that it is possible to know it, then S knows p.
Whether or not God can be fooled is neither here nor there: it’s no part of either of these definitions of omniscience. (Probably have to look to omnipotence for something on that front.) All that must be the case is that if God CAN’T be fooled and (pursuant to the weaker version) it’s possible for God to know this, then God WILL know this. So, whether or not God would know that IT is omniscient would depend on whether (i) we agree with keiths that such a proposition is impossible to know; and (ii) which of these definitions we prefer.
keiths takes the second, weaker definition to be more sophisticated/less naive. I don’t think that choice really matters much in this context, because, in my view, the interesting questions here are first, whether anything would be really Godlike if IT could not know whether IT is being deceived, and second, whether it’s really impossible for anything to know that it is not being deceived. I take the answer to both of these to be NO. If I’m right about those, I don’t think it matters here whether we take the “more sophisticated” definition of “omniscience” or not–although this choice may matter with respect to questions involving uncountable infinities, quantum uncertainties, etc.
BTW, these scholastic, angels-on-a-pin, metaphysical questions are fun. But, IMHO, nothing too important follows from any of them. All the arguments from any of our conclusions to the existence of a deity–or anything else–are, ontological/transcendental. They don’t work.
Incidentally, my first publication in philosophy, shortly after it was too late to do my career any good, set forth a transcendental argument for the existence of the physical world: http://www.jstor.org/stable/2107618?seq=1#page_scan_tab_contents
It was never claimed to actually work, but I still think it’s pretty cool.
GlenDavidson:
The differnence is between the assumption that a truth exists regardless of human norms and subjective perspectives, and the assumption that the truth of what we are talking about is defined by those norms and subjective (even if intersubjective) perspectives. We’re not talking about just not knowing for certain something is true, but claiming that what truth means and what is true by that possibly variant meaning of “truth” is dependent upon one’s conceptualization and interaction with “reality”.
Then, without even so much as a reference to my particular conceptualization or interaction with reality, you pass judgement on the truth-value of my logical system as if both your and my “sound logic” must conform to some exterior, absolute concept of logic.
You’re contradicting yourself. You cannot pass judgement on my logic in any sense other than “it’s not like my own, so it’s wrong” – at least not unless you at the bare minimum refer to my “conceputualization and interaction with reality” and show how it does not support my version of “sound logic”.
There is no way to pass judgement (other than “you don’t agree with me so you are wrong) on the logic, and logical conclusions of others, unless (1) one either assumes that logic is absolute and binding on everyone regardless of their personal conceptualization and interaction with reality, or (2) they happen to share the same logical framework, or at least know the other’s perspective well enough to argue from that perspective.
But neither Glen nor Neil are even attempting to argue from my perspective to show the “error” in my logic; they judge it from their own logical perspective, without offering any reason why I should consider it applicable to my own life.
If the logic they are arguing from/through is not claimed to be absolute and universally binding in its inferences and conclusions, why the heck should I listen to them? My logic is serving me and my life just fine. Why are they trying to argue me out of my logic, and into theirs?
Answer: because none of them for a minute actually believe logic is what they are arguing it is.
🙂
Tour de force post!
Who’s the fox?
And clearly you don’t really trouble to found your claims, so there’s certainly no evolutionary guarantee of thinking soundly.
What an idiosyncratic use of “idiosyncratic” to describe the regularities of evolution and of physics. You could try learning the bases of knowledge, rather than operating from your simple and sterile assumptions.
It appears that’s about all logic is to you, an excuse for baseless accusation. In (some) philosophy and (most) science the rules of how things work are recognized and used to good effect.
Well, look how you “argue.” Clearly we don’t have Plantinga-given sorts of perfect thought processes inavariably producing truth.
Well, rational discourse doesn’t do much to make you think well. It doesn’t mean that reasonable conclusions aren’t reached by bodies of thinkers, however. Our justice system depends upon it.
Glen Davidson
Allan Miller said:
That all depends on what I’m trying to accomplish by posting here. I achieve what I set out to achieve here pretty much with every post, and the responses that I get here are pretty much what I expect – although, I must say, occasionally the responses far exceed what I hope to get from them. The current responses by Neil & Glen are examples of responses exceeding what I hoped I’d get when I entered this debate.
Their responses are revelatory for anyone with an open and logically discerning mind. They’re gold.
