Essay talk:How to Overcome Atheism/Archive1

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Reasons for atheism are emotional

For me they are as emotional as well as rational. Setting aside the rational side, the emotional side is completely opposite to your claim that I had began to think much more about death, about whether life has a meaning, whether there is really justice in the universe. And, faced with these questions, atheism had very bleak answers for me - death is the end, everything is ultimately doomed (heat death of the universe), the meaning of life is whatever you can manage to make of it, but if bad luck, or misdeeds of another, strike you down, then it is all over. The fact the death is the end gives me purpose, gives me reason and gives me the emotional strength to know that every action I make could be the last...so make it count. And that fills me with joy, motivation and meaning. Ace^{of Spades} 00:14, 7 August 2011 (UTC)

Well, that's good actually that you share that. You see, why are some people theists and others atheists? Because one side is smart and the other side dumb? Because one side is rational and the other side irrational? No, because different people have different emotional makeups. (((Zack Martin)))^™ 00:21, 7 August 2011 (UTC)

Emotional reasons are actually what made my deconversion take so long. I clung on to ultraliberal Judaism and then deism because I emotionally felt like there needed to be some god. It was the rational side that ultimately won out. Thunderkatz^Ho! 01:33, 7 August 2011 (UTC)

You say you reached your conclusion through the use of reason, but which reason? Is there one system of reason, or many? Which system of reason is right? Maybe, if you used a different system of rationality, you would have reached a different conclusion? How do you know your chosen system of rationality is the right one? (((Zack Martin)))^™ 01:58, 7 August 2011 (UTC)

Without even having to pick a basis of reason. There was a lack of reason (from any basis) to believe in a god, so I didn't believe in a god. Thunderkatz^Ho! 02:10, 7 August 2011 (UTC) PS Most of what you are saying is meaningless. You sound fancy, but when it comes down to it, your question has no meaning behind it.

Pippa (talk) 02:22, 7 August 2011 (UTC)

When you decided that faith was not valid evidence, you picked a "basis of reason". You lack evidence for your position that faith is not evidence. (((Zack Martin)))^™ 02:36, 7 August 2011 (UTC)

And you lack evidence that claiming faith is not evidence needs evidence. Your argument is boiling down to "Truth is subjective, thus we should believe in a god." Thunderkatz^Ho! 02:47, 7 August 2011 (UTC)

Ah, so we both lack evidence for our beliefs, and each of us chooses to believe whatever we want to? Maybe stop hiding behind this mirage of alleged objectivity, which when investigated carefully is revealed to be empty. (((Zack Martin)))^™ 02:49, 7 August 2011 (UTC)

You missed my point, which was that this subjective truth argument is bullshit. If we're gonna be this way, then I have no evidence that another person's proclaimed faith is their actual faith, thus I cannot take another person's faith as evidence. The only faith I could take as evidence is my own, and I lacked any, so there was not faith as evidence. Satisfied? Thunderkatz^Ho! 02:55, 7 August 2011 (UTC)

Furthermore, even assuming that stated faiths are actual faiths, the number of contradictory faiths would lead me throw out any faith as any acceptable form of evidence. If one billion people have faith in Roman Catholicism and one billion people have faith in Islam, then there's no basis to believe in one over the other, and I can't believe in both as they are contradictory to each other, and thus only believing in neither makes any sense. Thunderkatz^Ho! 02:59, 7 August 2011 (UTC)

I am not talking about using someone else's faith as evidence, I am talking about using your own. So, the fact that so many people believe in Catholicism, and so many people believe in Islam, is not relevant.

If you read my essay, you will see I am not advocating that you have any old faith, but a particular kind of faith - what I call "highest faith". Highest faith does not have as its object the truth of a particular religious doctrine, or a particular religion. It only has as its object, "Good shall always triumph in the end". So all faith does is establish that one premise. From that premise, we deduce through ordinary reason (not faith) various doctrines, such as the existence of God or an afterlife. But we don't believe those doctrines directly by faith, only this basic principle. Our reasoning we base on that principle could well be mistaken, but the truth of that principle itself is certain.

Yes, if you have no faith, you can't use it as evidence — but you could always choose to get yourself some. You have a choice between having faith and not having faith, and thus far you have chosen to not have faith. But you could always change, if you chose to. (((Zack Martin)))^™ 03:05, 7 August 2011 (UTC)

The fact that you can sit here and try and say my truths are subjective and then in your own basic assumption use a word as subjective as "good" is mind-boggling. Thunderkatz^Ho! 03:10, 7 August 2011 (UTC)

I believe ethics is objective. You don't? You think "murder is wrong" has no objective truth to it, but is just an expression of dislike for murder, ultimately no different from "I don't like bananas"? (((Zack Martin)))^™ 03:12, 7 August 2011 (UTC)

(EC) No, but I think that the baker who has bread stolen thinks the act of stealing is evil, while the man who stole the bread to feed his starving children because he had no money to buy food because the same baker denied him a job on the color of his skin would see nothing evil in his act. And while you might be inclined to side with the thief at this point, consider that with the loss of profit from the bread, the baker is forced to shut down his shop, and cannot feed his own children, innocent of their father's racism. So was the act good or evil? And with no other assumptions, is there an objective basis for choosing, say, an Objectivist's idea of good over a Utilitarian's idea of good? Or even that your idea of good is even close to right? Your conclusions lead you to a god and an afterlife, but what if the amount of "good" you experience there is inversely proportional to how much "good" happened to you over your life? These acts which you consider "good" might be leading to eternal torment for people. Your basis is entirely bullshit. Thunderkatz^Ho! 03:36, 7 August 2011 (UTC)

Yes, it is true that people disagree about matters of ethics, and our ethical opinions can be clouded by self-interest. That doesn't mean there is no objective truth to it; people also disagree about factual matters, and their opinions about them can be clouded by self-interest, yet we don't conclude that therefore factual matters are purely subjective (unless maybe one is a postmodernist), so to be consistent we should not conclude on that basis that ethics is subjective either.

A matter having objective reality doesn't necessarily imply we know all the answers about it. We don't know all the answers about physics either, yet that is no argument that physics is subjective. So, the fact that you can point to difficult issues/dilemmas like the one you pointed to, doesn't mean that ethics lacks objective reality. (Would someone argue, that because no one knows the correct way to combine general relativity with quantum theory, that therefore physics lacks objective reality?) Likewise, the fact that people have different opinions about ethics (e.g. Utilitarianism vs Ayn Randism) does not imply that there is no objective reality to it, anymore than the fact that people have different opinions about theoretical physics implies that there is no objective reality to physics.

I don't believe in eternal torment, I am a universalist (hell, if it exists, is only of limited duration; everyone goes to heaven in the end). So, your invocation of eternal torment is irrelevant to my position. (((Zack Martin)))^™ 05:19, 7 August 2011 (UTC)

I enjoyed reading your essay Maratrean, although I disagree with its premises. On the specific point of choice I am interested; how would I ‘choose’ to have faith? Could I ‘choose’ to believe that the moon is made of green cheese? Tielec01 (talk) 03:16, 7 August 2011 (UTC)

Thankyou for reading my essay. In response to the particular point that you raise: there are two extreme views here, and I am somewhere in the middle. One extreme claims that we can never choose our own beliefs, that we have absolutely no choice in the matter. The other extreme claims that we have absolute choice in our beliefs, that we can choose to believe absolutely whatever we want. I believe neither position; I think both are wrong. Yet you seem to be equating my position (we have some power over our beliefs) with the extreme position that we have absolute/unbridled power over them.

There is a difference between claims that are obviously false, patently ridiculous, or plain ludicrous; and claims where both sides can make a prima facie plausible case, and neither side has strong evidence in its favour. "The moon is made of green cheese" is an example of the first situation; "ethics is objective" or "belief on the basis of faith can in some cases be approriate" is an example of the second. You can't choose whether to believe the first, but you can choose whether to believe the second.

Also, you can only change your beliefs if there is some benefit for you in changing them. This is just obvious - if you are a rational actor, you will only decide to do something if there is some positive benefit in doing so (whether to yourself personally, or to other people you care about, or to some larger goal you value). So, if you are someone like Ace McWicked admits being, who (he as claims) is emotionally satisfied with the idea of death as non-existence, and emotionally dissatisfied with the idea of an afterlife, then there is no value for you in choosing to believe in some belief system which implies an afterlife. Whereas, if you have the psychology that sees positive value in an afterlife, and sees non-existence as one of the greatest tragedies, then there is value for you in choosing to believe in a belief system which implies an afterlife, and you may in fact choose to so believe. This comes back to my initial point - the real gap between theists and atheists is not one of rationality, it is one of differing emotional makeups. Just because it is not in your interest to choose to change course, does not mean that you lack the power to so change if you decided that it was in your interest to do so. (((Zack Martin)))^™ 05:33, 7 August 2011 (UTC)

┌────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────┘ Hellenistic philosophers dribbled over Christianity in part because it at long last gave them a vehicle to ram their "objective morality" down the throats of the unenlightened rubes (in Latin, "paganus") who had not seen past the shadows on the cave wall.

On the other hand, if you do not believe in total depravity or some similar form of Manichaean-style dualism, a lack of objective morality is not a nightmare scenario, since you will observe that most people have consciences to point them in the right direction. ListenerX^TalkerX 03:49, 7 August 2011 (UTC)

You seem to me to be confusing two separate issues: (1) is morality objective? (2) if it is, then whose account of it is correct? If morality is not objective, then any morality is as good as any other. But, if morality is objective, that does not imply that any particular moral view is in fact the right one, just that they all have the potential to be more correct than the rest, but which of them if any actually is, that is a completely separate question. If someone tries to impose moral views on you that you disagree with, you have two choices (1) deny that morality is objective, (2) agree that morality is objective, but deny that they have the correct view of it. Is not in fact (2) the better choice? With (2), you actually get to claim those people you disagree with are wrong; with (1), all you can ultimately say is they have different preferences from you.

I don't believe in total depravity; on the contrary, I see the vast areas of agreement on morality between people. For example, just about everyone agrees that, as a general rule, killing people is wrong, although of course there are exceptions to that rule. Now, people will argue about what exactly those exceptions are, about which putative exceptions are valid and which are not; but let's not let the disagreement about the exceptions blind us to the near universal agreement on the rule itself, and the near universal agreement on judging many particular cases. Consider for example the acts of Ted Bundy or Jeffrey Dahmer - just about everyone will agree their acts were wrong, even people who disagree about the morality of other instances of killing (such as war or euthanasia or the death penalty). Likewise, almost everyone agrees, that as a general rule, taking other people's stuff (theft) is wrong, although again there is argument about possible exceptions (e.g. poor people stealing to survive, taxation, wealth redistribution, etc.) But, consider the case of the rich person, who steals from the poor, because it's fun - just about everyone will agree that is immoral.

