What is Philosophy?
Is it “unintelligible answers to insoluble problems”? (Henry Adams)
Is a philosopher “a blind man in a dark room looking for a black cat that isn’t there”? (Lord Bowen)
Is philosophy “a route of many roads leading from nowhere to nothing”? (Ambrose Bierce)
In a recent post a comment was made about how nice it was to have three trained philosophers engaged in making comments.
But is anyone else even paying attention? Does what these trained philosophers say even matter?
Isn’t it true that:
“There is only one thing a philosopher can be relied on to do, and that is to contradict other philosophers.” (William James)
“one cannot conceive of anything so strange and so unbelievable that it has not been said by one philosopher or another.” (Rene Descartes)
“The point of philosophy is to start with something so simple as to seem not worth stating, and to end with something so paradoxical that no one will believe it.” (Bertrand Russell)
Philosopher: “someone who doesn’t know what he is talking about but makes it sound like it’s your fault.”
Can any of our trained philosophers even offer a defense of philosophy beyond “it pays the bills”?
More specifically, what is the value of philosophy for an atheist?
[Changed Ambrose Pierce to Ambrose Bierce. HT: keiths]
Need I point out, Neil, that atheism is not supposed to be a religion?
Mung,
You seem to have lost the context.
Not really. I’m looking at the moral high ground you’ve staked out for yourself and wondering where you are.
fifthmonarchyman,
What you wrote was:
That’s a statement of fact, not of opinion. It is at odds with my experience and that of several others in this forum. You can’t make assertions like that and then hide behind “That’s, like, my opinion, man.” The intellectually honest response to being challenged on this is to either back up your claim or retract it.
I have yet to see a single description of the Christian God on this forum that comes even close to approximating the God that I believe in.
I have seen lots of what sound like angry sour grapes emotions directed at the sort of deity that is often taught in shallow Sunday school lessons or portrayed in the popular media.
Notice I did not say every Atheist had rejected a straw-man. I’m familiar with at least one apostate that seems to have abandoned a mature nuanced Christian faith so such a thing happens from time to time. I just don’t think it’s the rule.
What I do find to be interesting is that most of the folks here claim to have been raised in at least a nominal christian environment. That seems to lend credence to my claim that often Atheism is not a rejection of the concept of Gods in general but a rejection of one god believed in as a child.
Where are the folks raised in self proclaimed atheist homes or Hindu homes for that matter?
I also find it interesting that several folks here believe that a Buddhist or Pantheist or a Panentheist is an atheist simply because he rejects a personal deity.
and remember my original comment was in response to the inferred suggestion that an impersonal uncaused first cause does not qualify as God.
So I apologize if my observation offends that surely was not my intent. I was only trying to respond to a question directed toward me. I had no idea it would have the effect it did
peace
fifthmonarchyman,
I wasn’t raised in a ‘self-proclaimed atheist home’, but was raised in one where religion did not matter to anyone. I don’t recall atheism or belief being mentioned much. But (like most people in the UK) I went to a school with a compulsory element of religious instruction. I found it unconvincing, and doubted that a local, cultural version had much chance of being universally correct. I decided (aged about 11) that my answer to the question ‘do you believe in God?’ would be ‘no’, not ‘which one?’.
So, unavoidably, the first God I didn’t think was likely was the God of my local culture, but I did not make a special effort to reject a version of it, simply the whole concept of a (often suspiciously human-like) entity observing, judging, helping, creating or whatever other job we entrust to it this week.
I personally was more amused than annoyed by your statement. It’s not ‘this God’ or ‘that God’ that I don’t believe in. It’s all of ’em.
I was raised in a churchgoing family and was confirmed at age eleven. But I was already suspicious. I had firsthand experience with liars for God, but I was curious about religion. So I bought a simple book on comparative religion, around age eleven or twelve.
What I learned was that religion is interesting, but faith is just a way people manipulate and control each other. Not unlike the way some people insist on declarations of love or patriotism or loyalty.
Curiosity is the natural state of mind. Faith is the enemy of curiosity. Particularly public declarations of faith. That is pathological.
I have faith in the loyalty of family and friends, but it is based on long experience. The need to fend off the fear of death with fairy tales is a socially induced pathology.
[nods] Yep. You may not realize it, Fifth, old bean, but this gosh-no-that-isn’t-my-god schtick is sufficiently common that I have serious doubts whether any two Believers really do share the same concept of god. Which, in turn, is one of the reasons I don’t buy into the whole ‘god’ concept: the people who do buy into the whole ‘god’ concept, can’t make up their minds what the fuck they’ve bought into.
