Friendly Atheism

[Fireball]

How can a being that is one with everything be said to possess consciousness? And how can something that is one with everything have no parts, when everything clearly has parts?

Are you saying that the universe is conscious?

Back in the early '90s when I was still going to (Catholic) church, there was a movement afoot to embrace multiculturalism, which partly was to embrace just that "consciousness", ala the Native American belief that all things have some "spirit" in them. That was 25+ years ago, and I haven't been inside a church more than a handful of times since, so I don''t know how that sat with the pope or the rest of the hierarchy in the long run.

[SlowCalculations]

People think their rational when surrounded by ignorance
it's hard to convince people otherwise when their brought up around ignorance i think people like theists believe they're rational i think it's easy to trick the brain into believing anything you want to believe yes anything. But deep down do we know the truth of course we do. For some people like theists i think it's very scary because its hard for them to feel comfortable with the thought we just go back into the earth but basically lose all our consciousness i know that fear very well. So to admit something like one day you're basically nothing again is scary and fear often takes over lives for as long as it can. So Is it rational? no, is it rational to them in the mindset their in yes. If they feel this way i don't wish to invalidate them on their feelings but what i do wish to do is maybe one day help educate if i ever find myself in a position where i too know enough to help.

[Objectivist]

mcc1789

"I think what you say makes sense. This does align with what I've thought, that if God is the basis of everything there is no objective reality. I'm still unclear on why primacy of consciousness must be false, though it seems to be, I do agree. Forgive me if I seem slow. What concepts are stolen?


I have to admit every kind of skepticism seems to refute itself, unless a skeptic is only saying they personally don't know. Once it extends to someone else, how do they know others can't know?"

You're not slow!  You thought of that on your own whereas I had to learn it from someone else.  You are thinking in terms of essentials all on your own.  

The primacy of consciousness is false because existence doesn't conform to conscious activity.  If it did we'd all be perfectly fit and handsome or beautiful with perfect bodies and we'd all be rich.  Cheetahs wouldn't have to run to catch their food.  Frogs would just wish the flies into their mouths and kids would never get caught with their hand in the cookie jar.  LOL.

Seriously though, the primacy of existence is true because it corresponds to the facts.  Its truth is self-evident.  Every single conscious moment of our lives attests to its truth.  to accept the primacy of consciousness is to put one's feelings, emotions, faith, and imagination before the facts of reality.  That can't end well.  Also known as delusion.  

Here's a link to a paper on it.  It's by Anton Thorn.  I highly suspect that Anton Thorn is a pen name and the author is actually Dawson Beckrith of Incinnerating Presuppositionalism.  But I can't prove it. Anyway, it's good reading.  I highly recommend Incinerating presuppositionalism as well.  Some of the comment threads are highly entertaining.  Many theists have beaten themselves bloody trying to refute the primacy of existence over there.  

http://www.oocities.org/athens/sparta/10...rimacy.htm

http://bahnsenburner.blogspot.com/search...+existence

Which concepts are stollen? All of them really but they are trying to use logic and argumentation to rebut the argument that their view affirms the primacy of consciousness. Both the concepts "logic" and "argumentation" presuppose the primacy of existence (as do all concepts). So they are using concepts while denying a concept logically antecedent to them. In this case POE. I'm going to use POE from now on because I get tired of typing primacy of existence.

[Belacqua]

I can imagine all sorts of crazy things, but in the end I'm just imagining.  

I understand it seems that way, when we talk about traditional arguments about God.

The trouble with describing these very unfamiliar ideas is that we tend to start in the middle. All of the elaborate grounding and logical progression to reach that position is there, but takes a lot of work. And absent that work, especially if we just assume that all religious people are self-deluding fantasists, it's easy to dismiss. 

They would do well study Objectivism.

I'm never against studying something serious, for the reasons given above. I do want to avoid giving one view more credence based on begging the question about another view.

---

How can a being that is one with everything be said to possess consciousness? 

It doesn't. Not in the way that people possess consciousness. 

There are a lot of terms that are used only analogously when talking about God. For example, the statement "God loves you," is entirely different in meaning from "your mom loves you." 

And how can something that is one with everything have no parts, when everything clearly has parts?

