Good news from the Barna Group, a Christian polling organization:
Atheism on the Rise
For Gen Z, “atheist” is no longer a dirty word: The percentage of teens who identify as such is double that of the general population (13% vs. 6% of all adults). The proportion that identifies as Christian likewise drops from generation to generation. Three out of four Boomers are Protestant or Catholic Christians (75%), while just three in five 13- to 18-year-olds say they are some kind of Christian (59%).
This was particularly interesting…
Teens, along with young adults, are more likely than older Americans to say the problem of evil and suffering is a deal breaker for them.
…as was this:
Nearly half of teens, on par with Millennials, say “I need factual evidence to support my beliefs” (46%)—which helps to explain their uneasiness with the relationship between science and the Bible. Significantly fewer teens and young adults (28% and 25%) than Gen X and Boomers (36% and 45%) see the two as complementary.
Here are a few:
Life After Faith by Philip Kitcher
A Significant Life by Todd May
Knowledge and Its Place in Nature by Hilary Kornblith
Articulating the World: Conceptual Understanding and the Scientific Image by Joseph Rouse
Language, Thought, and Other Biological Categories by Ruth Millikan
Plato’s Camera by Paul Churchland
Second Philosophy: A Naturalistic Method by Penelope Maddy
Kantian Naturalist,
Most of those seem to be works of philosophy my question was more scientific in nature.
Which of the titles give a scientific reason for why a hairless ape should develop a non-evolutionary notion of success naturally from evolutionary processes alone.
thanks is advance
peace
Regardless of whether that is true, my decision doesn’t actually maximize my evolutionary success, so obviously I am perfectly capable of acting against my evolutionary interests. Now, I feel that should settle this discussion, but I have the feeling that you are going to tell something else that I ought to be thinking or doing.
I feel united to other people by love, friendship, and mutual interests, like enjoying slightly surreal discussions on obscure weblogs. Odd as it may seem, I do not generally do genetic testing on other people I meet.
Not By Genes Alone by Peter Richerson and Robert Boyd
The Secret of Our Success by Joseph Heinrich
A Different Kind of Animal by Robert Boyd
The Evolved Apprentice by Kim Sterelny
The Enigma of Reason by Hugo Mercier and Dan Sperber
Beyond Human Nature by Jesse Prinz
The Creative Spark by Agustin Fuentes
Cognitive Gadgets by Cecilia Heyes (forthcoming April 2018)
More Than Nature Needs by Derek Bickerton
Not at all, its not my business to tell you how to think or behave. I am interested to know why given your perspective you think it’s possible for you to voluntarily think and act contrary to your evolutionary interests and why you would think it’s a good thing to do so.
That explains the feelings you have it does not explain why you have those feelings.
At least not consciously. If evolutionary naturalism is true there is no reason that your overarching goals in life should have to reach the level of conscious awareness to be effective. Correct?
peace
fifth, to Corneel:
Because anyone with a couple of neurons to rub together can see that it’s possible — for example, when a modern person chooses to use contraceptives.
If my actual interests conflict with those of my genes, then I’ll choose in favor of my interests, with contraceptive use being a prime example of a choice made in such circumstances.
This is simple stuff, fifth. Why are you having such trouble with it?
How do you know what his evolutionary interests are?
There is no reason that they should remain inaccessible to the conscious mind either, correct?
Perhaps you should expand on your theory of the unconscious, you have it doing a lot of stuff.
I have been told that the organisms that have more viable offspring over the long haul will tend to exceed those that have less.
All things being equal I would expect Evolution will do what ever it takes to make him expand his genetic footprint. Including making his overarching goals in life hidden from his conscious awareness.
What I don’t understand is why according to your perspective any of this would be considered bad.
If I understand the role of the unconscious in evolutionary naturalism it’s pretty much the same role as everything else about you. Ultimately produce as many genetic progeny as possible
peace
It explains the goals he has which was your question. The benefits of group coordination are evident throughout the animal kingdom. There are many ways group cohesion is enhanced. The family unit for instance, the clan. Population level survival
Many people say the organized religion was created for that purpose, obedience to a belief creating group cohesion and control by virtue of a promise of a way to cheat oblivion or just effectively a way to avoid eternal suffering.
Nationalism, the nation survives even is the individual does not. Sacrifice of the individual for the group.
False, again and as usual.
That’s not really how evolution works.
