Finally an atheist proper, with views and questions

[Lucian]

I think a positive case can be made for atheism, such as “what would we expect to see in a universe that is governed by purely naturalistic reasons” and seeing if that is the case. Then I agree with Oppy though, there is no knock down argument that will convince everyone. And definitely nothing can be proved to mathematic certainty

Usually they say it's hard to prove a negative, so the claim "there is no god" may be difficult to finalize. And if people want to define atheism as a lack of belief, that seems reasonable to me.

As you've clearly found, though, a thoughtful adult person who is an atheist will have to deal with philosophical arguments. You have heard any number of claims by Christians, you have considered them, and you have found sufficient reason to judge them unpersuasive. No doubt you can articulate these reasons.

So to me, an atheist who is also a thoughtful adult person aware of the society he lives in will have philosophical positions that he can defend.

On the difficulty of proving a negative, there definitely are instances you can do that, eg there is no elephant in my room at the moment. That said, I don’t think I can prove there are no gods, for instance even if I look at the world and say this is what I would expect if there are none, it could still be a deistic universe. I doubt I could show that is false but for certain claimed gods with specific properties I think it is possible to show as unlikely / contradicted by observations

I am still in baby phase of being an atheist in the manner that I currently am, so lots more to learn and I have lots of views I may eventually soften or reject

[Lucian]

In a too-simple nutshell, for these types of theologians, God simply IS the Good. If we say he "wants" something, this is simply a manner of speaking -- he "wants" nothing in the same way I want a glass of wine. To say God wants X, in this context, means that if you do X you are moving more towards the Good. And the Good is never arbitrary. It is the Good of human flourishing, based on the type of animals we are. 

Granted, this is not the kind of theology one hears on Internet chat rooms, but it is what Dante wrote about, and I think he was a smart guy.

No, never read anything on those traditions. Something for the future methinks as far too much planned reading already and not enough time. Thanks for flagging them though

[Lucian]

Another query I had was around the evolutionary argument against naturalism. I have doubts about the soundness of the argument, but tempted to go another way rather than challenging it at a lower level

If we say that a key premise of the argument is that naturalistic evolutionary processes are unlikely to provide accurate beliefs, would it be legitimate to agree to that on a limited level? In other words, yes evolution won’t lead to consistently accurate beliefs, and we see this in the wide disagreement thomrough philosophy, various other academic disciplines, and even in the difficulty of agreeing with one another in more banal topics such as politics etc. we could limit the scope of accurate beliefs to those things in the physical world that we can reliably predict and use those predictions for actions. I am not sure whether to include maths and science here, but that is possible

Whilst this may make naturalism + evolution as beliefs self defeating, it would have a more limited scope of that. Of course, this question I have is outside those areas of likely accurate belief and firmly in the “lots of disagreement” area, but so would the ANE argument itself if naturalism and evolution are true and the argument is sound. I am happy to lean into the possible self-defeating view, but only as far as “we can’t be guaranteed that our views will be accurate” - that doesn’t mean they would of necessity be inaccurate

Probably not a popular route that I am taking. But I haven’t read nearly enough on it and certainly nothing recently.

Incidentally, I think that the poor quality judgements we are all prone to, and difficulty agreeing on many very basic things could be used as an argument against theism. If there is a god with the desire of wanting us to come to him and to know him, why create us in such a way that we will find that so difficult to do and almost guarantees that many won’t be able to be convinced

Thoughts?

[The Grand Nudger]

Sound enough. We'll not soon run short of examples showing how we're built to find dinner, not the truth. OTOH, we'll also have plenty of examples to show how and why accurate observations and predictions make you better at finding dinner. How the apparatus of seeking one particular dinner-based truth might have multi-use potential.

The trouble, really, is that it's a disingenuous argument. A person who assumes the truth of evolutionary processes in a criticism of their product as truth machines has already declined to endorse their own fundamental objection in at least one case. They're having or purporting to have a rational conversation with you as though it would be probative and accurate.

[Lucian]

Sound enough.  We'll not soon run short of examples showing how we're built to find dinner, not the truth.  OTOH, we'll also have plenty of examples to show how and why accurate observations and predictions make you better at finding dinner.  How the apparatus of seeking one particular dinner-based truth might have multi-use potential.  

The trouble, really, is that it's a disingenuous argument.  A person who assumes the truth of evolutionary processes in a criticism of their product as truth machines has already declined to endorse their own fundamental objection in at least one case.  They're having or purporting to have a rational conversation with you as though it would be probative and accurate.

Could you expand on that bit about declining to endorse their own fundamental objection? I am not sure I quite get what you mean (never claimed to be clever)
I like to try to meet people where they are with their arguments when possible. The “ok, here are your premises, you believe that our cognitive abilities are good enough that this can disprove naturalism, however I think our cognitive abilities are bad enough that it is strong evidence for naturalism or a bad designer, or a disinterested deist god”

[The Grand Nudger]

Sure, and where a person is at..if they're having or purporting to have a rational conversation with you, assuming the truth of evolutionary processes as a criticism of their product as truth machines, then however compelling they might find evidence to that effect, they've decided there's still at least one.

Them. The rational arguer...an evolutionary product expecting it's observations to yield conclusions that are both true and predictive.

[Lucian]

Sure, and where a person is at..if they're having or purporting to have a rational conversation with you, assuming the truth of evolutionary processes as a criticism of their product as truth machines, then however compelling they might find evidence to that effect, they've decided there's still at least one.

Them.  The rational arguer...an evolutionary product expecting it's observations to yield conclusions that are both true and predictive.

Ah, gotcha. Yes, that is something I have considered in the past - simply saying “yup, let’s say you are such a product and are in the same state as me”. It may be distasteful as a conclusion for them or for both parties, but not liking something doesn’t make it any more or less true
That said, you can assume something for the sake of argument and opine on it as an agent outside of that proposed framework, can’t you? I think we do this when levelling an internal critique against theism based on the argument from evil?

[The Grand Nudger]

I don't think there's any reason to disagree over things I agree with. The state and product of evolutionary processes is a compelling reason to apply skepticism to human intuition, imo. I like to take common ground where I can find it, lol.

I don't personally think that the various arguments from evil are valid. It doesn't follow that because a thing is evil (or because evil exists) it does not exist any more than it follows that because a thing is difficult to accomplish or rare it does not exist.

[The Grand Nudger]

-there's a fun confluence between the two notions, when I roll them around together. A moral universe may produce gods of varying quality just as an evolutionary universe may produce truth machines of varying quality.

[Lucian]

I don't think there's any reason to disagree over things I agree with.   The state and product of evolutionary processes is a compelling reason to apply skepticism to human intuition, imo.  I like to take common ground where I can find it, lol.  

I don't personally think that the various arguments from evil are valid.  It doesn't follow that because a thing is evil it does not exist any more than it follows that because a thing is difficult to accomplish or rare it does not exist.

Not sure if you are saying that I am trying to disagree with you, if so then sorry about that - poor communication on my part as I am definitely not. I agree with you that evolutionary processes are a good reason to apply skepticism. 

I am also not convinced on the arguments from evil, but likely because I still have plantingas argument in mind and haven’t read further than that. I know there are counters that are available in the literature - just not gotten around to it. I guess the point I was trying to make is that someone could reason as though they are in a universe with a designer and consider what it would be like if there were none. In that case they wouldn’t be conceding a point but would simply accept it for that one argument?