...Truth?

[Mister Agenda]

Hey guys. I'm trying to find truth. I feel like it's worth finding. I'm currently agnostic.

Welcome. I hope you like our forum.

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 wish you success. What I really want right now is an exception to the rule that people who aren't atheists come to our forum saying they want to learn and proceed to tell us what we think instead of actually asking us. I'm not optimistic, though.

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?

There are tens of thousands of theistic worldviews. Why would you assume that atheists all have the same one?

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.

'Truth has no intrinsic value' does not follow from 'atheist'. And can you give an example of something with intrinsic value for comparison? Everything I can think of that's valued is valued because someone or something capable of assigning value, values it. I think it's a bad idea to believe things that are false, why isn't that sufficient grounds for me to search for truth?

And perhaps you're 'mis-imagining' my motivation for criticizing someone else for arriving a conclusion that I deem false (or more likely, that I consider unjustified)? I'm usually concerned with a person's methods of arriving at their conclusion and the standard of evidence they use.

 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.

Why would an atheist have to do that?

 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.

No one has a 'logical standpoint'. Logic is a tool that's useful for critically analyzing propositions. If I want to avoid falling off a cliff, logic can help me do that, but it can't tell me to want to avoid falling off cliffs if I'm fine with it. Logic can't get us from an 'is' to an 'ought'. What we 'ought' to do depends on what we value.

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.

I'm not sure the victims of religiously-motivated violence would be much comforted knowing that their oppressors or murderers are theologically unsound.

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...."

Certainly, if religion disappeared, there would still be problems in the world. The fundamental problem with religion as far as its impact on society is the idea that one is carrying out the will of a divine being that is right in whatever it orders by definition. Religious dogmatism is not a requirement of religion (Unitarianism comes to mind). It's essentially the problem of any ideology that has a 'Dear Leader' or doctrines set in stone, religious or otherwise.

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.

Please don't arrogantly and condescendingly assume you know what our responses will be.

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

How do you justify caring so much about finding the truth about the world from a philosophical perspective as an agnostic, Caleb?