So you're an atheist? Not so fast.

[Hereandnow]

Fan of Science:

There is no relationship between theism and morality. Far from it. Plato addressed this issue thousands of years ago. If God's act is moral because God is adhering to a moral standard, then we merely need to look at the standard to determine morality, and not to God. On the other hand, if one claims that regardless of what God does, it is simply moral because he does it, then morality becomes arbitrary.

Your thinking on this matter is, well, trite. Sorry, but I get the feeling I'm reading a freshman year philosophy book for some survey course in ethics. Ethics is far more profound than your ideas allow. How profound? And, what does this word 'profound' even mean? Look to the world that sits before your waking eyes. I want to say that the word, like all words, has its depth of meaning in the intuitive impact of the world. I refer to the thousand natural shocks the flesh is heir to: how powerful are these? One has to go into it, not just the abstractions that fill the content of traditional arguments; these argument are supposed to be about the world and they should be constrained and defined by this. I've always had a soft spot for Antonin Artaud, the French dramatist (and crazy person), for he showed the world to us, free of any ameliorating language: we are thrown into horror. We are the characters on the stage and cancer and chocking to death are real horrors, not part of a taxonomic index of terms. Here is where religious sentiment and thought rise up, not out of some concept of god.

As an atheist, I don't even take a position on whether morality is or is not objective. I have never seen a good argument for either case.

Many people don't take positions on things that are important. This matter goes to the foundations of our being here. There is nothing more important to human understanding. And on the pragmatic end, wouldn't it be nice to close the door all the religious prattle that permeates our culture and causes so much trouble in moral reasoning? I believe it is in the intense dialectics that issue from the world free of presuppositions. Husserl is a good start.

-- Updated July 20th, 2017, 4:39 pm to add the following --

Lucky R wrote:

Well, would a description of you be more accurate and full if it defined you by what you don't belive in or what you believe in? Similarly, I can be quite comfortable disbelieving in ogres and unicorns without investigating them much.

In addition most atheists I know have put more independent thought into the moral principles that they use to govern their lives than the average church goer. Of course that is in large part due to selection bias, since in the current western culture it takes much more effort to reject religion than it takes to accept the norm. Thus leading to a higher percentage of thoughtful atheists (not as nihilists).

Sure, people have more full views than is suggested by the simple term 'atheist.' But it is *usually taken* as an either/or issue, like being pregnant or not. Their may be a lot to say in the background, but either you are of you are not an atheist. Granted, it can be more like, say, a political belief whereby you may call yourself a liberal or a libertarian, but the manichean proposition belies the real and complex dynamics of belief. And here is where my argument begins: It is almost always the former and not the latter. People who say they're atheists rarely have more to say on the matter beyond the banal reference to those notorious omni-this and omni-that. They've exhausted the issue, when in fact they haven't even come to understand the substantive questions. 'God" is a term that is either late in the game, or too early, for the term itself is so badly conceived and the ideas that are attendant to it, that investigatively precede it, so unrealized, that the claim to be an atheist is without content. As if, in sum, you could encompass the the breadth of human Being-here in the single disclaimer, I am not a theist!

What WAS Kierkegaard talking about in Sickness Unto Death?? The answer requires study, reflection, time, concern, caring. We need this in the public discourse, not facile atheism of theism.

[Fan of Science]

Hereandnow: Your position is the "trite," one, not mine. My position is rational while yours is nothing more than one unfounded assertion after another. Here are a number of stumbling blocks for you, none of which you have answered yet, and you most likely never will be able to:

1. You assume that atheists are not moral realists. This is demonstrably false. Atheism itself has nothing to do with the issue of moral realism, because atheism, like theism, has nothing to do with morality. Empirically, one can reference Sam Harris as an atheist who believes in moral realism while David Silverman is an atheist who doesn't. Like everyone else who has ever lived, neither of them have offered a convincing argument for their position. They, like you, merely assume their position is true and expect everyone else to agree.

2. You have no evidence for any god.

3. You have no evidence that any alleged god gives a damn about morality.

4. Even if you could establish a god, and a god that cares about morality, you have no way of knowing what that alleged god's moral position is.

5. Even if you could establish a god, establish it cared about morality, and that you knew exactly what this alleged god's opinions were on morality, you still have no way of showing that this alleged god's subjective opinions on morality are "objective."