What you call "conscience", I see as substantial agreement existing on objective morality. It is the same with factual matters - there is enormous disagreement about some factual matters (e.g. is global warming real? etc.), but let us not let those disagreements cloud us from the even greater agreement about the basics (e.g. the Earth, the Sun, the Moon exists; rain exists; trees exist; dogs and cats exist; 1+1=2; cows produce milk; most birds can fly; etc.) Just as these many agreements, in spite of those disagreements, is a sign that factual matters are ultimately objective, so are the many agreements about ethics, in spite of many disagreements, a sign that ethical matters are ultimately objective. (((Zack Martin)))^™ 05:47, 7 August 2011 (UTC)

To make sure I understand your position - you state that in situations where both sides of an argument have a prima facie case of being true then it is possible to choose which side to believe in.

For example ‘the moon is made of green cheese’ is clearly a ludicrous statement; therefore it is not possible for me to ever choose to believe it. Conversely the statement ‘belief on the basis of faith can in some cases be appropriate’ is –according to you- prima facie possibly true, therefore we can choose whether or not to believe it.

If I responded by saying that I don’t believe your statement ‘belief on the basis of faith can in some cases be appropriate’ has a prima facie case of being true, how could I then ‘choose’ to believe that it does? How can I choose to believe that the benefits of believing this statement are real?

I think your last sentence quite neatly summarises my problem with your position “Just because it is not in your interest to choose to change course, does not mean that you lack the power to so change if you decided that it was in your interest to do so.” How would I choose to ‘decide that it is in my best interest to do so’? I hate to charge in with the accusation of committing a logical fallacy but this seems to be begging the question. Tielec01 (talk) 06:23, 7 August 2011 (UTC)

Tielec01 - you can disagree with me that "belief on the basis of faith can in some cases be appropriate" is prima facie possible. You can claim that is prima facie ludicrous. But, let me put the question more generally - are there claims which for you both sides have a plausible case? Or are you a person where the whole world is black and white, and all claims are either obviously true or obviously false? If there are claims where, in your judgement, both sides have a plausible case, are you not free then to choose whether to accept one side, or the other, or neither?

How might you "decide that it is in my best interest to do so"? Well, if you examine why you believe what you believe, is it possible that you might find that for some of your beliefs, the primary causal reasons why you hold them are emotional? And, if that is possible, might it be possible that your emotions might change? And, if they changed, is it not possible that you could change your beliefs to suit? Or might you experience a conflict between your established beliefs and your new emotions? Don't you have some degree of choice, in whether you stick to your established beliefs in spite of your new emotions, or whether you let your beliefs yield to your new emotional state?

And, I would likewise argue we have some ability to control our own emotions. Not an absolute ability, but not none whatsoever either. And, if some of our beliefs are a product of our emotions, if we can choose to change our emotions, would we not in the process change the beliefs they generate? (((Zack Martin)))^™ 06:51, 7 August 2011 (UTC)

Is not in fact (2) the better choice? No; that sort of attitude is what leads to holy wars. Besides, telling lies is just a waste of time.

I don't believe in total depravity; on the contrary... Your extended paraphrasing of Thomas Aquinas would suggest that you are still drawing some of your points from Christianity.

...so are the many agreements about ethics, in spite of many disagreements, a sign that ethical matters are ultimately objective. No, they are a sign that human beings have roughly similar brains and all inhabit the same planet. ListenerX^TalkerX 07:19, 7 August 2011 (UTC)

that sort of attitude is what leads to holy wars - not necessarily. I can disagree with you about ethics, and even believe that we are disagreeing about some objective reality, as opposed to merely expressing differing likes and dislikes, without going to war with you over it. If there is objective ethics, then I have to admit that it is possible that I am wrong about it and you are right. If there is no objective ethics, then there is no such possibility, since there is no reality that you and I could be said to be right or wrong about. We can disagree about factual matters without going to war over it, we can disagree about ethics without going to war over it too. Now, it's not impossible that an ethical disagreement could lead to war (one of the causes of World War II was a series of disagreements about ethics between the Axis and the Allies); but whether it would in fact depends very much on the parties' viewpoints on the severity of the disagreement, on the ethics of warfare, and on practical considerations. And there can be no doubt, that many of the "holy wars" of history, had very little to do with actual disagreements about ethical matters, and were very much about political, economic or ethnic conflicts, thinly vieled in a religious cloak.

I don't deny being influenced to some extent by Christianity in general, or Aquinas in particular. I have studied many religions and philosophies, and I will take what I think is true and useful from each of them. That said, total depravity isn't really Aquinas' viewpoint, it is more Calvin's. Have you noticed my extended paraphrases of Nietzsche?

There are great similarities between factual matters and ethical matters, which could be taken as a sign that if one is objective the other must be also, as I indeed do. On the contrary, you insist those similarities are essentially coincidental, that they have other explanations, and fact and value fundamentally differ in objectivity despite any surface similarities. I suppose we each believe what we choose to believe; I am not sure how either of us could have any actual evidence with which to prove the other wrong. (((Zack Martin)))^™ 07:42, 7 August 2011 (UTC)

The turning point for me was when I realized I could just have faith in whatever I wanted.--ADeanism

Welcome aboard, fellow traveller, the great ship Faith! But, I feel I must disagree with you when you say I could just have faith in whatever I wanted. In my view, there are two extremes: at one extreme, we have the view that faith is totally illegitimate, i.e. justifies nothing. At the other extreme, we have the view that faith is totally without limitations, i.e. it is a blank cheque that justifies everything and anything. My own view tries to be the golden mean between those two extremes - the use of faith is legitimate, in some circumstances, but not just in any circumstance whatsoever. I have some criteria for the use of faith being legitimate (1) it must be in service of what is objectively good (which means, in practice, what you genuinely believe to be objectively good); (2) it must not contradict strong contrary evidence, if you are aware of any; (3) the absence of strong contrary evidence must be highly likely to be a permanent affair, rather than likely to be some temporary limitation of our knowledge; (4) faith is best used to defend high-level principles (like the good always triumphs in the end), rather than to support specific religious doctrines. Within those bounds, I support faith; beyond those bounds, I oppose it. (((Zack Martin)))^™ 10:12, 7 August 2011 (UTC)

Nope, I have faith that you are wrong. Also bees. I have faith in bees. Also seat cushions.--ADeanism

My less than rigorous response

For the record, I have never claimed to be a rational person, and I have always been very much ruled by my emotions.

I was raised in fairly secular family. My Father is catholic, my Mother is CofE. As a family, we have never prayed together, God was never discussed and the bible was never consulted. I went to a CofE church and sunday school until I was about 4. I remember very little of it except for some vague recollection of being a shephard in a nativity play. School was equally secular. I stopped going when my brother refused to go, and I thought if hes not going, then neither am I. My younger brother didn't go at all, and my mother stopped going after that. There was some obligation on the school to provide some religious education via the soinging of hymns but I don't remember them being especially zeealous about it and RE was a dicidedly half hearted affair. God, christianity and how it related to me was ever explained. I did not know what a christian was until I was about 9 or 10 and it still meant nothing to me. Faith was not instilled me. I was not an atheist and I was not a theist. These things meant nothing to me. I did not reject a religion that I had some disagreement with its views or rituals, it was never presented in such a way to either accept or reject.

I became more postitivly atheist in my teens. I had learned there was such a concept as a God. I learned what christianity was. I learned that the vague stories that had half heartedly been presented to me in my earlier years were meant to be profound truths or facts. They remained to me vague stories. I learned of other religions and they seemed to strange but just as vague as christianity I was barely inducted into. I learned what an atheist was. The one constant in all this was the idea that a god was out there watching over us, making things run right. All my friends were the same. God, christianity, or any religion was just not part of their life. If pushed they would say yes there is a god, but with no thought of feeling in that (at least, they didn't vocalise anything about it). People with strong religious belief were few and far between, and considered somewhat freakish. I can't say for certain at which point I became I said to myself I was an atheist, but at some point in my teens, this whole idea of God, of some kind of creator , of some divine plain, was just aburd to me. I had no (still haven't) any great understanding of evolution - it was just presented as fact. All the wars and bigotry in their name, destroyed any interest in organised religion for me. And everytime I see children in the news murdered and abused, or people killed and maimed in accidents, people starving to death in far of lands, and just the general awfulness that goes on in the world destroyed the notion of a God watching over us or with some great plan.

As I grew older (sadly probably not any wiser), I acquired many issues. And I still have many issues. My sexuality was a major problem for me in my formative years, the religious stance on this further distanced me from organised religion. Maratreanism mentioned looking at the finality of death, the meaningless of existence, the bleakness of life. Well, I looked at this also. Only my atheism wasn't weakened, it was strengthened. I can't say I have embraced this bleakness like Ace has said he has in an absurdist fashion, but rather I looked at the emptiness and collapsed into nihlism. It has been said by people I know that I am an angry person (i would say just passionate). God is no longer a concept that has no meaning to me but is a sick joke. The problem of evil has probably been done to death by greater thinkers than me, but it is a problem that cannot be resolved. How can a god allow cancers, and HIV and a myraid of vile and painful dieseases to exist. How can a god allow children to preyed upon, raped and murdered? How can god allow peoples homes and lives be destroyed by natural and unnatural disasters? Is this part of some divine plan? Do I have enough evidence to say their is no god? I cannot say. All I can say if a god can allow, or simply has no power over these things, then god is no god at all. AMassiveGay (talk) 05:57, 7 August 2011 (UTC)

Some of the issues you raise (e.g. sexuality) are really issues with particular religions, than with the idea of God in the abstract. I believe in God, but I think God is 100% OK with gay relationships. Likewise, yes religions have caused all sorts of war and other evil, but I think those are flaws of particular religions or groups or believers, rather than problems with the idea of God in itself.

Beyond that, it seems to me that your main objection to the idea of God, is the problem of evil. I don't want to belittle how serious a problem that is. I think, in a sense, it is not even a problem specifically about God - how can this world contain such great evil? How can it be possible? And yet, despite that, it is. How can we make sense of a world with such great evil in it? How can a universe containing such evil ultimately have meaning? Or must we conclude it is all a meaningless, valueless, fluke? This leads us to a position of nihilism; which implies the non-existence of God, but goes much further than merely denying God's existence. I have wondered about the same things; there have been times when that sort of nihilism has attracted me. Some authors (such as Clarence Darrow or Bertrand Russell or Algernon Swinburne) have the ability to turn this nihilism into almost a sort of poetic tragedy, which at some level I can understand the appeal of; I don't agree with it any more, but can't disagree that it can be moving.

