Atheism Undermines Knowledge

[frz]

My problem is not with atheism itself, but physical reduction. I think bridging the gap between mind and body is a serious philosophical issue. The mind-body problem still leaves something to explain. That is what I meant about undermining knowledge. You guys have stopped inquiry well before the reach of reason. You stance is not "I don't know" but rather "I do not care to know." A small part of the dilemma in the induction problem. You have given up and pretend that nothing more needs to be explained.

I had hoped someone would be able to contribute to my understanding by at least taking the problem seriously. A provocative thread title helps attract attention, but apparently that is the wrong strategy. It attracts the attention of the wrong type of critic. Being open minded, I find it conceivable, though unlikely, that a non-theistic solution could be found. If so I will return to my previous atheism. You cannot truly call yourselves freethinkers if you have stopped thinking.

The difference between us and the rest of the animals on this planet is that we are somewhat of a jack of all trades kind of animal. Basically our brain is a mash of a lot of survival, basic instincts that you would find in almost every animal. That's kind of what puts us on top of the food chain though, we are not the strongest of the animals. We out think and out maneuver them by knowing and copying them, the cats, the dogs, the birds, the reptiles, etc. It does not make special and magical. We're just a species with more functions. We're smarter, thus have the ability to survive longer than the rest.

[Esquilax]

My problem is not with atheism itself, but physical reduction. I think bridging the gap between mind and body is a serious philosophical issue. The mind-body problem still leaves something to explain. That is what I meant about undermining knowledge. You guys have stopped inquiry well before the reach of reason. You stance is not "I don't know" but rather "I do not care to know." A small part of the dilemma in the induction problem. You have given up and pretend that nothing more needs to be explained.

Do you have some form of telepathy I don't know about? Do you know all of us personally? Then how the fuck did you decide we've all given up?

Sorry if that seems abrasive, but it drives me fucking insane when people presume to tell me my motivations; as an argument it's not only dead in the water, it's an act of aggression.

[fr0d0]

it's difficult to deal with the 1 in 10 people who isn't beating you with a stick Esq. You taking up the stick too is insensitive.

[Lord Privy Seal]

The premise of the OP is this. Atheism entails the belief that physical interactions explain everything that needs to be explained. What you are doing is saying that the inherent order of the physical universe is a brute fact, it just is. I say this leaves something to be explained. The unanswered question is why there should be regular causal relationships as opposed to random outcomes.

Why should there be random outcomes as opposed to regular causal relationships? You're assuming that metaphysical randomness is some kind of default, so that a deity is required to step in and impose order, causality, etc. from the outside. Why should we accept metaphysical randomness as the axiomatic brute fact instead of the causal regularity we actually observe? Ours is the more parsimonious approach. We observe causal regularity instead of bowling balls spontaneously hatching flying purple elephants that sing opera in Japanese. So "causal regularity is a brute fact" is simple, even obvious, in comparison to "metaphysical randomness is a brute fact, except that the Goddess Ma'at imposes causal regularity on it by Her miraculous power. She keeps the bowling balls from hatching elephants."

Proposing theism doesn't actually answer the question, it just kicks the can down the road and off a cliff into an inaccessible realm. Where does the Divine (however you wish to define Her/Him/It/Them) get causal regularity from? A deity, in order to exist as that deity (rather than, say, turning into a bowling ball and hatching a purple flying elephant...), must be subject to causal regularity, exist rather than not exist, etc.. The regularity you're questioning must obtain for the deity and its plane of existence. So, why doesn't the deity dissolve into a Shoggoth or a bubbly puddle of spirit-goo while its Astral Plane crashes?

The stock answer is "Um...because, God, dude!" "God" has an Exemption Card to all rules. If a human being is "irreducibly complex" thus requiring "a Designer" (and we all know who He is, snap snap wink wink grin grin, knowhatImean?), Yahweh, with all his omni-superduperness would be infinitely more irreducibly complex. But, out comes the Exemption Card: "He just is, so He doesn't need a Designer!" "He just has/is the source of causal regularity!" "The Kingdom of Heaven is just fine-tuned and supplied with constants amenable to His existence, so stop asking!" Rinse, lather, repeat for every "insoluble mystery" the Potemkin Explanation of theism is trotted out for.

