Do you wish there's a god?

[Acrobat]

For one thing, despite all of our cognitive biases, we've managed to make them work, using some method or other.

What real cognitive biases did we have to work against to invent computers? Did we have to work against cognitive biases to invent the wheel, or figure out how to make a fire?

[The Grand Nudger]

I accept that you view morality through the lens of what you find aesthetically pleasing.  I specifically laid out both that and how I'm human just like you and that subjectivity is just as much a part of who I am as it is who you are. 

I just don’t elevate that to the status of my moral framework.

That’s because you’re delusiona, and try to imagine yourself as something other than the biological creature you are, as a man living outside his body.  You lack the basic self awareness needed to recognize the nonsense even from purely atheistic perspective regarding your moral views.

Why do you think I'm trying to imagine myself as something other than I am, and why do you think that I can't recognize my own subjectivity..particularly when I've explicitly acknowledged my own subjectivity?  

I'm only telling you that I don't elevate that to the status of my moral framework.  Why is this such a difficult thing for you?  You knew I was a realist going into this..that I reject explicit subjectivity as a valid method for reaching moral conclusions is baked right into that word.  That's the difference between subjectivism and realism.

 My moral proactive behavior is very much connected to my moral reasoning.

No it isn’t. A variety of studies have shown that there’s no real relationship between these two have been found. That what you call moral reasoning, is primarily a justification after the fact. The reason why you and I jumped in front of bullet for our wives, gf, children, mother, etc… isn’t because you relied on your unique moral reasoning to compel you to do it, and I instead did so because I was compelled by love. But rather we did so based on similar underlying motivations.

Yes, it is.  We can go back and forth all day long like this, you're just being a tool because you're frustrated.  

I might jump in front of a bullet for my wife for no moral reason at all, just instinct in the moment, sure.  Is that supposed to demonstrate that I don't consider actions before I commit to them, or that I commit to actions because they're beautiful?  

“It has been hard to find any correlation between moral reasoning and proactive moral behavior, such as helping other people. In fact, in most recent studies, none has been found…As one might predict based on what we have learned so far, moral behavior, as evidenced by helping others, is more correlated with emotion and self- control.”

“The proposal is that a stimulus induces an automatic process of approval (approach) or disapproval (avoid), which may lead to a full-on emotional state. The emotional state produces a moral intuition that may motivate an individual to action. Reasoning about the judgment or action comes afterward, as the brain seeks a rational explanation for an automatic re- action it has no clue about. This includes moral judgments, which are not often the result of actual moral reasoning.” - Michael Gazzaniga

Sure, there's a wide range of behaviors that we engage in for no moral reason and without any process of moral reasoning, or any rational process whatsoever, while we're at it.  The existence of that range of things doesn't demonstrate that there is nothing that we consider beforehand and then commit to.  It doesn't demonstrate that a person cannot hold moral realism as their position, that the beautiful and the good are the same thing, or that we explicitly seek the beautiful and cannot be compelled by the moral value of a thing in spite of it's aesthetic flaws.

Part of moral realism, in practice..is recognizing those things you think are right or wrong for no reason, societal reasons, or subjective reasons..and modifying your position on those items.

 

It's highly unlikely that you and I have uniformly equivalent aesthetic tastes, but if you want to agree with me that the good can be ugly, then so be it it?  

When it comes to morality, particularly core morality, it is highly likely. It been shown that our brains react quite similarly to variety of moral scenarios across cultures, and societies.

The sheer fact of our disagreement in this thread demonstrates otherwise.  Your only recourse has been to call me delusional, lol.  Well..maybe, but if so...we still don't agree...now do we?  

OFC people with similar equipment do similar things, this would be a fact of subjectivity, we've already discussed this..it's called intersubjectivity.

Are we going to hear what any of this is supposed to have to do with your reasons for believing in gods this side of judgment day, or what?

[Mister Agenda]

For one thing, despite all of our cognitive biases, we've managed to make them work, using some method or other.

What real cognitive biases did we have to work against to invent computers? Did we have to work against cognitive biases to invent the wheel, or figure out how to make a fire?

