(June 19, 2023 at 9:18 pm)Neo-Scholastic Wrote: I do not know so I am asking the question, and it really is not a very hard one.

Seriously, though, what's the question again?

That Christianity repeatedly attempted to coopt things does not mean that those things aren’t available to atheists. We can believe in logical things, we can believe in real things, we can even perceive and accept the sense of the numinous.

It really is as simple as we’re always telling you. We don’t believe in god things.

(June 19, 2023 at 9:26 pm)Tomato Wrote:

(June 19, 2023 at 9:18 pm)Neo-Scholastic Wrote: I do not know so I am asking the question, and it really is not a very hard one.

Seriously, though, what's the question again?

If we are going to build a productive atheistic philosophy what are its starting points?

The actual reality.

(June 19, 2023 at 9:29 pm)Neo-Scholastic Wrote:

(June 19, 2023 at 9:26 pm)Tomato Wrote: Seriously, though, what's the question again?

If we are going to build a productive atheistic philosophy what are its starting points?

A counter question, have you read any atheist-oriented philosophy books?

I would think Sartre, Camus, and Nietzsche quailfy as atheist oriented philosophy books? :-) Other that that I recented finished Thomas Nagel's book and he is an unapologetically atheist. Other than that a few of the main important papers by various academic and many lesser known articles. Look, I am well read but IMHO does not mean much. I am not niave or unreceptive to the notion that atheism is simple lack of belief in diety. At the same time, what if that lack is not simply one less fact in a world of facts? What if the lack is actually a gap between sensing and knowing that cannot be bridged? Can you have a capital-T Truth without somehow evoking or even reconstructing god. Who said that if Man did not believe in God he would have to invent Him?

C'mon guys! I am getting really disappointed. Can't a couple atheists debate this instead of this being another boring tribal us and them atheist versus theist thread. Surely there is someone willing to make put up some cognito ergo sum. So lame. If atheism is interesting and worthy of discussing then why all this "what do you mean by that" knida replies. Flesh it out. Or maybe you can't and hence do not try.

This is the part that stood out for me that I want to expand upon:

It's not a matter of sensing and knowing. For starters, sensing is not a valid approach toward perceiving reality. One can sense anything and believe it to be real merely with the notion of allowing the imagination to rule over reason. Further, knowing must carry with it the empiricism to back it up. Otherwise, the inward subjectivity of knowing is just a confusion due to an entanglement with sensing.

Yes, you can have capital t truth without invoking personal and intervening super-beings.

I do know my name, and there’s even a capital t in there. All that you could really be asking is whether or not a given atheist is a nihilist. I doubt you’ll find many nihilists, and it’s certainly not the majority position in academic philosophy despite academic philosophy being filled to the brim with atheists.

If we’re being blunt, all that the god concept ever did for absolutes was over promise and under deliver.

Here’s a question. Suppose that there were personal and intervening entities…and even immortal life - but no absolutes. Would you personally reject the offer just because there were no absolutes? How much work….really…are absolutes doing for your Christianity?

The only thing absolute does is to enable those supposedly steeped in Christian humility to inflate themselves and their egos to even more outrageous sizes by pretending to themselves that they command moral superiority without bounds, without caveats, and without need for even pretenses of introspective support and validation thanks to the god they made up.