Seriously.
Ask any five Believers what ‘god’ is, and you’re likely to get six answers. “God is love!” Okay, god’s an emotion. “No—God is a Person!” Oh. Not an emotion, then? Okay… “No—God is three Persons, who are all one unified entity, except when they’re not!” Uh… what..? “What’s more, God is fully human and fully divine, both at the same time, and this is not an irreconcilable contradiction because my priest said it’s not, so there!”
Believe in god? Thanks, but I’ll wait until you Believers hash out what the hell this ‘god’ thing even is, first.
Preach it! Amen!
The fact that no two people see the same god kind of reinforces the notion that it’s something people make up. This gets really ugly when one person or one tribe of people decide that everyone has to believe the same thing.
That’s intellectual circumcision. A tribal identifier.
fifthmonarchyman,
Please feel free to present that description.
Please provide some examples. That would help support your claim, although it would still leave you far from demonstrating it conclusively.
That doesn’t follow. When one finds that the gods of their parents and culture are unevidenced, it makes one more likely to apply stepticism to other god claims as well.
Do a web search for “muslim atheists”. They exist. Some even survive.
The issue isn’t whether or not it is offensive. The issue is that it is wrong.
petrushka,
11 was the age when I realized it was nonsense as well. I received a Bible as a prize in some Sunday School contest and sat down to read it. Genesis 1, okay, heard the preacher talk about that. Genesis 2 . . . wait a minute, didn’t I just read a different version of this?
The rest of it didn’t hang together any better. By the time I reached the blood sacrifice in the New Testament I was highly skeptical.
Kantian Naturalist,
Aww, damn, did I step in one of the philosophy threads by accident?
I’ll just leave this here and be on my way:
“That’s why it’s always worth having a few philosophers around the place. One minute it’s all is truth beauty and is beauty truth, and does a falling tree in the forest make a sound if there’s no one there to hear it, and then just when you think they’re going to start dribbling one of ’em says, incidentally, putting a thirty-foot parabolic reflector on a high place to shoot the rays of the sun at an enemy’s ships would be a very interesting demonstration of optical principles.”
— Terry Pratchett, Small Gods
So everyone’s story falls can pretty much be summarized like this
That is exactly what I mean about rejecting a straw man from your youth. Nominal or lukewarm Christianity is not Christianity at all. You don’t have to take my word for it listen to the Head of the faith
quote:
“‘I know your works: you are neither cold nor hot. Would that you were either cold or hot! So, because you are lukewarm, and neither hot nor cold, I will spit you out of my mouth.
(Rev 3:15-16)
end quote:
You reject belief in God because of what you think people who believe in God can agree on. That sounds really logical doesn’t it ;-).
What would you think about someone who rejected atheism because atheists disagree?
I happen to have interacted quite a bit with atheists from Muslim backgrounds and I can tell you from personal experience that most of them I talked to have not given much thought to the existence of the Christian God. They are atheists because they reject Allah.
Peace
I find it really interesting that no one seems to be bothered by my contention that an unmoved mover is God even if it is not personal
Instead what made folks angry was when I said that you did not reject my god when you became an atheist
By the standard of the Cosmological Argument none of you are atheists any way as far as I can tell from this conversation.
I wonder what it is about a personal god that bugs you so?
peace
I’m not bothered by it, but I don’t think it’s right. IMHO, in order to be “God” you have to be worthy of worship. And, as I’ve already posted, I don’t see why a Big Bang (for example) is that.
Furthermore, I think most theists would agree with me about this.
If you want to have a bible study give me your email address and I will be happy to oblige. But this is probably not the proper forum for that sort of thing 😉
peace
interesting
So a being could have all the attributes that are associated with the God of the Bible and still not be God because walto doesn’t feel he deserves worship?
That is a lot of power you have there. If you have the power to determine who is or is not God . It’s almost like you have assumed the role of God for yourself.
peace
Goes with saying.
I’m pretty sure you don’t think the big bang qualifies as an uncaused first cause. Do you? If something as complex as the big bang can spring into existence uncaused why stop there.
Why not go the whole nine yards and postulate a fully formed mature universe from nothing?
peace
Blindness on your part.
Welp. besides the fact that it’s transparently wrong and not in accordance with any rational experience of our mutual reality …
There’s the fact that cultures which encourage belief in a ‘personal god’ breed common religious scum (not necessarily your kind of christian, but definitely True Christians, and definitely scum) who use their specific god as an excuse to slaughter each other, to murder the innocent bystanders to their sectarian warfare, to murder and enslave women, to murder non-heterosexual and non-gender-conforming people of all kinds, all with the explicit approval and encouragement of their church leaders and their holy scriptures.