Assuming your way through an entire argument is a completely absurd position to take.

As far as the other user who claimed that science is grounded is concerned, that's also complete nonsense. Science is based on inductive reasoning. Why do we believe the scientific method works? Because it has worked in the past. But, that's simply using inductive reasoning to support inductive reasoning, which is a circular argument that grounds nothing. Look up the problem of induction.

[Hereandnow]

Fan of Science:


You sound upset, Fan of Science. Not my intention, but my fault.

You get your ideas from idioms of the trade. I think you and others who think like this should look more closely at what the actual value of the words you are using is. Take 'god': I don't buy this thing; never did. I fact, if there was a single book I would eliminate from the world it would be the bible, just because it causes sso much foolish moral thinking, but especially because displaces serious thought. By serious thought I want to bring the matter down from the lofty heights of reified-by-usage terms. 'God' is top of the list.

That is unless this term comes at the end of authentic search for meaning where naivete falls away and one finally understands that this is not a stand alone theoretical world; thatis, that the body of theory, the paradigms the issue from empirical science are entirely incommensurate with the the presence-at-hand intuitions that confront us, intuitions like those in experience of suffocating, for example. A lovely bit of reality that, as presence, cannot be fathomed. I mentioned elsewhere how much a appreciate Artaud, the French dramatist. This is where religious thinking, or, thinking about the foundation of the need for a redemptive metaphysics (not that i am willing to TALK about what it is. I follow Emanuel Levinas on this: It is not the metaphysics that puts forth articles of belief for premises of arguments; it's the world and its horrors that necessitate "something" entirely "other" then the same, the synthesized propositions of science.

Moral realism? Is there an exam? Begs the question: What is real? What is morality at the level of basic assumptions? There are lots of extrordinary things said about this in my favorite philosophers, like kant (though I am no fan of universalizing maxims that issue from an immortal rational soul. On the other hand, the transcendental ego is not nonsense at all), Heidegger, Sartre, Kierkegaard, Husserl, Rorty ( my devil's advocate), Wittgenstein, and so on. For me, these make the body of thought out of which religion can be understood.

the way you talk it sounds like you haven't read what I wrote.

[Burning ghost]

Spectrum -

The guy who had those vivid experiences is privileged. He says so himself. I know he is being honest because I have experienced something very much like what he has.

It reminded of something I was saying when I experienced this kind of thing. He CLEARLY says that to them they don't know beauty. He is correct. There is simply nothing to compare this experience to that gives it a reasonable representation to someone who has never been there.

[Spectrum]

Spectrum -
The guy who had those vivid experiences is privileged. He says so himself. I know he is being honest because I have experienced something very much like what he has.

It reminded of something I was saying when I experienced this kind of thing. He CLEARLY says that to them they don't know beauty. He is correct. There is simply nothing to compare this experience to that gives it a reasonable representation to someone who has never been there.

I agree to some extent it is a privilege. Some meditators only get to experience certain experience of oneness, unity, epiphany, and the likes after many years of regular meditations and contemplations. I have been meditating for a long time and had such experiences but to me they are merely side effects.

In the case of the guy in the video with Ramanchandran, he was suffering from temporal epilepsy. He was seeking out Ramanchandran to cure his epilepsy.
I often reference Jill Bolte, the neuroscientist who had a more profound experience but only that she experienced it from a massive stroke. Surely such a privilege is at a high and dangerous cost.

If you have experienced those 'spiritual' type of experiences on a regular basis and did not plan or anticipate [drug use, meditation, spiritual practice, the likes] then you ought to see a psychiatrist to eliminate the possibility of temporal epilepsy [most likely] or other medical problems. If it has happened on a one-off basis, then one need not have to worry about it.

Those experiences like that of the guy in the video can be triggered by many reasons and it is critical that one understand how such experience came about, i.e. from regular meditations, one off, temporal epilepsy, schizophrenia, mental illness, brain damage, drugs, hallucinogens, or etc.

Since you have had such experiences, one interesting task is for you to understand the neural mechanics and processes that caused one to have such experiences through the various methods and approaches.
One good test for repeatability is to use drugs and hallucinogens but there is a risk of a bad trip. The danger with drugs is the negative side effects.
Note the works of Timothy Leary, Aldous Huxley' Door of Perception and others.