It looks that way to us. 

The best explanation of this I've found comes through Lutheran mystic Jacob Boehme, who was so influential on Hegel. (The idea long predates Boehme, though.) 

For limited human minds, understanding comes through division. One part of the universe (e.g. your mind) has to stand in regard of another part of the universe (e.g. the laws of nature) in order to understand them. In fact, though, your mind is not separate from the laws of nature. 

(The cool thing is that the Japanese kanji 分 means both "divide" and "understand." 分ける = divide and 分かる = understand. I think those old guys knew some metaphysics. It's also true that in many cases, it is through dividing that we discern. For example, as you learn art history, you learn to divide Gothic style from Renaissance style, Quattrocento Botticelli from Cinquecento Raphael, early Raphael from late Raphael, etc. Increased connoisseurship comes through increased ability to discern one thing from another. For humans, understanding comes about through separating things. )

For mystics from Plotinus to Blake, visionary experience is when the apparent divisions go away. I'm pretty sure this is similar to satori in Zen, but being less familiar with that don't want to state it too strongly.

---

I suppose for the pantheist, it would be okay to say God is one with all things. However, classical theism denies that. Yet how do they reconcile this with what you've laid out I wonder? 

Again, I'm not exactly clear about this. We have to DIVIDE Catholic divine simplicity from pantheism. 

Roughly, I think it has to do with where we draw the boundaries. Non-Christian pantheists hold that God is contiguous and co-terminous with the universe. 

For Catholics, God is infinite, and therefore not co-terminous with anything. God is the whole universe, plus infinity.

---

assuming as they say he's wholly immaterial and necessary, separate from material, contingent things? 

Here I'm afraid that "separate from" is a spatial analogy, not a metaphysical truth. 

God seems separate to us, based on our limited perceptions. 

As far as I can tell, this was less clear in earlier theology -- I don't know of how Aquinas, for example, addressed this. 

In the 15th century the great polymath Bishop Nicholas of Cusa did original work in mathematics on the concept of infinity. (Since overthrown by Cantor's work, but there you are.) Cusanus argued that infinity could have no boundaries, because a limited infinity would not be infinite. (This is what Hegel called "bad infinity" -- what looks to us like infinity, but is said not to be present somewhere, isn't really infinite. Infinity must spread to everywhere.) 

Based on other arguments, Cusanus decided that because God is infinite, he can't be absent or separate from anything. This is the origin of Blake's famous poem: infinity in the palm of your hand, a world in a grain of sand, eternity in an hour, etc. 

(Cusanus also used this concept of infinity to show -- several decades before Galileo, that an infinite universe would have no center, and therefore it is wrong to say that the earth is the center of the universe. He even proposed that the stars we see are like the sun, and may have people looking at us. He was of course burned at the stake for this -- oops, wrong, he was lavishly praised by several popes.)

Thus God is not separate from contingent or material things. 

OK, OK, I know this is getting pretty wild. I only brought it up to point to one strong and old tradition in which God's existence and consciousness are not separate -- they are in fact identical. As God's existence isn't separable from God, because God is the existence of everything whatsoever.

[mcc1789]

mcc1789

"I think what you say makes sense. This does align with what I've thought, that if God is the basis of everything there is no objective reality. I'm still unclear on why primacy of consciousness must be false, though it seems to be, I do agree. Forgive me if I seem slow. What concepts are stolen?


I have to admit every kind of skepticism seems to refute itself, unless a skeptic is only saying they personally don't know. Once it extends to someone else, how do they know others can't know?"

You're not slow!  You thought of that on your own whereas I had to learn it from someone else.  You are thinking in terms of essentials all on your own.  

The primacy of consciousness is false because existence doesn't conform to conscious activity.  If it did we'd all be perfectly fit and handsome or beautiful with perfect bodies and we'd all be rich.  Cheetahs wouldn't have to run to catch their food.  Frogs would just wish the flies into their mouths and kids would never get caught with their hand in the cookie jar.  LOL.

Seriously though, the primacy of existence is true because it corresponds to the facts.  Its truth is self-evident.  Every single conscious moment of our lives attests to its truth.  To accept the primacy of consciousness is to put one's feelings, emotions, faith, and imagination before the facts of reality.  That can't end well.  Also known as delusion.  