If all those True Christians instead believed in a non-personal, non-verbal, non-interactive started-the-universe-then-went-away-and-never-cared-about-you-anyways type deism, then we humans would be immeasurably better off.
No god-given holy writ, no blasphemy, no heresy, no blasphemers, no heretics, no need to put the heretics to the torch. Easy peasy.
All “personal-god” based religion is crap. It’s all harmful. Only some of it is slightly less harmful than others.
Don’t act more like an ass than you have to.
Your conduct is unbecoming of a true christian.
So you are bugged by a personal god because of what certain cultures do? That sounds pretty logical. 😉
What if I rejected atheism because of what certain atheist nations have done?
…….I hope the folks can see what I was getting at when I talk about rejecting a straw man
peace
PS
funny you should mention scum there is some history there:
quote:
when slandered, we entreat. We have become, and are still, like the scum of the world, the refuse of all things.
(1Co 4:13)
end quote:
fifthmonarchyman,
I’m not a cosmologist and don’t feel like I’m in a position to substitute my judgement for those who are. But it dosen’t matter, anyhow. My point was only that if the Big Bang *WAS* an uncaused cause, that alone would be insufficient to call that event ‘God.’ And, as I said, I believe you to be in a tiny minority of theists, if you disagree with me about that.
Please do feel free to reject “atheism” because of what you claim certain “atheist nations” have done.
You won’t find me making the same asshole-type comments about why you might believe that, as the asshole comments you make about why we don’t believe in your christian religion.
Alternatively, xe doesn’t think in the least that an uncaused-cause Big Bang is named “God” and is just trying to score points against the atheists, no matter what.
Xe already identified as a fervent christian, and not just any old lukewarm not-true christian. Their god has a name and its name is not “Big Bang”.
I actually do think that a universe which itself bubbles up consciousness in (at least some) physical entities can be worthy of the term “god”. But that’s because I’m not bound by a christian religion which, not that long ago, would have burned me at the stake for daring to think that “God” was anything so impersonal (and so limited – “God” is of course bigger than the universe).
Where’s the creating the universe from prior to/outside of the universe? Where’s the “And god saw that it was good”? Where’s the Heavenly Father? Where’s the sitting in judgement?
Not in the Big Bang, that’s for damn sure.
Christians can believe in any kind of garbage they want, and still call themselves christians (and who am I to judge their petty little heresies?) but there have never been any kind of christians which identify the Big Bang as “God”. Caused by god, sure, sustained by god, sure, but identical to “God” Not christian.
Have you even looked at the cosmological argument?
from here:https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Quinque_viae
quote:
Therefore it is necessary to arrive at a first mover, put in motion by no other; and this everyone understands to be God.
end quote:
“Everyone” is probably more than a tiny minority. surely you understand this
Christians my self included don’t hold to an impersonal god so we would not call an impersonal god our “God” but we would not call Allah or Karma our god either.
Yahweh is the unmoved mover plus some other attributes.
Allah is the unmoved mover plus another set of attributes.
The god of Zoroastrianism is the unmoved mover plus yet another set of attributes.
I’m sure the unmoved mover you hold to has different attributes that any of these. But it shares the status of unmoved mover in common with all of them,
That is the point
The question is not what particular attributes a theist believes the unmoved mover has. The question is whether theists agree that the unmoved mover is God
and we do.
peace
I believe that is technically describable as a sweeping generalization.
It’s rude to tell other people what they believe, particularly when they don’t actually believe that.
Would it have helped if I included the phrase “from every thing I’ve seen here” or “from what I can tell” ?
If so is it possible to amend the record? I really don’t want to be seen as rude.
If some evidence is presented as to the inaccuracy of my statement I will withdraw it all together.
As it is I think I’m the best judge of what I believe and what folks are proclaiming that they rejected does not appear to have a lot in common with it
peace
fifthmonarchyman,
The not finding-it-very-likely thing, I guess.
fifthmonarchyman,
Try reading for comprehension. The Congregationalist church I attended was lukewarm only in comparison to the Baptists down the street and the Hosanna’s the next town over who would not have been out of place next door to Westboro Baptist.
Clearly disparaging the deconversion of others meets some need within you. That doesn’t make your view in any way accurate. You, too, could lose your faith, should you choose to think about it too hard.
fifthmonarchyman,
So that’s why you don’t quote your scripture here. Oh, wait….
If you want to know why your particular beliefs are unconvincing to atheists, present them. I doubt they’re all that different from others I’ve encountered, but I’m open to being surprised.
