Is atheism self-contradictory ?

[The Grand Nudger]

Let's not be hasty.  It can be and is all three.  

[Pat Mustard]

Similarly, I consider homosexual acts to be far more gross and disgusting than child marriage,

Well the difference is that with the gay sex you've got two (or more) adults who are consenting to same, and mentally and physically capable of giving an informed consent. With child rape even if the child says "yes" she has not given an informed consent (she is neither mentally capable nor mature enough to know what she's saying yes to), and the adult is forcing the choice on her through the disparity in power he has over her.

So you think one person forcing their will on another is worse than two people engaged in a loving act showing equal levels of power and consent? You, sir are an immoral animal.

[The Grand Nudger]

You got that one a little backwards.  It's the gay sexing that's worse than the kiddie diddling, in this one's opinion.  

[Pat Mustard]

As a nit, not 'self-confessed'. The story of Aisha's underage marriage is from a hadith, and the Shia vigorously contest its authenticity.

I know enough about islam that the hadiths are claimed to be the authoritative word of mohammed. So either the person islamists worship was a child rapists, or a fantasy figure.

[Astreja]

Similarly, I consider homosexual acts to be far more gross and disgusting than child marriage,

Well the difference is that with the gay sex you've got two (or more) adults who are consenting to same, and mentally and physically capable of giving an informed consent. With child rape even if the child says "yes" she has not given an informed consent (she is neither mentally capable nor mature enough to know what she's saying yes to), and the adult is forcing the choice on her through the disparity in power he has over her.

So you think one person forcing their will on another is worse than two people engaged in a loving act showing equal levels of power and consent? You, sir are an immoral animal.

While pondering Parsim0ny's utterly abhorrent view of sexuality, and wondering what if anything I could add to your mic-drop comment, I got a rather odd vision in my mind's eye:

I think most of us have seen various photographs of hundreds, sometimes thousands of men performing Islamic prayers in neat, orderly rows.  It appears that there is enormous pressure to conform and to submit.  That is profoundly abnormal human behaviour, adherence to a dogmatic and authoritarian ritual that IMO stifles creativity and innovation and individuality (as well as getting in the way of one's daily activities by interrupting it for the required prayer sessions).

The pressure that that creates can't be healthy, and it wouldn't surprise me one bit to discover that child "marriages" and other unconscionable and evil abuses are motivated by an twisted desire to reassert a modicum of authority -- by raping someone who can't fight back.

[vorlon13]

Well the difference is that with the gay sex you've got two (or more) adults who are consenting to same, and mentally and physically capable of giving an informed consent. With child rape even if the child says "yes" she has not given an informed consent (she is neither mentally capable nor mature enough to know what she's saying yes to), and the adult is forcing the choice on her through the disparity in power he has over her.

So you think one person forcing their will on another is worse than two people engaged in a loving act showing equal levels of power and consent? You, sir are an immoral animal.

While pondering Parsim0ny's utterly abhorrent view of sexuality, and wondering what if anything I could add to your mic-drop comment, I got a rather odd vision in my mind's eye:

I think most of us have seen various photographs of hundreds, sometimes thousands of men performing Islamic prayers in neat, orderly rows.  It appears that there is enormous pressure to conform and to submit.  That is profoundly abnormal human behaviour, adherence to a dogmatic and authoritarian ritual that IMO stifles creativity and innovation and individuality (as well as getting in the way of one's daily activities by interrupting it for the required prayer sessions).

The pressure that that creates can't be healthy, and it wouldn't surprise me one bit to discover that child "marriages" and other unconscionable and evil abuses are motivated by an twisted desire to reassert a modicum of authority -- by raping someone who can't fight back.

I like seeing long orderly rows of (usually) hairy mens butts upturned.

I'd also wonder about the motivation of those in charge who came up with this arrangement.

[Pat Mustard]

The pressure that that creates can't be healthy, and it wouldn't surprise me one bit to discover that child "marriages" and other unconscionable and evil abuses are motivated by an twisted desire to reassert a modicum of authority -- by raping someone who can't fight back.

I think the prevalence of child rape amongst devoutly islamic men is there for the same reason as the prevalence amongst catholic priests, because the opportunity is there and the rapist is in a power situation vis a vis the child.

[Mister Agenda]

I see you're no exception to the rule that theists who come here wanting to know about atheism tell us what atheism is and what we must think. In fact, you're the second person with the 'question I stumbled upon concerning atheism' person we've had in the last week.  Not very refreshing, but I did not have much of an expectation. At any rate, welcome to the forum, I hope you like it here. 

