Philosophy Now Forum

The logical consequences of denying your atheism will be to get down on your knees and pray.

I'm 2 for 2 and runnin' strong.

The Inglorious One wrote:

uwot wrote:This looks like fun. Tell me, Inglorious One, just what are the logical consequences of my atheism that I deny?

Been said. I'm not gonna repeat myself.

I must have missed it. Could you point me to your argument, or at least summarise it?

Sadly, it went down with the thread Lacewing deleted. I can recapitulate it all though. Formidable memory...

Gustav Bjornstrand wrote:Sadly, it went down with the thread Lacewing deleted. I can recapitulate it all though. Formidable memory...

I'm agog, Gus.

uwot wrote:

The Inglorious One wrote:

uwot wrote:This looks like fun. Tell me, Inglorious One, just what are the logical consequences of my atheism that I deny?

Been said. I'm not gonna repeat myself.

I must have missed it. Could you point me to your argument, or at least summarise it?

Go to the bottom of page 2 of this thread. There's enough there.

The Inglorious One wrote:Go to the bottom of page 2 of this thread. There's enough there.

Do you mean this?

The Inglorious One wrote:It kills me to say this, but Hobbes is right about seeking our own purpose. But doing so without God in the mix is a pipe dream. It is antithetical to the human condition -- and there is real science to back up this claim. If you really don't care enough about life to delve deeply into it's biggest mysteries, then your existence is so dull, drab and meaningless that you might as well put a bullet in your brain.

Inglorious, you, like Gustav or any of us, speak only from your own perspective, complete with its own personal limitations and blindness. Projecting your own vividly-displayed behaviors and characteristics onto "atheists" isn't fooling anyone except maybe you. And to think that your perspective somehow uniquely reflects ultimate truth for and about all (and other people) is so far beyond foolish... it becomes pointless for other people to even engage with that intoxicated mentality, which I'm guessing is why most people typically don't, and which is why I'm moving on from this discussion now too. You and Gustav can keep each other stroked with your usual public display.

There's Lacewing's core 'argument' all over again.

• There is only 'perspective' but there is no higher and lower, no superior or inferior level of comprehension. We are flawed people and no one of us can make any level of accurate statement about anything. Essentially, there are no truths (nor Truths) to define.
• To seek for, to define, to value 'superior truths' must therefor be an erroneous project, the project of 'fools' ('so far beyond foolish' as to be incredibly, awesomely beyond mere foolish into a special ultrafoolish category, oh heck its really hard to explain!)
• It is impossible to define any 'ultimate truths', not in the spiritual sense nor in any practical sense nor in any area.
• We who know better understand that this is an 'intoxicated mentality'.

These are all positive declarations which require a position of 'judgment' and one who judges (in the sense of assessment'). The fact that judgment is carried out would seem to indicate the judgment is not only possible but that the use of it and its utility is here demonstrated.

These are flawed philosophical tenets, my charming thread deleter!

Previously, you indicated that we were being evolved or transformed by evolution, something to that effect. What is evolving us? What is transforming us? Toward and into what?

What are the intelligent beings on all the exo planets doing do you think ? Do you think they have God as well or do you think it is
something exclusive to our species ? Do we carry on moving the metaphysical goalposts after we have died or does it all finish here
and now ? Given that no one that is actually dead has ever complained about it I myself remain sceptical about any grand ambitions
of any one though to be fair absence of evidence is not evidence of absence. However still very much favour the pragmatic approach
for the very obvious reason that observation is the best one can go on and so it is arguably far superior to either philosophy or religion

Gustav Bjornstrand wrote:Previously, you indicated that we were being evolved or transformed by evolution, something to that effect. What is evolving us? What is transforming us? Toward and into what?

Clearly you don't know anything about evolving systems, Gustav, because you've completely missed the most significant feature about them. They are self-causal.

What are the intelligent beings on all the exo planets doing do you think ? Do you think they have God as well or do you think it is something exclusive to our species ?

What is curious to me, among this group of atheistic thinkers, is the near total lack of imagination. The question itself is offered at such a low magnitude. The question is itself an essay in (please excuse this word) stupidity. I don't mean to imply that you or anyone else is stupid - probably not - but it is a given that if God is universal spirit, or the entity responsible for creation, or indeed the possibility of creation and the author if existence itself, that the notion of divinity would be present in all living entities similar to us in intelligence and awareness. It also would seem probable that in any society or civilisation of such intelligent beings that they would go through similar processes of evolution in their conceptual structure, just as we note this in human cultures.

