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"Exclusive materialist atheist"

Which category fits you?

  • I am an atheist materialist who believes that non physically verifiable entities are impossible

    Votes: 25 25.0%

  • I am an atheist materialist who believes that non physically verifiable entities are not impossible

    Votes: 37 37.0%

  • I am an atheist non-materialist who believes that non physically verifiable entities are impossible

    Votes: 4 4.0%

  • I am an atheist non-materialist who believes that non physically verifiable entities are not impossi

    Votes: 2 2.0%

  • On Planet X, god is an atheist materialist who believes that he is impossible

    Votes: 32 32.0%
  • Total voters
    100
I'm not jumping into this can of worms. I jumped into it once, and I have now accepted that I don't have a clue about what material means, or physical for that matter, let alone physically verifiable. I will just remain with skeptical and pragmatical, thanks very much. I voted planet X.
 
I am an atheist materialist who believes that non physically verifiable entities are not impossible
 
martillo said:
Wow. At the moment there are 5 actual materialists here. A good definition is at http://www.internationalskeptics.com/forums/showthread.php?t=103081 courtesy of poster Robin. :)
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I dunno about that definition. Historically, a materialist would probably have to believe that gravity was caused by a particle (remember, no action at a distance), and that photons are particles with mass and volume. I suppose we can redefine the meaning of "material" to be "observable", but why not just give ourselves a new name?
 
sthomson said:
I dunno about that definition. Historically, a materialist would probably have to believe that gravity was caused by a particle (remember, no action at a distance), and that photons are particles with mass and volume. I suppose we can redefine the meaning of "material" to be "observable", but why not just give ourselves a new name?
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Because while photons have some different attributes to particles such as protons and electrons, they are essentially the same stuff, and are interconvertible within the limits of things like the laws of thermodynamics and CPT symmetry. That's all that materialism says: there's one sort of stuff, and it makes stars and rocks and us - and our conscious awareness is a product of the interactions of this non-conscious stuff.

QM (and Relativity too) unveiled some surprises about how this stuff behaves, but it doesn't change the meaning of materialism, so we don't need to change the name. Though "stuffism" does sound attractive. ;)
 
Darat said:
Well when someone can produced a coherent version of dualism (or trism etc.) I'll happily look at that until then I'm sticking with my belief that reality is just made of stuff.
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Exactly.

I'm an atheist, yes, however I'm a skeptic first and foremost. Atheism is just one possible conclusion one can arrive at using a skeptical methodology. All atheism means is that I don't believe in any worshiped beings called gods. More specifically in my case, I have my own ideas about what gods, souls, angels, and demons are, which as you might suspect are in complete conflict with the theistic worldview. To put it another way, I reject the theistic definitions of god and the gods.

What does god mean to me? God is creation itself, not the creator. Gods are people. You are god, I am god; we are all gods in the sense that we are each responsible for shaping our world and how we see it. God represents the best and the worst that humanity is capable of. Angels and demons are people as well, representing the sides opposite the line between good and evil drawn down the middle of each of us. Souls are one and the same as our minds, and our minds are simply a subset of the physical workings of our material brains. There is nothing supernatural, because nothing supernatural is necessary.

As a skeptic, I believe only so far as there is evidence to show me. I reject absolute certainty, and I remain open to the possibility that I may be wrong. Being wrong, after all, means learning something new. I wouldn't assert that there isn't something more out there in the universe that is beyond our comprehension. In fact, I would say that there are such things, given that we have only explored an infinitesimal percentage of the universe. If however we were to discover or encounter such an entity one day, I believe the most reasonable thing to do would be to learn as much as we can about it, and possibly from it. Not get on our knees and start sending up worship and prayers.
 
I am a materialist nihilit.

There is no evidence for anything outside of materialism, there is no evidence for any gods or other hokum.

It is possible, just not likely at this point.
 
I voted 1.

If souls, gods, God, demons etc exist and even if they are not physical they are presumed to have causal power over physical objects and therefore would be at least potentially physically verifiable.
 
I no a pigeon, why you tryin' put a hole aroun' me

Can't I just be an Atheist and leave it at that.
Is there a Atheist code like the Furcode or something I could just apend it to my sig, then the theists would no what type of ebul skwryl yiffer they are talking to.
 
I’m definitely an atheist (or rather an ‘a-care-ist’ – if there is a Controlling Intelligence in any meaningful sense Its motives are likely to be so alien to me that there’s no point me worrying about whether I’m asserting my belief in It often enough, or doing so on the right day in the right building with the right group of people, or doing stuff with my penis of which It disapproves etc. etc. so basically **** that noise).

2nd half is a tad trickier, though. I’m a limited organism, a collection of chemicals come together, as far as I can tell, via a partially random (and let’s not have that conversation now) process that allows them to perpetuate their collective existence successfully in a particular, limited and, from a cosmic perspective, incredibly rare environment. It seems rather unlikely that everything that goes on in the universe would be in principle physically intelligible to me.
 
I find it intriguing that plumjam claims every atheist he knows here fits his definition of an exclusive materialist, when in fact only one in five of the respondents voted for that.
 
Seismosaurus said:
I find it intriguing that plumjam claims every atheist he knows here fits his definition of an exclusive materialist, when in fact only one in five of the respondents voted for that.
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Well, according to Martillo that just means we're not materialists.
 
At this time, 13 Physicalists/Materialists; two Idealists (besides me, since I didn't vote), and 49 (what I'd consider) Dualists.

Both the 13, and the 2, surprise me. :)
 
What always bothers me about these discussions is the simple fact that something that cannot be verified is, for all practical purposes, nonexistent. Believing in things that don't exist is generally a foolish and misguided way of going about your life, and I'm not sure why anyone gives credence to the concept.
 
Materialist, atheist, determinist. But if any reliable data come down the pike that seriously challenge those positions, I 'll look at them.
That's what we do on Planet X.
 
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