So you're an atheist? Not so fast.

[Steve3007]

Hereandnow:

A couple of brief observations:

1. Most of the talk about science in this thread was acknowledged as what it was: a diversion from the subject of the OP. The conversation has drifted.

2. On an initial reading of your post, I haven't really got a clue what you're going on about. I can't find the "take home message". I would suggest that rather than splurging your thoughts onto the page as they come to you, you first think what you want to say and the best way to say it as economically as possible. I know from personal experience, that's easier said than done. But you've got to try.

[Hereandnow]

Read it again Steve3007. I take issue with "splurge." The organization of thought here is not so bad at all. This is philosophy, at it is a different world altogether from physics. Of course, if you haven't read Husserl, Heidegger, Kant, Dewey, James, Sartre, Quine, Putman, and on and on, then it will be perhaps a challenge. But so what? Go at it and find issue if you think there is one. But it this sketch provided here there a string of logical progression from problem to solution you should try to encompass.

[Steve3007]

OK. I withdraw "splurge" and will read again.

-- Updated Mon Sep 18, 2017 6:58 pm to add the following --

Of course, if you haven't read Husserl, Heidegger, Kant, Dewey, James, Sartre, Quine, Putman, and on and on, then it will be perhaps a challenge.

Do I have to have read all of those to understand what you're saying? I've read other people's summaries of what most of those people said. Will that do?

[Hereandnow]

Sorry Steve3007. I can be a horse's a** when my ego comes online. No, you don't have to read all that. I was hoping the post would speak for itself. I do try, when an idea is put out, to then say what is signifies in an explanatory clause. I makes for thick prose, though, that would be more efficiently laid out were there no need to explain. I mean, if I refer to something being Cartesian I mean it puts the egoic center as the locus for the greatest epistemic authority. The more i say about this, the clearer it becomes, but then, the words do add up.

As I see it summaries are fine if they are read with understanding. How many doctoral theses have in part relied on the internet for summaries and so forth?

[Count Lucanor]

One interesting that springs to my mind here is that us humans tend to find it hard to believe that events in the world could have turned out any differently from the way in which they actually did turn out. We often look at an event, or events, with the benefit of hindsight and have a strong sense of "fate" or "destiny". We think that it was "meant to be" like that. It's difficult for us to accept that old saying "s**t happens!". Particularly events that strongly affect our welfare. This is obvious for many examples where we can see, on sober reflection, that there was no destiny or fate involved and that s**t did indeed just happen. So it may also be true in circumstances where that's not so obvious.

The interesting thing, then, is why we have a tendancy to think like that.

It seems likely to me that we think like that because it's a useful survival tool. i.e. those who didn't think like that were less successful at passing on their mental traits to the next generation. Being able to predict, better than an opponent/prey/predator, what is likely to happen next in any given set of circumstances is clearly useful. It's an extension of the more general rules of cause and effect that we and other animals construct for this predictive purpose. Our psychological need to believe that the world is predictable (and therefore safe) causes us to make post hoc rationalisations of those events that we couldn't predict, possibly because of their complexity and/or the number of variables that were hidden from us.

I think that's why, as we get better at finding those hidden variables and predicting the effects of more and more complex sets of events, we tend to rely less on these fatalistic/destiny ideas. As soon as things break down and events become unpredictable again we very quickly revert back to the fatalism. You can't so easily suppress millions of years of evolved behaviour with a few years of predictability!

That may indeed be a possibility, although I take it with caution, as it fits into the main tenet of Evolutionary Psychology: that everything we have implies an evolutionary advantage.

[Steve3007]

I'm quite into that idea that everything about us has an evolutionary heritage. After all, where else would have come from?

-- Updated Mon Sep 18, 2017 7:55 pm to add the following --

Hereandnow:

...The more i say about this, the clearer it becomes, but then, the words do add up.

OK. I'll re-read what you said with that in mind, and let you know if I have any questions.

As I see it summaries are fine if they are read with understanding. How many doctoral theses have in part relied on the internet for summaries and so forth?

I don't know. Lots?

[Ranvier]

This is a matter of the “thing”. Prove that you feel cold or hungry. How does one even begin such an undertaking using words? Even if one had a divine moment of absolute perspicuity, how could any of us convey such “feeling”? Language is a crude and inaccurate tool at best, in its vague intention to only “point” to things that we can all agree upon. But we can’t even agree on the language, no more than the “feeling” itself. Interpreting words of Kant or Heidegger is a wondrous insight into extraordinary minds, with own mind seduced by the notion of self-indulgent conceit to understand such current in the river of words. How does one convey the context of the universe of own mind in a paragraph or a book?

The “little Emperor” is screaming across the river to warn of the peril ahead to the blissful body marching in a drunken stride towards the “feeling”. Reality… what is the reality? Is it the disobedient body or the “little Emperor” crying in the corner of the “soul”? “Cogito ergo sum”, my “little Emperor” adds “If I can think of something, it must be possible”. Everything is possible if the mind can conceive of it, in the infinite universes of other minds. There can’t be a thought or a “feeling” without the “thing in itself”, where the thought becomes a thing that matters. Everything is “false” but none of us are “wrong”.

