Question for Atheists

[The Reality Salesman01]

It requires that it exist apart from matter, space, and time I order for it to create it though, doesn't it? But then again, there's that whole interaction problem rearing it's ugly head again. Not to mention the problem of lacking a material cause. Carpenter, wood, table...you know? What's the wood? And there in lies the rub. No amount of causal power is made manifest without an object upon which it can be exerted. Without that material form, Omnipotence becomes impotent. I think he'd have to invoke a 3rd substance form. Some kind of Tri-ism,I guess. I'm rambling again...I gotta start supper.

[Whateverist]

Guess what DeNihilists! Physical things have no meaning; they just are. Physical processes have no purpose; they just happen.

Of course meaning only comes in with agency. Things and experiences don't have meaning in themselves. They have meaning for agents.

And since your worldview is that everything is physical, then you have nothing with which to make real intentional or teleological properties! Truly deterministic processes do not have goals, purposes, or intentions. Nor do deterministic processes have meaning or significance. They move along their inevitable and unalterable course. Since humans, according to you, are walking talking electro-chemical reactions any meaning you think your life has is an illusion. Any purpose in which you believe is a rationalization of events over which you have no real control. You’re fooling yourselves.

Nope. So far as we are aware everything arises within or amongst the physical. Smiles, ideas and gravity make themselves known to us by way of the physical. Any qualia you have ever experienced was experienced by the physical you.

The language which has arisen to describe our hopes and aspirations still apply but the teleological is supplied by our own agency, something again which is embedded in the physical.

[The Reality Salesman01]

Whateverist The Gray! He is never late. He arrives precisely when he means to.

[Mudhammam]

@OP

Coincidentally, I watched a debate this morning called "Does The Universe Have a Purpose?" Among the participants are Michael Shermer, Richard Dawkins, Matt Ridley (all atheists), Michio Kaku (agnostic), William Lane Craig, David Wolpe, and another theist whom I did not recognize. It's a very interesting debate. I think Dawkins is right, the theistic case is an emotional one.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=p6tIee8Fw...ata_player

[Neo-Scholastic]

If minds are a property of matter, is it still not possible for those minds, made of matter, to create purpose for things, solely as a function of their material mind's ability to conceive of something as "being for" something else?

I think you are begging the question by essentially asking if a mind made of matter could have mental properties (like create purpose and concieve things). If you could make a mind out of matter then sure. But can you actually make a mind out of just matter? Speaking hypothetically, it depends upon what you think the world is made of and at what scale you believe mind manifests itself. If you are talking about the biological scale, described with 19th century physics, then I do not believe electro-chemical and mechanical processes can generate mental properties.

Then again what exactly is matter (the stuff) when you deconstruct it to the most fundamental level? After you remove every contingent property all that remains is primal matter. And yet in order for something to actually exist is must exist as something. So what exactly gives primal matter form, since it doesn't get it from itself? Reality as we know it is made manifests by these two distinct principles: the propensity to be and the intentional agency. These two are distinct in thought but not in actuality. The interaction problem disappears if you can erase the gap between psychological properties (akin to form) and physical objects (akin to substance). So basically, I am saying that mind and matter are both fundamental and necessary parts of the world. Trying to build it all out of matter or all out of mind is like trying to make a one-sided coin.

So as it relates to the OP, a reality that consists of only matter (?) has no way to manifest anything at all, much less mind. And without mind you cannot have meaning.

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Of course meaning only comes in with agency. Things and experiences don't have meaning in themselves. They have meaning for agents.

Exactly my point.

Any qualia you have ever experienced was experienced by the physical you.

You are begging the question.

... the teleological is supplied by our own agency, something again which is embedded in the physical.

Why do you assume it's embedded (or perhaps generated by) the physical? What if reality was actually the action of agency upon the physical? Or stated otherwise, physicality shaped by agency.

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No amount of causal power is made manifest without an object upon which it can be exerted.

I agree.

[The Reality Salesman01]

So then you cannot be a believer in the Christian God without special pleading. Either God acted upon himself and brought about the universe, or there existed a third substance. If God acted upon himself to bring about change in the form of The Universe as we know it, you are a Theist arguing for the existence of a God that is subject to change and therein, subject to pre-existing physical processes. The other version is that God sacrificed his own being for the existence of the universe, and you are a theist arguing for a position that was only correct before the existence of the universe, but is now wrong due to the existence of the universe that now exists in His place. If you conclude that God acted upon a separate "object" then you have only succeeded in moving the goal post and continue bearing your burden of proof. I suspect that's the route you will choose. But I'll let you answer...

[Angrboda]

Properties aren't something that can be removed as they aren't things. But I see you're in a mood for dancing rather than simply giving honest answers, so I'll sit this shindig out.

I will note in passing, however, that you now have made a claim about the mental, and now you do bear the burden of proof you have been so desperately trying to avoid.

[The Reality Salesman01]

I love it when Apo is in a sporting mood.

[Cyberman]

I'm buggered if I'm wading through six pages right now (maybe later) but if I don't stick my oar in now it'll be another ten. Anyway, in regards to the OP, the Universe is simply far too big to be able to attach any one "why" to its existence. Hell, there isn't even a single country right here on Earth that you could do that to. We could reduce the focal length somewhat, even if the scale is still grossly out: for instance, why does a rose exist and what is its purpose? To look pretty? To smell nice? To get into her pants? We need to stop looking at these things from an anthropocentric perspective if we want even an atom of a chance of learning what's really going on, if anything. Science offers us a way to learn how things work and how they fit together with everything else, what happens to that everything else when one thing stops working, and so on.

[The Reality Salesman01]

Dammit Chad! Where'd you go? You are an elusive beast indeed.

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Apo, you ran him off!