We directly perceived that round things roll and flammable things burn. We also directly perceived that the sky is a dome, the moon probably not that much higher than the mountaintops, and the earth a disk that you could see once on a mountaintop. The method we used to make wheels and fire was observation tested by trial and error. After all, not all round things make good wheels, and not all flammable things are easy to set on fire. That's not even getting into the best tools for making them. We used a method to figure out how to make those things, different primarily in complexity from how we figured out that our world is roughly an oblate spheroid, the moon is hundreds of thousands of miles higher than the highest mountains, and how to make computers. The knowledge didn't spring from our brows fully formed like Athena from the brow of Zeus.

[The Grand Nudger]

For a very long time, we thought that the business of holding and manipulating abstractions was the sole possession of this thing we called a "soul".  That it was beyond the ability of inanimate matter to do so....and unique to us in this world. 

Turns out we were wrong about that...and wrong about how we did it, too...lol. Some of the greatest thinkers of antiquity got shit profoundly wrong on account of this bias, and people, on account of their bias towards those guys authority, perpetuated that initial mistake for centuries getting even more things profoundly wrong. Going so far as to base their "sophisticated theology" on it. It's still with us today.

Then we came up with this method, can't for the life of me recall it's name (lol), that both showed us how profoundly wrong we had been -and- helped us to create the machine that demonstrates how profoundly wrong we had been.

[Acrobat]

@Acrobat

I diverge from most of my atheist counterparts in terms of the question “do you wish there was a god”. I do wish there was a god, and atheism is not my preferred position. So, if you have a good reason to believe in god, I’d most certainly like to hear it.

In my view the reality we live in and occupy appears to be about something rather than nothing. In fact humanity has long been oriented to such a perception. We're not creatures just looking for ways to survive, but looking for something to live for. We desire meaning, goodness, truth etc.., Are born with this nagging suspicion, that there's something more behind the curtain, that life is more than the sum of its parts. We live in a reality that appears to be playing a tune, something that lies at the heart of its excessiveness and ugliness, and beauty, within all its joy and pain. 

There’s something to all of this, that points, to things like we ought to be good, be kind and not cruel, to love rather than hate. That when we see a good person,  we see something whole about him, and something empty and absent about a bad one. We see things like cruelty, violence, hatred, resentment, etc as part of darkness, and things like kindness, compassion, mercy, justice as part of the light. 

That there’s something profound about the March from Selma, and something corrupted by the violence directed at its non-violent participants. 

We live not as empty little biological creatures, just procreating and surviving, but as far more excessive of a being than we ever needed to be, one’s capable of being moved beyond all measure, capable of recognizing depth and beauty that’s difficult to even take in. We’re not creatures existing in a reality uninterested, but a reality playing for us a tune, that perhaps we currently only hear vaguely, but we hear it nonetheless. One that’s about something, rather than nothing. 

[The Grand Nudger]

You've told us that this thing is beauty seeking.  All that has to exist for beauty seeking to exist, are creatures that seek beauty.  Things like us. Is that your reason for believing, some comment about people and how you think we are?

If you were wrong about that, would that mean that there were no gods...if you found out that you were wrong would you cease to believe?

All of this ridiculous shit boils down to "I think things are pretty, therefore god".......?

[Alan V]

I don't think that a mental function is an art form.

Fine. I thought I was agreeing with your point, but if not, not.

Consciousness is selective just like art is. So my point was a simile, I guess.

If entertainment is mere relaxation or enjoyable time-wasting, no. 

Perhaps "diversion" is a better word. Again my point is that even though I was raised to be an artist of a sort, I don't fall in with the typical pieties about it.

As for Magritte, those jokes get old fast. 

I think Magritte's "This is not a pipe" is one of the most profound paintings ever created. It is not a joke, it is true. A picture of a pipe is not a pipe.

Just for reference here: I have a master's in painting from a New York art school, and a doctorate in the philosophy of art from a Japanese university. And I have never heard anyone say that art is about directed attention. 

Cool. I am surprised you spend so much time writing on internet forums, but am glad you're here.

However, my point was simple. Artists want people to pay attention to their art. They are implicitly saying, "This is more important to pay attention to than something else you might spend the same attention on." It's their gig.

People used to say that taking a photo is the act of directing attention. But maybe they don't say that any more, what with Photoshop and all. 

My point was that people are directing attention to their art. In the case of photography, they are directing attention to their specific selection from the real world. In the case of painting, it could be something entirely imagined, decorative, emotion-laden, or whatever.