Timothy Francis Leary (October 22, 1920 – May 31, 1996) was an American psychologist and writer known for advocating the exploration of the therapeutic potential of psychedelic drugs under controlled conditions. Leary conducted experiments under the Harvard Psilocybin Project during American legality of LSD and psilocybin, resulting in the Concord Prison Experiment and the Marsh Chapel Experiment.

If the doors of perception were cleansed every thing would appear to man as it is, Infinite. For man has closed himself up, till he sees all things thro' narrow chinks of his cavern.

-- Updated Fri Jul 21, 2017 12:37 am to add the following --

...
As far as the other user who claimed that science is grounded is concerned, that's also complete nonsense. Science is based on inductive reasoning. Why do we believe the scientific method works? Because it has worked in the past. But, that's simply using inductive reasoning to support inductive reasoning, which is a circular argument that grounds nothing. Look up the problem of induction.

You are very quick to condemn the views of others. Based on what you have posted you seem to have a lot to catch up on philosophy which is relevant to a forum such as this.

Yes, there is a problem of induction [Hume] and Popper asserted scientific theories are at best 'polished conjecturals.'
Note I never said, inductive reasoning is grounded only on inductive reasoning which is merely one process within the whole Framework of Science.

I stated Science is grounded on the Scientific Framework, Systems and Methods plus its assumptions, principles, peer reviews, and inter-subjective consensus. Without such a total Framework, there is no Science as it is accepted in the present.

Because it has worked in the past.

While "it works" is one aspect that reinforce Science, not all scientific theories are put into works, e.g. in technology. The Big Bang Theory is accepted by most Physicists but it is not repeatable and how is any one to put it to "work"?

[Burning ghost]

Spectrum -

It is the reason I have two university level books on the subject of neuroscience. I read of Jill Bolte and can appreciate her description too. I have already considered what I had as a mini-stroke, but the truth is I guess I'll never know if it was or was not.

Either way I forced the experience a second time and it was a more hellish experience, whereas the first was purely an accident. I have found more similarities with techniques used in "shamanism" as I've mentioned elsewhere.

I most certainly wish everyone could experience what I did because I know the world would be a better place for it. It is most certainly dangerous too though because it is a very "open-minded" state.

[Chriswl]

Fan of Science:

There is no relationship between theism and morality. Far from it. Plato addressed this issue thousands of years ago. If God's act is moral because God is adhering to a moral standard, then we merely need to look at the standard to determine morality, and not to God. On the other hand, if one claims that regardless of what God does, it is simply moral because he does it, then morality becomes arbitrary.

Your thinking on this matter is, well, trite.

Oh come on now, you have to do better than that. Any philosopher looking at your OP would immediately think: Plato's Euthyphro dilemma, how's he going to counter that? You need a good response to this. I've always thought Plato's simple argument was incredibly powerful so I look forward to your brilliant demolition of it...

[Dark Matter]

Fan of Science:


(Nested quote removed.)


Your thinking on this matter is, well, trite.

Oh come on now, you have to do better than that. Any philosopher looking at your OP would immediately think: Plato's, how's he going to counter that? You need a good response to this. I've always thought Plato's simple argument was incredibly powerful so I look forward to your brilliant demolition of it...

Aw, come on. The Euthyphro dilemma? That's been shot down so many times people hardly mention it any more.

[Chriswl]

Humour me, shoot it down then.

[Hereandnow]

Fan of Science:

Oh come on now, you have to do better than that. Any philosopher looking at your OP would immediately think: Plato's Euthyphro dilemma, how's he going to counter that? You need a good response to this. I've always thought Plato's simple argument was incredibly powerful so I look forward to your brilliant demolition of it...

The Divine Command theory? I first read about this in John Mackie's Ethics: Inventing Right an Wrong. A terrific book, but his inclusion of Divine command Theory was just a token gesture to a culture that takes this seriously.

