Atheism Undermines Knowledge

[Neo-Scholastic]

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.

Current scientific methods absolutely do exclude certain parts of reality: formal cause, intentionality, and qualia for a start. And that is okay, except science is not the only field of human inquiry take for example linguistics and semiotics. Personally, I think the Cartesean divide has outlived its purpose. It is now being used to keep these two realms apart. The worship of Science, with a capital 'S', actually thwarts progress in bridging that divide. Have all the fun you want ridiculing my position as the search for elves and fairies. It doesn't matter, because what I'm making a serious inquiry into the nature and operation of qualitative values.

[Mister Agenda]

Not everything can be measured. Which is more of a dog Lassie or Pluto? Does love have a mass? How do you measure the difference between one's ability and one' desire? Who is more evil, a shoplifter or a rapist? Are you so dense that you cannot recognize the difference between descriptions about quantity and those about quality?

Lassie and Pluto are equally fictional portrayals of dogs. Love has an intensity. The difference between ability and desire is measured in success and failure. A rapist is more evil than a shoplifter.

I'm not saying your point is wrong, but your examples don't support it very well.

[Neo-Scholastic]

I think what ChadWooters is trying to say, is without God, properly basic beliefs cannot be justified, including induction? Am I right?

Right on, bro!

[Whateverist]

I think what ChadWooters is trying to say, is without God, properly basic beliefs cannot be justified, including induction? Am I right?

Right on, bro!

But are we entitled to be justified in our most basic beliefs? I mean is their good reason to think we are capable of this?

Afterall, our capacity for reason evolved in the pursuit of dinner, not in pursuit of 'the truth'. Perhaps it is not in our nature to require justification for belief. Certainly the unconscious part of our mind is not concerned with this. Since our conscious mind is a later update of a brain which did not require justification, why should we think there will always be justification for everything we know. Some beliefs which you are calling "basic" would likely be exactly those which we most likely would have learned to recognize before we were fully conscious and before we had the capacity for discursive reasoning.

This line of argument you want to pursue relies on the premise that everything we believe should be justifiable. But that may well not be true.

[Faith No More]

Current scientific methods absolutely do exclude certain parts of reality: formal cause, intentionality, and qualia for a start. And that is okay, except science is not the only field of human inquiry take for example linguistics and semiotics. Personally, I think the Cartesean divide has outlived its purpose. It is now being used to keep these two realms apart. The worship of Science, with a capital 'S', actually thwarts progress in bridging that divide.

Well, until it can be shown that a divide even exists(i.e. the mind cannot be solely dependent on the physical brain), science will dismiss it, and rightfully so.

Have all the fun you want ridiculing my position as the search for elves and fairies. It doesn't matter, because what I'm making a serious inquiry into the nature and operation of qualitative values.

I apologize if you felt I was ridiculing you, as I can assure you that was not my intention. I was trying to think of a proper analogy when the story of the shoemaker and the elves popped into my head, so I ran with it. No intent to ridicule.

The point of the analogy was to highlight the thought process you appear to be using and to demonstrate that dismissing supernatural elements such as the soul is not due to some inherent bias, as you seem to keep implying.

[Mister Agenda]

Is the modern atheist belief that only efficient causes exist consistent with the reliability of observed physical laws on which the acquisition of knowledge depends? No.

You answered your own question correctly with 'no'. Can you give an example of an efficient cause inconsistent with the reliability of observed physical laws on which the acquisition of knowledge depends?

The two cornerstones of modern atheism are:

Neither atheism nor theism have cornerstones. If you can't correctly name the philosophy you're criticizing, maybe you should study up a bit more first.

1) the physical universe is causally closed, i.e. devoid of any influence apart from the deterministic chain of cause and effect

The rationalist position (guessing at the position that you're actually critiquing) is that belief that the physical universe is causally open has to be justified.

and 2) dependant on nothing outside itself its continuity or regularity.

This is merely another way of saying '1)'.

The modern atheist removes from consideration teleology, final causes and intentionality.

A rationalist would contend that teleology for physical laws hasn't been sufficiently supported to reasonably warrant acceptance.

In practice, atheism presupposes that everything we know can be described in terms of ‘material’ interactions by means of efficient causes.

In practice, atheism is not believing in any God or gods. And at this point, the philosophy you seem to be critiquing has become materialism. It's not presupposition to not assume something can't be explained in terms of material interactions.

This excludes any type of formal or final causes that would lead one to posit divine influence.

Only if you define the divine as necessarily non-material, a sufficiently uncommon definition that I cannot find it. I can think of conceptions of the divine that are compatible with being material. For instance, God is made of a form of energy not yet detected that permeates the physical universe, like the Higgs field permeates our own cosmos. To define the divine as something so immaterial that it can never and will never be apprehendible to mortal detection is the same thing as saying we can never have evidence for it.

However, this cannot be the case.

I don't see anything in your post that supports this assertion.

