Atheist Tactics that Work

[plumjam]

Measurable physiological changes when near the person you are "in love" with.
Objective third party observable changes in behavior.

from where do these measurable physiological changes and third party observations ultimately derive their validity?
from accepting the word of the subjects

What have you have just stated is specific to hedonism. Behavioral psychology and evolutionary psychology have put forward hypothesis as to the origin of morals.

ultimately morality is founded on emotions such as pity, compassion, love, hatred of injustice etc...
This is pretty clear. To realise this, try to imagine what a moral system without them would look like. It wouldn't be a moral system.

Utterly incorrect.

Utterly correct

 

[Suggestologist]

Seems like you've missed, or are avoiding, the points I made.

Like I said, I'm not interested in specific arguments in this particular thread. I'm interested only in tactics and arguments about tactics. All of the arguments and counterarguments on the existence and nonexistence of god, etc., are all over other sections of this forum.

Proof belongs to the realm of logic.
I assume you believe that people fall in love. If someone were to ask you whether you're currently in love, what evidence could you offer them apart from the evidence of your emotions?
So in certain situations emotion is the only, or the strongest, evidence for the existence of particular phenomena.
Also, ultimately, all systems of morality are founded on emotion.
If you aren't going to trust emotion then we can have no systems of morality.

I believe people feel they are in love.
I believe people feel loved.
I believe people feel religious.

The difference is that feeling religious implies some outside force: some god or spirit.
Love does not.

A feeling is a feeling. Some are well-founded, others are not.
I do agree that morality is emotion-based -- empathy-based, really. It does not imply a higher force. It's comes from an evolutionary reward for better survival tactics.

 

[Belz...]

from where do these measurable physiological changes and third party observations ultimately derive their validity?
from accepting the word of the subjects

From where does ANY observation come from ? From accepting the word of scientists and other people.

We can do this forever, Plum.

 

[plumjam]

That's precisely WHY we have double-blind tests, junior.

In double-blind tests you're still taking their word for it, Pops

 

[Belz...]

In double-blind tests you're still taking their word for it, Pops

Yeah, sure. Care to guess why the double-blind test makes that NOT a problem ?

 

[Belz...]

Opposition to godliness is atheism in profession and idolatry in practice. Atheism is so senseless and odious to mankind that it never had many professors - Sir Isaac Newton
"There is no better soporific and sedative than skepticism." -Nietzche

Wow! Historical characters endorsed theism! What a shock.

I guess I should convert now.

...Anyway.

 

[plumjam]

I believe people feel they are in love.
I believe people feel loved.
I believe people feel religious.

The difference is that feeling religious implies some outside force: some god or spirit.
Love does not.

It does, unless it's just loving yourself... which isn't really the accepted usage of the term.
If you love someone you're implying an outside force, an exterior agent - the force of that person's existence.

I do agree that morality is emotion-based -- empathy-based, really.

Good, others here don't.

It's comes from an evolutionary reward for better survival tactics.

well that's a huuuuuge assumption there.
if morality comes from an evolutionary reward for better survival tactics, assuming I'd get away with it, why don't I kill my 86 year old grandmother? she's of no survival-use to me or anyone. If I killed her I could take her resources to improve my chances of survival and reproduction.

 

[plumjam]

Yeah, sure. Care to guess why the double-blind test makes that NOT a problem ?

the problem still remains...
you're still relying on anecdotal evidence... double-blind testing or not

to put it simpler for you:

if you aren't willing to accept anecdotal/subjective evidence as valid then there's no point doing the double blind experiment, because the results are (on both sides) anecdotal/subjective.

 

[Suggestologist]

if morality comes from an evolutionary reward for better survival tactics, assuming I'd get away with it, why don't I kill my 86 year old grandmother? she's of no survival-use to me or anyone. If I killed her I could take her resources to improve my chances of survival and reproduction.

Because you have an emotional attachment to her.

Or if you don't, other people did to their relatives, and made laws to reflect that.

Or, they saw their own future, and want to be treated a certain way when they get to be that age. Again, they made laws to reflect that. Benefiting their own future survival.

