What makes people irrational thinkers?

[polymath257]

[Simon Moon]

I can't speak for the OP, but for me, my athreism is a provisional position, it is not a destination.

This seems very reasonable to me, and wise.

I am completely open to being convinced a god or gods exist, but without rational, evidence based, reasoned argument, and valed and sound logic to support the case that a god exists, how would we go about figuring out if it is true, or likely to be true? As long as theists continue to fail to provide good standards of evidence to support their claims, my atheism will continue.

I think you'll see that there are two points here that can be questioned.

The first is whether or not rational evidence based reasoned argument with valid and sound logic really has failed to support the case that god exists. 

The second is whether such an approach is the only or best way to support the case that god exists. 

Believe it or not there are fascinating, non-crazy, challenging thinkers who disagree with you on both points.

What evidence, that is verifiable, demonstrable and falsifiable, have theists ever offered in support of the existence of a god? All they seem to do, is point their specific ancient texts, personal testimony, hearsay, and fallacious philosophical arguments.

If demonstrable and falsifiable evidence, reasoned argument, and valid and sound logic to demonstrate the existence of a god is not the only way or the best way, please offer another method that can reliably tell fact from fiction.

Because, the same 'methods' that theists currently use to justify their own beliefs, if applied equally to all religions and god beliefs, (and other supernatural beliefs), would have to also allow those other god beliefs to clear the same bar that their own god beliefs clear.

The "fascinating, non-crazy, challenging thinkers" you are referring to; what have they been able to offer up to demonstrate a god exists? If you are referring to arguments like: Kalam cosmological argument, ontological argument (including Plantinga's 'modal' version), teleological arguments, presuppositional arguments, etc, are either valid and/or sound.

And let me add, that I don't think theists have a rational reason to believe in gods. It is not that my bar is set too high, it's that theirs is set too low.

Or is set differently. It is hard to imagine, in our place, time, and social class, that sane people could disagree with us, but this is what questioning one's own beliefs consists of.

I never accused theists of being insane. The vast majority are sane. They just have beliefs that are unsupported by evidence, and valid and sound logic.

[vulcanlogician]

[Fake Messiah]

What makes people irrational thinkers? How about tribalism? You have some ideas, or should I say convictions, that become part of the tribe. So when someone is challenging those ideas, those who believe them don’t actually listen to them because they feel like you are attacking their tribe by challenging their ideas. They are obviously not open to actual thinking, but instead, go out of their way into irrationality to “defend” their ideas-identity.

Therefore, it is said that if you believe that a carpenter walked on water, you are a Christian, or if you believe that a man flew on a donkey to the seventh layer of heaven you are a Muslim, so you can imagine that to them it is not merely thinking about if their ideas are right or wrong, but actually losing the whole identity of who they are.

[Deesse23]

The simplest possible answer is "that which makes us alive." 

Like in "that which makes blood red"?
Kindly demonstrate that there is a "that", before we go to the demonstration that this "that" could be, or in fact is, a soul.

[Belacqua]

What evidence, that is verifiable, demonstrable and falsifiable, have theists ever offered in support of the existence of a god?

I don't think that metaphysical issues can be settled by such evidence, by definition. You're talking science, but metaphysics is different.

All they seem to do, is point their specific ancient texts, personal testimony, hearsay, and fallacious philosophical arguments.

Personal testimony can be very persuasive. 

Metaphysics only works through philosophical arguments, and if you've judged that all theological arguments are fallacious then it's reasonable for you to reject them.

---

Soul and mind have been colloquialized over the centuries. The average person may think of "soul" as some floating vaporous thing that leaves our body when we die. They may never ascribe to it sensations of desire or the capacity of thought as Plato did. Those things they would say are things related to the mind or brain. 

As I wrote before, the Greeks had different views of soul. Some included what we'd call mind, or parts of it, and some not. 

As for the popular image, that no doubt varies a lot as well. If they think the soul can leave the body and still be awake and thinking, then apparently it has sensations and thoughts. Does this theoretical "average person" think that the soul will be aware and awake on Judgment Day, for example? I seem to remember a number of paintings which show the reawakened souls to be very unhappy about going to Hell. 

Jung? He used the word "psyche" in his writings. When I use the word soul (or mind), I basically mean what Jung meant when he used the word "psyche."

Jung was careful to differentiate what he called the psyche (Psyche in his German) from the soul (seele). I suspect he revived the earlier Greek word (with a new meaning) to specify its difference from the more common German seele.

What he called the psyche included the whole set of processes, conscious as well as unconscious. What he called soul was more like personality, or a function complex. It was less than the whole psyche. 

