Philosophy Now Forum

Immanuel Can wrote: ↑Fri Aug 12, 2022 9:20 pm

Harbal wrote: ↑Fri Aug 12, 2022 9:11 pm

Immanuel Can wrote: ↑Fri Aug 12, 2022 9:03 pm Actually, he doesn't "have to" anything.

That is true. He could choose to ignore the dictates of his conscience, just as you could choose to ignore those of God.

Yes. But whereas I would have to answer for doing so, he believes he will never have to answer for it.

So how do you know what he believes? And if you are entitled to determine what he believes, he can decide what you believe with just as much authority.

Immanuel Can wrote: ↑Fri Aug 12, 2022 1:49 pm

Astro Cat wrote: ↑Fri Aug 12, 2022 5:56 am In this case, the nonexistence of limitation is an impossible premise

Only given existence.

Ex post facto reasoning. It doesn't explain why the universe exists: it only describes a condition that pertains, once it does. Limitation doesn't "cause" existence. It's a condition under which the existence of finite, physical things takes place and manifests.

limitation does exist because it has to exist.

Circular. And obviously so. Limitation has to "exist" for things to "exist," and since they "exist" there has to be limitation. It goes around and around, like a dog chasing its tail. But it explains precisely nothing about what makes things exist.

You haven't understood the whole of the argument based on these responses. For one thing, the argument had nothing to do with why the physical cosmos exists and did not seek to explain that. Secondly, the argument did not use the existence of other things existing to posit the existence of limitation (from your line, "...and since they 'exist' there has to be limitation"). That is not the argument.

Let me try it this way. Let us say that P is the existence of all physical things, and let us suppose that ¬P. (I really wish we could use symbolic logic more easily on the boards, but anyway.)

Now, given that ¬P, is there P?

If not, why not? If not, it would mean that ¬P = ¬P. But that is identity, that is limitation. So even in the absence of all physical things, all of them, there would still be limitation. Colloquially there is still a "rule" in effect: if there aren't any physical things, then there aren't any physical things.

Suppose the proposed proposition, "if there aren't any physical things, then there are some physical things." It would have to be false, right? Well, in order for it to be false, there would have to be limitation: "no physical things" would have to be "no physical things" and not "some physical things."

There is also the proposition, "something can't begin to exist out of nothing." In order for that to be true, limitation has to exist: there is a "rule" there. If anything doesn't exist, not even "rules," then there is nothing preventing nothingness from becoming somethingness. Because if there are no rules, then why couldn't it?

Your intuition will insist that no-thing couldn't become something because it is no-thing. But you are perceiving limitations. Limitations are the "rules." If you don't have rules, then nothing can be something. You can't have no-thing without rules, and by reductio ad absurdum, you can't have absolute no-thing because there at least have to be rules. The absence of rules just entails their presence (e.g., if there are no rules, then there is no rule preventing there being a rule, so 'there are no rules' could never have been true).

So, to recap, limitation is necessary for existence and it is necessary even in the nonexistence of everything else. But limitation itself is necessary. Even the nonexistence of the physical universe and everything else follows "rules," and rules are just another way to say "limitation." If nonexistence is not existence, then that is a rule, so there was never true "nonexistence" in the first place since there would have to have still been a rule. If there are no rules, not even rules, then there would be rules (because there is no limitation preventing it from being there, and so we could never have had "no rules, not even rules" in the first place by reductio ad absurdum). None of this relies on the physical universe existing to obtain, in fact it can use positing the nonexistence of the physical universe for the sake of argument to do so.

One final way to make the argument very simply is to consider L is limitation and ask whether given ¬L there is L? Both "yes" and "no" answers entail L, so L is necessary.

Immanuel Can wrote: Absolutely not. It's the core meaning of "nothing." If it's any other concept, you're talking about "something."

But we can unpack it semantically. "Nothing" is "no-thing." The concept means the absence of any "things" in a given place. Thus, to wonder how "nothing" can "exist" is to ask a nonsense question.

When I said "nothing exists" I didn't mean that no-thing is something that exists. That's why I said this is "semantics." So for instance if I'm looking for something I left in my car and it's not there, I might remark to my friend, "nothing was in there." I don't mean "nothing" is a thing that I found in my car. I mean that I found the absence of things in my car. It's just the way that people speak. So saying "if nothing exists..." isn't saying there's something called "nothing" that positively exists, it's saying the absence of things that exist.

"There was nothing there" is a very, very common phrase, and it doesn't denote nothing being a something, so I don't know if I'm going to try not using it as I did in the first paragraph, it's going to be too easy to slip back into using it. Hopefully you can just understand what I mean when I say it.

If I say "suppose nothing exists," it is exactly the same thing as saying "suppose that for all things that might exist, that they don't exist."

Immanuel Can wrote: No, not the Renaissance. After Bacon, after there was such a thing as "the scientific method," which is the real birth of "science" as we now understand it.

