Can atheists be rational? (not a parody thread)

[cj.23]

You have again evaded answering the question I actually asked you by re-defining the word Zeus. I've made it very clear that I am asking you about the Zeus that was worshipped, not your interpretation of that concept.

I've just lifted this as an example of the Zues I am talking about:



Do you believe in this Zeus?

I believe that Zeus was an interpretation of a divine reality. Do you believe in Darwin's theory of inheritance?

cj x

 

[JoeTheJuggler]

Well then. Is it rational to think the World was created Last Tuesday?

A simple "Yes" or "No" will do.

Yes entirely. As I said it's completely unfalsifiable - I believe Bertrand Russell himself cited it as an example of a rational but unreasonable belief

I think you're using an entirely different notion of "rational" at this point.

See blobru's long post on the other thread.

You're saying that when it's impossible to disprove something, it is rational to believe it.

For me, it's a matter of looking at the evidence. There's a great deal of evidence that the world is older than a week, and there's none whatsoever to support "Last Tuesdayism", so it is not rational to accept the last Tuesday claim.

 

[cj.23]

And further, cj, since you consider Zeus to be "a model of a deity that has been superseded by better models", do you believe that before this Zeus was superseded, he actually existed?

Yes of course, just as I believe Evolution occurred before Buffon, Lamarck, Darwin, Chambers and Wallace explored the issue.

cj x

 

[Darat]

I believe that Zeus was an interpretation of a divine reality. Do you believe in Darwin's theory of inheritance?

cj x

This is getting rather frustrating and I have no idea why it is proving so hard to get you to answer the question I've actually asked you; the evidence does not support a theory that you are backward at coming forward about your views.

Again do you believe in Zeus?

 

[cj.23]

I think you're using an entirely different notion of "rational" at this point.

See blobru's long post on the other thread.

You're saying that when it's impossible to disprove something, it is rational to believe it.

For me, it's a matter of looking at the evidence. There's a great deal of evidence that the world is older than a week, and there's none whatsoever to support "Last Tuesdayism", so it is not rational to accept the last Tuesday claim.

We can not logically show that all the evidence was not created with us Last Tuesday. The theory is underdetermined - either hypothesis is completely consistent with the evidence, and logically coherent, which is how rational is defined by many philosophers of science. I'll have a look at blobru's definition of rationality later - I thjnk we are using different definitions , yes. I find it rational to accept Last Tuesdayism as a premise - it is impossible to falsify, and yet as you say ther eis no evidence for it - but how can there be? (I'll dig out some of my earlier stuff on the logical implications of allowing a supernatural causation - my pet theory is that it would be completely indistinguishable from what we see, for various reasons, unless a supernatural entity WANTED to communicate it's existence - Karl Barth's position as well as I recall, in Church Dogmatics. Fun book btw, if you ever have a lot of time - it's six million words long. I read it for a bet as an (atheist) undergrad.

cj x

 

[Mojo]

And further, cj, since you consider Zeus to be "a model of a deity that has been superseded by better models", do you believe that before this Zeus was superseded, he actually existed?

Yes of course

Do you believe that this Zeus still exists?

If he does exist, is he currently a god or an invisible goblin? Was he a god or an invisible goblin before he was superseded?

 

[JoeTheJuggler]

I believe that Zeus was an interpretation of a divine reality.

But you reject the existence of thunderbolt hurling Zeus, the son of a Titan, etc.

You're saying that any God you don't accept was merely a murky image of the real one. Trouble is, part of the definition of these Gods is that they are NOT in fact other Gods--that's the way language works. Belief in many of them happened had the same time. Generally, the thinking was "our god can whip your god". And any of worshiper of Zeus would deny vehemently that Zeus was a distorted perception of some other God.

You, however, do not actually believe in the existence of Zeus. You believe that people who believed in Zeus were still somehow murkily perceiving a real god (yours).

Right?

What about Gods named in the Bible as enemies of the Judeo-Christian God? (I'm presuming that your God is some version of the Judeo-Christian God. If I'm wrong, please say so.) You know, the Gods that that God was jealous of? Were these Gods just distorted versions of himself?

 

[Mojo]

Do you believe in Darwin's theory of inheritance?

No. The hypothesis for inheritance that Darwin adhered to was completely wrong (and therefore a major problem as far as his theory of evolution by natural selection of inherited traits was concerned). But this is off-topic for this thread. Don't try to change the subject.

 

[PixyMisa]

I think you're using an entirely different notion of "rational" at this point.

