RE: Is atheism self-contradictory ?
July 1, 2017 at 3:47 pm
(This post was last modified: July 1, 2017 at 4:32 pm by Parsim0ny.)
(June 29, 2017 at 1:16 pm)Astreja Wrote: Don't worry, Parsim0ny -- first the monkey has to learn to read, write and speak a human language, graduate pre-med university with a high GPA, get accepted to medical school and pass all the exams, do a 5-year residency in Cardiac Surgery, do a 3-year Fellowship, and get hired by a hospital. I for one *would* trust any simian that could achieve all that. Because of the educational time required, the comparatively long-lived white-headed capuchin and the Guinea baboon are the most likely candidates.
More likely we'll see cardiac robots long before that happens, though, and ambitious monkeys will have to content themselves with other careers (parkour coach; rigger, roofer or skywalker; Shakespearean transcription) or explore entrepreneurship.
That's for cardiac surgery, but what about our preparedness to state/demonstrate objective facts about life and the universe ? I can safely assume - and nobody can refute my assumption - that the human mind must first survive ten thousand years of continous genome alterations and countless life-threating situations to begin ascertaning truths of any kind, wait 15 thousand more to consider our reasoning strong enough to start thinking about discovering objective facts. And even then, nothing indicates that our mind is reliable enough and we can never demonstrate it, it follows that nothing anyone can say has any objective value whatsoever.
(July 1, 2017 at 3:41 pm)Hammy Wrote: Objective truths are true regardless of minds, regardless of what anyone says and regardless of whether they're proved or not. That's the whole point. This whole "brain fizz" non-argument against atheism is total incoherent non-sequitur nonsense. It's also extremely childish. Hence why Matt Slick loves it so much (you should see him in a debate with Dilahunty... it's the most childish behavior I've ever seen from a theist in a debate with a public intellectual). On the whole when you combine the pathetic non-sequitur and poisoning-the-well-typed-approach that the "brain fizz" non-argument has... I would say it's actually the worst theistic (non) argument that there is.
And what's worse is even if weren't an incoherent non-sequitur... if there's no God then the same applies to theists. Everything they supposedly say is equally "meaningless" they just merely think that there's more meaning when there isn't.
How do you know there are actually objective truths if you can't prove them ? And what's the point of this whole rhetorical discourse if you still can't come up with a sound argument proving your mind is reliable ? What about just acknowledging the fact that constructing any reasonable ground for objective truth outside religion is madness ?
At least theists start from claim - regardless of its truth - : that there is a God. Therefore we - as creatures of God - are a product of a prefect being, this means that this being made us capable of following the right path towards him, which is equivalent to the reliablity of the human mind.
This does not prove God exists, it only proves that it is possible to provide a coherent theory about objectivity if we warrant the religious premise.
(June 29, 2017 at 11:24 am)Khemikal Wrote: I dont have a super powerful and reliable brain in my head. I have a more powerful brain than a canary, that's reliable enough for my purposes. An exterior being saying something to me won;t change any of that...and why would you trust the exterior beings word for it anyway? Wouldn't they, then, by this batshit law of reliable minds you're proposing...need an exterior being to establish that? And again, and again, and again..ad infinitum.
This is ignorance, Parsimony. All I have to do to sufficiently establiosh the reliability of a human mind is to see whether or not it produces useful and reliable results at it;s purpose. Acccurately modeling the environment to escape predation - for example. Check. Making profitable inferences as to where food may be found? Check. Correctly determining that my mate is not a simplteton...doublecheck.
That we can accurately and reliably make distinctions between a person with a reliable mind and a person with a deficient mind...again, shows us that there is no need to refer to some "exterior being". We have enough information, ourselves, here, to make that determination....and even if there were some batshit requirement of an "exterior being" then why doesn't some other human mind count? "Hey, Bill, is there a ball over there?" "Sure is Steve, why?" -Reliable mind confirmed.
You say that your mind is reliable enough for your purposes, which begs the obvious question : what are your purposes ? If your purpose is to be a dangerous predator on earth, your claim is plausible. But if we're talking about objective knowledge, then it can be easily dismissed as rubbish.
If the only thing you know is that you're more evolved than a canary, and if a canary is more evolved than, say, Mycoplasma, what prevents a canary from claiming that his brain is reliable since ((something))'s brain is less reliable than his ? What prevents a canary from coming here and debating us on the matter too, maybe even coming up with a better pretext than yours for trusting his brain ? What kind of reasoning is that ?
Besides, why do you even put yourselves at the top of the universe ? If I'm much better at math than my baby sister, can I claim that some math equations I scribbled in the walls of my bedroom are reliable and can't be questioned, and that my IQ is higher than that of Terence Tao ? This is ignorance, Khemikal.