Astro Cat wrote:I wouldn't share such a view if that's what you mean. While true that the Scientific Revolution saw the mechanization and itemization of scientific thinking, that doesn't mean that what people were doing in their attempts to understand the universe beforehand were strictly "not science."

Actually, it does. None of it was systematic, or processed "scientifically." Now, they could still have "inventions," or "chemicals," or "buildings," or other things such as that: but there was no discipline governing any of it. There was no way to rule out the "scientific" from the merely "traditional," or "superstitious," even, or the merely "technical" or "mechanical."

That the Scientific Revolution immediately followed on Bacon's theories was no accident. The scientific method showed immediate, spectacular results in harnessing the physical world. That never happend in China or India or Africa. Their later "revolutions" awaited the day when they began to adopt the Western methods of processing science. All their traditionalism, creativity, imagination, and making of things didn't amount to such a thing.

I think this is an impoverished view of the history of science, but I also don't care about the semantics of when we call careful thinking about the empirical universe "science" in history or not, so I'll just note that I understand what you're saying about the explicit definition and methodology of science being adopted and leave it at that.

Immanuel Can wrote:

Astro Cat wrote: 1) Skepticism of theism is not agnosticism,

Yeah, it is...analytically and definitionally. And since it's "just semantics," you won't mind conceding that.

As for Huxley, he was an avowed Atheist. But like so many smart men, he saw the folly of Atheism that could instantly defeat it -- it's lack of evidence warranting its claim -- and he sought to save it by agnosticizing part of the definition. This, however, is just a routine and transparent evasion of the problem: and it turns out to be self-defeating. For if Atheism means no more than "I don't know," it fails on the very thing the Atheist wants most out of it, namely, that it should grant him opportunity to argue that Theism is actually wrong. It turns his Atheism into a rather pathetic, wimpy, rearguard sort of claim, one that amounts to, "I don't believe, but I have no reason or evidence why you shouldn't."

So Huxley and his ilk, we can easily dispatch.

"Just semantics" doesn't mean conceding that your version is the correct one: it is to say "well, it's semantics, so we may have different ways of saying things."

I can acknowledge that some people use "agnostic" to merely mean "I don't know," and that's fine, I understand what they mean when they say it. Huxley, when he coined the term, meant that it would mean "I can't know," though. Now I don't always insist that words always mean what they originally meant, I am only saying some people use it in Huxley's way, especially in the agnostic and atheist philosophical communities. So we must all just understand what we mean when we say words.

I am not sure where you get your idea that "the very thing the atheist wants most out of it... [is] opportunity to argue that theism is actually wrong." That's quite a strange thing to think. Most people that are not theists -- whom I shall call atheists, as that is how a lot of us use the term -- simply do not care about theism beyond knowing they aren't convinced by it. Their main concern is not "arguing that theism is actually wrong." A common occurrence is that someone is going about their day, someone religious says something religious to them, and they indicate "I'm an atheist, actually" to try to just move the conversation away from religious things. The end (as far as they're concerned).

Atheism isn't defined by atheology. That some atheists do atheology means nothing for the rest of atheists.

I am also not sure why you think atheism has to be a claim that necessitates activism (you complain that otherwise, atheism would be "a rather pathetic, wimpy, rearguard sort of claim). Atheism is just a description. If a person is not a theist, for whatever reason, then they are some kind of atheist. That's it. It just describes whether they subscribe to a particular category of claims. Then, as I say somewhere below, it depends on which theistic beliefs are in question. But we'll get to that then.

Immanuel Can wrote:

Astro Cat wrote:2) Nothing about atheism, whether we mean a hard atheism or weak atheism, necessitates a materialist or physicalist ontology.

Nothing explicit, it's true. But as a corollary, it's inescapable. Unless you can show otherwise, of course...

It's not a corollary at all, nor inescapable. There are atheist Buddhists that believe in an entire spiritual religion that just doesn't incorporate any gods, so they are atheists. There are atheists that are into astrology, atheists that believe in ghosts, all kinds of New Age atheists that believe in all kinds of bullshit. They are still atheists. Atheists aren't immune to finger waggly mystical stuff, they just don't have active beliefs that any kind of theism is positively true. That's it. That's all that being an atheist means. It doesn't entail that there are no ghosts, or no souls, or no mind/body divide, or no whatever. The only thing it entails is a lack of affirmation that gods exist (at least).

If all that you know about S is that S is an atheist, you don't know that S is an ontological materialist. You don't know that S isn't a Buddhist, or a Taoist. You don't know that S doesn't believe in ghosts. You don't know that S doesn't believe in mystical connections between planets and the time of a person's birth. All that you know about S with the tidbit of information that S is an atheist is that S doesn't affirm any theistic propositions. You don't even know which theistic propositions S thinks is false vs. which ones S is simply skeptical about.