For myself, I look at my own personal situation for an answer to the problem of evil. I am the eldest surving child of my parents, but not the eldest child. I have older siblings, who all died in infancy. I can't imagine what that experience must have been like for my parents. But, I realise, it is only because of their deaths, that I am alive. If they had not died, would I have been born? It seems very unlikely; even if perchance there was a baby born with the same DNA as me, the circumstances of its upbringing, in all sorts of minor yet significant details, would have inevitably been so different, that the same person would not have resulted. Or, suppose my older siblings had never been born, and I was the first; again, it seems very likely, that in various ways, things would have happened differently, and a rather different person would exist in my place. So, it seems to me, quite likely, that I only live because my older siblings died; them and I are incompatible, universes in which they exist, I do not; universes in which I exist, they do not; yet, I also think I am dependent on them - I need their deaths for my birth. They are the sacrifice with which I was purchased.

But, when I think about it, this is not just true for me, it is true for everyone, just maybe my personal situation makes it more immediately obvious. When people die before their time, it is a great tragedy; and yet, removing people from the mating pool is very likely to change who ends up with who, and hence which set of children are actually born. Consider a momentous event like the second World War, where millions of people died from war, from genocide, and from famine and disease; and millions more were displaced. Consider the generation born during and immediately after WW2 - in a world in which WW2 never happened, many people who were born in our world would never have been born, many other people never born in our world would be born in that world instead. Many people, who found one partner in our world, would have ended up with someone else, who in our world was killed; many people who met in our world, as a result of population displacements, would not have met in that world; many people who met in that world, never come together in ours, since population displacements, and just all sorts of slightly different everyday circumstances (like where you work, who your friends were, etc.) are different. And then consider not just that generation, but the generations they have produced.

Now, the question is, if God exists, and God loves us, how does God love us? As just generic persons, or as particular individuals. Does God love me, just because I am, but doesn't particularly care whether I was or not? Or does God love me, for being me, and thus will arrange the world in such a way, so as to ensure my existence? If we give the first answer, then God's action in creating a world filled with immense evils seems inexplicable, as the greatest evil ever committed. Whereas, if God loves us as particular individuals, then God had no choice but to create all these evils, since they are necessary that we exist.

It is only because of the countless immense evils of history - war, murder, rape, disease, torture, famine, injustice, tyranny, disease - that we exist. In a perfect world, a world without these many evils, we are not. And when we, the children of these evils, condemn God for creating these evils, we are really condemning our own existence. Every joy, every good, every pleasure, every moment of happiness, that we have ever known, we have only known because of these evils, for without them, we would be not to know them. I for one refuse to participate in such self-hatred. (((Zack Martin)))^™ 06:42, 7 August 2011 (UTC)

Well, yeah, but maybe also not

Without reading any of the prior comments I want to comment myself - if I only repeat what somebody else already said, just point me there and I will tell that person how awesome he or she is. ;)

With

“”So, that is how I became an atheist; when and how did I cease to be one? I cannot put an exact moment on it, but it was somewhere in my later teenage years, towards the end of high school. What changed? I think, as a somewhat depressed teenager, I had began to think much more about death, about whether life has a meaning, whether there is really justice in the universe. And, faced with these questions, atheism had very bleak answers for me - death is the end, everything is ultimately doomed (heat death of the universe), the meaning of life is whatever you can manage to make of it, but if bad luck, or misdeeds of another, strike you down, then it is all over. These thoughts were not, for me, a recipe for happiness. I began to talk about God, religion, etc., with some Christian friends at school; I went to an Alpha course at a friend’s church. To be honest, much of what they taught did not convince me (for example, that Jesus died for my sins), although I was not overly open about many of my disagreements, since I did not think there was much point in arguing with them. But, it did make me reconsider some questions — is there a God? Is there a life after death? I asked myself, did I have any good reasons to disbelieve in God? And my conclusion was, I did not; so I gave up atheism.

—How did I cease being an atheist?

and

“”Consider questions like — Does God exist? Is there an afterlife? Is ethics objective? We lack any strong evidence for or against these propositions, so that absence of evidence creates space for faith. So, we ought to believe here, by faith, whatever we will be ethically better for believing. And, I think there can be no doubt, that all things being equal, believing that good finally conquers over evil, is ethically better than believing that the good is doomed. If there is a God, an afterlife, etc., then the murdered child will live again, there will be justice delayed, but not justice denied. If there is no God, no afterlife, then the murdered child has ceased to exist, forever. It is clear to me, which belief is ethically superior.

—Justiying faith

you basically shoot yourself in the foot. Let me just make the same comparisson you made with emotionality/rationality and subjectivity/objectivity; if we can agree upon that rationality is in the best case scenario absolutely objective, we can also follow that in this best case emotionality is equally absolutly subjective. You belief in the objectivity of ethics, of the objectivity of right and wrong, this directly leads you to a wish (which, in this case equals an emotion) that god exists. If you think lower of atheism stemming from emotion instead of rationality that means that you have to think eually low(er) of your own faith - which in turn gives you no ground to attack.

You paint a black picture of atheism, saying it doesn't give you anything to find justice in, which in turn stems from your belief in the objective truth of ethics. But what if a person does not agree with that? What if, a person does not think that a child murderer going without punishment is injustice? What if a person believes that all these words like (in)justice, good, evil, ethical behaviour, moral behaviour, right and wrong are all constructs that emerged at the very beginning of cultur(es) to order these societies and that these were kept alive because they proofed to be beneficial? What if a person asks you way to many rethorical questions on a talk page? ;)

Your argument and the way you came back to faith (and I might at for all the Christians that read this that I find the term "being saved" for the same thing highly offensive) does not work for everybody. It doesn't for me. For example, I find solace in the belief that nothing we humans do to ourselves, each other or this planet in any way matters to the rest of the universe. I find comfort in the belief that my life is finite, and that billions of years have come and gone before me and that billions of years will come and go after I'm long gone. I find solace in the belief that the universe is not driven by higher ethics but only by things we can see, meassure and abstract into mathematics, logic and the alike. I don't know why I do, but I do. And the idea that for example, I was created by an infinitly powerfull and wise being, that will always and forever loves me unsettles me. Again I can't say why. But I do, and why should I overcome a belief that makes me happy? The most prominent psychological argument would be: "So that the one that converted me is happier". But I won't accuse you to follow that path as much as I don't wish for you to become unhappy in atheism. --★uːʤɱ sinner 18:37, 7 August 2011 (UTC)

if we can agree upon that rationality is in the best case scenario absolutely objective, we can also follow that in this best case emotionality is equally absolutly subjective - I don't think I ever actually said that, said that rationality is objective and emotion is subjective. If anything, I've been arguing that emotion is more objective than commonly thought.

If you think lower of atheism stemming from emotion instead of rationality that means that you have to think eually low(er) of your own faith - I never said atheism was lower because it was based on emotion rather than reason. I have been quite open, that both atheism and theism are equally based on emotion. Rather, I think some forms of atheism are "lower" because they are unwilling to admit that their beliefs are just as much based on emotion as the theists are. But, if you are an atheist who agrees that your atheism is just as much based on emotion, and hence just as much pre-rational, as that of the theist, then you are immune to this criticism.

But what if a person does not agree with [objective ethics]? - well, if objective ethics is false, then basically you are claiming that "murder is wrong" is essentially the same as "I don't like bananas". And, if that is your position, so be it. But, if that is your position, you can't consistently participate in ethical discourse; when someone says (e.g.) "the death penalty is the right thing to do" and you respond with "no it is wrong", you have said that all that really means is "I don't like the death penalty", but if that is the case, why should anyone else care what you dislike? By denying the objectivity of ethics, you are neutering your ability to participate in moral discourse, because you have given up the ability to say that other people's views are wrong. When the Islamist wants to chop the hands off thieves, stone adulterers, hang homosexuals, etc., all you can really say in response is "please don't do that, I don't like it". You've given up the ability to say that what they are doing is wrong in some objective sense that transcends your own opinions or your own culture (if morality is just your own culture, why should they care about your culture? "you may not stone adulterers in your culture, but we do so in ours, we wish you'd stop trying to impose your culture on us")

and I might at for all the Christians that read this that I find the term "being saved" for the same thing highly offensive - actually, I don't describe coming to faith as "being saved". As a universalist, I believe that everyone is already saved, they just don't know it yet. So, I think coming to faith might be coming to knowledge of one's own salvation, but for me salvation was always there, even from the very beginning.

the way you came back to faith... does not work for everybody... I find solace in the belief that nothing we humans do... in any way matters to the rest of the universe - Well, that is fair enough. You feel differently from me. And if that's how you feel, I can't complain. I can wonder why you feel differently from me, but I don't know. Probably some difference in our genes, in our culture, in our upbringing, in our life experiences, in our brain chemistry... But my point is more, if atheists want to say "we are more rational than theists", I don't agree with them. If they want to say "we have a different emotional makeup than theists", I will agree to that.

the idea that for example, I was created by an infinitly powerfull and wise being, that will always and forever loves me unsettles me. Again I can't say why. - well, is the problem of evil part of it? For what it's worth, you'll see my response to AMassiveGay above, as to how I deal with that - I suppose I would say my solution is rather Nietzschean. Is it the aspect of infinity (whether of power or knowledge or time)? Well, I don't actually believe in infinity. For me, reality as a whole is unimaginably vast but still finite. God is not an infinite being, but the maximal finite being. God's power and knowledge, while absolute over reality, are yet finite, since reality itself is finite. Time has no beginning nor end, yet only a vast, yet still finite, duration - time is circular, and the end is the same as the beginning. Is it because you fear some deity standing in moral judgement over you? I don't believe God is judgemental; since God is all-powerful, whatever we do, is her will; how can she judge us for doing what we are told? If we do evil, it is the evil which she did through us - if she judges us, she judges us no more harshly than she judges herself. Now, these are my answers, you don't have to accept them. But, I think maybe if you thought more about that idea which unsettles you, and about some of the alternative formulations to the traditional, you might be able to pinpoint more precisely what specifically it is about this idea which unsettles you - and, if you can, maybe, just maybe, you might even find that one of those alternative formulations of God (including, but by no means limited to, my own), unsettles you less than the traditional one? (((Zack Martin)))^™ 20:46, 7 August 2011 (UTC)

The Goddess is Angry

How dare you say you believe in God? You believe in the Goddess Maratrea. Bow before me, and pray that I forgive you. The Goddess Maratrea (talk) 23:45, 7 August 2011 (UTC)

Responded here. (((Zack Martin)))^™ 07:42, 8 August 2011 (UTC)

I was Moved

I was so moved and Convinced by the essay that I Created my own. --Tolerance (talk) 10:08, 8 August 2011 (UTC)

Whence Maratreanism?

I have to ask -- having overcome atheism as you describe, what led you to style yourself a "protoprophet" and produce hundreds of pages of pseudo-Bible? How did you come to know that the most holy Prophet Travancus did travel unto the city of Caznacatus for some chit-chat with the most learned assembly thereof? Rejecting atheism can be done in a pretty wishy-washy way, but the protoscripture is another thing altogether. --67.159.5.242 (talk) 20:22, 7 August 2011 (UTC)

To me, I think prophecy belongs to everybody, at least in principle. Well, if you don't believe in God, how could God possibly be talking to you? But, if God exists, it is at least possible God talks to you. Actually, I think God talks to all of us, but we need to learn to listen. At the same time, I believe that there is a need for "prophecy" as a kind of institution. But we aren't there yet. So, what I claim is protoprophecy, which is something more than just this universal prophecy which everyone has, something less than institutionalised prophecy. Yet still, protoprophecy is not an exclusive thing - anyone can claim it. If you wish to play the part of a protoprophet, the mantle of protoprophecy is yours too to claim.