Which is what?
In what sense? What has been revealed? Or is it a secret only revealed once someone has bought your latest book?
Which you seem not to do, except when you decide to condemn others for not agreeing with you.
Of course I, by contrast to your relativism, accept that truth (broadly construed) exists beyond humans and must be found.
Sounds suspiciously close to your viewpoint.
Well clearly the human interface with reality is the only “truth” that we can be discussing. Kant, et al.
How could I pass judgment on your tripe without reference to it? Is sense just an option for you?
Your illogic shows again in the false assertion that sound logic must conform to something absolute in my view. It does seem to follow from your own simplistic absolutism, which takes words like “is” to have absolute meaning, when most of us recognize that they cannot bear such weight.
Of course the logic is “external,” in the sense that it has to conform with the observed world. That’s how we know you’re so wrong, you don’t really base your pompous claims on actual observable facts.
Oh, are you coming to the realization that you lack any basis for most of your claims, and your accusations against me rest on your absolutist conception of language that I don’t share? Because that’s why I’m not contradicting myself, you’re just so uncomprehending of others’ views, supposing that they must be as simplistic as your own.
No, I can judge anyone against observed reality, and say that they are wrong about logic and the world due to their basic lack of evidence for their premises, among other reasons. They don’t have to accept it, that’s obvious.
Of course I’m not arguing from your baseless premises. It’s bizarre to assume that I should have to do so. I also don’t care how it is or is not applicable to your life, I care about how it attempts to screw up others’ thinking for your own purposes. I judge from my logical perspective because it is shared by people who reason fruitfully and consistently about the world, at least where science and (some) philosophy is concerned.
No reason, why do you imply that there should be one?
You don’t seem very reasonable or interested in a faithful model of reality, and you’re entitled to your ignorant world and to ignoring intelligent responses to your folderol. But we also defend sound models of reality against assaults upon same.
Because you’re trying to claim that your socially-constructed worldview is the right one for describing reality, when it isn’t based upon reality, or even upon a decent sense of what language means.
Well, we don’t believe your evidence-free claims, such as the one above.
Glen Davidson
I’m sure everyone appreciates being told they are lying and *you* know the truth they are hiding even from themselves.
The Truth is out there.
People are convinced by actions. All WJM has to do is demonstrate some advantage to following his lead and people will do so.
WJM should look to people like Ghandi. He did not try to convince solely with words, he actually took action and people saw those actions and were inspired.
That’s what you are missing WJM, concrete results that would inspire others to follow your lead.
GlenDavidson said:
False? Cannot? I guess my problem is not understanding that every time you make an assertion or statement like these, you mean something along the lines of “may or may not be false”, and “cannot, or maybe can”. I’ll keep that in mind when trying to decipher your posts, which are apparently all issued as equivocations and not the assertions of certainty they appear to be.
I guess that in the land of equivocations, all utterances are understood by other equivocators as equivocations, even if they contain worlds like “false” and “cannot”.
So, why should I pay any attention to your criticisms of my logic? What end does the use of “proper” logic – even taken as an equivocation – serve? What’s the penalty for illogic?
Oh wait, you answered that:
IOW, this is all just admitted absurdism.
ROFL. Madness.
GlenDavidson said:
The evidence is written throughout every post you provided here, available for anyone capable (and willing) to see.
Your mumblings will be ignored and fade into dust as everyone forgets about you and your “work”. Others however will write words that will be remembered for the entire duration of human history. But not you.
Yes, yes, you win by default! We know this.
But how is that working out in the real-world?
Presumably you have so much time to spend on this board chatting because your fortune 500 company you own is letting you have the day off?
Is that as bright as you get?
False as in you say what can be shown not to conform to observation. And you just jump to an unwarranted conclusion that it’s all just equivocation.
There are levels of confidence, but that’s apparently not best for you.
Equivocation or certainty are the two possibilities for William.
Good for slotting the world in his simplistic binary world. Almost, but not quite, totally unrelated to the world and to my thinking about it.
I guess your mastery of language has some distance to go.
Oh, you don’t, you just jump to wrong conclusions about what I’m writing. And from your standpoint I don’t see why you should do otherwise, since getting it right seems optional for you, if even that.
Not surprised that you wouldn’t know, any more than you can recognize the difference between contingent “truth” and equivocation.
