[Serious] Absolutes and Atheism

[The Grand Nudger]

I often hear how classical demstrations for god have been refuted many times. The proported refutations generally challenge the validity of classical philosophy's assumptions. But after dispensing with all the foundational principles of classical philosophy to what does the debunker appeal to as foundational knowlege?

Wholly incorrect.  The classical demonstrations for gods have all been refuted many times on their own grounds, and on grounds of the validity of their inferences within a rational framework.

The only "successful" argument for god widely acknowledged is contemporary.  Imagine that, we've been getting better at things..even arguing for the existence of fairies...over time.

[Neo-Scholastic]

Let's say that is true...still hoping to hear some candidates for absolutes.

[Belacqua]

You don’t, but evidently Neo does.

Sorry, I'm not following you here.

Was this for me?

[Belacqua]

Are you saying though that he's talking conditionally... ie 'counterfactually'; if if the world was different than it is, ie not social... not populated, then it would be meaningless? I would indeed really like to read this to see what sort of picture he paints, to see if I'd agree with his overall conclusion, in that situation. But as a (perhaps) roughly similar concept, I've often thought if you had say your visual field but no perception of meaning or beauty or anything, then no matter what maelstrom of inputs were presented to your senses, your experience would be meaningless. And indeed AFAIK in Buddhism one form of advanced meditation aims to get to a roughly similar state where objects are not even identified, ie to be able to recognise your visual field as shapes and colours etc rather than identified objects for instance, but don't quote me on that, that's just something I vaguely remember, and I don't know how plausible it is in practice.

There's a little game I play with my students sometimes. I have them all look up at the ceiling, and then ask them what color are the chairs they're sitting in. A lot of times they can't remember. 

Clearly, when they came in the room they didn't fall on the floor. But they also didn't register the full sense-input of the chair. They saw the meaning of the chair and that was enough. I suspect that's how we see the world most times. 

I'm sure you're right that Buddhism addresses this, but I'm not sure how...

He may be more or less forgiving of your sitting on the fence for so long

The name "Belacqua" is from a character in The Divine Comedy, who was so lazy that he waited until the last minute to make up his mind. I use it to tease myself.

[Rev. Rye]

You don’t, but evidently Neo does.

Sorry, I'm not following you here.

Was this for me?

Yep. That was 100% a response to you arguing that you know that the science of sex and gender (Hell, even the science of biological sex) is more complicated than Neo thinks.

[Belacqua]

Why not? What assurance is there that we are not just in a pocket of proximate order within a cosmic chaos.

Yep, you have a point. The universe is a big place, and stranger than we can imagine. 

Also it might be that the "pocket" is just wherever we happen to be... I'm sure you know the analogy of the metal detector: Guy buys a metal detector, goes to the beach, and finds a bunch of metal. He goes home and says, "Everything on the beach is metal." Because he has a tool which can only find one thing, he concludes that the one thing is all there is. 

So Nietzsche would probably say that since our minds evolved to perceive order (for survival, not for truth) then that's what we find. And science is just a tool of those minds' goals. So it means that there could be a whole lot of chaos also. 

@Belacqua, I often hear how classical demstrations for god have been refuted many times. The proported refutations generally challenge the validity of classical philosophy's assumptions. But after dispensing with all the foundational principles of classical philosophy to what does the debunker appeal to as foundational knowlege?

I think the people who declare classical theology null and void tend to be poorly informed. We've seen what most of the rebuttals look like here, and they tend to go rather badly. Every time the Five Ways come up, for example, we have to re-teach what the word "cause" means. 

And yes, a lot of the rebuttals tend to involve serious question-begging. "Because foundational knowledge only comes from science, only science gives foundational knowledge." That kind of thing. 

It's often difficult to get people to admit they even have unprovable but strongly-held metaphysical beliefs, if they just take it for granted that their metaphysical beliefs are true. Probably it doesn't even occur to them that these count as their a priori absolutes. 

There are better rebuttals, of course. I should probably buckle down and read what Kant argued on this subject, for example. But there are serious people who rebut Kant's rebuttals, too, so it's not as if the whole thing is cut and dried.

[Belacqua]

Sorry, I'm not following you here.

Was this for me?

Yep. That was 100% a response to you arguing that you know that the science of sex and gender (Hell, even the science of biological sex) is more complicated than Neo thinks.

Thanks, I didn't understand.

I don't know what Neo thinks about all that, so I'll hang fire for now.

[Rev. Rye]

Okay, also weird, I somehow only just now realised that a post I thought was from Neo (the one comparing being trans to Nietzsche's provocations) was from you. Judging from your replies to me, however, I can only assume your views on this particular subject are a bit more nuanced than Neo's likely are.

[Belacqua]

Okay, also weird, I somehow only just now realised that a post I thought was from Neo (the one comparing being trans to Nietzsche's provocations) was from you.  Judging from your replies to me, however, I can only assume your views on this particular subject are a bit more nuanced than Neo's likely are.

No doubt I was unclear, but I wouldn't say I meant to "compar[e] being trans to Nietzsche's provocations." 

My thought was that Nietzsche challenged established norms, which people used to think were written into nature, as being in fact cultural habits. The freedom for trans people to declare that traditional binary gender is societally determined, and not an eternal law, comes from that same willingness to rethink what is (or is not) really a law of nature.

[The Grand Nudger]

Let's say that is true...still hoping to hear some candidates for absolutes.

.........................?  Like logical absolutes or moral absolutes or reality or feeling the sense of the numinous?