I read the Bible and found it lacking; so I felt the urge to write a new one. I should note that it is a "protoscripture", not a "scripture". That means, it is something that has the potential to become scripture, but isn't scripture yet, and might not ever be scripture (if it ever becomes scripture, it will I am sure become so in a very different form from which it currently exists - probably edited down quite heavily, but probably also with much else added). So, if you agree with anything you read therein, good for you; if you find it disagreeable, that is fine too, since it isn't scripture, it has no authority (divine or otherwise). But, if there are any parts you agree or disagree with, I would be very interested to hear the details of your agreement or disagreement.

And maybe some of it seems a bit tedious - but really, is the Bible any better? (((Zack Martin)))^™ 20:55, 7 August 2011 (UTC)

I disagree with the part about Travancus visiting Caznacatus. I don't think there is anyone named Travancus, or a city named Caznacatus. In fact I think you made the whole thing up. This veers from the territory of debating whether God exists, to debating whether an invisible dragon in my garage exists: any reasonable person will agree that the answer is "no" to both the dragon and to Travancus. Your claim is that God told you all the bits about his doings? --95.154.230.191 (talk) 21:17, 7 August 2011 (UTC)

Darn. You are correct about Travancus visiting Caznacatus. Be careful of the prophet, 95... and 67... Maratrean is being tested. The Goddess Maratrea (talk) 23:56, 7 August 2011 (UTC)

@95, I think the point of the protoscripture is the message, rather than whether it literally happened or not. Maybe it literally happened, maybe it didn't. Here are some possibilities:

• It is some kind of "sacred fiction" or myth, not meant to be taken that literally (although, maybe the boundaries between fiction and non-fiction are not as clear as we think they are)
• It actually happened, in a parallel universe
• Rather than existing in just one universe, maybe I exist in multiple universes simultaneously. Maybe in some of those universes it happened, in others it didn't
• There are multiple, simultaneously existent pasts. Like branching timelines, but here the timelines branch backwards rather than forwards. In some of those timelines, the events happened as described; in others they did not
• There is a single past, and these events happened as described in them at some unspecified point in the past, but all historical and archaeological records have been lost
• There is a single past, and the events recorded happened roughly as described, at some unspecified time in the past, but the names and places recorded are not the actual names and places, but some kind of code

Maratreans are free to believe any of the above. On this issue I actually suspend belief - I don't have the belief that it is literally true, but neither do I have the believe that it is not literally true.

@"The Goddess Maratrea", I think once again your impersonation fails due to lacking a true understanding of the issue. (((Zack Martin)))^™ 07:53, 8 August 2011 (UTC)

How dare you say I do not understand myself. You claim to understand your incorporeal Goddess? You cannot know my nature. The Goddess Maratrea (talk) 12:15, 8 August 2011 (UTC)

My Goddess isn't incorporeal, with a known nature, and who doesn't have "how dare I" in her vocabulary. I think you must be some other goddess, a different Maratrea from mine, who just happens to have the same name maybe. (((Zack Martin)))^™ 12:18, 8 August 2011 (UTC)

How dare anyone dispute my existence! As long as someone wants me to exist then, there I am. Travancus (talk) 12:24, 8 August 2011 (UTC)

Maratrean--I just said, "How dare you...." How dare you say that how dare you is not in my vocabulary?

Travancus--You are not from Caznacatus, even in this parallel universe. Imposter! The Goddess Maratrea (talk) 12:27, 8 August 2011 (UTC)

"How dare anyone dispute my existence!" doesn't really sound like Travancus. And "As long as someone wants me to exist then, there I am" misses the qualifier wants enough, i.e. sufficiently strongly.

Where did "Travancus" say he was from Caznactus? Indeed, CTCV 146 says "Now the most holy Prophet Travancus did travel unto the city of Caznacatus..." Travancus comes from (old) Tradicarus, per CTCV 309 "Therefore I left the land of Tegaranus and went unto the land of Tradicarus in which I was born"

(((Zack Martin)))^™ 11:23, 9 August 2011 (UTC)

I expected more

I expected more from you, M. I was particularly disturbed by this bit: "We lack any strong evidence for or against these propositions, so that absence of evidence creates space for faith. So, we ought to believe here, by faith, whatever we will be ethically better for believing." We discussed this before, and I've argued that there are many, many reasons why this is wrong, but apparently I was never able to communicate them properly or you just didn't listen. (Admittedly I have abandoned many of our discussions out of boredom and/or forgetfulness.) I'm just don't understand why you're so convinced by the "we don't have strong evidence for X, therefore rationality breaks down and we can do whatever we want" argument. Tetronian ^{you're clueless} 02:27, 7 August 2011 (UTC)

I said before, I'll say again, I don't find your or Yudkowsky's arguments on that matter convincing. If you would like to restart or revisit that conversation, I am willing. (((Zack Martin)))^™ 02:37, 7 August 2011 (UTC)

Yep, me too. Usually there's at least an interesting philosophical issue in there somewhere. This is just the classic theist projection: My belief is based on faith so yours must be too! Of course, no one's beliefs are completely untainted by belief, and I've heard some terrible atheist arguments, e.g., my personal favorite: "I used to believe in god, then my brother died. I don't see how a loving god could allow this to happen. Therefore, god doesn't exist." I could tell you that I believed in some vague form of deism (because, hey, it couldn't all be an "accident," right?) before I was an atheist and that when I started questioning even that ill-defined watchmaker god, I read through way more apologetics than atheist tracts. You can get through a lot of material pretty fast if you only read the arguments for a god and skip the Jesus/Muhammad/Vishnu stuff -- and I read some non-denominational stuff like Karen Armstrong, who should have titled all her works Equivocation: The Book. The only atheist/agnostic works I read were some essays by Mencken and Bertrand Russell's Why I Am Not a Christian (this was before we had all that New-Fangled Atheism stuff). In any case, read more on the pro-god side because I wanted to see if anyone had actually come up with a convincing argument, but ultimately what I found was that the fundamentals of the debate haven't really moved forward that much since last century, at least (I can only read about Pascal's Wager and Paley's Watchmaker so many times). As above, though, you can always fall back on the old chestnuts, "we can't be sure of anything, everything's subjective!" Ad nauseam. This kind of thing would be insulting if it weren't so silly. This might be titled "How to Overcome Achristianity," at best. Nebuchadnezzar (talk) 05:20, 7 August 2011 (UTC)

Maratrean does a bit of a flip-flop on the evidence question; in the "Why disbelieve?" section he suggests that there is evidence in favor of God's existence, only to issue a categorical denial of that in "Justifying faith."

But it is not necessary to use psychological projection to establish that most atheists take their position on faith, specifically a belief in strong rationalism. ListenerX^TalkerX 05:35, 7 August 2011 (UTC)

@ListenerX, I know what you are referring to. But I don't see it is a flip-flop, because I believe that faith is a form of evidence. That may seem a strange position to some, but if we understand the etymology of the word evidence (evidence, evident), which is ultimately about being a means to see the truth of something, then I would say that faith is evidence. Dictionary definitions can be found to support that usage. Indeed, even the venerable King James Bible can be quoted to support the usage that faith is a form of evidence - Hebrews 11:1 faith is... the evidence of things not seen.

Is atheism a faith-based position? To me, not exactly. To me, faith is a conscious choice to believe something which is not repugnant to reason because we ethically ought to do so. I think atheists may ultimately lack rational justification for their beliefs, but I don't see them as having faith by that definition. I do think atheists believe what they do for emotional reasons, and then rationalise to justify their emotionally-based choices. As a theist I do the same thing; I just think I am more honest about doing it.

@Nebs, I think I actually have something, at least somewhat original, to contribute to the debate. I reject the classic arguments as pointless. I am quite open about basing my case on faith, and on the deep relationship between ethics and rationality. Neither is entirely original (the first mirrors very much Robert M. Adams, the second the work of another philosopher whose name escapes me at the moment), but it is very much a different emphasis from the traditional one. (((Zack Martin)))^™ 06:09, 7 August 2011 (UTC)

When you have to quote-mine a dictionary to argue your point, most likely you have a dodgy argument. "Evidence" is generally used today — as you use it yourself in the "Justifying faith" section — to refer to objective or outward signs, of which faith is neither.

I do think atheists believe what they do for emotional reasons, and then rationalise... Trying to plumb atheists' motivations for their beliefs is bordering on an ad hominem; better to focus on faults in the rationalization. When I was an atheist, I did not let emotion creep into my metaphysical judgments too much (and I could barely stand listening to other atheists chatter about how they dropped Christianity based on ill-thought-out moral differences). When I became a pagan I quit trying to rationalize that way altogether. ListenerX^TalkerX 07:38, 7 August 2011 (UTC)

"Evidence" is generally used today... to refer to objective or outward signs, of which faith is neither - if your claim about the present-day usage of the word "evidence" is correct, then there can be no doubt that is a change from the past, compared to how it was used say by the translators of the KJV. Now, if the meaning has changed somewhat, we have to ask why? Could it actually be a loaded change, a reflection of a devaluing of faith in our culture? And if it is a loaded change, why should someone who disagrees with the ideological underpinings of that new usage assent to it?

It's not an ad hominem to ask the emotional reasons behind atheism. I have been open about the emotional reasons behind both my atheism and my theism. I ask myself - what is the greatest motivator of human beliefs, reason or emotion? - and I think the answer "emotion" displays a truer understanding of human nature than the answer "reason". And, in terms of understanding those emotions, the main thing I have to go on is my own personal experience, so my starting position is that the emotional reasons why other people are atheists must be similar to the emotional reasons why I was an atheist, and the emotional reasons why other people are theists must be similar to the emotional reasons why I am an atheist. Now, it is quite possible I am wrong there, which is why I welcome people who believe their emotions are different to give an account of them - but, in terms of a starting point, I don't really have any other choice than myself.

When people tell me that their beliefs are based on reason rather than emotion, I have two choices - maybe, unlike me, they really are some perfect unemotional reasoning machine, where reason generally trumps emotion in the belief-formation process; or, maybe they aren't unlike me after all, but simply have an emotional need to believe that they are? I don't claim to know; but, to me, the second possibility seems more plausible than the first.