No, it doesn't mean that. You're basing your claim on the wrong assumption that the order in the structure of reality only arises from the will of a conscious designer, which is exactly the claim you are trying to prove, so you're just doing circular reasoning. But even without the purpose and will of a conscious being, reality appears to us with some order and structure and there it is the domain to which we can apply our logic and reasoning. Unsurprisingly, you will resort to the old argument of the First Cause, but then you will have to deal with the old problem of the origin, the first cause of your designer.

Conscious… designer… first cause… What are such things in the minds of others? One would do well to allow the “little Emperor” to seek respite from the concerns of the body, if only for a moment, to “strip” away of all the knowledge of the body that weighs heavy on the “true” nature of reality.

No. Again, you're confusing randomness with unlawfulness. If a dice is thrown in the air, the resulting number will be unpredictable, considering all the options available, but that does not mean the dice will behave unaffected by gravity and other physical forces, nor it will produce a number not available among the dice options. The same way, the cave is the result of well known natural forces, not needing a purpose. And the circumstance of someone being lost in it may also be the result of other contingent, unpredictable factors, all of which coulde be traceable to the material causes of life on Earth, without the need of a divine designer.

Can you appreciate the “weight” of the “experience” drawn from the arguments of other people?
“… you’re confusing randomness with unlawfulness”, what does it mean? What is randomness or unlawfulness? What makes a distinction between these two concepts? Where did the dice, the air, or the unpredictable outcome originate? How can we infer anything about the “number of outcomes”? What is gravity and where did it come from or any “laws of nature”? Are there actually any laws of nature or are these just human inventions of subjective perception? I don’t claim to “know” anything about anything. Therefore, I’m curious of the claims of others who are “certain” of the “facts” using relative propositions to justify such “truths”… “There is no God”.

I already offered my break down of the “logic” and the rationale of the “confused” people that contradict any logic for any purpose. Therefore, there should be no surprise that there isn’t any purpose for “reason”, hence the bewilderment in arguments for morality, human laws, or any given path for the future. Where do these things come from and why do we need them? In atheist dogma, whatever that is, without any purpose such propositions seem to be illogical and irrational in my mind. What is the rational for any social rules?

Again, which one is more probable?

1. A universe with logical laws of nature that randomly “came” from nothing as a statistical “chance” of infinite number of universes??, which has no “purpose” in continuing to “exist”, where life and human consciousness (if there is such a “thing”) is meaningless.

Or

2. A universe that “originated” from a “reason” of the preexisting “laws of nature” that gave rise to life, including human consciousness capable to not only acknowledge such nature but learn from it for some purpose in the future

[Dark Matter]

Things have moved on since my untimely leave. In concordance with the OP, I'd like to reiterate: "Science deals with physical-energy activities; religion deals with eternal values. True philosophy grows out of the wisdom which does its best to correlate these quantitative and qualitative observations." The OP suggests that without the theoretical underpinning of an absolute, it is very difficult for an atheistic philosophy to make sense of the qualitative values we all experience.

I agree.

A hundred years ago, it was unthinkable to say something like:

Every impulse of every electron, thought, or spirit is an acting unit in the whole universe. Only sin is isolated and evil gravity resisting on the mental and spiritual levels. The universe is a whole; no thing or being exists or lives in isolation. Self-realization is potentially evil if it is antisocial. It is literally true: “No man lives by himself.” Cosmic socialization constitutes the highest form of personality unification. (UB)

Science just didn't allow it, but that is no longer the case -- which is why I bring it up. True philosophy cannot ignore the correlation between physical-energy activities and religious values.

The author of the OP is also correct to say, "If you're thinking that theism is just a joke about an old man in a cloud, then you don't understand theism, or any defensible form of it." The absolute underpinning my philosophy (at least for now) is a hypothesized "nexus": a point where every thing, every where, every when and their every possibility converge. It is "primal in all domains: deified or undeified, personal or impersonal, actual or potential, finite or infinite. No thing or being, no relativity or finality, exists except in direct or indirect relation to, and dependence on, the primacy of the First Source and Center" or Nexus. (UB)

This is the starting point of my conceptions, conceptions that, in the end, constitute an effort to convey in words the ineffable. Maybe I out on the fringe of rationally, but I've read enough to know that I'm not alone.

[Hereandnow]

Ravier:

This is a matter of the “thing”. Prove that you feel cold or hungry. How does one even begin such an undertaking using words? Even if one had a divine moment of absolute perspicuity, how could any of us convey such “feeling”? Language is a crude and inaccurate tool at best, in its vague intention to only “point” to things that we can all agree upon. But we can’t even agree on the language, no more than the “feeling” itself. Interpreting words of Kant or Heidegger is a wondrous insight into extraordinary minds, with own mind seduced by the notion of self-indulgent conceit to understand such current in the river of words. How does one convey the context of the universe of own mind in a paragraph or a book?