Here's a link to a paper on it.  It's by Anton Thorn.  I highly suspect that Anton Thorn is a pen name and the author is actually Dawson Beckrith of Incinerating Presuppositionalism.  But I can't prove it. Anyway, it's good reading.  I highly recommend Incinerating presuppositionalism as well.  Some of the comment threads are highly entertaining.  Many theists have beaten themselves bloody trying to refute the primacy of existence over there.  

http://www.oocities.org/athens/sparta/10...rimacy.htm

http://bahnsenburner.blogspot.com/search...+existence

Which concepts are stolen?  All of them really but they are trying to use logic and argumentation to rebut the argument that their view affirms the primacy of consciousness.  Both the concepts "logic" and "argumentation" presuppose the primacy of existence (as do all concepts).  So they are using concepts while denying a concept logically antecedent to them.  In this case POE.  I'm going to use POE from now on because I get tired of typing primacy of existence.

Yes, though they make an exception by saying that only applies to our consciousness (if at all) not God's.

That first link is dead, though I'll definitely look at the second. I have noticed what you speak of, and "stolen concept" is an apt term for it. The skeptics who try to use reasoning to refute reason itself etc.

---

I can imagine all sorts of crazy things, but in the end I'm just imagining.  

I understand it seems that way, when we talk about traditional arguments about God.

The trouble with describing these very unfamiliar ideas is that we tend to start in the middle. All of the elaborate grounding and logical progression to reach that position is there, but takes a lot of work. And absent that work, especially if we just assume that all religious people are self-deluding fantasists, it's easy to dismiss. 

They would do well study Objectivism.

I'm never against studying something serious, for the reasons given above. I do want to avoid giving one view more credence based on begging the question about another view.

---

How can a being that is one with everything be said to possess consciousness? 

It doesn't. Not in the way that people possess consciousness. 

There are a lot of terms that are used only analogously when talking about God. For example, the statement "God loves you," is entirely different in meaning from "your mom loves you." 

And how can something that is one with everything have no parts, when everything clearly has parts?

It looks that way to us. 

The best explanation of this I've found comes through Lutheran mystic Jacob Boehme, who was so influential on Hegel. (The idea long predates Boehme, though.) 

For limited human minds, understanding comes through division. One part of the universe (e.g. your mind) has to stand in regard of another part of the universe (e.g. the laws of nature) in order to understand them. In fact, though, your mind is not separate from the laws of nature. 

(The cool thing is that the Japanese kanji 分 means both "divide" and "understand." 分ける = divide and 分かる = understand. I think those old guys knew some metaphysics. It's also true that in many cases, it is through dividing that we discern. For example, as you learn art history, you learn to divide Gothic style from Renaissance style, Quattrocento Botticelli from Cinquecento Raphael, early Raphael from late Raphael, etc. Increased connoisseurship comes through increased ability to discern one thing from another. For humans, understanding comes about through separating things. )

For mystics from Plotinus to Blake, visionary experience is when the apparent divisions go away. I'm pretty sure this is similar to satori in Zen, but being less familiar with that don't want to state it too strongly.

---

I suppose for the pantheist, it would be okay to say God is one with all things. However, classical theism denies that. Yet how do they reconcile this with what you've laid out I wonder? 

Again, I'm not exactly clear about this. We have to DIVIDE Catholic divine simplicity from pantheism. 

Roughly, I think it has to do with where we draw the boundaries. Non-Christian pantheists hold that God is contiguous and co-terminous with the universe. 

For Catholics, God is infinite, and therefore not co-terminous with anything. God is the whole universe, plus infinity.

---

assuming as they say he's wholly immaterial and necessary, separate from material, contingent things? 

Here I'm afraid that "separate from" is a spatial analogy, not a metaphysical truth. 

God seems separate to us, based on our limited perceptions. 

As far as I can tell, this was less clear in earlier theology -- I don't know of how Aquinas, for example, addressed this. 