As to your own experience, I have to ask a question - you think your atheism was much less based on emotion than that of some other atheists you knew; that may well be true, but is it possible that while less emotional than some others, your atheism was still fundamentally a response to your emotional needs given the life situation you were in? And, since then you have become a pagan - do you think your becoming pagan was primarily about reason or emotion? (((Zack Martin)))^™ 08:02, 7 August 2011 (UTC)

I have described part of my conversion experience here. My atheism was completely unemotional, which I know because I was always a reluctant atheist. However, it was based on some faulty premises. When studying logic in graduate school, I learned about Gödel's incompleteness theorems and some related proofs involving Turing machines; as these falsify strong rationalism, from that time my days as an atheist were numbered. Later, when reading about the history of Christianity, I learned that (1) many of the wretched fanatics who bring that religion into ill repute are actually heretics, and (2) most of the fun bits of Christianity were actually syncretic carryovers from paganism. After that my adoption of paganism was almost entirely emotional. ListenerX^TalkerX 05:17, 12 August 2011 (UTC)

Hi, this is my first post here! -- This emphasis on whether the reason for believing some particular thing is emotional or rational: what does it matter? I remember debating with the local priest as a chield in confirmation classes about the nonsense he told us; because it WAS nonsense, I felt (strongly) that it was the right thing to call it that. He thought it wasn't, which lead to me being thrown out at some point. Although the reason for the debate was a rational one, that was certainly a very emotional experience for me. It's possible that some emotional reason got me started thinking about the nonsense of religion in the first place; again, what does it matter? It doesn't; just look at the existing rational evidence for any statement or belief. If you find that there simply is no rational evidence, then you may assume that the belief is in fact irrational (as is the case with religions). The reason why any particular person believes in something does not tell you whether the belief itself is irrational.

Also, I have yet to find an atheist who calls himself a "perfect unemotional reasoning machine". Who would claim to be such a thing? But I have heard theists and other woo-ists make that claim about atheists, which is really just an ad hominem - or maybe a "straw man" argument: "These atheists claim that they are perfect rational beings! Ha, but they aren't!" -- Well, no, actually they don't claim that. --Schroedinger's dog (talk) 23:08, 10 August 2011 (UTC)

Well, you talk about rationality, but here's a question - is there only one standard for rationality, or are there multiple competing standards? Could it be that theist and atheist rationality are different? If they are different, then which one is right? We can't justify choice of which rationality to adopt in terms of rationality itself, since that would be circular (unless I suppose our choice of rationality embraces circularity as OK). If rationality can't justify our choice of rationality, the only other way to justify it is through emotions - this rationality emotionally satisifies me, another one does not.

You say you concluded what the priest said was irrational; I don't know exactly what he said, so I can't speak to whether it was rational or not. But, even if it really is irrational by your rationality, maybe it is not irrational by another rationality? So, before you decided that was irrational, you (unconsciously) chose a system of rationality to use to judge it as irrational. And what motivated that choice? It can't be rationality, it must be emotion. So, your rational conclusion was dependent on your emotions; if you felt differently, then you would have judged rationality differently.

Emotion is not singular, but plural; why then should we expect rationality to be singular, rather than plural?

I agree that perfect unemotional reasoning machine is hyperbolic, but you miss the point behind it - I believe atheists really do underestimate the role that emotion has in their beliefs, and nothing you have said has given me reason to change that belief. (((Zack Martin)))^™ 10:00, 11 August 2011 (UTC)

Religious belief is, by definition, irrational. After all, if there was positive proof of a religious belief (such as for the existence of god), it would not be belief, right? It would be fact. Therefore, the question you are really asking is: "Isn't irrationality just another form of rationality?" - I think you can answer that question yourself.

Your whole idea of constructing these "different systems of rationality" is totally artificial. What should these "systems" be? If a person makes two mutually exclusive statements, at most one of them can be true. This is rationality; simple logic which even a theist should be able to understand. No "systems" involved.

Again, whether emotion has any influence in the belief of any particular person is irrelevant. "Atheists do have emotions" - duh! What's your point? It's the evidence that counts, not the reason (emotional or not) why any particular person believes in something. So stop these comical tries at an ad hominem. --Schroedinger's dog (talk) 13:17, 11 August 2011 (UTC)

Religious belief is irrational by your definition, but not by mine. You try to distinguish belief and fact, yet facts are beliefs, they just are beliefs that happen to be true. I believe "1+1=2". And that belief is true.

If a person makes two mutually exclusive statements, at most one of them can be true. - it sounds obvious to you, but people deny it. Look at paraconsistent logic. Traditional Indian logic also accepts the idea of true contradictions (see the Catuṣkoṭi, which holds that everything is either true, false, both true and false or neither true nor false). You seem unaware of the fact that there are different systems of logic. One commonly sees these lists of "laws of logic", like "everything is either true or false but not both" (law of non-contradiction), "everything is either true or false and not neither" (law of the excluded middle), but there are systems of logic which deny both. Once one realises there are different systems of logic, it is easier to accept the idea that there are different systems of rationality.

So, how do you choose which system of rationality to use? I would say it is by emotion. (((Zack Martin)))^™ 20:09, 11 August 2011 (UTC)

Religious belief is irrational by definition, not by my definition. As I said, if there was evidence for religious belief, it would not be religious belief. Ask any priest, shaman, etc. Your sneaky mix-up of terms does not help: I also 'believe' that it will probably rain soon when I see heavy clouds; but we both know that is not a religious belief. The terms are homonymous, but of course they don't mean the same.

There are no "different systems of logic" in the sense you imply. People trying to reason with "inconsistent information", as in paraconsistent logic, does not have any influence on the real world. Neither do the intellectual exercises of buddhist monks. If you disagree, why don't you name any factual statement which is objectively both true and false? (And no, "Yellow is a beautiful color" doesn't qualify, so don't even try that one.)

Your argument looks like this well-known tactic: implying that "rationality is just another arbitrary belief system, therefore belief in [the tooth fairy] is exactly as valid as any verifyable factual statement". This is related to the esoteric view that "Everybody is somehow right, nobody is ever wrong". Well, sorry, but there simply is no such rule. You, for example, are wrong.

For you as a religious person, it may be inconceivable that people actually think about things rationally and make decisions accordingly. Just believe me then when I tell you: some do.

And still, the point holds: whether a particular person 'believes' in some statement for rational or emotional reasons does not say anything about the factuality of the statement. And why should the reasons of other people bother you? Surely you can think for yourself; why the need for all the speculation about other's 'emotions'? --Schroedinger's dog (talk) 23:58, 11 August 2011 (UTC)

Since you seem so sure of your definitions, I would challenge you to propose definitions of the terms "religion", "belief", "irrational", "evidence", etc. Insofar as I can tell what your definitions are, I do not agree that they are the right ones. Present your definitions, and present evidence that they are the right definitions and that the alternatives are wrong. In particular, I don't agree that "believe" means one thing in a religious context, and another thing in a non-religious context. If you believe the word "believe" is equivocal, please present evidence to support that claim.

There are different systems of logic. Anyone who has seriously studied the topic seriously is aware of this. Logicians spend their entire careers devising new systems of logic and arguing over which system of logic is best. I really have no idea what you mean by saying that paraconsistent logic "does not have any influence on the real world". Logic in general has minimal influence on the "real world". But paraconsistent logic is just as valid a logical system as any other. You want an example of a statement both true and false simultaneously? Try "This sentence is false". More significantly, if we accept paraconsistent logic, then we can return to naïve set theory, rather than turning to alternatives such as Zermelo-Fraenkel, which some would argue are significantly weaker, through accepting paradoxes such as Russell's as true paradoxes (i.e. both true and false simultaneously). Paraconsistent logic offers a valuable new perspective on many logical and mathematical paradoxes.

As to your dismissal of catuṣkoṭi — it is not an exclusively Buddhist thing, it is a general phenomena of the Indian logical tradition, one finds very similar approaches in Jain and Hindu logic. Is it possible you are being eurocentric in dismissing the Indian logical tradition? And, while you dismiss it as the work of "Buddhist monks", you ignore the important role that Christian monks played in the development of the classical Western logic that you use (even if you are not fully conscious of that). And, even in the Western logical tradition, very similar ideas occur — e.g. among the Pre-Socratics; but, these ideas have been a minority in European logic since Aristotle, whereas in Indian logic they are mainstream.

You present my argument as rationality is just another arbitrary belief system, but that is not what I claim. I claim rationality is like morality. Just as there is not one morality, nor is there one rationality. There are many different systems of morality, and likewise there are many different systems of rationality. That doesn't mean that one of them can't be right and the rest wrong, but in both cases it is not immediately obvious which is the right one and which are the wrong ones. It is clear that our choice of a particular morality is strongly influenced by our emotional composition and our upbringing and our culture; likewise, I argue that our choice of a particular rationality is strongly influenced by our emotional composition and our upbringing and our culture.

Contrary to your claims, I have never said that everyone is equally right. No one is ever completely wrong, and no mere human is ever right about everything either, but no doubt some people will be more right than others, and some beliefs will be more correct than others. I have never said otherwise; I think you are projecting on to me one of the boogeymen of your psyche.

For you, as an irrelgious person, it may be inconceivable that religious people actually think about things rationally and make decisions accordingly. Just believe me then when I tell you: some do. My beliefs are perfectly rational when judged by my own rationality, and I know that my system of rationality is only one among many possible systems, and I do believe mine is right and the others are wrong, but I am honest enough to admit that my evidence and degree of certainty for that is not as strong as I would like, yet to be fair no one else has stronger evidence either, nor do they have good reason to have stronger certainty in this matter than I do.

whether a particular person 'believes' in some statement for rational or emotional reasons does not say anything about the factuality of the statement — well, no doubt that most atheists are ignorant of the variety of competing rationalities, and their insistence without evidence on one particular rationality rather than its competitors is irrational by the terms of their own rationality, and a consequence of either their ignorance or their irrationality; but, having considered what people believe, and whether their beliefs are right or not, it is only natural to ask why they believe what they believe, whether their beliefs be right or not. And in every case, whether it be mine, or another theists, or an atheists, the most important part of why (but not the whole of it) is emotion. In light of the fact that many atheists claim that the have a better whether because they have a better why (i.e. their beliefs are more likely to be true because of their reasons for believing them), it seems quite important that we investigate why, and doing so is quite possibly an important contribution to the ultimately much more important question of whether (i.e. which side is right?). (((Zack Martin)))^™ 10:36, 12 August 2011 (UTC)

In particular, I don't agree that "believe" means one thing in a religious context, and another thing in a non-religious context. If you believe the word "believe" is equivocal, please present evidence to support that claim.

I can provide an example. Consider:

A) I look at the sky. I see large dark clouds. I believe it will rain soon.

B) I believe that the universe was created by a supernatural, omnipotent, omniscient being which lives in another plane of existence.

Which one is the religious belief?

I really have no idea what you mean by saying that paraconsistent logic "does not have any influence on the real world". Maybe that's the problem.

