A Challenge to Richard Dawkins and the Atheists

[Immanuel Can]

Greta, you've nailed it down beautifully and not an emoji in sight, just straight forward rational analysis.

You know what a "cheerleader" is?

It's the blonde girl on the sidelines of the American football game, the girl with the big, white teeth the sparkly outfit and the fluffy pompoms. She's the one who's jumping around and screaming, "We're the best," when her team is down 48-0 with two minutes left in the game.

[Ginkgo]

I am of the opinion that ethics is grounded in human. Perhaps you can tell us why you think it can't.

Actually, I'm not quite sure what you're trying to convey there. "Grounded in human," you say? Do you mean "grounded by humans," or "grounded in the human," or...? Did you mistype?

And what would you mean by that, exactly?

The grounding of ethics in apriori principles. For example, Kantian ethics.

[Harbal]

You know what a "cheerleader" is?

I don't see what I do in my spare time has got to do with anything.

the girl with the big, white teeth

What colour do you prefer teeth to be?

and the fluffy pompoms.

Now who's being obscene?

She's the one who's jumping around and screaming, "We're the best,"

That's because, in this case, she is.

[Immanuel Can]

I am of the opinion that ethics is grounded in human. Perhaps you can tell us why you think it can't.

Actually, I'm not quite sure what you're trying to convey there. "Grounded in human," you say? Do you mean "grounded by humans," or "grounded in the human," or...? Did you mistype?

And what would you mean by that, exactly?

The grounding of ethics in apriori principles. For example, Kantian ethics.

What's "human" about the categorical imperative and the universalization principle?

[Greta]

The easiest description would be that most atheists simply don't care...

Atheists inform me that is an "apatheist." But of course, that's nonsense, because someone who's genuinely apathetic has no opinion at all. If you insist on it, though, you should respect their nomenclature: in which case my definition is no longer under contest.

No, I - an agnostic - Googled that term a few days ago and some atheists here decided they liked it.

Theists, by nature, are programmed to believe.

Yeah, that's what some Atheists believe; but they need to get out of the house more, and stop being such closed-minded weenies. There are plenty of thinking Theists around, and there always has been. In fact, the only way an Atheist could not know that is if they are simply not thinking.

I did not say theists do not think. Once theists MINDLESSLY fall into belief they can then be quite brilliant with their backwards rationalisations.

Belief is mindless. This is not a disparagement but a fact. I cannot mentally make myself believe something. I either do I don't. Ditto you. We can knowingly make true or untrue claims about what we believe and how much we believe, but the belief itself is automatic.

Again, the rationalisations come later. As things stand, I am simply not a believer. Not in anything. It's not my nature. I question everything and if there is something I have not questioned, that just means I'm yet to get to that one. There are many like me. We recognise that people far smarter than ourselves are putting their heads together to answer many of humanity's questions and we are curious to see what else they find, and to see how it tallies with our expectations.

As I say, belief and non belief are personality traits.

The simple fact is that morality predated religion by millions of years

Not true, actually. All known ancient societies were religious, and the sacred-profane distinction was controversially the very first moral distinction the human race ever made. If it wasn't the first, it was certainly the second, because all ancient societies have it.

Not true. We do not know the activities of the earliest humans.

Further, the roots of morality predate humanity, stemming from the rules devised by social animals. Take a human out of the group, completely isolated. What does morality mean then?

[Greta]

Greta, you've nailed it down beautifully and not an emoji in sight, just straight forward rational analysis.

You know what a "cheerleader" is?

It's the blonde girl on the sidelines of the American football game, the girl with the big, white teeth the sparkly outfit and the fluffy pompoms. She's the one who's jumping around and screaming, "We're the best," when her team is down 48-0 with two minutes left in the game.

I think you should delete this comment. A cheap and meaningless shot that reflects poorly on the writer.

[Ginkgo]

Actually, I'm not quite sure what you're trying to convey there. "Grounded in human," you say? Do you mean "grounded by humans," or "grounded in the human," or...? Did you mistype?

And what would you mean by that, exactly?

The grounding of ethics in apriori principles. For example, Kantian ethics.

What's "human" about the categorical imperative and the universalization principle?

Ethics is a product of the human mind. Kant's moral philosophy is grounded on inherent moral principles The categorical imperative is revealed to us though the operations of reason.

[Immanuel Can]

No, I - an agnostic - Googled that term a few days ago and some atheists here decided they liked it.

You're an agnostic? Oh. This thread isn't about you, then.

Belief is mindless.

Do you really believe that?

Of course it's not true. We use the word "belief" in many ways, from "I believe I'll have a chicken sandwich" to "I believe in unicorns," to "I believe the sun will come up tomorrow." Some beliefs are much better than others, and everybody believes things.

This is not a disparagement but a fact.