Immanuel Can wrote:

Astro Cat wrote:3) I'm not sure that you're using the word "metaphysical" right. Metaphysics doesn't mean "spooky things like ghosts and gods and souls." It means things like ontology, properties, causality, probability, and modality. Metaphysics fits on a shelf somewhere next to epistemology, ethics, and logic as a major "category" of philosophical thought.

I'm using it generally. I merely mean that anything undefined and unlimited by the strictly, crassly physical instantly becomes a problem for an Atheist. For his whole argument depends on asserting that the physical, the "scientific,"as he calls it, exhausts the totality of the "real." If it does not, and if there are real entities that strict Physicalism or Materialism cannot describe in their terms, then the possibility of other bases of real existence is opened up again...and he cannot have that, and be able to assert his cherished statement that Theism is "contrary to reason."

I think you mistake internet atheist activism from the likes of Richard Dawkins message boards (gross) or something for all of atheism as an epistemic and ontological position.

Atheism doesn't necessitate ontological materialism. There are atheists that can and do have entire spiritual systems of belief while still being atheists. There are some atheists that are Platonists, some that are mathematical realists (like myself), some that simply aren't convinced that the proposition "all things that exist have mass and spatiotemporal extension" is true, and so on.

Now we can say something like, "the overlap between atheists and skeptics are more likely [but not guaranteed] to be some kind of physicalist," and maybe that is true (is it, though? I don't even know what the demographics are like). But you're painting with too broad a brush with most of your comments about atheists.

Immanuel Can wrote:

Astro Cat wrote: 4) "Atheist" as a term is tricky because people have different modes of atheism towards different gods.

No, that's true but merely trivial. It's a secondary problem, one that only happens after Atheism has already been dismissed.

That is, the "Which god?" question only even can be asked if one has already granted that there is, or could be, A god. So if you assume that, Atheism's already been killed. It can no longer say people are unreasonable for believing in God.

The truth is that Atheism cannot include the existence of any gods. It wouldn't be Atheism if you were to say that Zeus was unreal, but Apollo was real, or Thor was, or Ahura Mazda was, but Allah not. One god -- of any description -- is enough to blow Atheism away. After that, we're dealing with some form of Theism...polytheism, monotheism, pantheism, panentheism...something like that. And the debate you mention in 4) can then appear. But what we certainly have, at that point, is not Atheism anymore.

If there are no gods (Atheism), you can't ask "What kind is He?"

It's not a secondary problem at all. As I said, I believe that a God that's defined as creating a 6,000 year old Earth and a literal global flood doesn't exist. That's strong atheism. However if God is just defined as omnipotent and omniscient and created the world, there's not enough there to make a positive argument against, so I just doubt it exists. That's weak atheism.

Nobody, for the most part, is JUST a strong atheist or JUST a weak atheist. A person is an atheist in general if they examine their beliefs and find that they don't accept any theistic propositions for whatever reason. But nobody is a "purely" strong atheist and nobody is a "purely" weak atheist. The reasons why they don't accept theistic propositions are going to differ.

Immanuel Can wrote: ↑Fri Aug 12, 2022 9:20 pm

Harbal wrote: ↑Fri Aug 12, 2022 9:11 pm

Immanuel Can wrote: ↑Fri Aug 12, 2022 9:03 pm Actually, he doesn't "have to" anything.

That is true. He could choose to ignore the dictates of his conscience, just as you could choose to ignore those of God.

Yes. But whereas I would have to answer for doing so, he believes he will never have to answer for it.

Of course, that he believes that doesn't mean he won't. It just means he doesn't know he will.

This cuts two ways, at least. This means that if he acts according to the dictates of his conscience, or perhaps even care about other people, he is not doing X because he will later 'have to answer for going against his conscience. Many theists on the other hand are arguing that they (and we) need to know we will be punished. Empathy, conscience are not enough. And further as individuals, it is an odd thing to take a high moral ground based in part on implicitly basing that higher ground on behaving well because they will get punished if they don't.

That doesnt' strike me as a higher moral ground. In fact, to whatever degree that 'having to answer for it' is a motive, it isn't moral ground at all.

Harbal wrote: ↑Fri Aug 12, 2022 9:29 pm

Immanuel Can wrote: ↑Fri Aug 12, 2022 9:20 pm

Harbal wrote: ↑Fri Aug 12, 2022 9:11 pm
That is true. He could choose to ignore the dictates of his conscience, just as you could choose to ignore those of God.

Yes. But whereas I would have to answer for doing so, he believes he will never have to answer for it.

So how do you know what he believes?

He's an Atheist. He's told me what he believes. Or rather, what he refuses to believe.

But either way, what he believes is not going to determine whether or not he's responsible before God. We all are. And if he's an Atheist, he's without excuse for being that (see Romans 1:20).

Immanuel Can wrote: ↑Fri Aug 12, 2022 10:16 pm
He's an Atheist. He's told me what he believes. Or rather, what he refuses to believe.

But either way, what he believes is not going to determine whether or not he's responsible before God. We all are. And if he's an Atheist, he's without excuse for being that (see Romans 1:20).