 

[plumjam]

From where does ANY observation come from ? From accepting the word of scientists and other people.

We can do this forever, Plum.

not ALL is taking people's word for it,.. you have your own experiences too, which we usually take as more reliable

such as spiritual experience, for example

 

[joobz]

A new medical test to improve headache treatment:

how would you empirically demonstrate that the subject was indeed suffering from a headache or cured of a headache without taking their word for it? (anecdotal, subjective)

is there some apparatus or method that can clearly demonstrate that a person is experiencing the sensation of a headache?

A device such as that does not exist, yet I do not see a reason to assume that such a device is impossible.

Now, there are tests that can be used to determine what the cause of the headache is. We don't have a test for all possible causes yet, but again, there is no reason to assume that such tests are impossible.

---
Now explain to me how,
Having a headache and god is real are related. Because your equivocation of these two events are causing you major problems.

We know that emotions and pain are real. Therefore, no one doubts.

Having a headache is possible
nor do we doubt that
Having a religious emotional experience is possible.
These two things are well within the realms of observable evidence. And experiments can be designed to prove these two items (as Belz has indicated)

However, Having a headache doesn't prove that the cause of the headache is a small invisble toad inside the person's ear. Secondary validation is needed to make such a claim valid.

Nor does having a religous emotional experience prove
the existence of a invisible magical being.

 

[plumjam]

Because you have an emotional attachment to her.

Or if you don't, other people did to their relatives, and made laws to reflect that.

Or, they saw their own future, and want to be treated a certain way when they get to be that age. Again, they made laws to reflect that. Benefiting their own future survival.

Nope.
You accepted that all moral systems are based on emotion/empathy.
If, as you argued, moral systems developed simply to improve survival... there's a contradiction here.

You were willing to accept emotion as the foundation of morality. Now you try to get out of the example by saying it's because I have an emotional attachment to my grandmother, as though that was invalid.

So you accepted that emotion was valid, and then you're saying it isn't.

Moral systems based on survival and resources are generally abhorrent. If we accept them we should just exterminate anyone who is a 'burden' on society. Mentally handicapped people, the very old, the terminally ill etc.. wouldn't stand much of a chance that way.

 

[Arkan_Wolfshade]

It's usually simpler to just point out the fallacies than explain what they mean at length.

Prexactly

from where do these measurable physiological changes and third party observations ultimately derive their validity?
from accepting the word of the subjects

Addressed by Belz...

ultimately morality is founded on emotions such as pity, compassion, love, hatred of injustice etc...
This is pretty clear. To realise this, try to imagine what a moral system without them would look like. It wouldn't be a moral system.


Utterly correct

How We Believe: Science, Skepticism, and the Search for God (second edition)

The Science of Good and Evil: Why People Cheat, Gossip, Care, Share, and Follow the Golden Rule

Do you have anything beyond your opinion to back your assertion?

 

[Mercutio]

We don't need to do this artificially, we actually just need to do this naturally. Eliciting emotions in other people isn't a difficult task. Movies and Books and people good at telling stories do it all the time. Being an emotionally expressive person helps a lot. I guess some people call it charisma or something.

I did not mean "artificially" to mean via drug or EMR or anything--but simply out of the original religious context, via some artifice. A natural situation would give us correlative evidence, but we would need to manipulate the situation (thus, artificial) in order to demonstrate causality.

Other than that, I agree.

 

[plumjam]

---

Now explain to me how,
Having a headache and god is real are related. Because your equivocation of these two events are causing you major problems.

the point is 'what is acceptable evidence?' with things like headaches science is ready to accept a person's experience as real (not because it wants to, but because it has no alternative)
with a person's spiritual experience science is not willing to accept this as evidence.
why the difference of treatment of the two?

We know that emotions and pain are real. Therefore, no one doubts.

No one doubts because they experience this internally, yes. Some people experience God internally. This is doubted not for any valid philosophical or rational reason... but merely because it happens to a lot fewer people than people who experience pain.