You are wise, Grasshopper.

You're saying that when it's impossible to disprove something, it is rational to believe it.

That's what he appears to be saying.

Utility tells us that exactly the reverse is true. Unfalsifiable propositions have zero utility, so we discard them.

 

[cj.23]

This is getting rather frustrating and I have no idea why it is proving so hard to get you to answer the question I've actually asked you; the evidence does not support a theory that you are backward at coming forward about your views.

Again do you believe in Zeus?

Yes as i have said many times, , I believe the stories of Zeus point ot a reality. Hence my evolution analogy - I know Darwin's principle of inheritance was wrong, but it pointed to a reality, later better explained by Mendelian genetics. Ditto Zues - I think he was an early model of a divine reality. So no I don't believe that the accounts of Zeus were literally correct, any more than I belive god literally waklked in the Garden with Adam - I se both as human expressions of a divine reality. I really hope this clarifies, I'm not being deliberately obscurantist!
cj x

 

[MattusMaximus]

Is there any actual evidence of the FSM's divinity? Nope. Well if it exists I have never seen it. Pastafarians -take note! Show me your evidence!

If I claimed to have had a divine revelation from the Great Noodly One, would that qualify as evidence for the existence of the FSM, as you've defined it?

If so, note that I would be providing an un-testable, supernatural explanation for my revelatory experience. There are, of course, more naturalistic explanations - I was high on drugs, I was dreaming, or I was just lying - that are subject to being tested using methodological naturalism. This outlines the very point I've been attempting to get you to understand.

The thing is we do not have to retreat to the Dark Ages - we simply accept that evidence is evidence, and then ascribe a confidence level to it. People constantly tell me there is no evidence for people seeing ghosts - there is you know, mountains of it. I have, and for all I know you may have too. That is evidence. It does not mean we ave to assume "ghosts are dead people" - it could be argued as evidence for that, but it can also be arghued as evidence for hundreds of other hypotheses. We simply admit the existence of the evidence, the data of the raw experience, then start to try and work out what the best explantory model is to fit it.

Good point. I see what you're saying and I agree. IMO, the "ghost model" just doesn't stand up as providing any kind of decent explanation. That is why I've dismissed it.

The evidence for God exists - but we can interpret, and create models for evidence in many ways. I think the evidence for bigfoot (and I'm not expert) is insufficient to establish the reality of bigfoot, and better explained by other hypotheses. You feel the same about the God evidence.We both I suspect agree that the fossil record provides good evidence for Evolution - and so forth...

Sorry, CJ, but you are begging the question here. You claim that there is evidence for this thing called God. Is there evidence of something? Yes.

But what about your explanation that the thing behind this evidence is God? That is an open question, one which - for the reasons I've outlined above - is not open to scientific exploration. Hence, on the question of God, we are left with philosophical discourse as the only avenue of exploration.

Do you see my point?

 

[cj.23]

No. The hypothesis for inheritance that Darwin adhered to was completely wrong (and therefore a major problem as far as his theory of evolution by natural selection of inherited traits was concerned). But this is off-topic for this thread. Don't try to change the subject.

No I'm trying to change the subject - I'm making a direct analogy with the Zeus thing - see my reply to Darat. Obviously my example was less clear than I had hoped!

cj x

 

[Darat]

Yes .... no I don't believe that the accounts of Zeus were literally correct

...snip...
cj x

Can you see why you are not being exactly clear?

I'm going to take your second answer the "no" so we've now established that that you don't believe in Zeus, so back to the beginning of the thread - is your atheism rational?

 

[truethat]

Very good.....! Awaits response.

 

[cj.23]

Do you believe that this Zeus still exists?

If he does exist, is he currently a god or an invisible goblin? Was he a god or an invisible goblin before he was superseded?

The evidence for Zeus could arguably be either, but I would favour the God hypothesis for various reasons - which I will doubtless have to explain later in this thread. Gods are supernatural, outside of time/space, though some like Zeus and my God are both immanent and transcendent - invisible goblins if they exist are by definition naturalistic, entities within time/space, so clearly within the realm of the scrutiny of science, even given the working assumption of mentodological naturalism. If invisible goblins exist we will expect to find evidence fo rthem - and the evidence we do have for "invisibale goblins", aka one theory of poltergeists, is hotly contested - I'll discuss it later cheerfully enough...

cj x

 

[cj.23]

Can you see why you are not being exactly clear?

