...Truth?

[Whateverist]

IMO, you're starting to come across as an uppity know it all who may not yet have reached the age of majority yet thinks he has the only or best answer. Guess what, you might, but only for you.

Just a suggestion (my bolded).

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Hey guys. I'm trying to find truth. I feel like it's worth finding. I'm currently agnostic. All I really want right now is to hear people legitimately defend their position. I'm pretty fed up with worldviews in general. I've got a few questions here that I'm just barely opening up. I'm not trying to be terribly profound; this is my first query post here and I just want to get some ideas flowing around that I can look into.

I've noticed that a lot of atheists pride themselves on not being "duped" or of not "living in a fantasy world," presumably referring to theism, deism, pantheism, or anything that accepts a supernatural element to the world of any sort. I'm just wondering, where in an atheistic worldview is there any impetus for this search for truth? From an atheistic point of view, truth has no intrinsic value (if I'm wrong here, I'd love to hear an argument for an intrinsic value of truth from an atheistic perspective), so in an isolated world, there's no reason to search for it apart from whim, and your search for truth on a whim would hardly be a reason to criticize someone else for arriving at a conclusion you deem false. An atheist'd have to go Nietzsche's direction along with the other postmodern philosophers and say that truth has no worth and that it doesn't matter whether we believe this or that—the thing that makes something worth believing is simply whether or not we believe it. I've also heard this facet of the issue argued further as "I'm concerned that wide swaths of humanity are duping themselves," but I fail to see from an atheistic perspective why there's any reason not to dupe yourself along with 'em or why you should care if others do, from a logical standpoint.

Another clear aspect of this issue, more related to this last point than to the intrinsic-value-of-truth part of the question, is the social problems associated with religion—i.e., the public practice of it. Granted, a good portion of Christians, Muslims, and many other religions cause harm in the world, but I would argue that, certainly in the former case and I hear in the latter case as well (although I'm not well-versed in Islam), those who cause harm to other people directly through their religion aren't living as their religion demands. In other words, the social issues in the world arising from religion seem to rise from an imperfect practice of religion, not the religion itself. (Once more, if you have an argument to the contrary, I'd love to talk about it.) It's the classic cliché: "I have nothing against Christianity. Christians, on the other hand...." Regardless, this is a different issue from what I'm talking about and springs from the first, so please don't begin a conversation about not liking religion because the religious infringe on your postmodern right to believing whatever you want. If that's the only reason you care, please just move on to the next topic. I'll ask about that later. What I'm concerned with here is why atheists care so much about finding the truth about the world from a philosophical perspective.


- Caleb

Under atheism, the brain is the product of cold and mindless natural processes and there is no mind driving them. How atheists can believe their brain is reliable for ascertaining truth while also believing the above is mind boggling. Often atheists respond to this charge by saying our brains are good at ascertaining truth because we wouldn't have survived if they weren't. That may sound like a good response at first, but it isn't. False beliefs can increase survivability. Evolution may give me the false belief that the boogeyman is inside every McDonald's Big Mac, causing me to stay away from Big Macs. This would save me from harming my health by eating Big Macs, increasing my survivability, but through the power of a false belief. This is a comedic example, but there are multitudes of other examples you could conjure up that are more serious. Even if evolution alone gave people true beliefs when it came to things like "don't go near that animal or it'll eat you," or "don't touch fire because it harms you," what about more abstract things like mathematics or philosophy? Does being good at math or metaphysics increase or decrease survivability? Probably not or probably by not much. So maybe our mind is good for basic things like "fire is hot" but it isn't good for complex ideas.

However, under something like Christianity, the brain is the product of an omniscient, omnipotent, and all-good immaterial mind. So the Christian has good reason to believe their brains are good at ascertaining truth.

Okay, now there is a contender for the title of "most insufferable noob".  Have at it.