Anyway, divine command theory, what is this? I mean, before you start giving it to some argument, make sure you know what it means, what the terms you are using mean. If I want to argue that Porche is better than Ford, what meaning can this have if I don't know what an automobile is? 'Divine command' begs a lot of questions. 'Divine' means 'of god' I guess, so you have 'god' commanding. this means god has the agency like a person. God commands, therefore wills, desires something to be the case as opposed to something else. God therefore judges, discerns differences between things, is thus perceptual, and must have a divine memory to recall things to bring them to bare on what is being judged, rejected, approved, and so forth; god uses reason to construct propositional grammar required to make imperatives: god thinks, desires one thing over another (why command, otherwise?) ......at this point you should start realizing that god is an awful lot like a person. In fact, god IS a person according this, and the divine command theory is very likely just an absurd anthropomorphism, a projection of the human image onto eternity, a fiction constructed out what is familiar and settling.

So why would something like this be so interesting, at all? It is just trivially true that this kind of god is a fiction, and about as interesting as the weather. If god can be analyzed into this, then what good is Plato's Euthyphro dilemma? How much weight can it have if it rests on assumptions about divine agency that are so easily dismissed?

This is why I am so disparaging about god arguments: Anselm's greatest possible being, the omni trio:omniscience, omnibenevolence, omnipotence make god into a superman; god as the prime mover. To me, they are all just projections issuing from the interpretative possibilities that we have, in the world.

But does this mean the concept 'god' is simply vacuous? Of course not. It means the concept needs a more penetrating analysis.

[Chriswl]

Hereandnow,

but we are arguing this in the context of your OP where you state:

Anti-objectivists here deny that ethical values need for their theoretical underpinning something absolute, like god or Plato's FOG (Form of the Good). Objectivists, like myself, think they do need this.

What does God bring to the table if you are an ethical objectivist? You already believe in objective moral laws or principles of some kind. If you don't need an anthropomorphic authority figure to in some way justify these principles what is this extra thing you need? What is missing if you just say that there are objective moral principles and that's that?

My atheism consists of a rejection of exactly the kind of personal God you describe. I don't believe in redefining commonly used words like God to mean something abstruse and exotic just so we can have philosophical fun with them. The meaning of words is inferred from their use and it's pretty clear that the people who actually care about God, the people for whom this word means something in their lives, imagine some kind of personal God (though I'm referencing christianity only here). They own the word God, not me, the concept would never have occurred to me if they hadn't invented it so I'll define my atheism in response to what they tell me God is.

Ethics is a far, far harder subject than deciding whether God exists. I'm not an ethical objectivist. Perhaps your problems with grounding your ethical objectivism without positing some further poorly defined mysterious thing (God) is evidence that ethical objectivism doesn't quite work? As I'm sure you are aware there are many other metaethical positions we can take, rejecting objectivism doesn't mean we automatically fall into nihilism or even relativism.

[Hereandnow]

Chriswl:

What does God bring to the table if you are an ethical objectivist? You already believe in objective moral laws or principles of some kind. If you don't need an anthropomorphic authority figure to in some way justify these principles what is this extra thing you need? What is missing if you just say that there are objective moral principles and that's that?

My atheism consists of a rejection of exactly the kind of personal God you describe. I don't believe in redefining commonly used words like God to mean something abstruse and exotic just so we can have philosophical fun with them. The meaning of words is inferred from their use and it's pretty clear that the people who actually care about God, the people for whom this word means something in their lives, imagine some kind of personal God (though I'm referencing christianity only here). They own the word God, not me, the concept would never have occurred to me if they hadn't invented it so I'll define my atheism in response to what they tell me God is.

Ethics is a far, far harder subject than deciding whether God exists. I'm not an ethical objectivist. Perhaps your problems with grounding your ethical objectivism without positing some further poorly defined mysterious thing (God) is evidence that ethical objectivism doesn't quite work? As I'm sure you are aware there are many other metaethical positions we can take, rejecting objectivism doesn't mean we automatically fall into nihilism or even relativism.

Understood. Would you read what I wrote to Fan of Science just above your post and tell me what you think? Also. read more closely what I wrote. Personal god? Did I describe myself as such? The term 'personal' is not an intrinsic part the objectivist position, nor does it exclude it. Its exclusion would could be argued for easily, but that is a very different matter. Consider: If you take an idealist/phenomenological point of view, you *can* find a great deal of weight given to the transcendental ego. This Cartesianism (and see Kierkegaard's Concluded Unscientific Postscript, too.) places at center stage of ontology the unseen but irresistible subject. Now, where you go from here is hard to put forth, but Martin Buber finds something very *personal* there. This does not, it should be strongly emphasized, put Buber in the cross hairs Occam's razor. It is a revealed understanding, not a discursive trifling.

