Topic: The problem with atheism. - page 34. (Read 38463 times)

I am late to the discussion here.  I love to discuss religion and philosophy so I wish I had joined sooner.

I do find it interesting that the OPs problem with Atheism seems to be the logical conclusion that it is all really meaningless.  I often thought that myself.  It is a bit depressing really.  If there is no God, then what is really the point?  Perhaps the "smart" ones are the ones that are the most hedonistic?  The ones that are chasing the next great feeling because if this life is all that there is, why not?

For the record, I am not an atheist.  I have the philosophy that this world is the closest to Hell that I will ever be in.  Of course, Hell is a whole different discussion.  I believe that God is fair and just and will not just throw everyone into Hell that has not prayed the "prayer."  That is not a popular thought in my "circle" for sure!  Being one that takes the Bible extremely literally, I am unusual in my belief that everyone will get a fair chance and will even get that "chance" after death.  It is not an excuse to "live and let live" but it has reduced my frantic feeling of helplessness and even the thought that "how could a loving God damn people to Hell that never even heard of Him?"  The answer I believe is that He doesn't!  He let's them decide in the afterlife if they did not decide here.  Of course, I do believe that some have made a distinct choice here to reject God.  That is a bit risky I think.  

On that note, I had a deep discussion with a Hindu once.  He said, "I believe all paths are valid."  I said, "If you really think all paths are valid and Christians say that there is only one way to the Father and it through Jesus, wouldn't the logical choice be to follow Jesus then?"  He smiled and said that I was quite persuasive.  I am not sure what ever happened though since he was a stranger I met on the beach.  But regardless of how logical that point was, it really is a matter of the heart.  People have an amazing ability to believe what they want to believe regardless of how logical or illogical.  

Also, I find that the more I study science (true science and not the made up theories that pose as "science" nowadays) my faith is strengthened.  The complexity of a single cell points to an intelligent designer.  It would be mathematically impossible for even a cell to evolve from nothing but somehow evolution has become "fact" instead of "theory" in the world we live in.  I have no problem with it being called what it is, a "theory."

Science is like a courtroom - proof in science is equatable to "proof beyond a reasonable doubt," and so that's why you read in published studies things like "The findings show that a statistically significant correlation exists between x and y, p < .05" or something similar.  The problem of induction arises whenever you try to infer predictions from a set of observations.  If you see me eat breakfast at McDonald's for 30 straight mornings, this is not proof that I will eat breakfast at McDonald's on the 31st morning, nor is it even an indicator of likeliness that I will visit McDonald's on the 31st day.  With respect to things that we assume are laws such as the laws of gravity or entropy, the same thing applies.  And while some might say, "Well it's just simply obvious that gravity is a law, try jumping off a building if you aren't so sure of it."  Well, that's fine and dandy and I might not jump off a bridge, but to try to apply validity to inductive reasoning using your experiences as a means for that application only means that you're using inductive reasoning to give inductive reasoning validity!

Math and geometry are abstract, self-contained languages.  Math proofs and geometry proofs are called proofs because of this self-containment - in and of themselves, they are proof of the solutions they express.  However, when you take a math or geometry proof and try to pin it to something tangible in reality, then the problem of induction creeps up again.  You might consider some mathematical expression to constitute proof of some real-life occurrence (E.g. d = m/v), and this might seem true because your observations have aligned with that particular expression, but it's still inductive reasoning.

Can you "prove" the sun is a fiery ball?  Well, I have a close example that exemplifies what I'm saying...

Suppose you go outside and feel the warmth of the sun on your face.  You know it's warm, you can feel it.  You can touch your fingers to your face, feel the heat on it, and you say, "Wow, that's warm!"  And I say, "Warm, you say?  Prove it to me."So, you get out your spot thermometer and take a temperature reading of your face and you say, "Look, 102 degrees.  It's warm."  What you don't know is that I just got back from a stream room at the gym where the temperature was 140 degrees.  I say, "I don't know, seems pretty cool to me."  So, which is it?  Is it warm or hot?  We have some arbitrary piece of evidence (i.e. 102 degrees) and yet there is no possible way for you to prove to me that 102 is warm unless I had the same direct perception of that warmth as you did while feeling the warmth on your face.

