Atheist struggling to answer a question i often propose to myself

[Cyberman]

I get the same impression when people bring up "who created the Universe".

[Thumpalumpacus]

The fact that axioms are accepted doesn't not imply that your god is why they are axiomatic. Arguing otherwise is a non sequitur.

You are correct. Good thing I didn't say or mean to imply that.

I've seen you mount similar arguments enough times that you need not say it each time.

[Whateverist]

To point out some limits to reason is hardly the same thing as concluding the world is not intelligible.

Of course there are epistemological limits to what reason can and cannot reveal. My point is about the efficacy of reason as a tool. i.e. that there are truth preserving forms, such as syllogisms, and inviolate rules of thought, such as the principle of non-contradiction. You cannot rationally prove these are valid, you either recognize them as self-evident and believe they are true or you don't. Similarly, you either believe that the world has a rational order or you don't. No one can prove that it does; the world could be absurd.

Nevertheless, both of these foundational beliefs are fundamental to Christian theism.  Believers' reliance on these as absolute principles is repeatedly attacked when atheists dispute the main logical demonstrations for theism, such as First Cause and Necessary Being. And indeed those objections work because the absolute principles on which those demonstrations rest are beyond the epistemological limit. But that kind of victory comes at great cost. In so doing, the skeptics are either denying reason's efficacy and/or asserting absurdity. Both approaches are nihilistic in nature.

In my opinion, when it comes to empirical facts, you can't discover those through the exercise of pure reason. Reason may turn up logically consistent connections which feel plausible. But you still need confirmation to be certain.

Do we always insist on 100% certainty to act on a hunch? Of course not, at least not where acting is necessary and the penalty for choosing incorrectly is trivial. But where is the necessity in choosing where one stands on god belief? If one already believes, perhaps 'hell fire' will be persuasive. Otherwise no choice is required and one may acknowledge their inclination is either toward or away from belief without investing a lot more thought in the matter. All the importance believers place on god belief is based on hypotheticals which follow from the possibility that this non-confirmable uber being is out there doing things you can't detect and judging you for how often you spank the monkey. But from the perspective of those of us who are disinclined toward belief, that's just silly.

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I see Chad's trying to logic his gawd into existence again.

Painful to watch, isn't it?  Can't help but want to tell him there is an easier way.

[Neo-Scholastic]

Of course there are epistemological limits to what reason can and cannot reveal. My point is about the efficacy of reason as a tool. i.e. that there are truth preserving forms, such as syllogisms, and inviolate rules of thought, such as the principle of non-contradiction. You cannot rationally prove these are valid, you either recognize them as self-evident and believe they are true or you don't. Similarly, you either believe that the world has a rational order or you don't. No one can prove that it does; the world could be absurd.

Nevertheless, both of these foundational beliefs are fundamental to Christian theism.  Believers' reliance on these as absolute principles is repeatedly attacked when atheists dispute the main logical demonstrations for theism, such as First Cause and Necessary Being. And indeed those objections work because the absolute principles on which those demonstrations rest are beyond the epistemological limit. But that kind of victory comes at great cost. In so doing, the skeptics are either denying reason's efficacy and/or asserting absurdity. Both approaches are nihilistic in nature.

In my opinion, when it comes to empirical facts, you can't discover those through the exercise of pure reason. Reason may turn up logically consistent connections which feel plausible. But you still need confirmation to be certain.

Do we always insist on 100% certainty to act on a hunch? Of course not, at least not where acting is necessary and the penalty for choosing incorrectly is trivial. But where is the necessity in choosing where one stands on god belief? If one already believes, perhaps 'hell fire' will be persuasive. Otherwise no choice is required and one may acknowledge their inclination is either toward or away from belief without investing a lot more thought in the matter. All the importance believers place on god belief is based on hypotheticals which follow from the possibility that this non-confirmable uber being is out there doing things you can't detect and judging you for how often you spank the monkey. But from the perspective of those of us who are disinclined toward belief, that's just silly.

That's the difference between ontological and cosmological demonstration. A cosmological one begins with common everyday observations and applies reason to draw conclusions based on them. Unless you're a nominalist unequivocal proofs can only be discovered in mathematics.

As for whether belief in God is necessary, I would say probably not for everyday living and scientific inquires about natural phenomena. However, taking a stand is a necessary condition for the fundamental things that I think really matter in life such as values, meaning, and purpose.

[Whateverist]

Inherently, no creature in this universe can observe or remark on anything or have any knowledge of something outside this universe. The instant we have any actual data about a god, that god then is part of the natural order, and can be observed / debunked. 100% (not 99.999%, but 100%) of everything claimed about gods are simply asserted without valid and admissible evidence, and can therefore be dismissed without consideration of this non-evidence.

That seems like a reasonable objection for many naive god concepts. It doesn't apply when the evidence is ubiquitous such as the fact that beings persist in there being despite change or the general observation that causes have regular effects.