Sounding like you.
Yes, I admit it’s your absurdism, and you egregiously quotemine to make it look like my allowance of your relativism as if it had something to do with my lack thereof. You can stick with your baseless “certainties,” but that I tolerate your sloppy thinking has nothing to do with giving it an intellectual pass.
And false ascription by you.
Glen Davidson
More baseless assertion.
You never really get any better, do you?
Glen Davidson
William J. Murray,
Your purpose was expressed in the post to which I was replying: “the attempt to correct the metaphysical misunderstandings of others for their benefit and mine for the purpose of promoting good.”. If that’s your purpose, you fail miserably. But of course you’ve got a cryptic True Purpose, which is to make atheists dance, like the theistic puppet-master that you fancy yourself to be.
Yes, of course you do.
So, you’ve found some people on the internet whose intellects and worldview you consider worthy of holding up to the scrutiny and – you hope – ridicule of ‘right-thinking people’ everywhere? Excellent (wiggles fingers Mr Burns-style). Perhaps you could try the same on the night bus. There are wrong-thinking people wherever you look. One by one, you will get them to dance to your masterly tune. Or not.
I confess as to being somewhat puzzled as to the contradiction (or at least inconsistency) that Murray claims to detect in my views. No doubt I could have expressed myself better.
As I understand it, Murray thinks that the following claims are incompatible:
(1) The criteria of good argument and empirical reasoning are non-optional for human thought;
(2) These criteria are grounded in social practices.
It is not entirely clear to me as to why Murray thinks these are incompatible. Though I take some consolation in noticing that no one else here thinks that (1) and (2) are incompatible, some clarification on my part may yet be helpful.
Why might one think that (1) and (2) are incompatible? As I can see it, the illusion of incompatibility is sustained by several mistakes, chief of which is a misunderstanding of the difference between norms and conventions, and another of which is misunderstanding the relation between norms and rules.
One mistake is the assimilation of norms to conventions. A convention can be thought of here as something like a social contract: individuals agree to hold each other accountable to some standard that is constituted by that agreement. Without that agreement, the convention ceases to be binding.
While conventions are quite important, it is easy to see that not all norms are conventions, and rational norms cannot be. For reasoning is required in order for the convention to be constructed and agreed upon, so reasoning cannot be a matter of social convention. One might conclude that therefore reasoning cannot be a matter of social practice at all. But I would resist that conclusion.
Rather, I would say that there are some norms — such as the norms of rational discourse — that are woven deeply into what one might call (using Wittgenstein here) “the human form of life.” The human form of life is one constituted by social practices such as asking questions, striving for mutual understanding (under some conditions), giving commands, giving reasons, and so on.
The human form of life is not itself a social convention, but what must be in the background for there to be social conventions. It involves social practices in the sense that there are shared patterns of behavior that are sustained over time and transmitted to future generations by rules. Human beings are rule-following and rule-obeying animals. But the regress-of-rules problem threatens here: rules can be applied correctly or incorrectly. How does one decide which rule applies, and how? Does one need another rule in order to do so? That quickly leads to the regress! So one does not need a rule in order to apply a rule?
The solution, as argued by Wittgenstein (and also by Sellars and Brandom) is that we are socialized into norms, and that rules are ways of making explicit what we are already implicitly committed to simply by having been socialized into a form of life that is structured by norms — that is, the distinctively human form of life. The rules of thinking and reasoning do not somehow transcend the norms and thereby explain them; the rules are how we use language to make explicit the implicit norms themselves.
On this Wittgenstein view, norms are implicit structures of social practices rather than woven into the fabric of reality. This does make it a non-Platonic view of reasoning (one on which the rules are transcendent and explanatory). Murray is right insofar as a Platonic view of reasoning makes theism look almost unavoidable, whereas on a non-Platonic view of reasoning, theism is a respectable option among many. I argued above that the Wittgensteinian view is preferable to the Platonic view because the Platonic view “wins” only by committing normative violence.
Murray has alleged that the Wittgensteinian view — that the norms of rational discourse are implicit structures of distinctively human social practices — is inconsistent with accepting the authority of those norms. I suspect that this is partly because he conflates norms and conventions. But I also suspect it is because Murray thinks that norms of rational discourse have authority only if they are necessary: that one must conform to them. A mere “should” is insufficient unless backed up by a “must”. I don’t know why he thinks this, though I suspect it is a hankering for certainty.