You want an example of a statement both true and false simultaneously? Try "This sentence is false". Sorry, no. This oxymoron is not a factual statement which is both true and false at the same time. It is self-referential only: it does not make any statement about anything other than itself. In fact, it does not make any statement. Any others? "This chair is made from wood" is an example of a factual statement. "God exists" is another. Factual statements simply cannot be true and false at the same time (or more exactly, a statement and its negation can't be true at the same time). "I am a liar" is another oxymoron: it's not a statement which is both true and false at the same time. The fact that it's possible to formulate an oxymoron doesn't prove "P && !P".

You present my argument as "rationality is just another arbitrary belief system", but that is not what I claim. I claim rationality is like morality. Just as there is not one morality, nor is there one rationality. Ok, so you claim basically the same thing, using weaker-sounding words. "Gravity exists" is a statement which makes sense in my system of rationality. If rationality is like morality, and some person's system of rationality denies gravity, why can't they fly?

Contrary to your claims, I have never said that everyone is equally right. I have never claimed that. I said that your argument is related to the esoteric view that "nobody is ever wrong, everyone is right". Based on what you say, that's what it seems like to me.

well, no doubt that most atheists are ignorant of the variety of competing rationalities [...] Sure. If your competing rationality includes some form of supernatural, unprovable omnipotent deity, it's probably the correct one, and atheists must be ignorant. After all, the deity probably told you so. --Schroedinger's dog (talk) 14:40, 12 August 2011 (UTC)

You provide an example of a religious and non-religious belief. The fact that one belief is religious, and the other non-religious, doesn't negate the fact that they are both equally beliefs. They are equally belief in a proposition, they are just beliefs in different propositions, even different types of propositions. I define belief as (roughly) a disposition to assert, internally and externally, that a proposition is true, and to act as if it were true. So you have presented two rather different propositions, but the same definition of belief applies equally to each of them.

You use this term factual statement, but you haven't defined what a factual statement is. You suggest that language about physical objects and about God are both factual statements, but that still leaves me with no clear idea about what is and is not a factual statement as you use the term. Are ethical statements factual? Are (alleged) laws of logic (e.g. the law of non-contradiction, about which we are disputing) factual? What about mathematical statements, like 1 + 1 = 2 ? In my own use, a factual statement is a statement other than a value statement, so any statement other than "X is good/evil", "X is rational/irrational", "X is beautiful/ugly". Since "This sentence is false" is not a value statement, it is a factual statement.

Your argument about denying gravity / being able to fly seems to confuse rationality with truth; they are different things. Sometimes it is rationally obligatory to believe a falsehood and disbelieve a truth. Here is an example: Tom is a schoolboy. He really dislikes his teacher Mr. Jenkins. One day he sees written on the wall of the toilets, "Mr. Jenkins is a rapist". Since Tom doesn't like Mr. Jenkins, he decides to believe what is written on the toilet wall. The next week Mr. Jenkins is arrested for rape, and he confesses to the crime. So Tom feels vindicated in his belief. The question is, was Tom's belief rational? Arguably, between reading it on the toilet wall, and learning of the arrest/confession, Tom's belief that Mr. Jenkins is a rapist is irrational, both because he bases it on unreliable evidence (grafitti is very weak evidence), and on his own animus against Mr. Jenkins; whereas, after reading in the paper of the arrest/confession, Tom's belief becomes rational. So Tom's belief started out as being irrational, and then became rational; yet the whole time it was actually true. So, whether a belief is rational or irrational, is a separate question from whether it is true.

You also ignore an important feature of both rationality and morality. With morality, we like to focus on the disagreements, but we ignore the vast areas of near universal agreement in the process. For example, just about everyone agrees, that in general killing people is wrong, although there are certainly exceptions to that general rule. Now, some of those exceptions are agreed on by just about everyone (e.g. if you see a spree killer running around shooting people, it is the right thing to shoot him to stop him from killing any more, even if that kills him), while other exceptions are heavily disputed (e.g. is it okay to execute the spree killer for his crimes). But, let's not let the disagreement about the exceptions, blind us to the great agreement about the general rule, and even some of those exceptions. Just about everyone agrees that killing to defend yourself or another from an immediate threat is a valid exception to the rule, and killing because you find it fun is not a valid exception to the rule. So there is a common core of morality about which there is universal agreement.

Likewise, your contrived example about gravity ignores the fact that there is a common core of rationality about which there is universal agreement. Just about everyone agrees that 1+1=2, that if a human being jumps out of a plane without a parachute from high altitude they will almost certainly die, etc. So, there are multiple rational systems, just as there are multiple ethical systems, but in both cases there is a common core of near universal agreement. (((Zack Martin)))^™ 23:40, 12 August 2011 (UTC)

I'm not sure what the misunderstanding about the different meanings of the word 'believe' is about. I'm not a native english speaker, so I'll try to explain again. Consider A) "I see clouds. Therefore I believe it will rain." and B) "I believe that an invisible, omnipotent, omniscient being created the universe [in 7 days/on Friday/etc]." Both use the word 'believe', but mean different things. One is a statement of belief that something will happen, extrapolating based on some observation ("I have reason to believe..."). The other is a statement of religious faith, which is not based on reason or evidence, by the definition of faith.

What are you getting at with the rapist example? Obviously, a statement which you have rational reasons to believe, can be false! Maybe the wind changes, the clouds move on, and it doesn't rain. Who claimed otherwise?

Next: morality. Not sure what you're trying to prove here. Many people believe that killing is wrong. Many people think some particular god created everything. Many people (especially little ones) believe in the tooth fairy. That doesn't mean that either of these statements are true or false. There certainly is a reason why the vast majority of people have similar moral beliefs. There also is a reason why people look remarkably similar (e.g., most of us have 2 arms and legs, and one face). That doesn't mean that morality is based on some objective truth, as you seem to be implying. It's entirely plausible that some basic moral rules give an evolutional advantage. After all, not killing the people in your clan (except in self defense) is surely good for the survival of the clan, as is caring for your relatives; therefore, the clans with basic moral standards survive, and the moral rules survive with them.

You wrote somewhere that your definition of 'evidence' includes faith. Well, I believe that the Flying Spaghettimonster created the Universe and Everything; also, I believe that it is the only true God, and therefore, any other gods, including yours, are illusions. That is my faith. I have proven these statements to you, and I have presented you with evidence in your own system of rationality. Therefore, you must believe them. If you don't, you are being irrational.

I also believe you should think about the meaning of the terms 'subjective' and 'objective'. --Schroedinger's dog (talk) 00:45, 19 August 2011 (UTC)

You fail to grasp that the fact that the same predicate being applied to two quite different objects does not thereby make it two different predicates. "I believe X" and "I believe Y" — yes X and Y can be very different types of propositions, that doesn't that mean we can't have a single predicate "believe" here, in both cases being used in largely the same way. I can desire democracy and I can desire ice cream, but that observation does not compel us to the conclusion that "desire" is equivocal. Likewise, our reasons for believing, our justifications, can be radically different for two different beliefs — but that does not imply that "belief" itself is equivocal. I'd suggest, since you say you are a non-English speaker, maybe you are imposing on to the English words "belief", or "meaning", some nuance which doesn't actually exist in English, even if it maybe exists in your native langauge.

As to the rapist example: So, we are agreed, rationality is not the same thing as truth. At times, rationality and truth can be opposed — truth can demand one belief, rationality the opposite. So it is good we are agreed on that.

Objective morality: you say that human ethical commonality can be plausibly explained without assuming objective ethics; but it can also be plausibly explained by assuming it. The issue is really that rationality and morality have a lot in common: they are both systems of oughtness (do this, don't do that; believe this, don't believe that), systems of positive and negative valuation (good/evil; rational/irrational), for both of them we have a choice between objectivity and subjectivity, for both of them we have both significant disagreements but also significant areas of near-universal agreement, for both the road to resolving these differences is unclear, many of the arguments against the objectivity of one can also serve as arguments against the objectivity of the other, etc. I think these deep similarities support (but do not compel) the idea that in terms of objectivity they stand or fall together; that rather than being entirely separate things, they are two parts of one larger whole, components of general axiology.

You misunderstand my contention that "faith is a form of evidence". To me, faith is not just about believing things willy-nilly, it is about believing something because you feel a deep moral compulsion to believe. You can claim to feel a deep moral compulsion to believe in the Flying Spaghetti Monster, but as a matter of human psychology, I struggle to believe you actually feel that way (whereas, if you made the same claim about Jesus or Krishna or Muhammad or Buddha or Odin or Diana or L. Ron Hubbard, I'd find your claim much more plausible.) So, even though I believe that faith is evidence, I don't believe you have such faith, hence lacking faith you lack faith-as-evidence. Even if you did have faith, your faith is only evidence for you, not for me, just as my faith is only evidence for me, not for you.

You think I should think about the meaning of "subjective" and "objective" — what do you think I should think about them? (((Zack Martin)))^™ 12:18, 19 August 2011 (UTC)

truth can demand one belief, rationality the opposite. Well, I have never personally seen truth demand anything. That's probably reserved to truer people than me.

So you actually think that believing something based on evidence and religious faith are the same? For me, that's an interesting insight. Well, sure, I can understand how you must think that: after all, for you, faith is evidence.

I don't quite understand, however, why you think so irrationally about the Flying Spaghettimonster, still denying its existence, omnipotence, and great noodlyness, although I presented you with evidence. For one thing, how can you know I don't believe sincerely in the great FSM? Mind you, the FSM is not a parody religion. Just because something looks like a parody from the outside, it doesn't have to be: the FSM isn't any more parody than your story about bats. And who are you to judge my moral compulsions? I feel deeply morally compulsive about my faith in the FSM, believe me.

Second, even if you doubt my faith (why would you?), you probably know there are people who sincerely believe in one singular, mutually exclusive god, like some particular variation of the christian or islamic gods. So, if faith is evidence, how can you still believe in some other god, even if presented with evidence for the contrary?

Ahhh, I see. my faith is only evidence for me, not for you. So, your faith actually is faith, not evidence in any useful sense of the word. Good that we agree on that. --Schroedinger's dog (talk) 17:43, 19 August 2011 (UTC)

edit point

To me, faith is not just about believing things willy-nilly, it is about believing something because you feel a deep moral compulsion to believe. The strength/intensity of your beliefs has no bearing on their veracity. The schizophrenic sincerely believes that the voices in his head are real. It doesn't make them real. From this it follows quite simply that Faith != evidence. Jack Hughes (talk) 13:18, 19 August 2011 (UTC)

I don't doubt the sincerity of the schizophrenic's belief that the voices in his head are real; but, does he feel this belief is the product of a moral compulsion? A compulsion, certainly, but a moral one? This is why, I would not classify the schizophrenic's belief as faith, in the fullest sense of the term. You read deep moral compulsion to believe, and you are focusing on the word deep, but ignoring the word moral. But deep modifies moral — it is not the depth of the belief that makes it faith, it is the depth of a felt moral compulsion to believe it. (((Zack Martin)))^™ 13:28, 19 August 2011 (UTC)

I'm focussing on the word 'compulsion' - just because you feel compelled to believe something doesn't make it true. Your whole "religion" is wishful thinking - it's about a fantasy world that we all wish could exist where "good overcomes evil" and we all go off to live on Sugar Mountain. Wanting it so, wishing it so, even if morally compelled, doesn't make it so, doesn't in any way add to the evidence.