In the 15th century the great polymath Bishop Nicholas of Cusa did original work in mathematics on the concept of infinity. (Since overthrown by Cantor's work, but there you are.) Cusanus argued that infinity could have no boundaries, because a limited infinity would not be infinite. (This is what Hegel called "bad infinity" -- what looks to us like infinity, but is said not to be present somewhere, isn't really infinite. Infinity must spread to everywhere.) 

Based on other arguments, Cusanus decided that because God is infinite, he can't be absent or separate from anything. This is the origin of Blake's famous poem: infinity in the palm of your hand, a world in a grain of sand, eternity in an hour, etc. 

(Cusanus also used this concept of infinity to show -- several decades before Galileo, that an infinite universe would have no center, and therefore it is wrong to say that the earth is the center of the universe. He even proposed that the stars we see are like the sun, and may have people looking at us. He was of course burned at the stake for this -- oops, wrong, he was lavishly praised by several popes.)

Thus God is not separate from contingent or material things. 

OK, OK, I know this is getting pretty wild. I only brought it up to point to one strong and old tradition in which God's existence and consciousness are not separate -- they are in fact identical. As God's existence isn't separable from God, because God is the existence of everything whatsoever.

I guess it is difficult for me to see how a being is both transcendent from everything yet also imminent simultaneously. To me, it seems many of these properties are contradictory. I'm also still unclear on where the line is between classical theism and pantheism (or perhaps there's none really).

[Belacqua]

I'm also still unclear on where the line is between classical theism and pantheism (or perhaps there's none really).

Certainly the classical theologians say there's a difference. 

There are a number of different flavors of pantheism, apparently. Very likely I'm not aware of all of them. 

The main point of pantheism, though, seems to be that God is identical with the world. What the world is, that is God. 

Classical theology will point to a number of differences: 

~ The world is contingent, God is necessary. 

~ The world changes, God is impassible and eternal. (And note here that the possibility that the world has always existed -- that the multiverse has no beginning, or whatever -- is not relevant here, as "eternal" does not mean "lasts for all time.") 

~ The world exists, God is existence.

[mcc1789]

I'm also still unclear on where the line is between classical theism and pantheism (or perhaps there's none really).

Certainly the classical theologians say there's a difference. 

There are a number of different flavors of pantheism, apparently. Very likely I'm not aware of all of them. 

The main point of pantheism, though, seems to be that God is identical with the world. What the world is, that is God. 

Classical theology will point to a number of differences: 

~ The world is contingent, God is necessary. 

~ The world changes, God is impassible and eternal. (And note here that the possibility that the world has always existed -- that the multiverse has no beginning, or whatever -- is not relevant here, as "eternal" does not mean "lasts for all time.") 

~ The world exists, God is existence.

I know they say that, but I'd been unclear on the difference.

A common definition for "eternal" is in fact "lasting forever". That is semantics though I realize.

I've never been clear on how God "is" existence according to them.

[Belacqua]

A common definition for "eternal" is in fact "lasting forever". That is semantics though I realize.

I've never been clear on how God "is" existence according to them.

Yeah, those are notoriously slippery ideas to get a hold of.

I wonder if it would be too far off topic for this thread.

[GrandizerII]

I'm also still unclear on where the line is between classical theism and pantheism (or perhaps there's none really).

Certainly the classical theologians say there's a difference. 

There are a number of different flavors of pantheism, apparently. Very likely I'm not aware of all of them. 

The main point of pantheism, though, seems to be that God is identical with the world. What the world is, that is God. 

Classical theology will point to a number of differences: 

~ The world is contingent, God is necessary. 

~ The world changes, God is impassible and eternal. (And note here that the possibility that the world has always existed -- that the multiverse has no beginning, or whatever -- is not relevant here, as "eternal" does not mean "lasts for all time.") 

~ The world exists, God is existence.

In other words, positions that are either unsound, uncompelling, or trivially true. Which means I'll be sticking to the most reasonable position I know of for the time being, which is atheism/naturalism.

[mcc1789]

A common definition for "eternal" is in fact "lasting forever". That is semantics though I realize.

I've never been clear on how God "is" existence according to them.

Yeah, those are notoriously slippery ideas to get a hold of.

I wonder if it would be too far off topic for this thread.

Well, it pertains to whether theism could be rational I'd say, so not yet.