Evolution doesn’t have goals. It’s not as if evolution is sitting around thinking, “how am I going to make this critter reproduce as much as possible?”
Evolutionary theory posits a set of mechanisms through which the distribution of traits in a population tends to change over time.
If you can’t understand that basic idea, then everything else you assume about evolution is sheer nonsense.
So it’s not really about the love, friendship, and mutual interests it about the group coordination which leads to evolutionary success. It’s simple benefits analysis Correct?
So if if the situation arises where love, friendship, and mutual interests don’t happen contribute to evolutionary success they will tend to be abandoned.
Those are people that have your perspective of course. From your perspective there is really no driving force above evolution in the animal kingdom.
Anything whatsoever that exists in the animal kingdom is there because it tends to produce more viable offspring. That includes our values and desires, beliefs and associations correct?
peace
Of course that is true,
I did not intend to anthropomorphize evolution. It really does not care if your beliefs are justified or not. It does not care about anything It’s not a person like God. It’s just the inescapable overarching constraint to everything associated with you.
All that really matters is that you produce as many viable offspring as possible and that is not because of some intentional goal as far as evolution goes it’s just a cold hard fact of nature.
There is definitely no meaning or purpose to your existence. Correct?
peace
False.
False.
It’s actually kind of amazing to see someone who claims to love truth and yet say things that are completely false and widely understood to be false.
By your own standards, because you identity truth and God, every time you opine on evolutionary theory you are openly rebelling against God.
Simple math,
Evolution is not God, it does not know anything, it has no foresight. Since most of the species that existed are extinct we might say evolution is more successful at removing species than preserving them.
Why would it be beneficial if the goal was to expand it genetic footprint to hide it from conscious mind? I mean besides being beneficial for your argument?
The only thing so far that according to my perspective in all of this that I consider bad is your logic , then again I strongly suspect that the logic behind your argument is not the logic of your argument. But then evolution made me suspicious.
Sex maybe, but the costs associated with as many genetic progeny as possible might make the unconscious consider what it’s selfish interests are.
peace
False, again and as usual.
But by all means, continue to openly mock and reject God by lying about evolution.
I’m not lying. This is my honest impression of what you claim to believe.
If you believe something different you could explain yourself. I’m not a mind reader,
peace
Based on how you’ve responded to what I’ve already said in this thread, you’re not good at the other kind of reading either.
Perhaps your worldview causes you to unconsciously misunderstand what people write if it challenges that worldview. Survival of worldview , evolution in action.
No, it would not be my worldview that causes that it would be evolution that causes that. My worldview would just be a side effect the evolutionary process.
Of course that is if we assume your worldview is true
peace
look if I don’t fully understand what you say I will ask clarifying questions. That is how discussion works.
If you don’t like the implications I’m drawing from what you say perhaps you should clarify or tell me why I’m mistaken.
All of this boils down to your apparent inability or unwillingness to articulate why in your perspective it’s a good thing to have justified beliefs beyond saying that it will lead to “success”.
You might want to start there.
peace
I don’t know. It’s not my worldview.
Perhaps an organism with a mind in which the conscious and subconscious are in conflict will result in more genetic progeny.
The only thing that we can say for certain is that if evolutionary naturalism is true everything about you including your beliefs and values will tend to be ultimately conducive to that end.
peace
fifthmonarchyman,
Could your omnipotent god have created us through random mutations and cumulative selection?
no randomness is by definition unpredictable even by an omnipotent God, God could not create anything specific using randomness.
If he chose God could create a world that through random mutations and cumulative selection would tend to produce people like us but in that case evolutionary naturalism would be false.
peace
Could an omnipotent god give purpose & meaning to the lives & dreams of evolved creatures?
I regard justification as a social practice. A belief is justified if there are good reasons for holding it. What makes a reason count as good (or at least good enough) depends on the local epistemic norms of the group to which justification is presented. The function of reasons lies in the social practice of reasoning. We reason together in order to decide what to do, what makes good sense for us to do. The need for reasoning comes to an end when a course of cooperation likely to be successful is agreed upon.
This is precisely why beliefs can be justified and yet be false: because local epistemic norms can fail to be truth-tracking. (To the Azande, crop failure is evidence of witchcraft. Their belief is false, but it is justified by their shared local epistemic norms.)
