Why not deism?

[Inqwizitor]

I was never into that whole thing about teleology anyway.

And you might call this way more ambitious than classical deism, but if one wants to be very stringent with the PSR, then this should be the natural conclusion. Even if you were to argue that the universe exists the way it is because God willed the universe to be such way, one could still ask why did God will it one way but not another?

And I wouldn't agree that this isn't a form of naturalism since I'm not positing a super-being out there that is somehow aware of this reality. I think the only beings that are conscious in this whole reality are entities like you and me, and it probably helps for us to have consciousness. I see no need for the whole cosmos to be conscious, however.

According to my view, there is an orderly hierarchy of levels of reality that logically arises, sure. But it's still all "blind" at the end. No sentient purpose behind it.

So, there is no sufficient reason for all possible worlds? I must be missing something. How does that pass the PSR? If we expand all possible worlds to some "megaverse" — what is the reason it exists? I feel like we need some starting point in any case.

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I'm not sure how it provides meaning or reason. Maybe you can help me to understand how it would do that. The only thing I can think of is the notion that there was at least an original creative purpose and intent to existence, even if it's all running on automatic since. But that doesn't change what it is like to be human, just because some being decided to set it in motion doesn't change what it is to experience it, or provide externally bestowed meaning or purpose to experiencing it.

Far as I can tell, life means whatever we want it to mean. A lot of elusive concepts we chase aren't really things-in-themselves. Meaning and purpose are just a subjective emotional state, a response to having enough value. If you consistently seek and embrace things that you find valuable and let go of things you don't find valuable, eventually you have enough value that it feel subjectively like "meaning" and "purpose" -- simply because you look forward to enjoy said value each day. I don't see how an ineffable, unrelatable, indifferent deity as a starting-point for all that makes any difference. How is that different, practically speaking, from existence being eternal or cyclic or a simulation or whatever else you want to speculate that it is?

Right. For a deist, they still have to come up with some subjective meaning that motivates them, because there is no revelation. The same need for subjective meaning goes for religious people, but we just think that some objective meaning has also been made known to us, although we'll never grasp the entirety of it.

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They assume, or believe there is some sort of god or creator, without evidence. That is called faith. Claiming you used reason to come to the conclusion that there's a god doesn't make it any more true. It doesn't even compare to having objective, verifiable evidence.

I'm not sure about this. If you're limiting the possible uses of evidence only to demonstrate natural things, then you're begging the question. The arguments for a prime mover et al. start with objective, verifiable phenomena as premises, but the conclusion is not.

How does this relate to what I said?

Maybe I misunderstood you.

That's not necessarily true. Plenty of deists believe in some kind of afterlife. They may not have the same idea of god as most theists, but they may still believe that consciousness exists in some way after the death of the brain. Which is another assumption based on no evidence.

There are logical arguments that the mind is not the brain, and that intentionality is indissoluble. These are not objective, verifiable phenomena though, so you might dismiss the arguments categorically. Hume's fork?

Sure there is. Life and nature are fascinating. Even people in the most terrible of circumstances can, and often do, find happiness and wonder in life. That's not to say there isn't suffering in life as well. No one's claiming it's all rainbows, grapes being fed to you and endless orgasms. Life has it's ups and downs. But it's beautiful to me. And that's enough for me.

That's a good note to end on.

[GrandizerII]

I was never into that whole thing about teleology anyway.

And you might call this way more ambitious than classical deism, but if one wants to be very stringent with the PSR, then this should be the natural conclusion. Even if you were to argue that the universe exists the way it is because God willed the universe to be such way, one could still ask why did God will it one way but not another?

And I wouldn't agree that this isn't a form of naturalism since I'm not positing a super-being out there that is somehow aware of this reality. I think the only beings that are conscious in this whole reality are entities like you and me, and it probably helps for us to have consciousness. I see no need for the whole cosmos to be conscious, however.

According to my view, there is an orderly hierarchy of levels of reality that logically arises, sure. But it's still all "blind" at the end. No sentient purpose behind it.

So, there is no sufficient reason for all possible worlds? I must be missing something. How does that pass the PSR? If we expand all possible worlds to some "megaverse" — what is the reason it exists? I feel like we need some starting point in any case.

I'm not sure if you're understanding my view correctly. If you replace "megaverse" with "God", what is the reason "God" exists? Whatever that reasoning you use to answer that question can probably be applied to the "megaverse" as well, unless you resort to special pleading that is.

The way I look at it is:

If you remove all things in existence, you're left with absolute nothingness which somehow ... exists. Can we make sense out of that? I don't think so, so it would be better to say that something is necessary to exist. But then the next question would be: what form must this something take? Why can't it take another form instead?

In answer to that question, I feel modal realism addresses it satisfactorily by positing that all possible worlds must be actual. So it isn't that there is a concrete reason we can pinpoint at and say that's why this exists. Rather, if we get rid of the "megaverse", then why do we have some worlds actual but not others? The more complete the answer, the better. The PSR perhaps may never be fully satisfied per the wording of the principle (if we're going with the most stringent possible), but if you have some respect for the PSR nevertheless, what more satisfactory answer is there?

Some naturalists are fine with the universe just is, and that's fine. They don't care about the PSR. You and I, on the other hand, do.

[Inqwizitor]

So, there is no sufficient reason for all possible worlds? I must be missing something. How does that pass the PSR? If we expand all possible worlds to some "megaverse" — what is the reason it exists? I feel like we need some starting point in any case.