The “little Emperor” is screaming across the river to warn of the peril ahead to the blissful body marching in a drunken stride towards the “feeling”. Reality… what is the reality? Is it the disobedient body or the “little Emperor” crying in the corner of the “soul”? “Cogito ergo sum”, my “little Emperor” adds “If I can think of something, it must be possible”. Everything is possible if the mind can conceive of it, in the infinite universes of other minds. There can’t be a thought or a “feeling” without the “thing in itself”, where the thought becomes a thing that matters. Everything is “false” but none of us are “wrong”.

Interesting diatribe. Not a word of actual response. All you. The former would be much, much harder. Try it. I mean read the ideas and work with them. Anyone can throw rhetoric around.

[Ranvier]

Hereandnow

Is that all? Am I just throwing a rhetoric around? There is no "substance" at all? Or is it just that I'm not conforming to the "proper" rhetoric?

[Hereandnow]

"The former would be much, much harder. Try it. I mean read the ideas and work with them."

-- Updated September 18th, 2017, 8:56 pm to add the following --

It's just that many specific ideas were put on the table. The Cartesian approach, for example, and the notion of proximity. the question about the nature of a thing: It is very valuable in understanding difficult problems. I didn't just write it up for no reason. Look at the argument. If I go wrong somewhere, then say so. Why do anything else?

[Ranvier]

Read carefully the "words" you quoted... if it were word for word to your thoughts, you would still disagree on the meaning.

[Hereandnow]

So what do you think about the Cartesian approach to addressing the religiosity of a human being? Look, it's not all that strange an idea. If you want know about god, you should look to the structures of knowledge relationships in general. Here you find the foundation of propositions and their justifications, how experience works. My claim is that there is in the intimacy of "knowing" those things that are most, to borrow a term, proximal, that is closest to consciousness, the bare stuff of experience, a revelatory possibility. How so? Because I think experience by and large is trivialized by common speech practices. It is protective, occlusive, and fixating. And so on.

I really don't know anything else worth discussing but the post itself. Sure it's long, but no apologies for that. It has intuitive plausibility if one reads closely.

[Count Lucanor]

Conscious… designer… first cause… What are such things in the minds of others? One would do well to allow the “little Emperor” to seek respite from the concerns of the body, if only for a moment, to “strip” away of all the knowledge of the body that weighs heavy on the “true” nature of reality.

OK, nice rethoric, but would you mind giving the due response to the argument? It seems like all of the sudden you're not concerned about reason and logic anymore.

Can you appreciate the “weight” of the “experience” drawn from the arguments of other people?
“… you’re confusing randomness with unlawfulness”, what does it mean?

It means exactly that: that you confuse the multiple instances of causes and effects in a given system, which produce unpredictable outcomes, with the lack of any system or structure of reality.

Where did the dice, the air, or the unpredictable outcome originate?

They all originate from previous states of matter. There's nothing esoteric about it.

How can we infer anything about the “number of outcomes”?

By simple observation we can realize that a dice will behave following the basic laws of nature and its geometry will determine the possible outcomes.

What is gravity and where did it come from or any “laws of nature”?

On the basis of what you assume that it must "come from" somewhere?

Are there actually any laws of nature or are these just human inventions of subjective perception? I don’t claim to “know” anything about anything. Therefore, I’m curious of the claims of others who are “certain” of the “facts” using relative propositions to justify such “truths”…

You can seek refuge in solipsism, but then if everything is just an illusion why would you want to debate any subject?

I already offered my break down of the “logic” and the rationale of the “confused” people that contradict any logic for any purpose.

But so far the only one contradicting his own "logic" has been shown to be you. You said that finding an explanation of existence defined purpose, but then you deny that same possibility.

Therefore, there should be no surprise that there isn’t any purpose for “reason”, hence the bewilderment in arguments for morality, human laws, or any given path for the future. Where do these things come from and why do we need them?

These things are part of the actual circumstances of existence. There are some conditions now, from which I depart to reach a future condition.

What is the rational for any social rules?

The same as always: the organism in relation to its environment, including the interaction with other organisms, at different levels of complexity.

Again, which one is more probable?

1. A universe with logical laws of nature that randomly “came” from nothing as a statistical “chance” of infinite number of universes??,

Why would we need to assume that it "came from" somewhere?

which has no “purpose” in continuing to “exist”, where life and human consciousness (if there is such a “thing”) is meaningless.

Remember the example of the cave. According to your line of argument, it is necessary that you find a reason for the cave to exist, an explanation on the origin of the cave, in order to take a decision about what to do.

Or

2. A universe that “originated” from a “reason” of the preexisting “laws of nature” that gave rise to life, including human consciousness capable to not only acknowledge such nature but learn from it for some purpose in the future

So then, you tell me what would be the reason and purpose that explain the emergence of that preexiting consciousness. You know, just not an anecdotal accident. Please be convincing.

[Spectrum]

Hereandnow
Is that all? Am I just throwing a rhetoric around? There is no "substance" at all? Or is it just that I'm not conforming to the "proper" rhetoric?

Hereandnow has wider range and greater depth of philosophical knowledge than you. However underlying both views reflect an active 'zombie parasite' that strike [with spikes] at others when threatened.