Atheism Undermines Knowledge

[Mister Agenda]

MOVING THE GOAL POST: It seems to me that many atheists who rely on reason and evidence to support their beliefs do just as much goal-post moving. Rather than defend their presuppositions, some have been trying to shift the debate towards specific gods or attributes of god and so they can argue against familiar enemies with their favorite bromides.

We certainly shouldn't do that. Are there any particular posts you can cite that make you think that many of us are doing this?

DEFUALT POSITION: As I understand it random chaos IS the default position of physical reduction. At the macro level, we are told that natural selection is the outcome of random processes.

You seem to be conflatiing 'undirected' with random. Natural selection is not random. Evolution has random elements, in the sense that mutations and environment aren't wholly predictable...but they are constrained. There won't be a mutation for laser vision, there won't be an environment change that will require adaptation to rains of unicorns. Natural selection is part of evolution that reduces randomness (where random means a range of possibilities might occur, some specifics of which are not certain and others of which are).

Then we are told that at the very tiniest of scales everything dissolves into a froth of probability.

Not only are we told it, there are experiments that support it. There will probably come to be technology that depends on it.

Next, we are told that the forces and constants we know are also the result of random chance.

Who tells you that? It's certainly not established physics. And is random chance more random than regular chance?

Many possible universes could have existed, and even might, but we only know about this one because of the anthropic principle. (And the anthropic principle is really an excuse for ignorance).

The anthropic principle doesn't tell us that there are other universes. Some theoretical physics strongly implies that other universes are possible, but math alone doesn't make something so: it won't be settled until there's an experiment that could falsify it. The anthropic principle is no excuse for ignorance.

I contend that if the foundation is random, then the structure built on top depends on it. And if it truly is random then it could randomly change into anything at all, i.e. it is absurd.

So you conclude that the concept is absurd rather than considering that it may be your understanding that is absurd. At the quantum level, matter and energy are probabilistic, at our scale that results in reliable laws of nature. For example, the Casimir Effect is a predictable force that depends on random virtual particles, but whereas a single pair of virtual particles is wholly unpredictable, that a certain number of them (give or take a few decimal points) will appear in a given time in a given volume is nearly certain...because random things follow the laws of probability. Things can't randomly change into anything at all. That is your own absurd notion.

That remains the case no matter how much statistical inertia the overall system has. And any talk of meaning, intentions, value and even rationality is unjustified. The atheist existential nihilists accept this conclusion. Theirs is the logically consistent position.

Funny, I hadn't heard existential nihilism precluded one from talk of meaning, intentions, value, and rationality. In fact, I'm pretty sure I've heard existential nihilists discuss them. Perhaps this is a subject you don't fully understand. I do run into the idea that nihilism is the only consistent position for an atheist to have often enough that I suppose it's based on a desire by certain theists for it to be true.

EXCLUDED MIDDLE? I cannot conceive of a partial order, somewhere halfway between randomness and order.

Your ability or inability to conceive something is irrelevant to the odds of it being true.

I’m imagining an enduring glass filled randomness, one minute it’s Pepsi the next minute it’s pennies. But if both the glass and its contents are ultimately made of the same stuff at the bottom, then it seems like special pleading to say the glass is ordered and the contents random.

Actually it would be the fallacy of composition to assume contents and container must have all the same properties. If a wall is made of unbreakable bricks, that doesn't mean the wall is unbreakable.

That’s pretty good. I think more than anyone you have an understanding of from where I am coming. Although, I do not consider it magic to posit some kind of substrate that can support qualitative content.

Neither do I.

Not do I consider it impossible to identify a means of interaction between a physical universe that has a random underbelly and non-physical substrate that imposes order.

Good. If it's not impossible to identify, how do we go about identifying it?

By definition said non-physical substrate would be transcendent. From their we can apply reason, including observations about how we use and apply meaning, to further inquire into what’s really going on.

You really need to start applying reason before you get to the transcendant non-physical substrate, if you want to find out what's really going on.

Atheists who are rationalists provisionally accept the current best scientific explanations for phenomena, because the available alternatives are usually more wrong. If a better explanation with more evidence indicates that Quantum Foam isn't random after all, we'd be fine with it. Atheism really has nothing to do with specific explanations for natural phenomena, unless any of them are determined to be God, which would convert all of the rationalist to some form of theism. As rationalists, observing that there is randomness at the quantum scale doesn't cause us to disregard our observations of reliable natural laws at larger scales.