An infinite series of ever smaller intermediate causes and effects separates each cause from its corresponding effect.* In order to avoid this paradox, there must be a smallest possible finite unit. You can stack small finite units (of time, space, etc.) to fill a finite gap. In quantum physics, you have a smallest possible unit of time, Plank time or tP. Yet no efficient cause links one tP to the next.

Just because you don't know of an efficieint cause that links them doesn't mean there isn't one. We have a long history of the gaps in our knowledge of causes being filled by natural ones.

They just happen to be ‘next’ to one another. Either relationship between one tP and another is random OR a transcendent order links one tP to all others.

OR a nontranscendet order.

If random, the physical universe would have no logical continuity.

And if it is partially random it would have some logical continuity.

In such a universe, no knowledge would be justified.

In a partially random universe, some knowledge would be justified.

Since the modern atheist denies any transcendentally imposed order he must accept that the universe has no logical continuity on which the base his knowledge.

You had to exclude the middle to get to only a transcendental order rather than any other possible order being necessary, so the foundation of your assertion is fallacious. You did nothing to exclude a natural order, you simply ignored the possibility.

Therefore, the atheist cannot also believe in the valid acquisition of knowledge without contradiction.

I believe you're capable of better work than this, but to produce it you have to be able to anticipate obvious objections to your statements. You can't claim to be making serious inquiry and just spitball it. You're a little too attached to your ideas I think, that is, you invest too much hope in them. They should be held lightly and let go of if they aren't sufficient.

Were I you, I'd let go of the idea of making serious inquiry and go with throwing things out for us to take potshots at so you wind up with something more sturdy. I saw half a dozen thoughts in your post that would have been worth a thread of their own, each.

[Neo-Scholastic]

MOVING THE GOAL POST: It seems to me that many atheists who rely on reason and evidence to support their beliefs do just as much goal-post moving. Rather than defend their presuppositions, some have been trying to shift the debate towards specific gods or attributes of god and so they can argue against familiar enemies with their favorite bromides.

DEFUALT POSITION: As I understand it random chaos IS the default position of physical reduction. At the macro level, we are told that natural selection is the outcome of random processes. Then we are told that at the very tiniest of scales everything dissolves into a froth of probability. Next, we are told that the forces and constants we know are also the result of random chance. Many possible universes could have existed, and even might, but we only know about this one because of the anthropic principle. (And the anthropic principle is really an excuse for ignorance). I contend that if the foundation is random, then the structure built on top depends on it. And if it truly is random then it could randomly change into anything at all, i.e. it is absurd. That remains the case no matter how much statistical inertia the overall system has. And any talk of meaning, intentions, value and even rationality is unjustified. The atheist existential nihilists accept this conclusion. Theirs is the logically consistent position.

EXCLUDED MIDDLE? I cannot conceive of a partial order, somewhere halfway between randomness and order. I’m imagining an enduring glass filled randomness, one minute it’s Pepsi the next minute it’s pennies. But if both the glass and its contents are ultimately made of the same stuff at the bottom, then it seems like special pleading to say the glass is ordered and the contents random.

…I think Ibn Arabi argued on this basis, God is constantly creating and recreating the universe.

My argument was adapted from Aquinas’ 5th Way which sounds similar to your summary of Arabi.

…Can your argument be summarized like this:
Time being connected is magical and needs outside magical cause.
Time cannot be unconnected or we would have no knowledge.
We do have knowledge.
Therefore time is connected.
Therefore there is a magical causer.

That’s pretty good. I think more than anyone you have an understanding of from where I am coming. Although, I do not consider it magic to posit some kind of substrate that can support qualitative content. Not do I consider it impossible to identify a means of interaction between a physical universe that has a random underbelly and non-physical substrate that imposes order. By definition said non-physical substrate would be transcendent. From their we can apply reason, including observations about how we use and apply meaning, to further inquire into what’s really going on.

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Afterall, our capacity for reason evolved in the pursuit of dinner, not in pursuit of 'the truth'.

Did it?

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Were I you, I'd let go of the idea of making serious inquiry and go with throwing things out for us to take potshots at so you wind up with something more sturdy.

I'm not a academic! At least give me some credit for trying. And I like the potshots if they make me think.

[Mister Agenda]

MOVING THE GOAL POST: It seems to me that many atheists who rely on reason and evidence to support their beliefs do just as much goal-post moving. Rather than defend their presuppositions, some have been trying to shift the debate towards specific gods or attributes of god and so they can argue against familiar enemies with their favorite bromides.

We certainly shouldn't do that. Are there any particular posts you can cite that make you think that many of us are doing this?

DEFUALT POSITION: As I understand it random chaos IS the default position of physical reduction. At the macro level, we are told that natural selection is the outcome of random processes.

You seem to be conflatiing 'undirected' with random. Natural selection is not random. Evolution has random elements, in the sense that mutations and environment aren't wholly predictable...but they are constrained. There won't be a mutation for laser vision, there won't be an environment change that will require adaptation to rains of unicorns. Natural selection is part of evolution that reduces randomness (where random means a range of possibilities might occur, some specifics of which are not certain and others of which are).