I'm sorry I have to say this, but it seems to me that everybody has the right to insult and disregard any argument we make because they think they are too smart to answer. You are actually the second or third person to reply in this thread without directly neglecting the thread and attacking Muslim beliefs.

It's hard to be as kind and patient the 341st time someone marches onto our forum to tell us what we think, which accounts for a lot of people not having much patience for that sort of thing. But it's not your fault you're the 341st.

It does not follow from the fact that a god cannot be proven with logic, that the mind itself can't be trusted. You seem to have skipped some steps in making that claim. But the claims are not necessarily false in their conclusions, they are unsound. That is, if there is a God, none of the arguments presented thus far successfully establish that. There's no 'proof' given by a scholar or philosopher that both contains no logical fallacies and rests on sound premises that any reasonable person would assent to. 

If there is a God, who is by definition absolutely fair, he must make his creatures capable of knowing him and follow the right path. Therefore, I know my mind is reliable because God made it that way. Assuming no God exists, nothing tells me that my mind - as a product of long-term alterations of genome - is reliable enough to discover objective truths about life and the universe. Our minds can produce science, but science itself is merely cumulative experience and an endless trial-and-error process, and everything we know about the universe via scientific investigation can break down at any moment and become history. Producing science DOESN'T mean our brains are reliable, it only appears that way.

Our minds are provably unreliable in many ways. How do you reconcile that with them being a product of perfection?

You seem to be going the 'how do we know we're not brains in a jar or experiencing a vast hallucination' route. We don't. If you don't accept reality as an axiom, it isn't any more provable than God. And all you've presented to support your case is assertions, and assertions don't count as logic or evidence. You're just telling us what you believe. You can believe anything you want, it doesn't have anything to do with whether you're right, no matter how certain you are.

Also, I can't say for myself that I'm brilliant about anything. I can't claim that I have a good and natural voice unless someone else hears me singing and assures me of that. Humans cannot say about themselves that their minds possess any great ability without an "exterior consciousness" telling them that.

We can compare each other's observations, reasoning, and thoughts, so there you go.

You say therefore, but no argument preceded that conclusion. You're claiming not believing something is believing something, that's a strange claim to make. If you asked us what we think instead of telling us, you'd find that most of us just aren't sold on the deity you're trying to sell. There might be ghosts, but I don't believe in them. I'm not going to believe in literal ghosts (or Bigfoot, or alien abductions, or Amway) until I'm presented with sufficient evidence to convince me. Do you believe in things without sufficient evidence to convince you?

The initial variations in our genome are random within a certain range of possibilities, but which variations are conserved isn't random, evolution is (vastly oversimplifying here) a process of culling disadvantageous variations while conserving advantageous ones. I can reasonably infer that my brain has evolved to deal with the environment that actually exists, and while it may be imperfect, it does the job. And we've come up with science to help us with our blind spots (and there are many of them). 

I'm not trying to sell you anything. I'm simply requesting for a reasonable explanation about our minds being presumably reliable.

Already given, and my explanation has the advantage of explaining why our brains are limited in their reliability.

This is, of course, not sufficient to summon any supernatural creator, but means that [u]If our minds aren't the work of a consciousness, THEN they are not reliable.

You keep skipping the middle part of an argument:

If our minds aren't the work of a consciousness,
(Middle Term)
Then they are not reliable.

You don't even bother to try to explain why they require an exterior consciousness creating them to be reliable (as reliable as ours are, anyway).

Or you could do it like this:

If our minds ARE the work of a perfect consciousness,
Then our minds are perfectly reliable.
Our minds are not perfectly reliable.
Therefore our minds are not the work of a perfect consciousness.

Snip

It clearly follows from the two premises that our minds ARE NOT reliable as we claim they are.

How reliable do we claim they are? I haven't heard anyone claim they're more reliable than they need to be for us to survive in the environment we find ourselves in.

---

As a nit, not 'self-confessed'. The story of Aisha's underage marriage is from a hadith, and the Shia vigorously contest its authenticity.

I know enough about islam that the hadiths are claimed to be the authoritative word of mohammed. So either the person islamists worship was a child rapists, or a fantasy figure.

They're not all even supposed to be the word of Mohammed. Many are clearly third-person commentary on his life. The one about Aisha's age, for instance.

Or he could have been a real person who married Aisha when she was older. Shia put her as at least 19. But of course they had political reasons to make her older, just as the Sunni had political reasons to make her younger.