[Chriswl]

The reply above was actually a reply to me and I was replying to that.

The only thing I've read on the transcendental ego is Sartre and he rejects it (the title of his work The Transcendence of the Ego is a clever play on words, the transcendental ego is transcended and thus no longer transcendental at all). He disagrees fundamentally with Husserl and elaborated on this at great length in Being and Nothingness.

But anyway I've not read Sartre for a long time and I'm a pretty standard naturalist/physicalist these days. I simply don't see the motivation for any kind of idealism. From the point of view of philosophy of mind and even ethics I think a purely physical ontology is plausible. In any case, whatever alleged problems such analyses have, those problems don't point us to any alternative that isn't itself itself far more problematical.

[Hereandnow]

Chriswl:

The reply above was actually a reply to me and I was replying to that.

The only thing I've read on the transcendental ego is Sartre and he rejects it (the title of his work The Transcendence of the Ego is a clever play on words, the transcendental ego is transcended and thus no longer transcendental at all). He disagrees fundamentally with Husserl and elaborated on this at great length in Being and Nothingness.

But anyway I've not read Sartre for a long time and I'm a pretty standard naturalist/physicalist these days. I simply don't see the motivation for any kind of idealism. From the point of view of philosophy of mind and even ethics I think a purely physical ontology is plausible. In any case, whatever alleged problems such analyses have, those problems don't point us to any alternative that isn't itself itself far more problematical.

Sartre is a Cartesian, like Husserl. This is an excellent book, the Transcendence of the Ego which is an argument of Sartre against Husserl on the matter of the transcendental ego. Sartre thinks such a notion undercuts pure phenomenology, or what is warranted by the phenomenological approach. His Cartesianism is the subjective nothingness. Never understood how this was tenable. His program was tainted by a perceived need for accountability for WWII traitors. Nothingness is the ontology of freedom. But the argument is not what i would call just play. I'd have to read it again, though. Forgot the argument re. reflective and prereflective consciousnesses and the thetic pivoting of the ego.... can't bring it to mind.

Physical ontology? What is that?

[LuckyR]

Lucky R wrote:

Well, would a description of you be more accurate and full if it defined you by what you don't belive in or what you believe in? Similarly, I can be quite comfortable disbelieving in ogres and unicorns without investigating them much.

In addition most atheists I know have put more independent thought into the moral principles that they use to govern their lives than the average church goer. Of course that is in large part due to selection bias, since in the current western culture it takes much more effort to reject religion than it takes to accept the norm. Thus leading to a higher percentage of thoughtful atheists (not as nihilists).

Sure, people have more full views than is suggested by the simple term 'atheist.' But it is *usually taken* as an either/or issue, like being pregnant or not. Their may be a lot to say in the background, but either you are of you are not an atheist. Granted, it can be more like, say, a political belief whereby you may call yourself a liberal or a libertarian, but the manichean proposition belies the real and complex dynamics of belief. And here is where my argument begins: It is almost always the former and not the latter. People who say they're atheists rarely have more to say on the matter beyond the banal reference to those notorious omni-this and omni-that. They've exhausted the issue, when in fact they haven't even come to understand the substantive questions. 'God" is a term that is either late in the game, or too early, for the term itself is so badly conceived and the ideas that are attendant to it, that investigatively precede it, so unrealized, that the claim to be an atheist is without content. As if, in sum, you could encompass the the breadth of human Being-here in the single disclaimer, I am not a theist!

What WAS Kierkegaard talking about in Sickness Unto Death?? The answer requires study, reflection, time, concern, caring. We need this in the public discourse, not facile atheism of theism.

To be fair, most folks who claim atheism, have a much bigger (and well thought out) problem with religion than they do with gods. So, for example among the common folk, a deist would be felt by the average church goer to fall into the atheist group, though you and I know that is inaccurate. Similarly, the same deist would likely find the commonality against religion with an atheist stronger than their common agreement on a god with the average church goer.