Then we are told that at the very tiniest of scales everything dissolves into a froth of probability.

Not only are we told it, there are experiments that support it. There will probably come to be technology that depends on it.

Next, we are told that the forces and constants we know are also the result of random chance.

Who tells you that? It's certainly not established physics. And is random chance more random than regular chance?

Many possible universes could have existed, and even might, but we only know about this one because of the anthropic principle. (And the anthropic principle is really an excuse for ignorance).

The anthropic principle doesn't tell us that there are other universes. Some theoretical physics strongly implies that other universes are possible, but math alone doesn't make something so: it won't be settled until there's an experiment that could falsify it. The anthropic principle is no excuse for ignorance.

I contend that if the foundation is random, then the structure built on top depends on it. And if it truly is random then it could randomly change into anything at all, i.e. it is absurd.

So you conclude that the concept is absurd rather than considering that it may be your understanding that is absurd. At the quantum level, matter and energy are probabilistic, at our scale that results in reliable laws of nature. For example, the Casimir Effect is a predictable force that depends on random virtual particles, but whereas a single pair of virtual particles is wholly unpredictable, that a certain number of them (give or take a few decimal points) will appear in a given time in a given volume is nearly certain...because random things follow the laws of probability. Things can't randomly change into anything at all. That is your own absurd notion.

That remains the case no matter how much statistical inertia the overall system has. And any talk of meaning, intentions, value and even rationality is unjustified. The atheist existential nihilists accept this conclusion. Theirs is the logically consistent position.

Funny, I hadn't heard existential nihilism precluded one from talk of meaning, intentions, value, and rationality. In fact, I'm pretty sure I've heard existential nihilists discuss them. Perhaps this is a subject you don't fully understand. I do run into the idea that nihilism is the only consistent position for an atheist to have often enough that I suppose it's based on a desire by certain theists for it to be true.

EXCLUDED MIDDLE? I cannot conceive of a partial order, somewhere halfway between randomness and order.

Your ability or inability to conceive something is irrelevant to the odds of it being true.

I’m imagining an enduring glass filled randomness, one minute it’s Pepsi the next minute it’s pennies. But if both the glass and its contents are ultimately made of the same stuff at the bottom, then it seems like special pleading to say the glass is ordered and the contents random.

Actually it would be the fallacy of composition to assume contents and container must have all the same properties. If a wall is made of unbreakable bricks, that doesn't mean the wall is unbreakable.

That’s pretty good. I think more than anyone you have an understanding of from where I am coming. Although, I do not consider it magic to posit some kind of substrate that can support qualitative content.

Neither do I.

Not do I consider it impossible to identify a means of interaction between a physical universe that has a random underbelly and non-physical substrate that imposes order.

Good. If it's not impossible to identify, how do we go about identifying it?

By definition said non-physical substrate would be transcendent. From their we can apply reason, including observations about how we use and apply meaning, to further inquire into what’s really going on.

You really need to start applying reason before you get to the transcendant non-physical substrate, if you want to find out what's really going on.

Atheists who are rationalists provisionally accept the current best scientific explanations for phenomena, because the available alternatives are usually more wrong. If a better explanation with more evidence indicates that Quantum Foam isn't random after all, we'd be fine with it. Atheism really has nothing to do with specific explanations for natural phenomena, unless any of them are determined to be God, which would convert all of the rationalist to some form of theism. As rationalists, observing that there is randomness at the quantum scale doesn't cause us to disregard our observations of reliable natural laws at larger scales.

[Esquilax]

That’s pretty good. I think more than anyone you have an understanding of from where I am coming. Although, I do not consider it magic to posit some kind of substrate that can support qualitative content. Not do I consider it impossible to identify a means of interaction between a physical universe that has a random underbelly and non-physical substrate that imposes order. By definition said non-physical substrate would be transcendent. From their we can apply reason, including observations about how we use and apply meaning, to further inquire into what’s really going on.

Can you demonstrate that non physical substrate? If yes, that's cool. If no, and your reasoning continues to be that you feel like there must be one, then beyond your personal feelings how are we justified in assuming that one exists? Or rather, how could we not be justified in continuing to just keep making up whatever we want- after all, we're already accepting the existence of something that can't be demonstrated in a scientific sense?

By necessity we're limited to things we can actually demonstrate, because if we take things as true sans actual evidence, then we're just indulging our imagination. It's not that science- or atheism- is denying the existence of such things, we just see that accepting them as true before we have proof of them is a ridiculous proposition.

[fr0d0]

It's not 'feelings' Esq, it's thought. If you can rationalise something that cannot be proven empirically, that's not a feeling. There are reasons for your decisions. What you are dismissing is this whole realm of human endeavour (which covers far more than philosophy). That's wholly illogical.