Question for Atheists

[Whateverist]

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.

But why then should that be a problem for atheists? We believe in human agency, or at least I do. Whatever all the fuss may be about free will, if anyone can ever be said to intend anything it is people .. at least as far as any one knows for sure.

It would seem to be theists who are ill prepared to demonstrate that there is any teleology apart from the intention of persons.

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

You are begging the question.

I only know you from what your physical fingers write here online. The only qualia I've ever heard you mention were reported through those fingers of yours to appear here on this screen of mine. If there is anything at all apart from these physical bodies of ours and the minds they house, there does not seem to be a single example to which you can point. So far any world unconnected to the physical world seems only to exist as the conjecture of a human mind.

[Neo-Scholastic]

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

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Apo, you ran him off!

Nah, I've given lots of long thoughtful posts and am starting to get bored. As for your question, I advocate panentheist, process theology. And I really don't have time to explain all that. You can do your own research.

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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.

Do you even know how to read something without projecting your own preconceptions into the text?

[Whateverist]

Sorry you aren't getting traction here Chad. I do appreciate the thoughtful posts you've made. But I offer my critique and disagreement -where it exists- in all sincerity. I don't disagree with you about everything but I don't share the god hunch.

[max-greece]

Rayaan,

So according to what you've just written the whole point of life is to praise and glorify the creator - who doesn't need it.

How pointless is THAT life!!!

Could you just run by me again why we need it? I seem to have missed that.

We need Him to be guided to the Straight Path (Sirat al-Mustaqeem). Otherwise we are like people who are riding on a rudderless boat with no sense of direction ...


but some people take their own desires as their god - and thereby they have strayed away from the path: "Have you seen the one who takes his own desire as his god? Then would you be responsible for him? Or do you think that most of them hear or understand? They are but as the cattle; nay, they are farther astray from the path." [Surah 25:43–44]

So according to your world view the choice is between Allah and desire as a god. False dichotomy.

How about conscience? How about empathy? Why would neither of these things, or both, in conjunction with a sense of right and wrong be a good God to have?

Any evidence of the "straight path"? Any evidence it is a better path than the meandering path?

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

Agree with all of the above.

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.

This is the problematic bit. We do not know what caused/causes conscientiousness. It appears, taking a physical view of the universe, that under certain circumstances with sufficient complexity and enough time a thinking mind can be caused entirely from the physical.

This is not limited to us as human beings - although we appear to be its most extreme case to date. We see varying levels of self-conscience throughout the animal kingdom, some higher (Chimps, Orcas etc.) and some so low its borderline to define them as being alive (Viruses).

"any meaning you think your life has is an illusion."

In a sense (looking at the universe as a whole) certainly. At a local level, however, we can still strive towards the highest ideals our minds can create in any given area. Illusions surround us - religions are a perfect example as they represent the desire to be important to a higher being (imaginary being as it happens).

You could easily argue that almost everything we value is of no real import. Money has no inherent value - land ownership, conceptually, is just silly and so on and so forth.

I tend to think of life as we experience it as a game - akin to chess. There are basic rules in playing the game which everyone is expected to observe but within the game there is strategy, planing, forethought, organisation, adjustment, bluff and a whole slew of other facets. The game is just a game but the tactics and techniques, the thoughts, the planning and the enactment of the plan, quite real.

How you choose to play the game, how good you are at it, how dedicated to improving your abilities within it - those are all real issues totally invested within the game.

Ultimately whether I win or lose a game of chess with someone (or with a computer come to that) has ZERO impact on you if you are not my opponent. How I live my life has zero impact on the Andromeda Galaxy. Neither of these facts devalue the game.

[Mudhammam]

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.

I would much rather create the illusion of meaning in my personal experiences than import the illusion of meaning of someone else's existence as my own, especially someone as nonsensical as the various biblical Gods.

And what's "real" control versus "unreal" control exactly?

[Esquilax]

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

My question is this: let's presume you're entirely right, from top to bottom, even in the things you've assumed to be true about my position without actually knowing them; what does that matter to me?

You seem to be implying that our position is somehow pointless or negative because there's no externally granted purpose, and that the correct response for us- that we're denying in some sort of inconsistent action- is nihilism. Why is that? So things are deterministic and our purpose is ascribed by biochemical reactions within our brains: how does that alter the life that I have? How are the things I find purpose in any less valid, because they're constructed by my meat brain rather than a magic soul?

You are begging the question, by assuming that such things are pointless in order to come to the conclusion that the correct response is nihilism.

[Whateverist]

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?

Interestingly it seems we each do just that. In the process of cell division from the point of conception each one of us did in fact assemble our bodies and brains, independently from our parents. Of course they provided the blueprints and the raw materials. But then, incredibly, each of our physical bodies is formed through processes which we are beginning to understand.

Of course our being able to assemble these bodies of ours does not depend on science. But science more and more is revealing how we do it. If anything can be called miraculous -as in jaw-droppingly amazing- this is it.

[The Reality Salesman01]

I agree. The human body is fascinating!

[Mudhammam]

I agree. The human body is fascinating!

Apparently too fascinating for our incredulous resident theists.

[Angrboda]

It's Plato's fault.