An atheists guide to reality

[Esquilax]

Rosenberg argues, and I agree, that since physical things do not have meaning, then any philosophy of mind that makes mental properties identical to the brain and its physical states, undermines the notion very of meaning. It sets up an infinite regress. Marks, like words & pictures, dramatic life events, and scientific “evidence”, are signs that take their significance from other signs that take their significance from others signs, and so on. In physical monist philosophies, the brain is just another sign among signs. In physical monist theories, which nearly all the AF atheist accept, the knowing subject is an illusion, a uniquely compelling one, but an illusion nonetheless. Anyone with an open mind can see the incoherence of this notion: who exactly is having the illusion!

Clearly, intentionality is a part of reality, whether fundamental to it or emanating into it. Either way, I do not know what else to call this source of intentionality other than God.

So, Esq, no matter how strenuously you assert the opposite, you cannot escape the fact that atheism entails nihilism.

And this is where I disagree, because I see no reason why consciousness merely becomes another outcropping of a physical thing, and hence meaningless, merely because it issues from a physical thing. The brain is a physical object, and consciousness emerges from it, but that doesn't make it a physical thing in itself any more than the words you speak are physical merely because they are a product of your tongue.

The mind is a state, not an object, created by the alignment of our brains; a very advanced one, a self aware one that's possibly unique, but there's nothing in the idea that it comes from physical material that makes it less valuable, or inherently nihilistic. That's an assertion you're making, and to demonstrate it you'd need to detail whatever it is that you're claiming the soul- immaterial mind, whatever- has that a physically derived mind cannot ascertain for itself.

And honestly, it's strange, the kind of freewheeling, unconnected assertions theists like to make on this subject; in your view the mind doesn't exist beyond the brain, therefore it's an illusion (nevermind the false dichotomy inherent in not making room for a potential third category there) and therefore atheism is nihilism... none of that follows.