And so it turns out that causal regularity, existence-rather-than-nothingness, and all the rest are brute facts after all. The theist just wants to be able to stamp "GOD" in big red letters all over them before acknowledging them as such. The atheist, seeing that we're all accepting orderly Existence as a brute fact anyway, just saves a step by not bothering with the "GOD" stamp. It doesn't provide us with any actual information, and leaves us in the exact same situation we're in without it.

[downbeatplumb]

My problem is not with atheism itself, but physical reduction. I think bridging the gap between mind and body is a serious philosophical issue. The mind-body problem still leaves something to explain. That is what I meant about undermining knowledge. You guys have stopped inquiry well before the reach of reason. You stance is not "I don't know" but rather "I do not care to know." A small part of the dilemma in the induction problem. You have given up and pretend that nothing more needs to be explained.

There is no evidence for the position you have taken and a line of reasoning that has nothing going for it can be abandoned.
Otherwise you'd have us still sacrificing to water spirits, its time to let go of your outmoded belief system.

I had hoped someone would be able to contribute to my understanding by at least taking the problem seriously. A provocative thread title helps attract attention, but apparently that is the wrong strategy. It attracts the attention of the wrong type of critic. Being open minded, I find it conceivable, though unlikely, that a non-theistic solution could be found.

I find you to be quite closed minded.

If so I will return to my previous atheism. You cannot truly call yourselves freethinkers if you have stopped thinking.

You equate a need for evidence with being closed minded but it is not. If you start to believe things without evidence then you can bring your self to believe in any crap.

My wife is a spiritualist, I know of what I speak.

[fr0d0]

You've seen nonsense 1st hand dbp so you stop yourself from thinking?

[Faith No More]

My problem is not with atheism itself, but physical reduction. I think bridging the gap between mind and body is a serious philosophical issue. The mind-body problem still leaves something to explain. That is what I meant about undermining knowledge. You guys have stopped inquiry well before the reach of reason. You stance is not "I don't know" but rather "I do not care to know." A small part of the dilemma in the induction problem. You have given up and pretend that nothing more needs to be explained.

It seems you have confused the lack of a willingness to consider an unsupported, wildly speculative hypothesis with apathy towards the question. The supernatural must be ruled out until it can be demonstrated to exist, and a lack of a natural understanding of a process is not evidence for the supernatural. Unless you can demonstrate that a natural explanation is impossible, the supernatural must be dismissed.

[Neo-Scholastic]

LPS, for now let’s take what you say as given: that appealing to transcendent principles “kicks the can down the road”. My response is that curiousity and rational inquiry is all about seeking deeper and more thorough understanding of the world. Let me give an example:

I’m in my car with three of my friends: a mechanic, a physicist, and a priest. Now my car is very old and so they are all wondering if my car even starts and I say, “Of course! Every time I turn the key, the car starts. The turning the key is the cause and the car starting is the effect. It’s just a fact.”

The mechanic then says, “There’ much more going on. When you turn the key, it starts a whole chain of cause and effect. The key activates the starter motor that moves the pistons, until the spark plugs ignite the gas and the engine starts to run on its own.” And that he says, “is how everything works. Those are the real facts.”

The physicist says, “Actually, the chain of causes and effects goes much deeper than that, not just the movement of the parts, but the chemical reaction of combustion, and even deeper into to the fundamental forces of energy and matter.” And that he adds, “explains everything that needs to be explained.

Then the priest says, “And here I thought the car started because we want to go bowling.”

The point of my story is this. The mechanic knows more than I do. The physicist knows more than both me and the mechanic. And while the priest may know nothing about cars or physics, he does know something that adds to our understanding of the world: the contribution of intelligent agency. As it applies to my critics, the key starting the engine is not a brute fact; there is more to be known. The operation of the engine is not a brute fact; there is more to be known. And I’m saying if we call the laws of physics a brute fact, then we have stopped short. There is more to be known, especially with respect to why the law of cause and effects works.