I’m not even sure what that means. Do you think genuine faith is something you can loose? Do you think that I believe that?
Faith is not a choice and it’s not the abandonment of curiosity or reason.
It’s simply confidence in what you know to be true. It’s like my confidence that there is no piranha in the pool. Thinking hard only increases faith if the object is trustworthy
It’s statements like this that make me think you have rejected a straw man.
I believe that Jesus is Lord.
That sentence is short and sweet but I expect to spend the rest of my days unpacking all that it means.
Every day I discover new implications that flow from that one sentence. I expect to continue to do so the rest of my life.
That you would think I could unpack all of it here to you is yet more evidence that you did not understand what I believe when you rejected it.
Instead if you are truly interested in understanding the God you reject lets try it this way
Tell me what part of the Christian faith you find to be demonstrably false and I’ll tell you if that is something I believe.
I completely understand why you would not be interested in loosing your faith so I don’t expect any feed back on this one
peace
It would seem that someone touched a nerve!
Age 11. So wise for one so young.
Ah yes. Another wise 11 year old.
And yet for all those centuries Jews and Christians never noticed. God they must be ignorant (to the eyes of an 11 year old.)
Blood sacrifice didn’t make it’s first appearance in the New Testament.
Yes.
No, I’m pretty sure that you don’t believe that.
What is it about the number 11? You read a book on comparative religion at around 11 or 12 and never looked back. Wasn’t it great to be so young?
We’re all different ages when we stop believing in fairy tales. Some of us never do…
You think your characterization of Christianity or theism as a “fairy tale” helps out here do you?
Let me explain how I came to not believe in Santa Claus. My older brother “stopped believing” and as the eldest and the first of us kids to do so he got special presents that year. So, needless to say, I “stopped believing” the next year.
Did I get special presents?
It would seem that I exchanged one fairy tale for another and got nothing from the bargain.
As explained several times above, just because something is an old argument, doesn’t mean it’s a good argument. There are well known problems with both one of the premises and the derivation of the conclusion from them.
Also, it’s quite clear from a lot of your posts that you mean much more by “God” than unmoved mover. So, yeah, not only would only very small minority of Christians take whatever happened to be the first cause as God (if it had nothing else going for it), I doubt you would either. And this is so not just in spite of the cosmological argument, but, likely, because of it–or at least its fairly obvious defects in proving what Christians actually want in a God even were it to be a convincing argument for a first cause.
As I’ve said before, the ontological arguments are better for the purpose of getting to something worthy of worship, because they require various types of perfection. Also Descartes, Leibniz and Plantinga (if not Anselm) had to deal with many more objections from much more competent interlocutors.
For all you or I actually know, fifth, the universe began with a Big Bang –nothing prior to it whatever. If that’s true, I don’t think it would be God. Do you?
For me, it was because my mind matured and my post-child intellect found lots of ways that Santa was at odds with reality in terms of purported abilities, aims and origins story.
The payoff is “the truth”, and you may find it uglier than pretty lies.
I think the Santa Claus claims are at least easier to get a handle on and seem to be falsifiable in principle.
God defenses tend to jello (and on this site insults).
I’d like to ask mung whether, if cosmologists were able to prove to a moral certainty that the universe began with a big bang–nothing whatever before it–whether he would call that event “God” and consider it worthy of worship. If not, I think we may dispense with the Second Way. That is, as keiths pointed out a long way back, it requires more to get anything one can sink ones worship fangs into. And if that’s so, we want THE WHOLE ARGUMENT, not some part you’re particularly fond of (even though it doesn’t work so good).
walto, the classical arguments do not rely on there being a beginning to the universe. So the question, I humbly submit, is misguided.
That said, to your larger point, any one of the individual “ways” does not get you to the Christian God or even necessarily to a God one might consider worthy of worship. I have probably already said that in the Cosmological Argument thread.
I think Aquinas has an ontological argument as well, but I am saving that for the time being.
That said, if there is a Being keeping all things in existence at every moment and apart from Whom nothing could exist, that Being might be worthy of worship.
True?
Mung,
Why would that being want to be worshiped ? Is it a child?
Shame on you, then.
Stripped of the “being” part, this seems to become:
Things continue to exist so we should be happy.
Okay, fair enough, though some people might not be happy about that.
Why does it have to be juiced up with unnecessary verbiage?
Then what you’re saying is that most christians believe in a strawman, since that is what is taught in the Sunday School lessons you mention.
Is it not right, then, for everyone, including atheists, to reject such strawmen? Should you not defend them when they do, rather than belittling them and accusing them of missing the point?