I'm going to take your second answer the "no" so we've now established that that you don't believe in Zeus, so back to the beginning of the thread - is your atheism rational?

I'm not discounting the God hypothesis though, or that human accounts of Zeus relate to a divine reality you see, juts as you are not discounting Evolution based on flaws in a primitive model thereof - Darwins... can you see my point? So I'm saying I'm not an atheist, in that I deny no Gods - I just think some models thereof are less accurate than others...

cj x

 

[truethat]

So basically you are stating that people didn't understand what they were experiencing and that they were sort of assigning the wrong definition to that God. So it wasn't Zeus it was something that they didn't understand.

In Hume’s essay The Natural History of Religion (1757) he accepts the idea of a supreme being. His critique of polytheism suggests that it in itself was a form of evolution. According to Hume, man in his unenlightened state was working his way up to comprehending the “real” God: the one true God of Christianity

To any one, who considers justly of the matter, it will appear, that the gods of all polytheists are no better than the elves or fairies of our ancestors, and merit as little any pious worship or veneration. These pretended religionists are really a kind of superstitious atheists, and acknowledge no being, that corresponds to our idea of a deity. No first principle of mind or thought: No supreme government and administration: No divine contrivance or intention in the fabric of the world. (Hume 1757)

Basically you are on the path to atheism. You are just several steps behind, though unfortunately you seem to think you are several steps ahead of the atheist.


Why is it, you wish to stop the logical conclusion, with your preferred version of God? Why not follow your conclusion all the way through to the end? Which is what I did in my first post to you?

If you can logically conclude that there was some sort of misunderstanding with regard to early God belief, and that those believers were sensing some sort of dual reality then why is it you can't look at modern believers the same way.

There is nothing to suggest that the awarness of this dual reality, is in any way connected to a supernatural being. Rather all evidence points to it being a misunderstanding of a state of mind. Temporal lobe activity creating a vivid "dual reality" to the person experiencing such a state. It is similar enough in people to be a shared experience.

The emotional response to this state of mind, is to experience it as a reality. The logical response is to objectively be aware of what is happening and to understand that just because it seems real, doesn't mean it is real.

The logical person who takes LSD and keep their wits about them during a "trip" will understand that what they are seeing is just messing around with the brain. A person who didn't understand that would think it was real.

 

[Mojo]

Gods are supernatural, outside of time/space, though some like Zeus and my God are both immanent and transcendent - invisible goblins if they exist are by definition naturalistic, entities within time/space, so clearly within the realm of the scrutiny of science, even given the working assumption of mentodological naturalism. If invisible goblins exist we will expect to find evidence fo rthem - and the evidence we do have for "invisibale goblins", aka one theory of poltergeists, is hotly contested - I'll discuss it later cheerfully enough...

How does the evidence for invisible goblins, which you defined as a "real cause" behind observations otherwise explained by a naturalistic hypothesis, differ from the evidence for "God", which you appear to be defining as a real (but undetectable) cause for the universe?

 

[MattusMaximus]

The evidence for Zeus could arguably be either, but I would favour the God hypothesis for various reasons - which I will doubtless have to explain later in this thread. Gods are supernatural, outside of time/space, though some like Zeus and my God are both immanent and transcendent - invisible goblins if they exist are by definition naturalistic, entities within time/space, so clearly within the realm of the scrutiny of science, even given the working assumption of mentodological naturalism. If invisible goblins exist we will expect to find evidence fo rthem - and the evidence we do have for "invisibale goblins", aka one theory of poltergeists, is hotly contested - I'll discuss it later cheerfully enough...

So, by that rationale, there should be an experiment that could test for the validity of Zeus and your God, right?

Please name these experiments. Outline them and the experimental protocols in detail. I'm very interested in seeing this.

Also, are you willing to go on the record - here and now - as stating the following:

1. That if the Zeus hypothesis is found to be valid, you will begin worshiping Zeus?

2. That if both hypotheses are found to be invalid, you would drop your religious beliefs altogether and embrace atheism?

I eagerly await your responses to these questions, CJ.

 

[Darat]

I'm not discounting the God hypothesis though, or that human accounts of Zeus relate to a divine reality you see, juts as you are not discounting Evolution based on flaws in a primitive model thereof - Darwins... can you see my point? So I'm saying I'm not an atheist, in that I deny no Gods - I just think some models thereof are less accurate than others...

cj x

I see your point but it's not my point or the point of my question to you.

You have now agreed that you do not believe in Zeus, how is your atheism rational?