The fact that beings persist isn't an adequate justification for any claim apart from the persistence of beings.  Our understanding of what are the necessary conditions for being is far from complete.  

Well yeah first of all so called First cause says nothing of the nature of god, meaning it can't say if it's Buddha, Medusa, Jesus, Krishna and so on. Second the problem of First cause is that then someone also had to make God and if you don't need explanation who created god then you don't need an explanation of the "first cause" of the universe or in other words why could that cause itself not be natural? Not to mention that we have a highly successful theory of probabilistic causes called quantum mechanics.

When someone brings up "who created god?" I can tell either they haven't thought it through or don't understand the argument.

A clean beginning of everything out of a condition of absolute nothing begs the question of where the capacity for that creation is to come from.  If there is something else of any kind whatsoever which can erase the nothingness then there never was a pure nothing to begin with.  You haven't erased the paradox by positing an agent to transform your 'nothing' into something.  Your agent Agent if existent is still something and if we insist on prior causes must be accounted for.  If you are content to allow this eternal potential to exist, that is not one wit better than the claim that it is turtles all the way down.  I prefer the turtles claim myself because it doesn't falsely claim to have erased the paradox.  It is better simply to acknowledge the paradox and to reflect on what that tells us about the way we are wired.

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As for whether belief in God is necessary, I would say probably not for everyday living and scientific inquires about natural phenomena. However, taking a stand is a necessary condition for the fundamental things that I think really matter in life such as values, meaning, and purpose.

Really?  No values.  No meaning.  No purpose.  That sounds like the perspective of a deeply depressed person.  

But why even imagine we have any subjective experience at all?  Perhaps without god belief we are no more than automatons.  Only belief in god lifts a person up into full consciousness.  Otherwise we remain merely objects in the experience of those possessed of true subject-hood by virtue of their god belief.  Seems pretty far fetched to me.

[Neo-Scholastic]

That seems like a reasonable objection for many naive god concepts. It doesn't apply when the evidence is ubiquitous such as the fact that beings persist in there being despite change or the general observation that causes have regular effects.

The fact that beings persist isn't an adequate justification for any claim apart from the persistence of beings. Our understanding of what are the necessary conditions for being is far from complete.

By itself, no. It is a reference to Aristotle's successful resolution of the dilemma between Parmenedies and Heraciltus.

When someone brings up "who created god?" I can tell either they haven't thought it through or don't understand the argument.

A clean beginning of everything out of a condition of absolute nothing begs the question of where the capacity for that creation is to come from. If there is something else of any kind whatsoever which can erase the nothingness then there never was a pure nothing to begin with. You haven't erased the paradox by positing an agent to transform your 'nothing' into something. Your agent Agent if existent is still something and if we insist on prior causes must be accounted for. If you are content to allow this eternal potential to exist, that is not one wit better than the claim that it is turtles all the way down. I prefer the turtles claim myself because it doesn't falsely claim to have erased the paradox. The paradox remains.

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As for whether belief in God is necessary, I would say probably not for everyday living and scientific inquires about natural phenomena. However, taking a stand is a necessary condition for the fundamental things that I think really matter in life such as values, meaning, and purpose.

Really? No values. No meaning. No purpose. That sounds like the perspective of a deeply depressed person.

But why even imagine we have any subjective experience at all? Perhaps without god belief we are no more than automatons. Only belief in god lifts a person up into full consciousness. Otherwise we remain merely objects in the experience of those possessed of true subject-hood by virtue of their god belief. Seems pretty far fetched to me.

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As for whether belief in God is necessary, I would say probably not for everyday living and scientific inquires about natural phenomena. However, taking a stand is a necessary condition for the fundamental things that I think really matter in life such as values, meaning, and purpose.

Really? No values. No meaning. No purpose. That sounds like the perspective of a deeply depressed person.

But why even imagine we have any subjective experience at all? Perhaps without god belief we are no more than automatons. Only belief in god lifts a person up into full consciousness. Otherwise we remain merely objects in the experience of those possessed of true subject-hood by virtue of their god belief. Seems pretty far fetched to me.

I think we are talking about necessary being. Like the first cause argument it is about logical priority not temporal. So there is no issue about one bringing the other into existence at one point in time but rather what sustains existence across all time, i.e. contingent relationships. It was never an origin story which is what the 'who created god?' Objection mistakenly assumes. All that 'out of nothing' stuff is an entirely separate issue.

[The Grand Nudger]

As for whether belief in God is necessary, I would say probably not for everyday living and scientific inquires about natural phenomena. However, taking a stand is a necessary condition for the fundamental things that I think really matter in life such as values, meaning, and purpose.

The god issue is demonstrably irrelevant to all three.  So what If there isn't god-value, god-meaning, or god-purpose?  That doesn't diminish, affect, alter, or eliminate what value does exist, what meaning does exist, and what purpose does exist.

You are only expressing, here, your dissatisfaction with god-absent value, meaning, or purpose...that's a you problem, not a logical problem. I'm not suffering under the same dissatisfaction. The contention that, if there is no god-meaning..then there is no meaning (rinse and repeat with the rest)..would be a non sequitur. So much for god's purported necessity.