To appreciate the idea of God two things seem required: 1) Some sort of inner experience or intuitional link. One has to have had the sense or the experience, and something has to have been moved or activated on an inner plane because - obviously - the 'existence of God' is not verifable through testing reality in the same way that you might test a deposit for the presence of gold. An underatanding of divinity is an affair of consciousness, of awareness, of translation of sense or experience into symbols and language. You could not be so dense as to imagine it in any other way, or could you? Again, I mean you no offence, and yet your questions are questions out of a dense mind. There HAS to be an inner movement or awakening in order to HAVE the sense or the notion of divinity. Thereafter, the experience, rather impossible to explain and communicate, is symbolized in language or in some other way.

2) I would suggest to you, based on the low-level question that you ask, devoid of imaginative capacity (the question of a dullard, there is no other way to put it) that in order to be able to understand and to appreciate the higher aspect of what is attempted by referring to 'God' or divinity as a substructure or understructure to reality itself, and especially to our own human awareness, that your imaginative capability requires expansion, that much of it has to do with notions of and about both relatedness and connection, and also value. How can one entity, I will ask, be connected to another? How do you define and speak about, for example, the love of one person to another? How do you define this in purely materialist terms? But it is not only 'love' in its most exalted sense that might be referred to, but every other higher or supreme value. In all literature, art, poetry, music and dance it is ALWAYS the higher dimension of awareness that is expresseed, and it is always the case that it is this sense and this range of value that is expressed in religious writing, poetry, and scrpture.

Yet this seems to go over your head - that is, if I were to concoct an opinion on the basis of such a stupid question. What goes on in that consciousness of yours? I would ask? What kind of a person is there thinking? What do you *see* in your world? You see, I tend to think that not only is the so-called metaphysical or spiritual connection lost or broken when one cannot even imagine what it is like to imagine divinity - because I consider a metaphysical connection real and tangible in intangibility - but that so many other levels of valuation are affected. Generally, here on this forum, there is little expression of imagination, little range of thought, zero appreciation of beauty.

• "What sphinx of cement and aluminum based open their skulls and ate up their brains and imaginations?"

All you folks seem to do, and all that seems to interest you, is tearing down. If this weren't the case your writing would be different, of this I am sure.

However still very much favour the pragmatic approach for the very obvious reason that observation is the best one can go on and so it is arguably far superior to either philosophy or religion.

Observation of and measurement of the surrounding world of matter, energy and objects, I think it must be understood as a core datum, will not ever render to you an understanding of what thousands and thousands of years of experience have offered to those who have experimented in consciousness to achieve and experience an inner sense of 'what god means'. It is there, in symbolic form, intangibly, often poetically expressed in much writing on the subject, but moreover in music and in art. To understand that requires a shift or a development in the inner field of the inner man. There is no other way.

Geez. And people think I'm harsh for using the word "dimwit"?

The only difference is that you do it with style.

Gustav Bjornstrand wrote:
What is curious to me among this group of atheistic thinkers is the near total lack of imagination

Why should imagination play any part since as the name suggests it has zero bearing on what actually is true ? Furthermore
the Universe is not actually there for our benefit. Since our very existence is completely superfluous with regard to its own
We are just another species on the evolutionary chain passing through. The fact that we are the most complex ever to have
existed is of no consequence as we shall still become extinct like all the other species. So I do not need to invoke imaginary
beings to justify my existence or over come my fear of death. Imagination is of course a wonderful thing but is not required
for the formulation of a world view. As that should be firmly based on observational reality and nothing which contradicts it

I suggest that we need to linger awhile on the topic of 'imagination', as imagination has to do with being able to hold ideas or images or senses of relatedness and whole conceptual structures in one's consciousness! Without imagination, there is really no man. In order to be able to grasp and appreciate 'what is true' the imagination is crucial.

Our 'metaphysical dream of the world' is not a mystic phrase, it is something that each of us is actively engaged in. We actively hold to and 'imagine' a world.

In order to grasp the notion of divinity - I mean, if one desires to - requires a work of imagination.

You make a group of statements, radical assertions with a metaphysical base, and you state them nearly exactly as religionists state their dogmatic presuppositions, and yet you do not see that you are stating a group of choices about how to perceive.

More later. A group of Swedish ex-physicists, led by my fine self, at the very center of the World Navel in the Upper Peruvian Amazon, are going to injest ayahuasca and communicate with the Presiding God of the Universe, the Anaconda Spirit.

If we all get though it alive we should have oodles to report.