Well, no...as above. Your usage of the word "belief" is confining it in a way nobody else practices.

I cannot mentally make myself believe something. I either do I don't. Ditto you.

Not true. Because belief is probabilistic, not absolute, each one of us decides what he/she will believe...but none of us has 100% evidence for it.

Take the belief, "The sun will come up tomorrow." Even for that one, we can only be very highly probabilistically convinced it's true...because theoretically, a thermonuclear explosion could kill us all, so nobody would exist to observe the sun coming up tomorrow, or the Earth could be hit by a giant asteroid and so the sun wouldn't "come up" at all.

But we don't take those kinds of odds seriously. And that's fine. That's the nature of belief. It ought to make use of probabilities. But absolute, it never is.

...the belief itself is automatic.

Only to someone who isn't even realizing he's "believing" anything. To him, it just seems like it's reality, and beyond doubt. To anyone who understands epistemology, though, it's clear this is his fault for not thinking...the "belief" itself isn't at all "automatic." Rather, he's on auto-pilot mentally.

Again, the rationalisations come later.

That's sometimes true, but sometimes not. For example, you're attempting to convince me by reasoning (rationalizing) your beliefs to me. Are you convinced already that changing the minds of anyone who reads this is impossible? I doubt that. Sometimes the reasons precede the belief. In fact, that's the normal way things happen.

But yeah, there are exceptions.

As things stand, I am simply not a believer. Not in anything. It's not my nature. I question everything and if there is something I have not questioned, that just means I'm yet to get to that one.

Maybe now's the time.

The simple fact is that morality predated religion by millions of years

Not true, actually. All known ancient societies were religious, and the sacred-profane distinction was controversially the very first moral distinction the human race ever made. If it wasn't the first, it was certainly the second, because all ancient societies have it.

Not true. We do not know the activities of the earliest humans.

I would contest that; but we don't need to. Because if what you say is true -- if I grant it 100% -- then your statement is also undermined. How could you "know" as a "simple fact" that "morality predated religion" when you just claimed "we do not know the activities of the earliest humans"? You would have to say we know no such thing.

Further, the roots of morality predate humanity, stemming from the rules devised by social animals. Take a human out of the group, completely isolated. What does morality mean then?

Animals have no moral axioms at all, to our knowledge. A lion kills a gazelle...it's not murder. A lion even kills another lion...not murder either. Some animals eat their young...but I've yet to see one go to court for it. Animals do what animals do. "Right" and "wrong" are not concepts they have invented; far less something they passed on to us.

And that's the problem with Atheism, morally. It treats us all simply like animals.

[Immanuel Can]

Ethics is a product of the human mind.

What evidence convinces you of that? I'm assuming it's not just an Atheist presupposition you are floating there...it would have some evidence, no?

Kant's moral philosophy is grounded on inherent moral principles The categorical imperative is revealed to us though the operations of reason.

It's not, actually...which explains why it took us as long as Kant to discover it at all.

I could show you why that's wrong, but it's a big, big task, since Kant is quite complex. Instead, let me point you again to Joel Marks; or even better, to the recent critical work on Kant by Allen W. Wood, one of the leading scholars on Kant. He argues very convincingly that Kant had a teleological view of ethics, one derived from his Protestant pietistic background, and one that he took for granted. And you can really see Wood is right, if you consider Kant's #2 version of the categorical imperative, also called "The Humanity Formula." It presumes (without proof of any kind) that human beings have an unalienable right to be treated as "ends in themselves." This he clearly got from his Protestant suppositions, because nothing in Atheism or even a neutral secularism gives us a reason to know why it's true.

It's a nice idea...but Kant had no grounding for it. He never even tried, because he seemed to think everybody would just accept it. And maybe, in his society, most people would...maybe. But whatever the case, he never thought to say why we ought to believe it.

I wonder if he'd have made the same mistake if he lived in the 20th Century. Probably not. There are now far too many counter cases for us to believe him without question.

Anyway, Wood's your man. I doubt you can possibly believe that Kantianism is deducible from pure reason once you've read him. But see what you think.

[Harbal]

Ethics is a product of the human mind.

What evidence convinces you of that?

Something as self evident as that hardly requires any further evidence.

[Greta]

Belief is mindless.

Do you really believe that?

Of course it's not true. We use the word "belief" in many ways, from "I believe I'll have a chicken sandwich" to "I believe in unicorns," to "I believe the sun will come up tomorrow." Some beliefs are much better than others, and everybody believes things.

Well played

I should have said I don't tend to consciously believe in things. As you picked up, I too, mindlessly believe in things.