On the other hand, if we follow your argument, then what about all those who were morally compelled to believe in the Grecian pantheon. Were they equally right or is your believe, in some fashion, superior to theirs? Jack Hughes (talk) 13:38, 19 August 2011 (UTC)

Just because you feel compelled to believe something doesn't make it false either. However, if you do feel compelled to believe it, then you have to conclude it is true, since otherwise you would commit Moore's paradox. "I am compelled to believe X", hence "I believe X"—"I am compelled to believe X, but don't believe X" is somewhat contradictory, since if you don't actually believe it, you can't be that compelled. And to say, "I believe X but not X" (as you suggest), well if X is left as a vague specifier, that is non-contradictory (i.e. of the things I believe, probably some of them are false), but when we specify X (e.g. "Goddess exists"), then the sentence becomes contradictory. "I believe God exists, but God does not exist" - classic Moore's paradox.

As to those morally compelled to believe in the Greek pantheon, I wouldn't necessarily criticize their belief. I subscribe to inclusive monotheism - there is one God, with many names/forms/images/servants/representatives/emanations/etc. So I can accept Zeus and Aphrodite as names/forms/images/servants/representatives/emanations/etc of the same God in whom I believe. What counts more, is exactly what they believe about God/gods, than which ones they believe in. But, if their religious beliefs generally are motivated by a moral compulsion, that doesn't mean they are all equally so motivated. If they have some particular religious belief to which I object, I must ask, is that particular belief an object of moral compulsion for them? Or are they morally compelled to some other beliefs, and this belief is being brought along for the ride, but they could dispense with it, if convinced, without going against that compulsion? And finally, I can judge for myself the correctness of the morals underlying their moral compulsion. If their moral compulsion is to believe that the gods love them, I will approve that compulsion; if their moral compulsion is to believe that the gods demand human sacrifices, I will condemn that compulsion. (((Zack Martin)))^™ 22:31, 19 August 2011 (UTC)

Bullshit

And, I think there can be no doubt, that all things being equal, believing that good finally conquers over evil, is ethically better than believing that the good is doomed. If there is a God, an afterlife, etc., then the murdered child will live again, there will be justice delayed, but not justice denied. If there is no God, no afterlife, then the murdered child has ceased to exist, forever. It is clear to me, which belief is ethically superior. Bullshit. There's nothing ethically good about wishful thinking. If anything, believing that there is no god and no afterlife and no final justice will motivate you to actually catch the murderer as opposed to letting him go and be judged by god. -- Nx / talk 06:52, 7 August 2011 (UTC)

ListenerX^TalkerX 07:32, 7 August 2011 (UTC)

There's nothing ethically good about wishful thinking - but wishful thinking is a loaded term. If we consider the schema It would be good if X was true, therefore X is true, I agree that in many cases its use will be contrary to both reason and ethics, but I don't agree that we can generalise from that to the position that it is wrong in every possible case. Whether it is wrong depends on what X is. If X="fresh air is a better cure for cancer for chemotherapy", then the application of that schema is both rationally and ethically wrong. On the other hand, if X="there exists a life after death", I don't see the problem. You try to generalise from some specific cases to produce a general rule; I disagree with that generalisation.

If anything, believing that there is no god and no afterlife and no final justice will motivate you to actually catch the murderer as opposed to letting him go and be judged by god. But, the reality is, no matter how hard you try, it is entirely possible that the wrongdoer will never be found. And even if you find them, can you really get justice? No matter what you do to them (lock them up for the rest of their life, kill them, slowly and painful torture them to death), you can't get true justice, because you can't bring the murdered child back to life. And, one must be wary of the very real possibility, that in excessive eagerness for justice in this world, one might commit a miscarriage of justice, and convict and punish the innocent. I think this is a real problem with our society - because people don't believe in justice beyond this world, they are overly eager to find justice in this one, to the point that their desire for justice actually becomes a cause of further injustice. Is it not better, to hope for the perfect justice of another world, than rely on inherently flawed earthly substitutes for it? I am not saying we should not lock murderers up; but we should see that as doing what is necessary for the protection of others, rather than as some impossible attempt to right wrongs which it is not in the power of this world to right. And, if we make a mistake, I think it is better if we can say "we honestly thought you were a danger to others, we are sorry now that we realise our belief was mistaken" than "we honestly thought that you were evil scum that deserved to be hurt as much as possible, we are sorry now that we realise our belief was mistaken". The first seems to me a much more innocent a mistake than the second. (((Zack Martin)))^™ 07:28, 7 August 2011 (UTC)

Believing in something doesn't make it true. --Schroedinger's dog (talk) 23:18, 10 August 2011 (UTC)

As a general rule, no, but maybe in some more constrained circumstances it does. (((Zack Martin)))^™ 20:10, 11 August 2011 (UTC)

Like 'believing that good finally conquers over evil'? --Schroedinger's dog (talk) 00:24, 12 August 2011 (UTC)

That could be an example. Well, I think it is true whether we believe it or not; but coming to believe in it is an important part of it coming true: i.e., in order for good to conquer evil, everyone must come to believe that it will. (((Zack Martin)))^™ 09:02, 12 August 2011 (UTC)

And you don't see the logical inconsistency in that last statement. A is not dependent on B but, for A to happen B must happen first. How exactly are you defining dependency? Jack Hughes (talk) 09:39, 12 August 2011 (UTC)

Suppose I am a life sciences researcher, and in twenty years time I make a major breakthrough, and discover a cure for cancer or aging or something similar. Now, at one level, it is true now that In twenty years time I will make that breakthrough, and that is true regardless of whether I now believe it or not. On the other hand, if I believe it now, that might make me more driven or optimistic, which might make it more likely to actually happen than if I didn't believe that. So, it may well be, that come twenty years time, my breakthrough is causally dependent on my having believed today that it would happen, yet on the other hand its truth then is independent of whether I now believe it or not. It's a distinction between rational dependence and causal dependence. Good finally conquering evil is not rationally independent of our belief that that is true, but it may well be causally dependent on the same belief. (((Zack Martin)))^™ 10:50, 12 August 2011 (UTC)

And when good has finally "conquered" evil - what then. Don't we "need" evil to exist (see your arguments elsewhere)? Does that mean the end of existence? Or are we then translated into something else? It seems very much like you're describing the second coming - but without the Christ figure. I assume you've invented some suitable substitute to take that role. Really, even by your standards, this is descending (further) into farce. Jack Hughes (talk) 13:08, 12 August 2011 (UTC)

We need evil in the past to exist, and when good finally conquers evil, then we will still need evil in the past to exist, and we will still have evil in the past, we just won't have evil in the present any more. (((Zack Martin)))^™ 23:11, 12 August 2011 (UTC)

But the past will be forgotten. --Schroedinger's dog (talk) 00:57, 19 August 2011 (UTC)

Will it? To me, heaven isn't about forgetfulness, it is about remembering. In heaven, we remember the evils of this world even more vividly than we do now; yet, we remember them in an entirely new light, for we come to see with perfect clarity, and to love, the far greater beauties which they purchase. What we once fled from, we come to will — not as an end in itself (even things we once so willed) — but as a means to a far greater end. We remember the past, and in remembering the past we will it to be, and having willed it, it therefore is. Or at least, that is what I believe. (((Zack Martin)))^™ 11:35, 19 August 2011 (UTC)

Well, that might be what you believe, but obviously the actual truth of the matter is that in the Afterlife we will be too busy playing with the Strippers (of both sexes, mind you) and the Beer Volcano to remember anything Bad or Evil. And it is Good, RAmen. --Schroedinger's dog (talk) 17:48, 19 August 2011 (UTC)

misleading title

Hey. Well, I read your essay as promised, and i think you make the same mistakes that those you are "challenging" make. You suggest that emotion and rationality are somehow separate spheres of our problem solving world, and that one is some how at least slightly better, if not fully better than the other. Instead of drawing off this idea, you just conclude "I don't know". which is a fine conclusion, I suppose, but not a very compelling one for how your essay will give a path to non-atheism. You were a teen when you "found your godlike being". That's pretty early in life, to be suggesting it's somehow a position of deep thought, deep emotion or deep awareness. In my *biased* opinion, when anyone finds truths about life as a teen, at the height of the world being confusing, and full of hormones and so often filled with rejection - that's a "truth" i would be dubious of. Simply because we are so desperate and searching for so much. So, anyhow. I read. And I am no closer to understanding how to overcome atheism from your perspective. I can admit that atheism is an emotive and rational assessment of what I know, see, and understand. But that doesn't make me "overcome it". What you are suggesting is I could just as easily overcome leprechauns or unicorns, Zeus or the tooth fairy. And I know you and I both accept that those things do not exist, and you can't simply "overcome" that. There is nothing at all, rational, logical, or scientific that points to a god. So all you are left with is emotion. and for me, nothing at all emotional points to that. I WISH for a god, cause it would make the world make sense. I would LIKE a god cause hell, i want someone who grants wishes. but nothing in this universe fills the void of "we do not know how this happens", except science. Just filling our ignorance in with a "god" didn't get us anywhere for 100,000 years. starting to look for answers where we stuck gods is what got us answers. I am glad I read it, but as it stands right now, it is simply a statement of your faith, and no more compelling to me than anyone else's. --En attendant Godot 14:07, 8 August 2011 (UTC)

You need to open your mind. You are stuck in scientism and need to overcome this with an emotional decision.--Tolerance (talk) 14:19, 8 August 2011 (UTC)

Maratrean's whole belief system is wishful thinking. He wants so much for there to be a sugar mountain afterlife that he will go through all sorts of contortions of the "you can't disprove it" variety to reinforce his beliefs. He hides all this behind a Bayesian Gish Gallop but it comes down to "we can't prove anything, therefore anything is equally likely, therefore I can believe anything I want and you can't tell me not to, so there!". Jack Hughes (talk) 14:24, 8 August 2011 (UTC)

@Godot: I didn't find the truth™ as a teen. I left atheism as a teen. And then from atheism I didn't go immediately into any kind of coherent theism, but spent several years as what I called "vaguetheism" ("I'm sure there's something out there, kinda sorta likea "God" or whatnot, but I have no real idea what that thing is"). But I didn't find the truth I feel I have now back then. I have only found this truth in the last 3 years or so, and it keeps developing. I realised atheism was not the answer, but I still didn't know what the answer was, so I kept on looking.

I don't think emotion and rationality can be completed separated, and I don't think one is better than the other, we need both. What I am arguing against, however, is those who think that other people's beliefs may be due to emotion, but mine aren't - unlike theirs, mine are rational. Theirs are emotional, mine are rational. That is something, that I wouldn't say all atheists believe, but certainly very many of them do. I think, on the contrary, reason and emotion are so deeply interconnected, I don't think they can ultimately be separated.