You know, whenever I get involved with you, IC, I always end up not knowing whether to laugh or cry.

Astro Cat wrote: ↑Fri Aug 12, 2022 9:50 pm Let me try it this way. Let us say that P is the existence of all physical things, and let us suppose that ¬P. (I really wish we could use symbolic logic more easily on the boards, but anyway.)

Now, given that ¬P, is there P?

Accepting your terms, this means "if not the existence of all physical things, are there all physical things?" And the answer, of course, is "no." But only because you've self-contradicted.

If not, why not? If not, it would mean that ¬P = ¬P.

"The non-existence of all things = the non-existence of all things?" Yes.

Something's wrong in the formulation of that argument. But I don't know how to fix it for you, because I'm not sure what you're trying to say.

Suppose the proposed proposition, "if there aren't any physical things, then there are some physical things." It would have to be false, right? Well, in order for it to be false, there would have to be limitation: "no physical things" would have to be "no physical things" and not "some physical things."

No, "nothing" does not specify. It's an utterly inclusive term. So it doesn't require the supposition of the existence of any things.

There is also the proposition, "something can't begin to exist out of nothing."

That's not a clear proposition. It would have to be specified further. Do you mean, "Nothing can start to be, that has no cause?" That would be right.

Your intuition will insist that no-thing couldn't become something because it is no-thing.

No, my intuition is not telling me that.

My intuition tells me that God can create ex nihilo. But I can go with you this far: that if there were no God, nothing could exist. That's true.

So, to recap, limitation is necessary for existence

But it is not necessary for the universe to exist. It is contingent, not necessary.

So for instance if I'm looking for something I left in my car and it's not there, I might remark to my friend, "nothing was in there." I don't mean "nothing" is a thing that I found in my car. I mean that I found the absence of things in my car.

Right.

Immanuel Can wrote: No, not the Renaissance. After Bacon, after there was such a thing as "the scientific method," which is the real birth of "science" as we now understand it.

Astro Cat wrote:I wouldn't share such a view if that's what you mean. While true that the Scientific Revolution saw the mechanization and itemization of scientific thinking, that doesn't mean that what people were doing in their attempts to understand the universe beforehand were strictly "not science."

Actually, it does. None of it was systematic, or processed "scientifically." Now, they could still have "inventions," or "chemicals," or "buildings," or other things such as that: but there was no discipline governing any of it. There was no way to rule out the "scientific" from the merely "traditional," or "superstitious," even, or the merely "technical" or "mechanical."

That the Scientific Revolution immediately followed on Bacon's theories was no accident. The scientific method showed immediate, spectacular results in harnessing the physical world. That never happend in China or India or Africa. Their later "revolutions" awaited the day when they began to adopt the Western methods of processing science. All their traditionalism, creativity, imagination, and making of things didn't amount to such a thing.

I think this is an impoverished view of the history of science,

I don't. I think it's basic.

I can acknowledge that some people use "agnostic" to merely mean "I don't know," and that's fine, I understand what they mean when they say it.

Well, that's literally, analytically, exactly what it means. It's "a-" the Greek particle of negation, and "gnosis," the Greek word for knowledge. It means "don't know."

Huxley, when he coined the term, meant that it would mean "I can't know," though.

Huxley was overrreaching.

"I don't know," doesn't imply, "You can't know." He was just wrong, as he often was.

But it's okay: he knows better now.

I am not sure where you get your idea that "the very thing the atheist wants most out of it... [is] opportunity to argue that theism is actually wrong."

Let's suppose it's not true, then. Then the Atheist is only speaking about himself, saying, "I don't happen to believe in God or gods." But that would be unimportant to anyone else but him, and would be utterly devoid of implications for others. It doesn't mean, "You can't believe in God," or "You shouldn't believe in God," or "It's irrational to believe in God." It just means that one little man has not (yet) found a reason to believe there's a God.

Big deal.

But I don't think that's enough for most Atheists; do you?

But their Atheism still has massive problems even in that weak, merely personal form. For it fails to realize the possibility of new information that could change that view. And it still means they're making a positive claim of non-existence on no adequate evidentiary basis.

So what have they got now? Atheism means only "I don't happen to believe right now, but later I might, and you're not wrong if you do, and my skepticism is non-evidentiary."

Do you now think that's enough for most Atheists?

I am also not sure why you think atheism has to be a claim that necessitates activism (you complain that otherwise, atheism would be "a rather pathetic, wimpy, rearguard sort of claim).

"Activism"? No, I don't think it requires anything. But it's "wimpy" by virtue of having absolutely no implications for anyone else. It's like saying, "I have a stone in my shoe." That's their problem; nobody else needs to care.

But again, do you think that's what Atheists really mean?

Immanuel Can wrote:

Astro Cat wrote:2) Nothing about atheism, whether we mean a hard atheism or weak atheism, necessitates a materialist or physicalist ontology.