Now, you might say, "But that's a relative example!  Warm and cool are relationally opposed - I proved to you that it was 102 degrees!  Well, I say that 102 degrees is relational!  102 degrees is relational to something that we, for example, defined to be 0 degrees, and if we had defined that other thing to be something other than 0 degrees, then the object you just measured at 102 degrees would be measured at some other figure.  Geometry is relational to math, and math and physics are relational to philosophy.

Inductive reasoning has been called "the glory of science and the downfall of philosophy."  Because philosophy is a self-contained system that is inherently entwined with logical expression, it is possible to form logical tautologies that are totally unbreakable.  But when philosophy branches into mathematics (abstract) and physics (physical) and you attempt to link the two, you automatically begin formulating assumptions that aren't present with a strict philosophical model, namely that mathematical models can always be applied to their physical analogues.

Edit:  Don't forget, ratio is the root word of rationale.

Someone who is atheist is someone who does not understand god.  To find god is to find understanding of what god is, to find peace.

I was atheist until last year when I tripped LSD at the beach.  I realized we are god, the universe is god.  God exists and every form of it.

Can you clarify what you mean?  How is science without proof?  How is math and geometry without proof?  How is physics without proof?  Also from my limited understanding the problem of induction refers to predictions of things doesn't it?  And predictions are just that predictions which one seeks to prove or disprove.  If I'm doing geometry I can prove it through repeatable calculations that something is true or false.  How can one repeat a "spiritual experience"?  If one saw God in a trance can he/she go back and see him again under the same conditions?  Are you saying that I can't "prove" that the sun is a fiery ball of mostly hydrogen and I might as well believe it to be the sungod RA and if I get high enough to see his face after looking directly into the sun and that proves it through direct observation of a spiritual experience?  Granted there's plenty of theoretical stuff out on the leading edge of science but it's just that "theoretical".

I actually like atheists because they have a relatively open minds with logic chippering but what I hate is the religious atheists when they get all religious on me about how theism wasted my life and I would be better off it and if I don't get to be an atheist I will burn in atheists' hell  .

Logic wise, Dawkins sucks. His arguments were defeated numerous times. Even I (a theist) got better ones pro-atheism.

There's no proof in science at all, either.  You can never say "prove" in science and be correct because of the problem of induction.  You can use inference to support a point, but not to prove it.  

However, there is proof/knowledge available through direct perception, and so those who say they had a "spiritual experience" of god or something similar, assuming they are not lying, actually had as much proof as you could spend all of eternity looking to find.

Faith, in a religious sense, is used as an excuse for not putting forward evidence.  Faith, in the religious sense, is saying, "believe what I tell you, it's the truth, even though I've got no idea what the truth is myself". 

If you make a claim, then yes, I want proof.  For me, I make no claim regarding a god and so have nothing to prove.  There might be some type of god or gods or there might not.  It seems unlikely to me, but I don't know obviously one way or the other.

No religion has any proof at all.  When asked for proof they usually go back to some thousands of years old book.  Books aren't in and of themselves proof of anything.   Therefore no proof.  So what religious figures should be saying is "I don't know if there's a god/s or not".  But that wouldn't bring in the dough, would it?

That's why we have the language of perception, a languge that is shared by everyone and one that carries with it no assumptions or inference.  Indeed, it's only through perception that something can be known or 'proven' absolutely.  Otherwise, the next best thing we can do is create a tautological model of reality based upon logic which is inherently entwined with the language of perception.

and I was wondering, how people obtain hero member status...

