[Serious] Absolutes and Atheism

[Mister Agenda]

We don't expect theists to only have one religion in common, why would you expect atheists to only have one philosophy in common?

I, for one, have no such expectation. At the same time, if atheism is simply a lack of belief in the divine, then it is a kind of hole. IMHO holes are, in their own way a thing and can have their own unique qualities. So it is right an proper atheism would be variously expressed in the intellectual life of individual atheists, just as theistic belief manifests itself in various ways. If a hole, a true physical lack, can have size and shape then so also an intellectual hole can be described by the extent to which it fails to inform other beliefs. And maybe the hole isn't really about the divine as-such; but rather the function served by belief in the divine.

The thing about atheists, I think, and maybe I'm overgeneralizing, is that you can tell way more about us from how we reached the conclusion that belief in divine beings isn't justified than by trying to read into the conclusion itself. Some of us were never raised to believe in any deities and when we were exposed to the idea simply found it unbelievable. Others found it believable and stopped being atheists. Some of us were raised relgious and found out the claims weren't born out in reality, and didn't find the claims of any other religion any more credible. Some of us have supernatural beliefs that don't involve any deities being real; like some Buddhists who are atheists and still believe in karma and reincarnation. Since the few examples of someone I know are atheists and convert to religion do so because of the influence of their significant other, I suppose it works the other way around sometimes too. And yes, it sometimes happens that someone can't reconcile a great tragedy in their lives with the the God they believed in and just couldn't anymore (I know exactly one of those).

I was raised religious, became a mere theist after reading the Bible twice; but becoming an atheist was a process of years of shedding lesser beliefs I couldn't justify until the big one was all that was left.

That hole you describe is just an opinion, like mere theism is just one opinion. The hole you describe, for instance, could be filled by Deism or Letsism or Unitarian Universalism, and those are very wispy substances to fill a hole with. The function of religion/belief in the divine is filled with religion, not theism; IMHO. A God or god can be whatever its worshippers agree that it is.

After all, people who sacrificed virgins to the volcano also had belief in the divine; so it seems more cultural than anything else.

[Anomalocaris]

There are an infinite number of things that can be conceived, and which can be dismissed out of hand for the lack of relevant evidence. The number of things that can be thus dismissed is literally an infinite time more than the number of things which deserve even one extra look. Why do theists think the dismissal of “god” is “a kind of hole” where as the dismissal of an infinite number of other equally worthless proposition do not leave similar “holes” in which theists would like to bog down discussions?

[Astreja]

When Nietzsche wrote "God is dead," his point was clearly not simply that Christianity was unsalvageable but that its demise took with it any pretense of transcendent certitudes or absolutes. Was he right? Or are there absolutes that must be true in all possible worlds and true even if there were no physical universe at all?

There might be such an absolute, but how does one assess the claim?  I think that it's indeterminate at best, neither true nor false because there's no way of knowing for sure.

[The Grand Nudger]

It's a bit for framing. A shallow reading of nietzsche combined with the ludicrous self-serving premise that god and transcendence of any kind are interchangeable.

Nietzsche didn't think that, he espoused his own transcendent certitudes and absolutes. He believed that the foundations of the culture -then- were undercut by the falsity of the fairytales which supported them. This was mostly informed by his moral nihilism, but he was not an existential nihilist. Even in the moral sphere, he believed that we needed and should create new values that reflected our new secular reality.

If we believe in things like right or wrong - no matter what we put in either category..if we believe that we so much as know our names, these are both absolutes in the philosophic sense. Claims to knowledge, rather than opinion. Truth is a "transcendent value/quality/object/proposition". The dilemma, at least for nietzsche, was that the searth for and valuing of truth of a very specific kind had lead to the suspicion that there were no such thing as claimed - and he was right, regardless of whether or not there were any truth et al - which he continued to believe in like a common philospher, lol. Alot of ink has been spilled about this since, and mostly in criticism of nietzsche coming from a resistant christian culture, as some fundamental incoherence in his worldview - but I don't think it was. At worst, he was extrapolating a larger truth from a smaller claim which couldn't cash it out - though I'm of the opinion that he was just calling it like he saw it, even if what he saw was a confusing mess of contradictory principles and false claims. It would be interesting if we had a time machine (just like with any of the "greats") to see what they would have to say about things as they saw them now. I suspect they would surprise us.

More people today, I think, live as his hypothetical supermen than did in his own time. Taking control, insomuch they can, of the life they've been given rather than allowing the frequent idiocies of religious culture to determine it for them. Seeking out freer expression and a personal fulfillment, rather than doing their godly duties as drones. Even the religious. In that, he'd probably be pleased. I say all this, ironically, as Not A Fan. I think, in the end, nietzsch was himself so hopelessly and fundamentally misinformed by the very culture he criticized that he himself could not escape it even in his own thoughts. I don't think it takes alot of jargon heavy debate or deep research into philosophy to understand where he was at - as alot of us have been in a similar place. Very much wanting to be free of a thing we believed was wrong, but not being able to free ourselves from it. Instead, dreaming of a better future where others -had- freed themselves of it. So I guess we can add that to the list of ways that the judeochristian god concept has poisoned every goddamned thing it's touched. Right down to finding myself defending nietzsche, lol.