Why don't I believe in God? I find the anthropomorphism terribly unlikely. As for the pantheistic and panentheistic versions, I don't know, hence agnosticism. I cannot make myself believe in those more logical versions, though, even if I find the idea appealing. I simply don't know and nor does anyone else. Dogs don't know either, and the difference between our relative levels of ignorance may be less than we imagine.

I cannot mentally make myself believe something. I either do I don't. Ditto you.

Not true. Because belief is probabilistic, not absolute, each one of us decides what he/she will believe...but none of us has 100% evidence for it.

Take the belief, "The sun will come up tomorrow." Even for that one, we can only be very highly probabilistically convinced it's true...because theoretically, a thermonuclear explosion could kill us all, so nobody would exist to observe the sun coming up tomorrow, or the Earth could be hit by a giant asteroid and so the sun wouldn't "come up" at all.

But we don't take those kinds of odds seriously. And that's fine. That's the nature of belief. It ought to make use of probabilities. But absolute, it never is.

I take your point, though that raises a question. What of your belief? Did you consciously sit down and decide that, all in all, the idiot goat herders of the middle east during the Iron Age actually got it right while cultures in other places and times all got it wrong?

Is your belief conscious, Immanuel? Were you raised in a religious family and/or community?

...the belief itself is automatic.

Only to someone who isn't even realizing he's "believing" anything. To him, it just seems like it's reality, and beyond doubt. To anyone who understands epistemology, though, it's clear this is his fault for not thinking...the "belief" itself isn't at all "automatic." Rather, he's on auto-pilot mentally.

Could you parse the difference between auto-pilot and automatic. They strike me as synonyms.

Again, the rationalisations come later.

That's sometimes true, but sometimes not. For example, you're attempting to convince me by reasoning (rationalizing) your beliefs to me. Are you convinced already that changing the minds of anyone who reads this is impossible? I doubt that. Sometimes the reasons precede the belief. In fact, that's the normal way things happen.

But yeah, there are exceptions.

I don't think it through that much - much more automatic It never occurs to me that I might change someone's views. For me the aim and challenge is to comprehend what's being said and articulating my internal/logical response.

Greta: Further, the roots of morality predate humanity, stemming from the rules devised by social animals. Take a human out of the group, completely isolated. What does morality mean then?

Animals have no moral axioms at all, to our knowledge. A lion kills a gazelle...it's not murder. A lion even kills another lion...not murder either. Some animals eat their young...but I've yet to see one go to court for it. Animals do what animals do. "Right" and "wrong" are not concepts they have invented; far less something they passed on to us.

And that's the problem with Atheism, morally. It treats us all simply like animals.[/quote]
Then again, a human kills a lion and it's not murder either. Yet if a lion kills a lion there will be serious repercussions unless the killer is very dominant or well networked. Just as in human society.

Remember - social animals. You are aware of the Capuchin monkey fairness experiment?

[vegetariantaxidermy]

Belief is mindless.

Do you really believe that?

Of course it's not true. We use the word "belief" in many ways, from "I believe I'll have a chicken sandwich" to "I believe in unicorns," to "I believe the sun will come up tomorrow." Some beliefs are much better than others, and everybody believes things.

Well played

I should have said I don't tend to consciously believe in things. As you picked up, I too, mindlessly believe in things.

Why don't I believe in God? I find the anthropomorphism terribly unlikely. As for the pantheistic and panentheistic versions, I don't know, hence agnosticism. I cannot make myself believe in those more logical versions, though, even if I find the idea appealing. I simply don't know and nor does anyone else. Dogs don't know either, and the difference between our relative levels of ignorance may be less than we imagine.

I cannot mentally make myself believe something. I either do I don't. Ditto you.

Not true. Because belief is probabilistic, not absolute, each one of us decides what he/she will believe...but none of us has 100% evidence for it.

Take the belief, "The sun will come up tomorrow." Even for that one, we can only be very highly probabilistically convinced it's true...because theoretically, a thermonuclear explosion could kill us all, so nobody would exist to observe the sun coming up tomorrow, or the Earth could be hit by a giant asteroid and so the sun wouldn't "come up" at all.

But we don't take those kinds of odds seriously. And that's fine. That's the nature of belief. It ought to make use of probabilities. But absolute, it never is.

I take your point, though that raises a question. What of your belief? Did you consciously sit down and decide that, all in all, the idiot goat herders of the middle east during the Iron Age actually got it right while cultures in other places and times all got it wrong?

Is your belief conscious, Immanuel? Were you raised in a religious family and/or community?

...the belief itself is automatic.

Only to someone who isn't even realizing he's "believing" anything. To him, it just seems like it's reality, and beyond doubt. To anyone who understands epistemology, though, it's clear this is his fault for not thinking...the "belief" itself isn't at all "automatic." Rather, he's on auto-pilot mentally.

Could you parse the difference between auto-pilot and automatic. They strike me as synonyms.