Plato, he agrees with Jung except Plato also thinks the psyche is indestructible, eternal, and can recall things it has learned in previous lives under the right conditions.

Plato had no concept of an unconscious mind. For him, mind is thinking consciously. 

As you say, he did think we might have memories from before we were born which could come to the surface, but there was nothing like the active, ongoing, affective unconscious of Freud or Jung. 

There are hints of an unconscious mind as early as Plotinus, and Paracelsus thought we might be perceiving things which we weren't aware that we were perceiving. But the term was coined in the 19th century by Schelling (Unbewusste), and translated as "unconscious mind" by Coleridge. 

So I'm not sure how Plato's ψυχή resembles Jung's, except in name. They are structured and function entirely differently. 

[polymath257]

The simplest possible answer is "that which makes us alive." 

Like in "that which makes blood red"?
Kindly demonstrate that there is a "that", before we go to the demonstration that this "that" could be, or in fact is, a soul.

I am always bothered when something is defined as 'that which does something'. The definition itself assumes that there is a single thing that 'does something' and that it is uniform across all examples. That is almost always false.

For example, what is it that makes me alive? Well, life *is* a complex collection of chemical reactions which, in my case, is driven by the difference in chemical potential of molecular oxygen and sugars and the end products of carbon dioxide and water. The specifics are quite complex, but that is the ultimate basis for keeping the collection of chemical reactions going.

In the case of sulfur archaebacteria, however, oxygen is poisonous and the relevant chemical potential is based on sulfur, not oxygen.

For plants, the relevant aspect is the energy from light captured to drive chemical reactions.

There isn't a single 'that' which keeps all living things alive. And it is a HUGE mistake to assume that there is.

In a similar way, the concept of God as a 'source of being' is, I think clearly, incoherent. Among other things, it assumes that there is such a source, and that it is the same under all cases of 'being'. It also assumes that 'being' requires a 'source' (does the source not exist?).

Of course, the ASSUMPTIONS continue in claiming that 'source' is conscious. Which, frankly, is preposterous. Consciousness is, itself, a complex collection of interactions between different parts to process information. How that can be connected to a 'source for being' is never dealt with. In fact, the question seems never to be acknowledged at all.

But it goes further. Not only is this 'source of being' supposed to be conscious, but it is *also* supposed to be the 'source of consciousness'. And, again, that has all of the problems of the original 'source of being'  concept.

I've stared reading the book 'The Experience of God' and have found another thing that seems quite common among theists. It wants to identify matter as 'inert'. And that is *far* from being the case. In fact, the most interesting aspects of physical things is precisely that they *interact*. And, at the most fundamental level, they are *defined* by how they interact: electrons interact via the E&M force with photons with a characteristic coupling; quarks interact via the strong force with gluons and via the E&M force photons, etc.

Physical things have properties and those properties say how they interact with other physical things that also have properties. They are far from being inert.

Another thing the book seems to be trying to do is place metaphysics above science in terms of its reliability. There I have to laugh. the fact that metaphysics is filled with biases and preconceived notions and cannot test itself except through simple logical coherence is the reason why it is ultimately unable to answer any questions and is thereby unreliable. the reason the scientific method works is because it demands that ALL hypotheses be testable and rejects those that cannot from consideration as ultimately meaningless.

That there is no way to test metaphysical ideas is why they cannot be trusted. Logical coherency is a very poor substitute for actual knowledge. And it is far from clear that metaphysics even manages that level of coherence.

[Deesse23]

Like in "that which makes blood red"?
Kindly demonstrate that there is a "that", before we go to the demonstration that this "that" could be, or in fact is, a soul.

I am always bothered when something is defined as 'that which does something'.

Me too (obviously)

First of all, its completely meaningless. It adds absolutely no content to what we already know or believe. The only "thing" such a claim adds is the unsupported assertion that there is something special, where it could be either some emergent property/combination of things we already know to exist or a gazillion other causes.

It leaves however, for wannabe philosophers, enough (= all) wiggle room in case they want to backpedal or distance themselves from their own unsubstantiated assertion, by giving no content to attack/criticize if one makes the mistake of accepting said unsupported assertion in the first place.

I can accept such a thought process from some ancient philosopher, but i am expecting more, much more, from a person of the modern age, after science has shown us so often how this kind of conclusion "this which does x" was simply wrong.

Someone invoking metaphysics in
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[Simon Moon]

[Belacqua]

So, again I ask, what method should we use for these metaphysical issues that can reliably tell fact from fiction?

I don't think there is one. 

You definitely shouldn't believe any statement concerning metaphysical issues.