I'm not sure if you're understanding my view correctly. If you replace "megaverse" with "God", what is the reason "God" exists? Whatever that reasoning you use to answer that question can probably be applied to the "megaverse" as well, unless you resort to special pleading that is.

The way I look at it is:

If you remove all things in existence, you're left with absolute nothingness which somehow ... exists. Can we make sense out of that? I don't think so, so it would be better to say that something is necessary to exist. But then the next question would be: what form must this something take? Why can't it take another form instead?

In answer to that question, I feel modal realism addresses it satisfactorily by positing that all possible worlds must be actual. So it isn't that there is a concrete reason we can pinpoint at and say that's why this exists. Rather, if we get rid of the "megaverse", then why do we have some worlds actual but not others? The more complete the answer, the better. The PSR perhaps may never be fully satisfied per the wording of the principle (if we're going with the most stringent possible), but if you have some respect for the PSR nevertheless, what more satisfactory answer is there?

Some naturalists are fine with the universe just is, and that's fine. They don't care about the PSR. You and I, on the other hand, do.

I think I get it. So the megaverse is actually metaphysically necessary?

I need to do some more reading.

[EgoDeath]

I'm not sure about this. If you're limiting the possible uses of evidence only to demonstrate natural things, then you're begging the question. The arguments for a prime mover et al. start with objective, verifiable phenomena as premises, but the conclusion is not.

If something is natural, then it has natural characteristics, no? That means we'd be able to define, observe and study those natural characteristics.

If something is supernatural, or outside of nature, then it cannot be observed by natural means, can it? Therefore, why bother talking about it? Claiming that you can't observe god because it's outside of nature is akin to saying it isn't even real, seeing as how everything we know of so far is within the natural universe.

Also, the prime mover argument is just silly, and I'm not going to debate this with you. We've exhausted the prime mover argument again and again on this forum and the only people who find it convincing are religious people, interestingly enough. And then maybe @Belaqua as his sole purpose on the board seems to be acting as a contrarian to any and every atheist. Outside of that, no one takes the argument seriously and I just don't care to get into it as I've done it countless times with countless other people.

There are logical arguments that the mind is not the brain, and that intentionality is indissoluble. These are not objective, verifiable phenomena though, so you might dismiss the arguments categorically. Hume's fork?

Logical arguments don't really help much with proving the existence of unverifiable concepts, unfortunately. After all, you don't use logic alone to cross the street, do you? No, you also use observation and evidence that can be verified by others.

That's a good note to end on.

Where there's life, there's hope.

[The Grand Nudger]

@ the op q

-another poster hit on this immediately, but deism provides no utility.  It lacks the accuracy of atheism, and the utility of theism.  Stuck in the middle, to no end and for no reason, without the benefits of either position to it's immediate left and right (in this comparison, at least).

[Nay_Sayer]

Also, it took too long to get to this;

[Simon Moon]

The universe itself is sufficient evidence of something not-universe. Or at least not this universe. As all arguments do, this rests on some assumptions, such as the principle of sufficient reason and a rejection of "brute fact" as a satisfactory explanation.

All I can see is, the universe is evidence that the universe exists. Not sure how one would get to something 'not-universe' existing? And even if this 'not-universe' exists, how would one even begin to speculate that it is an agent, that could be defined as a god?

As far as I can tell, PSR is nothing more than an attempt to come up with some rational sounding argument, to get around the discomfort humans have in not having an answer. And how does PSR get around being applied to the god itself? If the universe conforms to PSR, why doesn't the god?

[Objectivist]

Atheism is an amorphous description of a lack of belief in a god or gods. It could mean that someone has no faith in a religious idea about what a god or gods means, or it could be a philosophical conviction of some kind. 

Something I'm curious about is why deism is virtually non-existent nowadays. There are arguments for the existence of "God", that actually, in the end, don't amount to much more than a hypothetical Prime Mover, or "something" — we don't know what — that is the source of reason, volition and material phenomena. 

Is deism pointless or even dishonest, because it's asserting something as knowledge that we cannot know? Did you ever seriously consider it instead of atheism? Or is there any practical difference?

I was a deist for a short period of time, maybe a year.  I think deism is a stop on the way to atheism.  A god that does not interact with the universe is essentially identical to a god that doesn't exist.  The reason I'm no longer a deist is that deism isn't true either.

[Objectivist]

First, we should ask, "Why deism?"

What reason to we have to think there's a god of any kind in the first place?

If we want to really get down to an ontological principle, we should ask, "What is a god?"

That might be the fundamental problem with deism, actually. In that case, though, atheism loses cognitive meaning, as well.

The issue is basically, why is there something rather than nothing? That is at least a reason, if not an entirely convincing one (and to be convinced is subjective anyway), to accept some sort of necessary existent.

"why is there something rather than nothing" is an improper question.  As soon as you offer a reason you are talking about existence.  You can't explain existence by pointing to something that exists.  You'd have to step outside of existence to look for an explanation.  But if something doesn't exist then it can't explain anything.  

If an answer to the question of why anything exists is the basis for your belief, then you're in trouble. You don't get down to an ontological principle by starting with an error.

[LastPoet]

You are all a product of my mind, a figment of my imagination. Prove me wrong!

I'm not a great philosopher, but the limit for religion thought is solipsism. You can't ever prove a solipsist wrong