Again, the rationalisations come later.

That's sometimes true, but sometimes not. For example, you're attempting to convince me by reasoning (rationalizing) your beliefs to me. Are you convinced already that changing the minds of anyone who reads this is impossible? I doubt that. Sometimes the reasons precede the belief. In fact, that's the normal way things happen.

But yeah, there are exceptions.

I don't think it through that much - much more automatic It never occurs to me that I might change someone's views. For me the aim and challenge is to comprehend what's being said and articulating my internal/logical response.

Greta: Further, the roots of morality predate humanity, stemming from the rules devised by social animals. Take a human out of the group, completely isolated. What does morality mean then?

Animals have no moral axioms at all, to our knowledge. A lion kills a gazelle...it's not murder. A lion even kills another lion...not murder either. Some animals eat their young...but I've yet to see one go to court for it. Animals do what animals do. "Right" and "wrong" are not concepts they have invented; far less something they passed on to us.

"I believe I'll have a chicken sandwich" to "I believe in unicorns,"

Not well played. He's using two completely different meanings for 'believe'. Most people would just say 'I think I'll have a chicken sandwich' (meaning they are thinking about it). And 'believing' the sun will come up the next day is hardly 'belief'. There's a fair amount of evidence to suggest it will.

[Immanuel Can]

Why don't I believe in God? I find the anthropomorphism terribly unlikely. As for the pantheistic and panentheistic versions, I don't know, hence agnosticism. I cannot make myself believe in those more logical versions, though, even if I find the idea appealing. I simply don't know and nor does anyone else. Dogs don't know either, and the difference between our relative levels of ignorance may be less than we imagine.

I understand that. I think that, left to our own devices, we'd all be equally blind on such an issue. And under those circumstances, we'd all really be rational to be agnostics...for how could we ever know anything about a Supreme Being that had made no gesture whatsoever to reveal Himself to us?

I take your point, though that raises a question. What of your belief? Did you consciously sit down and decide that, all in all, the idiot goat herders of the middle east during the Iron Age actually got it right while cultures in other places and times all got it wrong?

At one time, I don't know what I really believed. I'd heard of God, of course; but to tell the truth, it seemed rather distant and irrelevant from my lived experience. My mind changed in the second year of university. Thomas Hardy, the agnostic novelist, had taken me one step. But others...Hobbes, Nietzsche, and some of the early Postmodernists took me a second step. They got me sad enough to actually try to read my Bible...just one book of it, just once, for myself. I really didn't know when I started that I would find anything.

It was searching on my own that convinced me...much to my surprise...that there was something really ethically unique about Jesus Christ. That intrigued and startled me...but it put me down a path that's led me far.

Could you parse the difference between auto-pilot and automatic. They strike me as synonyms.

I guess I would say "automatic" is when something just happens, and one wasn't in control of it. "Auto-pilot" is when a person could be in control of what they're thinking, but either doesn't bother or doesn't want to be. I think "auto-pilot" is the condition to be avoided. The "automatic" can't be.

I don't think it through that much - much more automatic It never occurs to me that I might change someone's views. For me the aim and challenge is to comprehend what's being said and articulating my internal/logical response.

That's actually a pretty terrific goal. But they're not mutually exclusive, I think. To argue is to refine one's thinking. It's also to test just how good another person's idea is, so as to decide if it belongs as an addition to one's own catalogue of ideas. Those are harmonious goals, I think.

The problem is when personalities get involved. The ad hominem is the kryptonite of conversation.

Remember - social animals. You are aware of the Capuchin monkey fairness experiment?

Yes. But as Hume pointed out, that's only an "is," not an "ought." Capuchins "happen" to behave in a certain kind of way -- that does not suggest that they are "good" if they do, and "bad" if they do not. And it doesn't say they have an moral duty that means they "ought" to behave in what we humans regard as an even-handed or just way. They're Capuchins. Capuchins do what Capuchins do. That's all animal behaviourism can really say.

What makes us humans better is that we don't have to follow our programming. We don't have to be on "auto-pilot."

[Immanuel Can]

Something as self evident as that hardly requires any further evidence.

Here's a good axiom: when someone tells you something is "self-evident," you can be quite certain he knows it's not.

[thedoc]

Not true, actually. All known ancient societies were religious, and the sacred-profane distinction was controversially the very first moral distinction the human race ever made. If it wasn't the first, it was certainly the second, because all ancient societies have it.

Not true. We do not know the activities of the earliest humans.

Further, the roots of morality predate humanity, stemming from the rules devised by social animals. Take a human out of the group, completely isolated. What does morality mean then?

Actually archaeologists have discovered evidence that points to the earliest humans having some religious beliefs. Animals have been accepted as having no morality at all, so any supposition about animal morality is anthropomorphic at best.