And of course there is no iron-clad guarantee that shared epistemic norms are genuinely truth-tracking. But that doesn’t mean that we haven’t learned things about which kinds of shared epistemic norms are likely to be truth-tracking and which ones are not. Shared local epistemic norms are more likely to be truth-tracking to the extent that they direct attention to detecting actual regularities in the phenomenon that are encountered.
Yes of course.
But an omnipotent God does not exist in your worldview.
So if you want to have purpose and meaning you need to be able to somehow get them from evolutionary processes that are at best indifferent to those things.
That is what the question I’m asking KN is all about.
peace
Or from movies.
OK,
So why is it good in your worldview to have justified beliefs?
peace
Evolutionary processes are indifferent to purpose and meaning. Organisms are not. All sorts of organisms are sensitive to what is meaningful to them and act purposively with regard to what they perceive as significant.
According to your worldview Movies ultimately exist to increase the genetic progeny of those who create them. If you think you get meaning and purpose from them it’s only because such a belief would tend to increase your genetic progeny.
Correct?
peace
I don’t understand this question.
Are you asking “why is good that any individual conform to the shared epistemic norms of his or her cultural group?” or “why is it good that shared epistemic norms evolved at all in the first place?” or something else entirely?
now we are getting somewhere
Given your worldview why is that exactly and is it a good thing?
please be specific and it might prevent a long series of clarifying questions 😉
So you can have evolved creatures with purpose and shit…
That means this crap has nothing to do with evolution, it’s all about god being necessary for all the fancy things you claim require god.
You’re a pathetic one trick pony, and with a failed trick
That is the problem
The first one
You said that people tend to prefer justified beliefs.
I asked why is that a good thing.
You said because It leads to success
I asked you to define success
You are apparently saying that success is “conforming to the shared epistemic norms of his or her cultural group”
Now I ask
Why is that a good thing?
peace
No,
It’s about why justified beliefs are good in your worldview?
I want to understand why you believe and act the way you do.
KN says it’s good that beliefs are justified I want to understand what he means by that.
I think It’s important that we understand where the other side is coming from.
I believe God is necessary for everything that exists that goes with out saying.
You deny that God exists yet claim that things like purpose and meaning and goodness exist I want to know what that means because such a claim makes no sense from my worldview.
peace
evolution is not remotely the same thing as evolutionary naturalism
peace
Please provide a definition of both
Yes
That you’re too dim to notice comes as no surprise. You don’t see how according to “evolutionary naturalism” one can have justified beliefs, morals, purpose in their life, blah, blah, blah. But by your own admission, the evolutionary part of “evolutionary naturalism” is not an issue, therefore the problem in your narrow little mind is “naturalism” or the lack of a magical problem solver in the sky you call god
No. The ‘worldview’ you are satirizing is barely familiar to me at all. It’s a nice sermon you could offer your minister, though. Like hell without the brimstone.
BTW, lumping together “evolution” & “naturalism” as if belief in evolution was a worldview is as stupid as every other thing you say, and that’s a lot of stupid
No. The ‘worldview’ you are satirizing is barely familiar to me at all. It’s a nice sermon you could offer your minister, though. Like hell without the brimstone.
You just pile one absurdity atop the next, apparently under the delusion that the more of them you post, the more sense you’re making.
FMM’s hidden assumption is that purpose, meaning, etc.. come from our “creator”, so if evolution “created” us, then that’s the only possible source of purpose and meaning. Lulz
fifth:
Because justified beliefs are more likely to be true, and “reality-based” is generally better than “fantasy-based”.
Why is this so confusing to you?
FMM wants to know (or claims he wants to know) why non-theists are entitled to believe that justified beliefs are more likely to be true.
In my view, it’s because beliefs that are arrived at through the game of giving and asking for reasons, aimed at successful cooperation, are more likely to be sensitive to the underlying real patterns and causal regularities — since if they weren’t sensitive or sensitive enough to those underlying real patterns, the cooperative actions would not actually be successful.
Right. He apparently didn’t pick up any of his values from his parents, teachers or TV shows, like the rest of us, since according to ‘his worldview,’ he must have ‘gotten’ them either from Jesus or from a particular scientific theory he happens not to enjoy.
It’s just a large pile of gibberish that is getting larger by the minute.
Or from books
Humans invented contraception therefore a method of not having genetic progeny exists in order to increase genetic progeny. QED
At least this means he wasn’t saddled with any troublesome traits like humility or teachability.
Glen Davidson