In addition, positing the existence of god or transcendent influences will not stop reasoned inquiry. One unique feature of the Christian thought is the belief that god can be known. “God did it” is not the end of my curiosity; it is the beginning. God did it, but I still want to know how, why and understand more about His nature. The minute you say, that’s just a brute fact, you have stopped thinking about it. And it’s okay to presuppose something as a brute fact IF it explains everything that needs to be explained. Laws of parsimony only apply between two theories with equal explanatory power. LPS, you haven’t saved a step. Instead you’re leaving half of the problem on the table.

---

The supernatural must be ruled out until it can be demonstrated to exist, and a lack of a natural understanding of a process is not evidence for the supernatural. Unless you can demonstrate that a natural explanation is impossible, the supernatural must be dismissed.

This attitude is part of the problem. Dividing the world into two realms, one for the natural world consisting of quantifiable interaction between matter by means of cause and effect. And a second realm of values and ideas restricted to qualifiable mental properties like sensation, intention, and meaning. This Cartesian divide is the convenient fiction behind the scientific method. It intentionally ignores half of the phenomena to focus on natural processes, to the exclusion of mental phenomena. And that's a good thing, but only so long as we recognize that we have installed an artificial barrier. Like the old cliche says, "If the only tool you have is a hammer, every problem is a nail."

[pocaracas]

The point of my story is this. The mechanic knows more than I do. The physicist knows more than both me and the mechanic. And while the priest may know nothing about cars or physics, he does know something that adds to our understanding of the world: the contribution of intelligent agency. As it applies to my critics, the key starting the engine is not a brute fact; there is more to be known. The operation of the engine is not a brute fact; there is more to be known. And I’m saying if we call the laws of physics a brute fact, then we have stopped short. There is more to be known, especially with respect to why the law of cause and effects works.

In addition, positing the existence of god or transcendent influences will not stop reasoned inquiry. One unique feature of the Christian thought is the belief that god can be known. “God did it” is not the end of my curiosity; it is the beginning. God did it, but I still want to know how, why and understand more about His nature. The minute you say, that’s just a brute fact, you have stopped thinking about it. And it’s okay to presuppose something as a brute fact IF it explains everything that needs to be explained. Laws of parsimony only apply between two theories with equal explanatory power. LPS, you haven’t saved a step. Instead you’re leaving half of the problem on the table.

I see your god agent as a presupposition with nothing to back it up.
You want there to be something more fundamental than the observed world and you call it god.

I ask why do you require that god? that extra fundamental thing of the world?
Why stop at one god? why not go further and inquire if god cannot be itself held together by some other entity?...

The brute facts are what we can measure. The Universe is what it is... maybe not entirely as we see it, given that we have a small lens into it, but I'd say we see pretty much as it is.
If you know there's more to be known, then how do we get access to such knowledge? How did you gain that access? How did you come to know about that god thing that keeps space-time together?

[Faith No More]

This attitude is part of the problem. Dividing the world into two realms, one for the natural world consisting of quantifiable interaction between matter by means of cause and effect. And a second realm of values and ideas restricted to qualifiable mental properties like sensation, intention, and meaning. This Cartesian divide is the convenient fiction behind the scientific method. It intentionally ignores half of the phenomena to focus on natural processes, to the exclusion of mental phenomena. And that's a good thing, but only so long as we recognize that we have installed an artificial barrier. Like the old cliche says, "If the only tool you have is a hammer, every problem is a nail."

No one is excluding the "mental phenomena," as you call it. We are simply saying that the lack of understanding of a natural explanation for these phenomena does not mean that we need to leap to a supernatural one. We know that natural mechanisms behind the functions of the brain exist, so until positive evidence is shown that a supernatural mechanism exists, belief in the existence of a supernatural mechanism must be withheld. That is the scientific method.

For example, I am a shoemaker, and I awake in the morning to see that all of my shoes that needed repair have been fixed during the middle of the night. I have absolutely no idea how this happened. I can either speculate that my assistant came in during the night and finished my work, or I can speculate that magical elves floated in from another dimension and repaired the shoes. Now, why should I consider the magic elves explanation?