Nothing explicit, it's true. But as a corollary, it's inescapable. Unless you can show otherwise, of course...

It's not a corollary at all, nor inescapable. There are atheist Buddhists that believe in an entire spiritual religion that just doesn't incorporate any gods, so they are atheists.

Go to Myanmar. Then tell me Buddhism isn't religious.

It's only Westernized "Beatles buddhism," the lame cousin of real Buddhism, that fits that description.

There are atheists that are into astrology,

Yes, I have met one.

Isn't it remarkable, that when a man stops believing in God, he doesn't start believing in nothing; he starts believing in practically anything.f

But astrology presupposes a meaning-filled astrological universe. And that opens the door to God or gods again, because that wouldn't be the case by accident.

...all kinds of New Age atheists that believe in all kinds of bullshit. They are still atheists.

Yep, there you go. When a person throws out God, they become a fool for all sorts of things.

Nowadays, Marxism is the big one.

Immanuel Can wrote:

Astro Cat wrote:3) I'm not sure that you're using the word "metaphysical" right. Metaphysics doesn't mean "spooky things like ghosts and gods and souls." It means things like ontology, properties, causality, probability, and modality. Metaphysics fits on a shelf somewhere next to epistemology, ethics, and logic as a major "category" of philosophical thought.

I'm using it generally. I merely mean that anything undefined and unlimited by the strictly, crassly physical instantly becomes a problem for an Atheist. For his whole argument depends on asserting that the physical, the "scientific,"as he calls it, exhausts the totality of the "real." If it does not, and if there are real entities that strict Physicalism or Materialism cannot describe in their terms, then the possibility of other bases of real existence is opened up again...and he cannot have that, and be able to assert his cherished statement that Theism is "contrary to reason."

I think you mistake internet atheist activism from the likes of Richard Dawkins message boards (gross) or something for all of atheism as an epistemic and ontological position.

Atheism is neither. It has no epistemology. And it has only an anti-ontological claim. But it requires support from other ideologies, like Naturalism, Physicalism or Materialism.

Or, an Atheist can be irrational with that. And as you point out, many are.

But I'm not talking about the statistical sociology of Atheists: I'm talking about the logic of their claim. In other words, I'm not debating all the irrational positions Atheists DO take; I'm talking about what rationalizes with the basic claim requisite to being an Atheist itself.

Immanuel Can wrote:

Astro Cat wrote: 4) "Atheist" as a term is tricky because people have different modes of atheism towards different gods.

No, that's true but merely trivial. It's a secondary problem, one that only happens after Atheism has already been dismissed.

That is, the "Which god?" question only even can be asked if one has already granted that there is, or could be, A god. So if you assume that, Atheism's already been killed. It can no longer say people are unreasonable for believing in God.

The truth is that Atheism cannot include the existence of any gods. It wouldn't be Atheism if you were to say that Zeus was unreal, but Apollo was real, or Thor was, or Ahura Mazda was, but Allah not. One god -- of any description -- is enough to blow Atheism away. After that, we're dealing with some form of Theism...polytheism, monotheism, pantheism, panentheism...something like that. And the debate you mention in 4) can then appear. But what we certainly have, at that point, is not Atheism anymore.

If there are no gods (Atheism), you can't ask "What kind is He?"

It's not a secondary problem at all.

Yes, it is. If there are no gods, then it just goes away.

You can't have a "what kind of car should I drive" problem if there are no cars.

Harbal wrote: ↑Fri Aug 12, 2022 10:41 pm

Immanuel Can wrote: ↑Fri Aug 12, 2022 10:16 pm
He's an Atheist. He's told me what he believes. Or rather, what he refuses to believe.

But either way, what he believes is not going to determine whether or not he's responsible before God. We all are. And if he's an Atheist, he's without excuse for being that (see Romans 1:20).

You know, whenever I get involved with you, IC, I always end up not knowing whether to laugh or cry.

Well, we'll see which you should have done, I guess.

Because if you're right, neither of us will ever know. But if I'm right, we'll both know. I'm trying to make sure you don't find out in a way you don't want to.

Immanuel Can wrote: ↑Fri Aug 12, 2022 10:55 pm

Because if you're right, neither of us will ever know. But if I'm right, we'll both know. I'm trying to make sure you don't find out in a way you don't want to.

Don't worry about me, I've already booked my ticket south.

Immanuel Can wrote: ↑Fri Aug 12, 2022 10:55 pm Well, we'll see which you should have done, I guess.

Because if you're right, neither of us will ever know. But if I'm right, we'll both know. I'm trying to make sure you don't find out in a way you don't want to.

You both could be wrong. Perhaps he's heading north and you're not.

Harbal wrote: ↑Fri Aug 12, 2022 10:59 pm

Immanuel Can wrote: ↑Fri Aug 12, 2022 10:55 pm

Because if you're right, neither of us will ever know. But if I'm right, we'll both know. I'm trying to make sure you don't find out in a way you don't want to.