I would also add that I accept a roughly Deweyan view of the origin of social practices — they evolved. And yes, that would make them as contingent as any other adaptation in the biological world. But even the synthesis of Dewey and Wittgenstein that Sellars began and I (along with many others) are continuing does not settle the metaphysical issue in favor of naturalism. There is as much room for the God of classical theism on the Wittgensteinian/Deweyan view as there is on the Platonic/Aristotelian view that Wittgenstein and Dewey (respectively) oppose.
The difference is that on that the Platonic/Aristotelian view of rational animality, theism is baked right into the cake, and on the Wittgensteinian/Deweyan view of rational animality, theism is not baked right into the cake. The interest in avoiding normative violence — akin to the interest in avoiding theocracy — is a consideration in favor of the Wittgensteinian/Deweyan conception of rational animality.
Doing so means giving up on certainty, not on faith.
This might get deep buckle up
1) I would not necessarily limit humans to just 5 senses
2) The universe is fully comprehensible to at least one human (Christ)
3) Christ’s Bride has a mystical but real (one flesh) union with him so in at least one sense it is fully comprehensible to us and me in particular.
I don’t think you quite grasp the issue. If the universe is not fully comprehensible I don’t see how we can know that induction works right now.
Perhaps we only think induction works and are mistaken.
You might counter that it seems like induction works now but what does that prove if we can’t trust our mental faculties? seems to be true does not equal true
The problem with partial comprehensibility is that there is no way to contain the chaos. Imagine an arithmetic problem that is partially correct but you don’t know where the error is or how to find it.
anyway
It’s important to remember that I am not making any kind of argument especially not one that says that since the universe is comprehensible therefore God exists.
I’m really only saying that I can know things because of the Christian God and asking you how you can know things
peace
That does not surprise me. All you are saying is that from your perspective you can’t see how certainty is possible.
well
That is my point
peace
I suppose you could be the devil, but I’d prefer to not think so. 😉
We can know it’s TRUE that snow is white if God reveals it to us
but how do you know it’s true?
peace
fifth,
How do you know that God has revealed it to you? Maybe you’ve been fooled into believing that.
As many world-views as there are people minus one.
I can’t even accuse atheists of contradicting each other, now that KN has renounced his atheism 😉
Damn you KN!
This way of putting it makes it look that the complete comprehensibility of the universe is an implication of the Incarnation, rather than a presupposition you have prior to accepting the Incarnation.
It seems to me that the right way of putting your view would be: the complete comprehensibility of the universe is an implication of the Incarnation, and in turn, the complete comprehensibility of the universe also explains why induction is generally reliable.
So the explanatory priority runs: the Logos became flesh, therefore we know that the universe is fully comprehensible, and therefore we also know that induction is generally reliable.
I think that is more consistent with everything else you say here — why you put the Logos becoming flesh at the center of your view, and why you think there’s an explanatory burden on non-theists to explain, in their terms, why induction is generally reliable.
If that’s right, then I’d urge you to avoid saying that the complete comprehensibility of the universe is a free-standing premise or presupposition from which you infer the acceptability of the Incarnation. Or maybe you weren’t saying that, but a lot of us here (including myself) thought you were saying that, and that’s where we all got stuck.
Ain’t I a stinker?
I don’t believe I have been challenging atheists to explain how they can know anything. I think it’s fair to assume they know things like I do.
I will admit though, that there is one particular atheist who confuses me. The one atheist who seems so certain while also proclaiming that certainty is a myth. But getting him to discuss epistemology seems to be a losing proposition.
My interest is more along the lines of what can we agree on with regard to what we can know and how we can know. I even started a thread on it. 🙂
I’ll admit some disappointment though at the lack of response in that thread from all those here who seem to think they possess some superior “way of knowing” that renders superfluous any other way of knowing.
Getting more and more like walto every day!
Thank you for your opinion. Given all that you’re doing is offering your opinion, whether the correspondence theory of truth “works” or not is is pretty much irrelevant. Which makes your opinion on the matter likewise irrelevant.
Or I could assume that you’re actually trying to make an argument. But then your position is just incoherent. If that matters.
Thanks to evolution, some of us are more logical than others.