...Truth?

[bennyboy]

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

Before you ask why something is true, you have to be more sure that it is true.

It is not true, for example, that atheists have a universal view on ANYTHING, except their lack of belief that God exists, or their belief that God does not exist (most here probably the former).

You use a dangerous word, "intrinsic."  This smells much of theism: "God is the objective standard by which value is established."  Things don't NEED to have a philosophical "intrinsic" value in order for us to have value in them.  There's nothing intrinsically valuable about children, but we are a social species, we have instincts to care for young, and many of us will fairly contentedly live out our lives in an effort to support our offspring.  Because we are human, our children have value to us-- a God idea is not required for that to be true.

--edit--
Oh. Elvis has left the building. Oh well. Given the last few pages, I wonder what he's claiming to be "agnostic" about. Was that just deception?