[Astonished]

Hello everyone ,

This is my first thread on the forum, and I hope to get convincing responses to a question I stumbled upon concerning atheism.

Assuming no God can be proven by logic, how can one trust his judgment about religions/existence of god if his mind itself cannot be trusted ? How can I trust any atheist/agnostic's claim that all kinds of proofs that have been given by scholars or philosophers of religion throughout history are false ?

Therefore, rejecting belief is in itself belief that your mind possesses some kind of an absolute power that makes you distinguish between good arguments and fallacies. I don't want to talk about evolution in this thread, but since the brain is the product of random alterations of our genome, how can it be trustworthy ? 

You'll say to me that this power is simply logial reasoning, but, you see, logic is based on axioms, i.e. basic FACTS taken for granted. What are you taking for granted to refute any logical argument whatsoever ? And why do you TRUST your thinking in the first place ?

How do you know no god can be proven by logic? Seems to me that it is well within the capability of anything typically described as a god (very powerful and very knowledgeable) to do. Even if it exists outside of the physical universe, clearly it interacts with it (if in nothing other than creating it) so if this god chooses not to present itself or proof of itself that is unmistakable, it would just be a god that no one on this earth should give two shits about since that seems to be about the same level of interest that god has in us and our little ball of mud.

You're asking about hard solipsism-how can we be sure of anything, including our own consciousness being legitimately our own. Let me begin by saying, this helps your case in proving a god not one bit, in fact it hurts it quite badly as no description of a god anyone is actually trying to defend includes a god that is a sadistic trickster that wants to constantly pull the wool over our eyes for their amusement. By that same logic we could not trust any of what we think about our notions of any gods or what's in our holy books or that our loved ones even exist or that they're being honest with us about anything (or that they even know what they're talking about when they say anything at all). Bringing this up shows you have put zero thought into this laughable proposition and I pity you for lacking the critical intellect to grasp this before demonstrating your incapability. Not a great start when you're trying to make an argument.

But let me go a step further; this is commonly a question attributed to what are known as presuppositionalists. The most outspoken advocates of this position have also got zero awareness of both how easily their argument breaks down and how badly it hurts the underlying agenda they are trying to promote. Allow me to demonstrate, in one sentence, how presuppositionalist apologetics fall apart:
Question: Could you be wrong about everything you know?
Answer: If I know that I don't know everything, and I can be wrong about that, it means I do know everything, and am therefore omniscient, and based on that attribute, I am what you seem to define as god.

They sure as shit ain't gonna accept that. But instead of doing the smart thing and dropping it (especially if I start taking on the role of god and rubbing it in their faces for my amusement) they'll just try it on someone else. The underlying unethical motives behind the whole thing should get these charlatans arrested for willful fraud but the world isn't just enough for that.

There are fundamental assumptions we must all make about the world, theists included, in order not to descend into madness and lose what sense of identity we perceive. That our consciousness exists, at a minimum, whether or not others do alongside us. That the numerous senses we experience are genuine (barring some physical or mental disorder), that there is a physical and energetic world around us that we are capable of interacting with, and that our experience in this world is objectively real whether our consciousness exists or not. You asking if we can know that any of this is actually real, without asking yourself the same question and all the ramifications of it, or ignoring the fact that it harms your case for a god, show an amazing lack of awareness.

The language you are using is also troubling. You seem to think a rational skeptic is as arrogant as you are, claiming we have anything remotely resembling a mind that has an 'absolute power'. Thank you for proving very early on that you are prejudiced, ignorant, and seem to have a tendency to project your own personal faults onto others as a defense mechanism against criticism and being told that you're wrong which is always an uncomfortable feeling, but as a theist, I promise you, you will never, ever hear any end to it. Because you are dead wrong.

We don't have to talk about evolution, let's talk about creationism. The typical model of deity outlined in nearly every holy book that people actually debate about is a petty, insecure, ignorant, bigoted, short-tempered, jealous, callous, forgetful, flip-flopping buffoon that would baffle every psychologist and psychiatrist on the planet trying to pin down exactly everything wrong with its mental health. Given that this is all we really have to go on as far as what to think of and judge this deity's character by, it's hardly fair to say that our minds are unreliable and yet a god doesn't have to submit to this scrutiny. If we don't go by what's written in books, we can look at what is apparently here by design; we eat and breathe out of the same tube, we males urinate and ejaculate out of the same tube, we have an appendix that we don't need that can kill us if it ruptures and isn't treated surgically (which we haven't been able to do without the advent of modern science and medicine), and that's just in the human species (and I'm not even close to done, but I'm sure you have your hands full with just those 3). This speaks to an either indifferent creator, and incompetent one, or a malicious one looking for a laugh when our babies succumb to crib death because of how effective this design is.