Having a headache is possible
nor do we doubt that
Having a religious emotional experience is possible.
These two things are well within the realms of observable evidence. And experiments can be designed to prove these two items (as Belz has indicated)

Experiencing a headache and a spiritual experience are not observable, except for the person experiencing them.

However, Having a headache doesn't prove that the cause of the headache is a small invisble toad inside the person's ear. Secondary validation is needed to make such a claim valid.

Nor does having a religous emotional experience prove
the existence of a invisible magical being.

In this regard spiritual experiences are much more complex than a headache.
Almost no one who has a headache imputes a supernatural origin to it, because the supernatural or spiritual is not a component of the experience.

Yet, in spiritual experience, the sense of another moral agency, or being, or expansion of consciousness.. these are very common components of the experience.

 

[Suggestologist]

Nope.
You accepted that all moral systems are based on emotion/empathy.
If, as you argued, moral systems developed simply to improve survival... there's a contradiction here.

You were willing to accept emotion as the foundation of morality. Now you try to get out of the example by saying it's because I have an emotional attachment to my grandmother, as though that was invalid.

I neither said it was valid nor invalid. I said that it likely is something you feel.

But I guess that's why babys are "cute" and old people are "ugly". Much easier to feel good emotions around a person who is "cute" than one who is "ugly" - unless you formed an emotional attachment to them through prior experience.

So you accepted that emotion was valid, and then you're saying it isn't.

Moral systems based on survival and resources are generally abhorrent. If we accept them we should just exterminate anyone who is a 'burden' on society. Mentally handicapped people, the very old, the terminally ill etc.. wouldn't stand much of a chance that way.

Well, people used to go off into the wilderness to die of exposure when they got old. Different societies handled it differently. It depends on the particular society's view of the world.

 

[plumjam]

Do you have anything beyond your opinion to back your assertion?

Which assertion?

 

[Mercutio]

from where do these measurable physiological changes and third party observations ultimately derive their validity?
from accepting the word of the subjects.

Interesting. The odd thing is that these individuals had to learn the label ("love") for what they are feeling, from people who had no access to these individuals' feelings. More, their teachers had no way of giving access to their own feelings to these individuals.

How, then, did they learn that what they were feeling was love, as opposed to excitement, lust, limerance, indigestion, or dozens of other possibilities?

From the behavior of many publicly observable examples.

You might think we should be better at judging our own feelings than our public behaviors--after all, we have direct access to our feelings. In point of fact, though, we have a very fuzzy grasp on these--even something like hunger can fool us (ever said "gee, I guess I wasn't as hungry as I thought", or "I guess I was hungrier than I thought"?).

Love has been studied scientifically for decades. There are some fairly sophisticated paper & pencil tests ("asking the word of the subjects", but with controls for lying or for self-aggrandizement), physiological measures, behavioral measures... Just because something feels as magical as love does, does not mean it is impossible to study scientifically.

 

[plumjam]

But I guess that's why babys are "cute" and old people are "ugly". Much easier to feel good emotions around a person who is "cute" than one who is "ugly" - unless you formed an emotional attachment to them through prior experience.

Little old ladies are cute too, yet utterly useless to me (in a survival sense). So are fluffy teddy bears, and pink ankle socks.

Well, people used to go off into the wilderness to die of exposure when they got old. Different societies handled it differently. It depends on the particular society's view of the world.

would you advocate the reintroduction of such a system?
I assume you wouldn't. So therefore you think our current morality is better. How did our better system of morality come into existence then? (If it's all just developed from survival concerns)

 

[Mercutio]

Experiencing a headache and a spiritual experience are not observable, except for the person experiencing them.

It is also impossible for anyone but the subject to know which lens makes his/her vision sharper, right? And yet, the tools of psychophysics allow us to systematically examine this perception, using signal detection theory, to give you a better lens prescription than you would choose for yourself. Systematic observation allows us the ability to account for bias. Double-blind testing serves a similar function in headache tests, and in some of the "replication of spiritual experience" experiments.

Of course, subjects could lie--but unless they are systematically able to lie differently in different conditions while blind to those conditions, all lying will do is increase variability.