Don't worry about me, I've already booked my ticket south.

That's up to you.

Immanuel Can wrote: ↑Fri Aug 12, 2022 11:22 pm
That's up to you.

Okay, what shall I do if I change my mind, and require saving?

Harbal wrote: ↑Fri Aug 12, 2022 11:28 pm

Immanuel Can wrote: ↑Fri Aug 12, 2022 11:22 pm
That's up to you.

Okay, what shall I do if I change my mind, and require saving?

Well, start with that intuition you had earlier, that things in your earlier life maybe weren't what you wish now they had been. Decide whether or not you really think that, and whether or not that's indicative of a serious problem you wish you could deal with. Or is it just "water under the bridge." That'd be phase 1.

Immanuel Can wrote: ↑Fri Aug 12, 2022 10:55 pm

Harbal wrote: ↑Fri Aug 12, 2022 10:41 pm

Immanuel Can wrote: ↑Fri Aug 12, 2022 10:16 pm
He's an Atheist. He's told me what he believes. Or rather, what he refuses to believe.

But either way, what he believes is not going to determine whether or not he's responsible before God. We all are. And if he's an Atheist, he's without excuse for being that (see Romans 1:20).

You know, whenever I get involved with you, IC, I always end up not knowing whether to laugh or cry.

Well, we'll see which you should have done, I guess.

Because if you're right, neither of us will ever know. But if I'm right, we'll both know. I'm trying to make sure you don't find out in a way you don't want to.

Oh save us IC please save us!!!! Save us from what obviously is THE most evil entity in existence.............GOD!!!!

GOD is EVIL - just for suggesting the concept of burning in hell for eternity.

So who is the biggest sinner - the creator God or that which God created, wo/man?

The question was rhetorical - answer - GOD is the biggest sinner in the universe... purely for suggesting such a concept as hell.

Immanuel Can wrote: ↑Fri Aug 12, 2022 10:53 pm Accepting your terms, this means "if not the existence of all physical things, are there all physical things?" And the answer, of course, is "no." But only because you've self-contradicted.

Astro Cat wrote:If not, why not? If not, it would mean that ¬P = ¬P.

"The non-existence of all things = the non-existence of all things?" Yes.

Something's wrong in the formulation of that argument. But I don't know how to fix it for you, because I'm not sure what you're trying to say.

Ok, I'm just going to try saying this completely colloquially, because it is a pretty opaque concept to try to talk about.

So, what I'm trying to say is that there have to be rules (and this is a very colloquial term for limitation, but easier to digest). In order for nothing to be nothing (to not be anything), rather than something, that's a rule: otherwise nothing could be something at the same time and in the same respect. But this is all very familiar, this is just identity and excluded middle: nothing = nothing, and nothing ¬= something at the same time and in the same respect.

But this is a contradiction: nothing isn't nothing if there's a rule! So the intuition that you might be missing, or the thing you might not be thinking about, is the ontological quality of the rule itself. Why would nothing be nothing and not something? There's a "somethingness" to that fact. If there were nothing, not even rules, then there would be no "rule" that nothing couldn't be something. Yet we will insist that nothing has to be nothing. So there has to be a rule.

Yet if there is a rule, nothingness is impossible because there's still at least one thing: the rule that would have to exist in order for nothing to be nothing (and not something). So the supposition that there could be nothing self-contradicts.

Nothing about this demonstrates why there is a physical universe, I don't want you to walk away thinking that's what I'm saying. All that I'm saying is that there have to be rules, even if there is nothing else. Even in the absence of all material things, the absence of any other things, there would be rules, because if there weren't, then there would still be rules (proposing rules' absence just entails their presence).

Now, understand that by "rules" I'm talking about limitation. If we try to imagine limitation not existing, in other words, we find that limitation still applies in its proposed absence (in order for ¬Ǝx to not be Ǝx, there has to be a "rule" -- limitation). This is incorrigibility. If limitation's proposed absence entails its presence, then it is incorrigible and necessary.

We can do this piecemeal and ask "does the absence of materiality entail materiality?" The answer is no, it does not. Consider that M is the existence of any possible material thing, and ¬ƎM. Now ¬ƎM = ¬ƎM would be the case comfortably without implying anything material exists, there is no contradiction. So we can posit the nonexistence of material things without any kind of problem at all.

The problem comes in if we try to ask "does the absence of anything at all entail the presence of anything at all?" and yes, yes it does. When we posit the absence of literally anything, we find that something must still be the case (there must still be a rule: at least that nothing isn't identical to somethingness). And there's something ontological about that. It's not material, but it is ontological. And it's because limitation is "something." Limitation must exist, because its absence entails its existence and so the absence of it self-refutes. This is not circular reasoning, it's transcendental argument using reductio ad absurdum.

Immanuel Can wrote:

Astro Cat wrote:Suppose the proposed proposition, "if there aren't any physical things, then there are some physical things." It would have to be false, right? Well, in order for it to be false, there would have to be limitation: "no physical things" would have to be "no physical things" and not "some physical things."