Unless you've got a god-radio in your head or something akin to that and it's by that mechanism exclusively that you have knowledge of the nature of god and all things (and how you'd determine that's actually genuine or not a lie from whatever source it's coming from...because what's the first thing a liar says? "I'm not a liar." Or to go one further, "It's not even in my nature to lie." We people with actual critical intelligence call that one 'Methinks they doth protest TOO MUCH), you have to make assumptions about reality the same as any rational thinker. Your ability to learn language so your parents could lie to you about the nature of the world, or your ability to see and read which you aren't using very effectively if you've managed not to figure out half the things I'm saying by reading whatever you've been reading.

Because of the limits of our knowledge and the range of our senses, we have nothing but logic and empiricism to rely on to learn anything. Stick your hand in a fire and tell me you're not going to be in pain. Please, try it, because if we don't know for sure it's going to happen, what's the harm, right? Put your money where your mouth is or please close it until you learn something worth saying. Now the consequence of this logic and empiricism is that it renders all god concepts on offer either absurd or irrelevant. In this society and all others, the entire notion is completely unnecessary and is indisputably harmful, far more than any 'good' it can be claimed to do can possibly ever justify.

I think I covered about everything and I think for the most part, I was way, WAY more civil than usual (since I'm responding to your very first post and this is like 18 pages in or so already) but let me close by saying this. Let's assume that you believe you get something positive out of your faith and that you should be allowed to continue to practice it in any way you like. I can never be okay with that for these reasons: I see what effect it has had on your ability to think and reason, I can guarantee you there are alternative and superior means by which to achieve these benefits you claim to get from harboring a delusion, and because you're likely to want to force this same belief system on your children I am forced to consider you a criminal for violating their rights in that way. Sorry if any of this hurt or offend you, but the truth hurts, and I think that's why religion is so appealing. Don't be the least common denominator, or at least don't be so proud of being that.

[Amarok]

Hello everyone ,

This is my first thread on the forum, and I hope to get convincing responses to a question I stumbled upon concerning atheism.

Assuming no God can be proven by logic, how can one trust his judgment about religions/existence of god if his mind itself cannot be trusted ? How can I trust any atheist/agnostic's claim that all kinds of proofs that have been given by scholars or philosophers of religion throughout history are false ?

Therefore, rejecting belief is in itself belief that your mind possesses some kind of an absolute power that makes you distinguish between good arguments and fallacies. I don't want to talk about evolution in this thread, but since the brain is the product of random alterations of our genome, how can it be trustworthy ? 

You'll say to me that this power is simply logial reasoning, but, you see, logic is based on axioms, i.e. basic FACTS taken for granted. What are you taking for granted to refute any logical argument whatsoever ? And why do you TRUST your thinking in the first place ?

How do you know no god can be proven by logic? Seems to me that it is well within the capability of anything typically described as a god (very powerful and very knowledgeable) to do. Even if it exists outside of the physical universe, clearly it interacts with it (if in nothing other than creating it) so if this god chooses not to present itself or proof of itself that is unmistakable, it would just be a god that no one on this earth should give two shits about since that seems to be about the same level of interest that god has in us and our little ball of mud.

You're asking about hard solipsism-how can we be sure of anything, including our own consciousness being legitimately our own. Let me begin by saying, this helps your case in proving a god not one bit, in fact it hurts it quite badly as no description of a god anyone is actually trying to defend includes a god that is a sadistic trickster that wants to constantly pull the wool over our eyes for their amusement. By that same logic we could not trust any of what we think about our notions of any gods or what's in our holy books or that our loved ones even exist or that they're being honest with us about anything (or that they even know what they're talking about when they say anything at all). Bringing this up shows you have put zero thought into this laughable proposition and I pity you for lacking the critical intellect to grasp this before demonstrating your incapability. Not a great start when you're trying to make an argument.

But let me go a step further; this is commonly a question attributed to what are known as presuppositionalists. The most outspoken advocates of this position have also got zero awareness of both how easily their argument breaks down and how badly it hurts the underlying agenda they are trying to promote. Allow me to demonstrate, in one sentence, how presuppositionalist apologetics fall apart:
Question: Could you be wrong about everything you know?
Answer: If I know that I don't know everything, and I can be wrong about that, it means I do know everything, and am therefore omniscient, and based on that attribute, I am what you seem to define as god.