I think scientific rationality contains within itself the seeds of its own self-destruction. We need to find these seeds, and water them. For me, transhumanism really was such a seed. Look at Nick Bostrom's simulation argument, Max Tegmark's radical platonism, multiverse theories, Frank Tipler and Freeman Dyson's quests for scientific eternity, the mathematics of infinity, computability, supertasks... These things have been for me a road through science and beyond it, into the land of faith.

We had some gods for so many thousand years. But the gods we had were such a tiny proportion of the gods we could have. If the gods we have had didn't get us anywhere, is that because all gods are useless? Or maybe we need to look for some new and different gods?

@Hughes: we can't prove anything - we can prove some things, like a²+b²=c² (I forget how exactly, but I did it at school). And maybe, it's not really about proving individual propositions, but looking over a choice of internally self-consistent worldviews, and choosing between entire worldviews, rather than individual propositions? I don't believe anything is equally likely. I am much more likely to be alive next week than dead tomorrow (and I do hope the same is true for you), although both are possible. I don't believe I can believe anything I want. There are real limits on what I can believe, but at the same time I have some degree of choice, and beyond what I can there are rational and ethical limits (and these two form one cohesive whole) on what I should should believe. (((Zack Martin)))^™ 11:47, 9 August 2011 (UTC)

My view is that "God did not create man, man created God," that the Gods spring from their cults like Athena from the head of Zeus, to use a gratuitous simile. ListenerX^TalkerX 02:37, 12 August 2011 (UTC)

Si Dieu n'existait pas, il faudrait l'inventer. (((Zack Martin)))^™ 09:04, 12 August 2011 (UTC)

I Agree that we should believe things which we Feel are Ethically true before those things which are Evidently true.--Tolerance (talk) 14:54, 12 August 2011 (UTC)

Have you turned the parody switch on again? ListenerX^TalkerX 23:14, 12 August 2011 (UTC)

The ethically true is evidently true, since ethics is a form of evidence. (((Zack Martin)))^™ 23:43, 12 August 2011 (UTC)

That statement is a radically new insight for scientists, and people, all around the world. Please elaborate. --Schroedinger's dog (talk) 00:49, 19 August 2011 (UTC)

Ethics is not evidence for science, because science is not concerned with ethics. If anything, ethics holds science back — imagine how much further advanced medical science would be today if we could use humans the way we use mice. But, there is more to human thought than science, so though ethics is not evidence to science, it is evidence to other domains of human thought. (((Zack Martin)))^™ 12:22, 19 August 2011 (UTC)

I agree. Circles are more Ethically Pleasing than epilepsies. In consequence we should look for evidence which supports the belief that celestial orbits are circular rather than elliptical. As the total quantity of Evidence in the universe is Potentially Infinite we should be able to find Evidence which supports this view. Only those wedded to ideas of Scientism would dispute this.--Tolerance (talk) 19:40, 19 August 2011 (UTC)

You are Infinitely Spot-On about those Epilepsies. --Schroedinger's dog (talk) 12:59, 22 August 2011 (UTC)

Actually, Maratrean, science is concerned with ethics. I deal with it often in works on the evo of teh "mind". ethics and morality seem to be genuinely a part of how we are programmed by evo to think, to see the world, to interact with others, ect. and why, once we get past some basic "don't kill. steal bad" ethics, do we make the subtel distinctions we do is very much a scientific question. Since the devo of the mRMI, science has jumped in with two feet to ask "why do we dream what we dream" "why do we say what we say" and yes "why do we judge, moralize and ethicize (both made up verbs) as we do?" ^{— Unsigned, by: WaitingforGodot / talk / contribs}

You and I are talking about different things. You are talking about science making ethics an object of study. I was talking about science considering ethics as input, as a form of evidence, as something to be obeyed.

It does raise an interesting question though. Evolutionary psychologists will often claim that ethics is not ultimately real, it is just a byproduct of evolution. But, if that is true, can't we make the same claim about rationality too? Rationality is not ultimately real, it is just a byproduct of evolution. But, if rationality is not ultimately valid, that calls the validity of science into question, since by relying on rationality, it is relying on something which is not ultimately valid and may well be incorrect. Evolution shoots itself in the head, and the evolutionary house of cards collapses... (((Zack Martin)))^™ 22:37, 19 August 2011 (UTC)

┌────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────┘Been reading Plantinga lately? Nebuchadnezzar (talk) 23:01, 19 August 2011 (UTC)

Not recently, but I have before. But anyway, Plantinga is not the only one who makes this argument, and any flaws that paper identifies may just be flaws in Plantinga's presentation of it, rather than the argument in general. (((Zack Martin)))^™ 23:38, 19 August 2011 (UTC)

Rationality, speach, thought, tools, of course they are by products of evoultion. what ever would be your point otherwise. as for your comment about ethics, it's very untenable. first you say science is not concerned with ethics, dismissing the fact that there are branches of science devoted to that very thing - what is the ethics of science and what can and should we be studying, and how... so then we make the assumption that you mean science cannot study ethics, though it can. your arguments always seems so superfical and/or residing in your head somewhere, on a track no one can understand.En attendant Godot 23:10, 19 August 2011 (UTC)

you say science is not concerned with ethics, dismissing the fact that there are branches of science devoted to that very thing - I think you are confusing several different things - (1) ethical beliefs as a subject of scientific study, whether we adopt a social sciences or evolutionary psychology or whatnot framework to study them in, and (2) the ethics that scientists feel themselves subject to in doing science (scientific ethics), and (3) ethics as a discipline in itself, and a subject of philosophy, theology, etc. You are talking about (1), I am talking about (2) and (3). And the ethics of science (2) is not a part of science, but it has science as its object. (((Zack Martin)))^™ 23:37, 19 August 2011 (UTC)

Science doesn't consider ethics or your faith in giant bats as evidence. That's because scientists are close-minded. --Schroedinger's dog (talk) 18:03, 21 August 2011 (UTC)

No, science doesn't consider that evidence because science isn't supposed to. Science has a limited domain of proper authority, and those matters are outside the proper domain of science, and hence it is entirely appropriate that it not consider them. (((Zack Martin)))^™ 09:13, 22 August 2011 (UTC)

The domain of science is stuff which is, so you're implying that ethics and your faith aren't. I think you're wrong, although I could be. --Schroedinger's dog (talk) 12:42, 22 August 2011 (UTC)

The domain of science is stuff which is... - at least two things obviously not part of the domain of science: mathematics (science uses mathematics, but neither is part of the other), philosophy (the domain of discourse which paragraph belongs to). History isn't part of science, even if it sometimes uses science as input. Same goes for literature. All these things are studies of "stuff which is". And, if these are real and valid disciplines, separate and distinct from the natural sciences (albeit interacting with them to differing degrees), maybe ethics or theological could be such disciplines also? (((Zack Martin)))^™ 13:43, 22 August 2011 (UTC)

Mathematics isn't science? History isn't science? Again, what a deep insight, especially for mathematicians and historicians. Go and tell them.

To the extent that claims about existing stuff are made, all the things you named are science. Even theology constructs hypotheses, e. g. the hypothesis that the world was created by some kind of god. The hypotheses religion constructs are just generally not verifiable nor falsifiable, and therefore as worthless for gaining insight about the world as pure fiction. --Schroedinger's dog (talk) 13:58, 22 August 2011 (UTC)

I don't think many mathematicians would claim that mathematics is a science in the sense that the natural sciences are. Mathematics is deductive, the natural sciences are inductive. Part of the problem here, is the multiple/changing meanings of "science" - the original meaning, of a field of human knowledge, and the contemporary meaning, referring primarily to the natural sciences. You mentioned you are not a native English speaker - maybe the cognate of "science" in your native language has a different distribution of meaning to English.

Similar comments about history - it is not science, because its methods are very different from the natural sciences.

Theology is a science in the original sense of "science", but not in the contemporary sense. Its not just about forming hypothesises, its also how you test them. Goldbach's conjecture is a mathematical hypothesis, but it does not belong to science, since it cannot be tested empirically. Many mathematical conjectures, we have no idea of whether they are verifiable or falsifiable - both are equivalent to a proof existing - often we have no idea whether any proof exists waiting to be discovered, or if the conjecture is e.g. independent of our axioms, or unprovable due to Godel's theorems, or maybe a proof exists but it is too long/complicated for any human mathematician to ever discover or understand it, or so on.... (((Zack Martin)))^™ 14:06, 22 August 2011 (UTC)

So, basically, we can't prove anything so my ideas about giant bats are just as valid as mathematics. QED. You're totally correct, except the bat has meat balls and noodly appendages. --Schroedinger's dog (talk) 00:50, 23 August 2011 (UTC)

No, I never said we can't prove anything. Obviously we can prove things mathematically; science does not deal in absolute proofs, but in finding the most likely (but not necessarily correct) explanation given the evidence available. But one can't use scientific methods to find mathematical truth, nor can one use purely mathematical methods to find scientific truth (certainly mathematical methods are useful in finding scientific truth, but never by themselves, only ever in combination with extramathematical methods). There are different types of truths, and each type of truth has an appropriate method. (((Zack Martin)))^™ 09:46, 23 August 2011 (UTC)

Let me guess, there is one certain type of truth which includes giant bats in caves and an almighty god(dess) which creates infinite parallel universes in which all your wishes come true. The appropriate method for this type of truth is, obviously, gaining insight by faith and ethical correctness, which are both evidence.

I'll stop here and giggle a bit about this Poe guy. Have a nice time. --Schroedinger's dog 21:37, 24 August 2011 (UTC)

Well, I've never claimed that giant bats in caves is true, and those who have suggested that I have are quoting a single paragraph while ignoring the paragraph that comes immediately afterwards. With selective quoting you can achieve a lot of things. When, say, creationists, use selective quoting to justify their beliefs, the atheists are rushing to point it out. When one of their own number uses selective quoting, not a whisper from them will be heard. Which I think goes to show, that what they really value is not truth, it's simply being seen to win the debate. Point out all the mistakes of your opponents, then commit them all yourself and hope no one notices the hypocrisy.

I think there is a type of truth, which is objective ethics; and when we realise the fundamental unity of ethics and rationality, a door is opened for faith. But I am a minimalist when it comes to faith; I only use faith to justify broad, general principles (e.g. the good will always triumph in the end, the greatest good which is imaginable, possible given what we know to be, and highly unlikely to be defeated by further knowledge, must be true). From these broad principles which I accept by faith, I seek to justify my more particular doctrines; but it is entirely possible for someone to accept these basic principles, yet reject the reasoning which I build upon them. (((Zack Martin)))^™ 10:51, 25 August 2011 (UTC)

Anyone who can read can figure out for themselves whether discrediting your stuff as requires any selective quoting. --Schroedinger's dog 15:35, 26 August 2011 (UTC)