No, "nothing" does not specify. It's an utterly inclusive term. So it doesn't require the supposition of the existence of any things.

Yes, but that misses the point: why wouldn't there be any physical things if there were no physical things?

Because something can't come from nothing on its own, right? That is limitation: nothing is limited to being nothing, limited from being something. A "rule" exists.

If you wanted something like "true nothingness," then nothing of that sort would mean there aren't even any rules. But if there are no rules, then there could be rules: why couldn't there be, unless there were a rule?

It sounds silly when spoken of colloquially, but I think that's the way to get there. There's a "somethingness" to rules -- to limitation. You can't have the nonexistence of limitation because it just entails the existence of limitation to try. That's incorrigibility. "True nothingness" is not possible because it would still be limited, and limitation is more than "true nothingness." "True nothingness" is a nonsense utterance, in other words: it self-refutes. Limitation is necessary.

Immanuel Can wrote:

Astro Cat wrote:So, to recap, limitation is necessary for existence

But it is not necessary for the universe to exist. It is contingent, not necessary.

Huh? Limitation is necessary, period -- whether a physical cosmos exists or not. It is certainly necessary for a physical cosmos to exist, but it's also necessary even if a physical cosmos does not exist.

Immanuel Can wrote:

Astro Cat wrote:I can acknowledge that some people use "agnostic" to merely mean "I don't know," and that's fine, I understand what they mean when they say it.

Well, that's literally, analytically, exactly what it means. It's "a-" the Greek particle of negation, and "gnosis," the Greek word for knowledge. It means "don't know."

If we want to play that game, the prefix of atheism is also a-, or "without," and theism comes from theos-ism, something like "god belief," so an atheist is "without god belief." Notice that's not the same as "belief in no-god."

Anyway this would all be the etymological fallacy if we cared about it, which I don't, just making the point.

I will continue to use "atheist" in the way that many philosophical atheists do, and that is to mean simply that someone is not a theist, whether for weak or strong reasons, and depending on the theistic beliefs in question. You may continue to use it only to refer to universal strong atheism if you like, of course: all that matters is that we know what we're saying when we say it. IC is not the arbiter of language any more than Cat is, and people use this term differently. I do tend to side with people that use terms to describe themselves over people that use terms to describe other people, though, when there is a semantic discrepancy: and many philosophical atheists do not use "atheist" to mean "universal strong atheism" in the way that you do.

Really though, I'm kind of contradicting myself: sometime earlier I said "I just use nontheist to avoid the baggage with the term," and that's probably still true. I'll probably still just say "nontheist." But that's because this semantic debate is such an old canard that it makes the eyes roll out of my head (no offense, lol).

Immanuel Can wrote:

Astro Cat wrote:I am not sure where you get your idea that "the very thing the atheist wants most out of it... [is] opportunity to argue that theism is actually wrong."

Let's suppose it's not true, then. Then the Atheist is only speaking about himself, saying, "I don't happen to believe in God or gods." But that would be unimportant to anyone else but him, and would be utterly devoid of implications for others. It doesn't mean, "You can't believe in God," or "You shouldn't believe in God," or "It's irrational to believe in God." It just means that one little man has not (yet) found a reason to believe there's a God.

Big deal.

But I don't think that's enough for most Atheists; do you?

Yeah -- it would be unimportant to anyone else besides themselves. And that is why I think you associate atheism with atheologists. Because the atheists that aren't activists aren't going to talk about their atheism for no reason, because they know nobody cares. So you mostly talk to the atheologist sort of atheist and maybe assume that's what atheism is.

But atheologists aren't the entirety of atheism, and it'd be silly to insist that we are.

Immanuel Can wrote:But their Atheism still has massive problems even in that weak, merely personal form. For it fails to realize the possibility of new information that could change that view. And it still means they're making a positive claim of non-existence on no adequate evidentiary basis.

So what have they got now? Atheism means only "I don't happen to believe right now, but later I might, and you're not wrong if you do, and my skepticism is non-evidentiary."

Do you now think that's enough for most Atheists?

Yeah. That's what most atheists are like. Atheologists -- those that actively engage in debate about theism -- are a subsection of atheists. A vast majority of atheists just don't beleive theism is true, possibly don't care about the issue, and don't engage like people such as myself do.

Now, I care about the debate -- to an extent. I'll engage with theists, I'll examine theistic arguments and make arguments that they are weak, incoherent, or whatever else. But that doesn't mean that this is a requisite for atheists. I think this is just the type of atheist you're used to dealing with. The average person on the street that shrugs and checks "nonreligious" on the census or whatever is the usual type of atheist.

Immanuel Can wrote:

Astro Cat wrote:It's not a corollary at all, nor inescapable. There are atheist Buddhists that believe in an entire spiritual religion that just doesn't incorporate any gods, so they are atheists.

Go to Myanmar. Then tell me Buddhism isn't religious.