They sure as shit ain't gonna accept that. But instead of doing the smart thing and dropping it (especially if I start taking on the role of god and rubbing it in their faces for my amusement) they'll just try it on someone else. The underlying unethical motives behind the whole thing should get these charlatans arrested for willful fraud but the world isn't just enough for that.

There are fundamental assumptions we must all make about the world, theists included, in order not to descend into madness and lose what sense of identity we perceive. That our consciousness exists, at a minimum, whether or not others do alongside us. That the numerous senses we experience are genuine (barring some physical or mental disorder), that there is a physical and energetic world around us that we are capable of interacting with, and that our experience in this world is objectively real whether our consciousness exists or not. You asking if we can know that any of this is actually real, without asking yourself the same question and all the ramifications of it, or ignoring the fact that it harms your case for a god, show an amazing lack of awareness.

The language you are using is also troubling. You seem to think a rational skeptic is as arrogant as you are, claiming we have anything remotely resembling a mind that has an 'absolute power'. Thank you for proving very early on that you are prejudiced, ignorant, and seem to have a tendency to project your own personal faults onto others as a defense mechanism against criticism and being told that you're wrong which is always an uncomfortable feeling, but as a theist, I promise you, you will never, ever hear any end to it. Because you are dead wrong.

We don't have to talk about evolution, let's talk about creationism. The typical model of deity outlined in nearly every holy book that people actually debate about is a petty, insecure, ignorant, bigoted, short-tempered, jealous, callous, forgetful, flip-flopping buffoon that would baffle every psychologist and psychiatrist on the planet trying to pin down exactly everything wrong with its mental health. Given that this is all we really have to go on as far as what to think of and judge this deity's character by, it's hardly fair to say that our minds are unreliable and yet a god doesn't have to submit to this scrutiny. If we don't go by what's written in books, we can look at what is apparently here by design; we eat and breathe out of the same tube, we males urinate and ejaculate out of the same tube, we have an appendix that we don't need that can kill us if it ruptures and isn't treated surgically (which we haven't been able to do without the advent of modern science and medicine), and that's just in the human species (and I'm not even close to done, but I'm sure you have your hands full with just those 3). This speaks to an either indifferent creator, and incompetent one, or a malicious one looking for a laugh when our babies succumb to crib death because of how effective this design is.

Unless you've got a god-radio in your head or something akin to that and it's by that mechanism exclusively that you have knowledge of the nature of god and all things (and how you'd determine that's actually genuine or not a lie from whatever source it's coming from...because what's the first thing a liar says? "I'm not a liar." Or to go one further, "It's not even in my nature to lie." We people with actual critical intelligence call that one 'Methinks they doth protest TOO MUCH), you have to make assumptions about reality the same as any rational thinker. Your ability to learn language so your parents could lie to you about the nature of the world, or your ability to see and read which you aren't using very effectively if you've managed not to figure out half the things I'm saying by reading whatever you've been reading.

Because of the limits of our knowledge and the range of our senses, we have nothing but logic and empiricism to rely on to learn anything. Stick your hand in a fire and tell me you're not going to be in pain. Please, try it, because if we don't know for sure it's going to happen, what's the harm, right? Put your money where your mouth is or please close it until you learn something worth saying. Now the consequence of this logic and empiricism is that it renders all god concepts on offer either absurd or irrelevant. In this society and all others, the entire notion is completely unnecessary and is indisputably harmful, far more than any 'good' it can be claimed to do can possibly ever justify.

I think I covered about everything and I think for the most part, I was way, WAY more civil than usual (since I'm responding to your very first post and this is like 18 pages in or so already) but let me close by saying this. Let's assume that you believe you get something positive out of your faith and that you should be allowed to continue to practice it in any way you like. I can never be okay with that for these reasons: I see what effect it has had on your ability to think and reason, I can guarantee you there are alternative and superior means by which to achieve these benefits you claim to get from harboring a delusion, and because you're likely to want to force this same belief system on your children I am forced to consider you a criminal for violating their rights in that way. Sorry if any of this hurt or offend you, but the truth hurts, and I think that's why religion is so appealing. Don't be the least common denominator, or at least don't be so proud of being that.

All of they above the worst part about presup theists is they don't realize all there own criticism apply to themselves and no amount of asserting "god reveals it in a way I can be certain changes that"

---

And only theists assume absolute minds. As if the existences of such a thing helps the theists case . Or his own knowledge of such a thing is possible.