That's why I made a post explaining how there are higher and lower levels of logical syntax, and how people frequently mix varying levels of syntax in their arguments, thereby resulting in both confusion and misunderstanding.  I also provided an example illustrating how it is possible to bypass this problem.  I've spent (over) the 10 most recent years of my life heavily devoted to the subject, and I believe I have insight into the topic that others can benefit from.  Truth is not purely relative, but most people choose to believe it is because they don't have the logical skill set required to recognize when they're mixing their syntaxes.  When syntaxes are mixed without awareness, infinite regressions result along with seemingly unreconcilable paradoxes and an endless line of apparently valid counter arguments.

The problem is that every fucking word gets twisted. When I put forward an argument that god is not necessary, i get Hah! - I knew it! You believe that it is not necessary - you  are a beliver - but you don't belive in god - so it must be the devil - you are evil - I'll have to kill you

I personally have problems when people think that discussing the nature of our existence should be avoided as if it should be regarded as taboo or reserved for the elephant in the room.  Absolute truth can be established, and by definition absolute truth takes precedence over everything else.  But if you'd like this can be a discussion about cat memes or something equally trivial.

I see no problems with atheism, but huge problems with atheism discussions.

How about I show you a proof that the boundary of a boundary = 0 and so we can see how words like inside and outside slide down the rabbit hole awfully quick?

The biggest problem with Athiesm is that Richard Dawkins gives it a bad name.

Are you sure there is an outside world?

I hope you realize that the reality you stare at is an output of processed information.  In other words, when you try to study the outside world, you're really studying the results of an internal process.

A really good drug trip, like god, is all in your head.   

The problem with atheism is that it doesn't regard the universal consciousness or the consciousness of nature. Lsd shrooms and most importantly DMT won't allow me to be completely atheist.

I prefer a different approach...

First off, anything that is not capable of being perceived is of total irrelevance.  The old question "If a tree falls in the forest and nobody is around to hear it, did it actually fall?" can be answered with simply, "Stop asking a ridiculous question!"  When people talk about parallel or infinite universes, they trod down the same path.  To make things simple, we can simply refer to the largest set of observable phenomena as the 'Real Universe', for if there were something real enough outside of this universe so as to be considered real, then it would be in the Real Universe!

Now, since we have defined the largest set or system of observable phenomenon, talking about the "Most High", as you put it, can be done by describing the syntax governing this largest set.  The challenge, of course, is avoiding slipping into an infinite regression, a 'tower of turtles,' in which every description leads to a logical contradiction.  This can be avoided by understanding how logic actually works, and to demonstrate, I will use the physical dimensions of space and time to show that logic itself has higher and lower dimensions.

We all know that 0-dimensions is represented by a point, 1-dimension by a line, 2-dimensions by a plane, and so on.  Or, phrased another way, the first dimension represents an ininite number of configurations of zero-dimensional space, the 2nd dimension represents an infinite number of configurations of 1-dimensional space, and so on.  Understanding lower dimensions is easy because we inhabit a level of syntax that is higher than the lower dimensions.  But how can we talk about higher dimensions and gain understanding about them?  Well, as it turns out we need to simply 'pretend' that we inhabit a higher level syntax and we need to thrust higher syntaxes below us.  This might sound confusing, but ill give you a simple example.

When I draw a tesseract on a piece of paper, I gain an understanding of 4-dimensional spacetime by thrusting it first into the 2nd dimension.  Logic operates in the same way, and aside from straw man fallacies, some of the most common errors in logic are made when arguments contain elements from multiple levels of logical syntax.  To put it simply, there are an infinite number of syntax levels, but we can begin to form an accurate model of reality by thrusting all of those infinite levels below us.  What this does is remove all of the constraints caused by higher levels of syntax - that is, the things we can never fully understand.  Then we can look at the universe from above, like our 3-dimensional selves looking at a 2-dimensional plane and understanding it's basic structure.  What results is something like a tesseract, the most perfect representation of 4-dimensions that we can observe from the 3rd dimension.