[Neo-Scholastic]

As for whether belief in God is necessary, I would say probably not for everyday living and scientific inquires about natural phenomena. However, taking a stand is a necessary condition for the fundamental things that I think really matter in life such as values, meaning, and purpose.

The god issue is demonstrably irrelevant to all three.  So what If there isn't god-value, god-meaning, or god-purpose?  That doesn't diminish, affect, alter, or eliminate what value does exist, what meaning does exist, and what purpose does exist.

You are only expressing, here, your dissatisfaction with god-absent value, meaning, or purpose...that's a you problem, not a logical problem. I'm not suffering under the same dissatisfaction.

It absolutely does because you have never presented any absolutes on which to rest value, meaning, and purpose. All you have ever offered up are circular reasons that go nowhere..

[The Grand Nudger]

A restatement of the same non-sequitur that replaces "god" with "absolute".  So what if there is no absolute value, no absolute meaning, no absolute purpose?  That doesn't diminish, affect, alter, or eliminate what value, meaning, and purpose does exist.

[Harry Nevis]

i'm wondering if you can help me im an atheist but am struggling to answer a question i often propose to myself it goes something like this...as far as we can see humans right now are as intelligent as we can get, but growing up we do not have the intelligence capacity to comprehend our surrounding. ...What if we, right NOW are at this point in time, at our current level of intelligence are in the same position as the Ant and Toddler? Could there be an unknown Force, Entity, that just the same as we are unknown to the ant and the toddler to his or her world, that is looking at us as we look at the ant?

Yes, but such an entity would not be the God of Classical Theism. Such an entity would be just another being in a world of beings. From Aristotle and Plotinus to Anselm and Aquinas God is the inconceivable & ultimate hypostatis in whom everything "moves, lives, and has its being." He is the eternal and self-sustaining Being-in-Itself, the "I AM." And unlike some distant and grand invisible being, God makes Himself known to all through the light of reason and through the world's intelligibility.

Yes, it IS inconceivable that someone actually thinks the christan god is found trough reason.

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The former which our new member brought up at least keeps in mind perspective where yours just glibly assumes things we are in no position to know.

That is precisely my objection to atheism...it devolves into nihilism. When you say "we are in no position to know" you are basically saying that reason is unreliable and that the world is not intelligible. Holding either or both is self-defeating.

Geez.  It does nothing of the kind.  You're tripping.

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Atheism is about a persons status of belief in gods.  Nothing more, nothing less.

Again, that is only the trivial definition of atheism you and others have chosen to embrace, i.e. one that applies applies to infants and the unaware. The alternate and meaningful definition of atheism is a intellectual negative stance with respect to the proposition that "God(s) exist."

I do not consider you so young or so indifferent as to not have taken a stance.

Redefining words to suit your prejudices, huh? The arrogance of telling people what they REALLY believe is fucking amazing.

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Nothing about atheism requires this "negative stance" if by that you mean taking up a knowledge position that there are no gods. It only requires seeing no valid reason to afford belief to any deities.

A proposition is either true or not true. So with respect to the proposition "God(s) exist." there are only two options. The proposition is either true, the theist stance, or it is not true, the atheist stance. The meaningful definition of atheism I have given does not force atheists to claim metaphysical knowledge; but rather asks them to own where they stand with respect to the question.

(Well, maybe there is a third option called 'I don't care' but I do not seriously believe any AF member falls into that category.)

God(s) exist.

Really? Show me evidence.  I'll wait to see if you have any, but no one has been able to come up with any for a few thousand years, so I don't accept your claim as of yet.

And, I don't care if any gods DO exist.  I doubt that I'm the only one here, but keep telling us what we REALLY think.  It's a real hoot.

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As for whether belief in God is necessary, I would say probably not for everyday living and scientific inquires about natural phenomena. However, taking a stand is a necessary condition for the fundamental things that I think really matter in life such as values, meaning, and purpose.

So, by not saying "god exists" or "god doesn't exist" my life has no value, meaning or purpose?  Or just the values, meanings and purpose you want there to be?  How fucking arrogant.

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That seems like a reasonable objection for many naive god concepts. It doesn't apply when the evidence is ubiquitous such as the fact that beings persist in there being despite change or the general observation that causes have regular effects.

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That is your evidence for god? Meh.

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The god issue is demonstrably irrelevant to all three.  So what If there isn't god-value, god-meaning, or god-purpose?  That doesn't diminish, affect, alter, or eliminate what value does exist, what meaning does exist, and what purpose does exist.

You are only expressing, here, your dissatisfaction with god-absent value, meaning, or purpose...that's a you problem, not a logical problem.  I'm not suffering under the same dissatisfaction.

It absolutely does because you have never presented any absolutes on which to rest value, meaning, and purpose. All you have ever offered up are circular reasons that go nowhere..

Why do you need absolutes?