Certainly artists want to direct attention. But is that what the art is about? Or do they direct attention in order to do something else? To stick with the names I mentioned before, Brueghel and Rembrandt do more than point. If somebody directs my attention, they sure as hell had better have something good to direct me to. 

So I wasn't saying artists are pointing at something else, they are saying, "Look at my art."

Well, some things are more worthwhile looking at than others. That's why it's better to look at the good ones. I would never dispute that there's bad art. But why is this relevant? Art enriches, and some of it enriches more than others. 

My question is, is the art in question worth my attention? That's why I mentioned bad art. Much art is not worth my attention.

Now, going back to what you said earlier, about how the religious classics are lipstick on a pig: Do you remember the chapter in Walden called "Reading"? If you wanted to review that, I think you'd see that the author is decisively and entirely in disagreement with you. If he were posting on this forum, you would tell him that he's wasting his time.

I was thinking more about religious paintings as lipstick on a pig. As far as classics are concerned, yes, Thoreau made a point of recommending them in the chapter on "Reading" in Walden. (He spent more time recommending specifically religious classics in A Week On the Concord and Merrimack Rivers.) And that's why I spent a semester learning Classical Greek in college, before I gave it up to focus on translations of classics of Sufi mysticism -- for almost 25 years.

Would I do it again, knowing what I know now? No, I would not. I sometimes think it would be a good idea to write an update to Walden in which the recommended reading was of science instead.

If Thoreau was brought forward in time by a time machine, yes, he would likely still promote the same ideas. But I like to think that if he actually grew up in our times, he would more likely agree with me now. (This one point is a big reason why I do not get along with other Thoreauvians. I consider Thoreau as a friend and a philosopher rather than as a mystic laying down the law.)

[Acrobat]

What real cognitive biases did we have to work against to invent computers? Did we have to work against cognitive biases to invent the wheel, or figure out how to make a fire?

We directly perceived that round things roll and flammable things burn. We also directly perceived that the sky is a dome, the moon probably not that much higher than the mountaintops, and the earth a disk that you could see once on a mountaintop. The method we used to make wheels and fire was observation tested by trial and error. After all, not all round things make good wheels, and not all flammable things are easy to set on fire. That's not even getting into the best tools for making them. We used a method to figure out how to make those things, different primarily in complexity from how we figured out that our world is roughly an oblate spheroid, the moon is hundreds of thousands of miles higher than the highest mountains, and how to make computers. The knowledge didn't spring from our brows fully formed like Athena from the brow of Zeus.

You're moving the goal post. You earlier claimed that the scientific method is some sort of cure for the limitations imposed on us by our biases. This is what I'm arguing against. Not the variety of benefits, inventions, discoveries that were a product of it. 

Let view strong biases as a disease, and imagine the scientific method as a cure to that disease. We'll use a creationist with his strong biases as an example, explain to me how I can cure his disease, his biases,  with the scientific method?

Will his biases prevent him from applying the scientific method properly? Does he have to set his biases aside first, before applying it?

[The Grand Nudger]

[downbeatplumb]

[quote='downbeatplumb' pid='1897599' dateline='1554398060']
Just existing and finding all the arguments for god laughably childish.

The diagnosis here. Is that you want arguments that are laughably childish, because it makes you feel more like an adult, a fully developed human being, if you can imagine everyone else as a child.

No its because all I have seen is childish arguments for gods.

There's something appealingly egotistical, about atheism, that one can be an atheist with very little effort or thought, and yet feel above the rest of religious humanity as a result.

All it takes to be an atheist is not be convinced by the idea of a god and to date no one has even given a good description of what a god could be and I have asked often.

Now, I find most atheists arguments silly and childish as well, but I don't like that though.

My argument is mainly that I'm not convinced.

There are a number of reasons that I'm not convinced that has grown more supported by evidence as I've learnt more about theists arguments, but from the start I am just agog that people can believe what is obvious nonsense.

I like a challenge, a strong counter position, that causes me to reflect and rethink my own views, rather than the cheap confidence that comes as a result of poor arguments.

Well present something to argue against.

So you could tell me:


What god is made of?
How god does his godding?
Where did it exist before the universe/time existed?

I want all your answers to those extremely basic requests and I would expect evidence to support any answer.

"arguments" are nothing that I take notice of. Alone they are nothing.