It's only Westernized "Beatles buddhism," the lame cousin of real Buddhism, that fits that description.

You're conflating religiosity with theism. What I was saying is that some forms of Buddhism does not incorporate gods even while incorporating a whole religion and religious practice, sometimes including karma and afterlifes and mythical (but not diefic) creatures, and so on. That's still atheism because it doesn't include belief in gods. This is sheerly definitional. Same thing with some Taoists. I'm sure there are probably more, but those two spring to mind readily.

Some atheists are religious. That is just a fact. What no atheist is, after all, is a theist (which would be to affirm at least one theistic ontological proposition). Not all religions are theistic, ipso facto some religious people are atheists (if their religion doesn't include the existence of gods).

Immanuel Can wrote:

Astro Cat wrote:There are atheists that are into astrology,

Yes, I have met one.

Isn't it remarkable, that when a man stops believing in God, he doesn't start believing in nothing; he starts believing in practically anything.f

But astrology presupposes a meaning-filled astrological universe. And that opens the door to God or gods again, because that wouldn't be the case by accident.

Astro Cat wrote:...all kinds of New Age atheists that believe in all kinds of bullshit. They are still atheists.

Yep, there you go. When a person throws out God, they become a fool for all sorts of things.

Nowadays, Marxism is the big one.

Well, I've said it before and I'll say it again: humans are really, really bad at things like separating correlation from causation, and have really, really good imaginations. If you asked me, I'd surmise this is why many humans are theists, too

Immanuel Can wrote:

Astro Cat wrote: I think you mistake internet atheist activism from the likes of Richard Dawkins message boards (gross) or something for all of atheism as an epistemic and ontological position.

Atheism is neither. It has no epistemology. And it has only an anti-ontological claim. But it requires support from other ideologies, like Naturalism, Physicalism or Materialism.

Or, an Atheist can be irrational with that. And as you point out, many are.

But I'm not talking about the statistical sociology of Atheists: I'm talking about the logic of their claim. In other words, I'm not debating all the irrational positions Atheists DO take; I'm talking about what rationalizes with the basic claim requisite to being an Atheist itself.

Atheism still doesn't entail ontological physicalism/materialism. I don't think that everything that exists must have mass-energy and spatiotemporal extension: I am not an ontological materialist. Nothing about atheism would entail that I must be. So no, you can't make this claim that atheism entails it. It doesn't.

An atheist doesn't even have to name anything specific that they think exists which doesn't have mass-energy and spatio-temporal extension. They could just not believe that the proposition "All things that exist have mass-energy and spatio-temporal extension" is true. All it takes is to be skeptical of that claim, or a denial/rejection of that claim, to not be an ontological materialist. They could say "I don't know what it would be, but I have no reason to suppose that all existing things are material." It's as easy as that: they would not be an ontological materialist. Nothing about atheism entails that they must affirm that proposition. So it's just not true to assert that it does.

Immanuel Can wrote:Yes, it is. If there are no gods, then it just goes away.

You can't have a "what kind of car should I drive" problem if there are no cars.

I'm not sure I understand what you're saying here.

What I'm saying is that people generally aren't universal strong atheists or universal weak atheists. It generally depends on what kind of god is in question.

You can insist, as you seem to want to do, that "atheist" means "universal strong atheist" (as in, a person that positively affirms that all theistic propositions are false: all of them), but then atheists like myself can just shrug and say "yep, you're right, those people are screwy... but attacking that as if you're attacking real atheists out there in the world is sort of like attacking a straw man."

No serious person is a universal strong atheist. So you can define "atheism" to mean that if you want, but I don't understand why you'd want to do that when serious people out there use the word "atheist" differently. It's hard not to think the motive might be a little straw man-ish. I mean, we can poke fun at universal strong atheists all day if you want, but it's not going to do anything about more serious, philosophical atheism.

Immanuel Can wrote: ↑Sat Aug 13, 2022 2:55 am
Well, start with that intuition you had earlier, that things in your earlier life maybe weren't what you wish now they had been. Decide whether or not you really think that, and whether or not that's indicative of a serious problem you wish you could deal with. Or is it just "water under the bridge." That'd be phase 1.

The problem, if you could call it that, is that I do not like the person I used to be. The quality of my character, in some respects, was poor. I've changed over the years, particularly in the last ten or so, and I am quite a different person to the one I used to be. There's still room for improvement though. There are a few actual events in the past that I deeply regret, and remembering those things is a troubling experience for me. Other than that, the thought of the kind of person I used to be makes me feel uncomfortable in that it affects my sense of self esteem.

I wish, in a way, that all that wasn't there for me to have to live with, but, given that it is there, it is important to me that I live with it without trying to rationalise it into something more palatable. It isn't unbearable, and I don't need any help with it. There isn't really anything for God to do, as I would rather try to do what does need to be done myself. If God really is love and wisdom, and he is merciful, he isn't going to punish me for that.