...Truth?

[Astonished]

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

I would hazard a guess that you're freshly out of some faith tradition, not because you say you're agnostic, but because you seem to have an oversimplified understanding of atheism and 'positions'. Feel free to correct me if I'm wrong but I figure if you're looking for answers, you'll want to be aware of a particular vibe you're putting out in regards to your own attitude towards the subject.

Atheism isn't a 'position', at least not in the sense you seem to be describing it; yes, we're on the side of the fence where no god beliefs fit, but we're not making a positive or negative claim about it). It's actually just the way we express the null hypothesis where the claims of theists are concerned. You confuse it with antitheism, the position that indeed, there are no gods. Certain god concepts can be dismissed in this way because they are contradictory (in fact the vast majority of them because they come from organized faiths which because of their rigidity fall prey to this glaring problem). But for the most part we can't say definitively there are none (but this isn't so special because that pertains to every claim where you're trying to prove a negative, godly or otherwise). We simply say "I have not been convinced that what you're saying is true." That literally is the only thing you can say atheists have in common. You're going to have to apply more specific labels and target a small population thereafter if you want to have a discussion about anything else.

Much as you or others may find it distasteful to be so blunt, religious belief is largely a result of someone being duped. When the things they believe in are transparently false and can be proven beyond any doubt, the fact that something has happened in their cognitive development that prevents this from registering or being acknowledged is demonstrable that something ill-fitting has been forced into the machinery there and is causing a malfunction. That doesn't mean it can't be removed and replaced with a working part, it happens all the time. But the result is that they are much more credulous about a claim that has no merit and is in fact in most aspects, utterly false. Now, I'm sure the ratio of people who come into this without indoctrination, make it to adulthood well-educated and have no cultural pressure or other political reasons to adopt faith and as a result reject it is extremely high but inevitably there are exceptions and someone who fits that description will still end up falling down the rabbit hole for whatever reason, but that the overwhelming majority do not, should indicate there's a pretty good reason why that's so infrequent. Whether it's well-meaning parents or a community with an agenda, the children being indoctrinated are being sold a con, completely unknowingly, by the people they are supposed to trust more than any others. Whatever the intention, these people know that they have no real evidence or justification for it, nor do they care about their children's civil liberties to make up their own minds. I don't see how a person can possibly defend that even on the grounds of parents' rights.

What's the reason we search for truth, or a 'greater truth' in whatever sense that means depending on who you ask? What reason is there for us to get out of bed in the morning? What's our motivation to interact with other humans? This is all a nonsensical line of reasoning and I would encourage you to discard it along with any god concepts you may have once entertained. We are thinking agents and have a burning desire to seek truth, purpose, love, etc., it's simply an instinct as much as any other and whether it's a product of mutation or something we developed after our brains reached a certain point of complexity, it's there and it's beautiful. So the idea of settling for a simple answer which is in most cases demonstrably false, is not only something we cannot accept, but which we cannot usually abide others espousing. It demonstrates flawed thinking, weak character and a huge liability. That the form it takes is usually arrogant certainty and the dismissal of any contradictory claims regardless of the amount of evidence usually leads to antagonism and unproductive discussions.

You also seem to misunderstand the way logic works and its purpose. It's a tool we use to make sense of things and is largely ignored when it comes to dogmatic beliefs. The fact that there has never been a shred of empirical evidence for it, coupled with the fact that every abstract argument for it breaks down in every way possible means that there is no room for that in logic. So when the choice comes to being a rational agent seeking facts and building a framework for how reality works, or accepting a prefabricated framework from someone who when pressed to defend it has no merit whatsoever, you could not possibly go into that unbiased and choose the latter unless you are stark raving mad. In this way religion represents a very dangerous idea, namely a contagious mental illness. Think of a plague; you see how badly it's spreading just by contact, and the only thing scarier is hearing someone say, "it's airborne".

I honestly don't give a flying fuck what the particulars are regarding believers' attitudes towards their instructions on how to behave. You can cherry-pick this or that out of any holy book but unless you've been indoctrinated in such a way that you are incapable of questioning them, you're really using your own internal barometer to determine what's right and wrong. But if you insist on saying that your morality does come from your holy book or from a divine authority, you've unfortunately abdicated your responsibility as a moral agent. I like my analogy for this: Someone who decides to only obey the good bits in their books is not the moral superior to the one who believes with all their heart that murdering infidels is the truly best thing they can possibly do. They are both using the same irrational, unjustifiable methodology to reach a conclusion and each could have easily stumbled upon the opposite interpretation if the books had emphasized one thing more than another. In this way, they are both like drunk drivers in this sense, where the 'good' religious moralizer just happens to make it home safely, and the aspiring suicide bomber is the drunk driver who just tragically happens to mow someone down in their stupor.

I'm not going to go into particulars about why I hate religion. I think I've made it clear that its own inherent irrationality is the wrong way to go about developing a framework for reality and morality, and that alone is indictment enough. If you want my opinion on something specific, just ask.