Is genuine debate between theists and atheists possible?
« on: 2006-12-26 00:06:07 »
The existence of this Church warms my heart, for it appears that among we atheists, some are finally accepting the idea that fire must be fought with fire.
Let me first, before I attempt to open a dialogue with y'all, describe myself, to give at least some idea of where I'm "coming from". I have a B.A. in philosophy (read: a very expensive piece of toilet paper) from the University of California, Santa Cruz. I'm 24, male, heterosexual, an ordained SubGenius minister (which allows me to adopt the humorous title of "Reverend" when it suits my purposes), and a staunch atheist.
I have come here seeking council, and I apologize profusely if I state or ask anything redundant (for what it's worth, I have at least searched for similar topics, and in cursory perusal found no directly relevant posts). The problem that vexes is me is this: is a genuine debate between a theist and an atheist possible?
After spending six years studying philosophy (the 4-year plan is overrated), I have come to only two conclusions. The first is that a truth cannot by itself compel a human mind to accept it as such, but can at the most only bring about the destruction of a mind that refuses to accept it. The second is that reason is merely a set of rules governing the procession from a set of assumed basic axiomatic statements to a set of derived statements; reason contains no rules for determining which set of basic axiomatic statements is the most effective to assume--only natural selection is capable of accomplishing this. I have observed time and again the futility of reason when an atheist confronts a theist and attempts a "conversion" (and vice versa). This I attribute to the fact that while both may be perfectly rational (in that they both accept the same principles of logical procession from axioms to derived statements), they disagree on the fundamental axioms from which rational thought should proceed.
In other words, what most (if not all) debates between theists and atheists amount to is merely a confrontation between mutually-exclusive axioms; since reason requires an assumed set of axioms to proceed, it appears to me that genuine debate between theists and atheists is impossible. Even showing a theist that their axioms are inconsistent with each other seems to fail, because even the concept of "consistency" appears axiom-dependent. What appears inconsistent to an atheist does not appear so to a theist, presumably because the axioms are already accepted and therefore "must" be consistent.
What I am seeking here among you Viriians is a perspective beyond my own. Do any of you feel that it is possible to have a genuine debate between a theist and an atheist that amounts to more than saying "my axioms are better than yours"? If so, how? If not, how can theists be dealt with? I certainly feel that theism, in all its varieties, is dangerous, destructive, and obsolete, and should--in the interest of the human species--be eliminated. In my younger and more idealistic days, I thought that rational discourse was the surest means to cure this plague that faces humankind. Now I am not nearly so sure. So what do y'all think?
I thank you for taking time to read the post of someone with no reputation.
Re:Is genuine debate between theists and atheists possible?
« Reply #1 on: 2006-12-26 22:03:50 »
Welcome, Perplextus, very interesting question.
I think it comes down to just one axiom that matters, and that is whether logical consistency is desirable or not in all matters pertaining to truth. I think that is the difference between rational and irrational, and between sense and nonsense. If the other person doesn't share that desire, then there is little use engaging them (except maybe for entertainment).
Every sane person adopts the rational axiom when it comes to matters like whether their spouse is cheating on them or when they are accused of a crime they didn't commit. They just abandon it when it comes to matters like religion which means that they have a double standard at best (and blatantly hypocritical at the worst). I think there is always hope that they can be shown that it generally undesirable to hold such a double standard. Unless and until you can reach a common understanding on that point you will very likely just be talking past each other.
Re:Is genuine debate between theists and atheists possible?
« Reply #2 on: 2006-12-27 18:07:29 »
Be very welcome, Perplextus.
Caution, the contents that follow are thought to be a realistic appraisal, but will likely be perceived as suffering from a surfeit of pessimism or even be seen as depressing and negative. As such it should probably be avoided by optimists, those with sensitive dispositions and people hoping to maintain unrealistic goals. On the other hand, it may just offer a peek into what I think we "ought to do" and why, and an explanation of why, despite what I see as our bleak outlook, I am not unhappy or even depressed (except on alternate Wednesdays).
Atheism is undoubtedly not just the only rational (and I don't mean rationalized) conclusion to come to in the light of what we know and think we know about our Universe, but it seems to me that it leads to eminently sensible decisions about life, how to live it and how best to interact with others to the benefit of all. However, atheism labors under the distinct disadvantage of butting heads with at least 40,000 years of religiosity, and very likely more; the last 1,600 or so against wickedly skilled memeticists.
I suggest that as a consequence of this, whether we use the language of philosophy, or the language of everyday life, our expressions, and thus much of the available modes of thought, are tainted through and through with the imputed acceptance of invisible and unprovable concepts and things. This panders massively to the theist. See [ Church of Virus BBS, Mailing List, Virus 2005, Weyken, a bright, shiny and needed word?, Reply #2 on: 2005-11-25, Hermit ] which I suggest says more or less the same as you did, only; I think appropriately; rather more generally.
Standing alone against this dominating tower of precedence, is the scientific method and the vocabulary and modus we are building up around the scientific method. The recent concepts and methods, drawn largely from Heisenberg and Popper, have provided us the tools to invert millennia of philosophic thought and to recognize that it is through recognizing the grey areas of our surroundings and sufficiently disproving the false, rather than the impossible task of proving the temporarily-sufficiently-true, which has lead to much of this progress. New vocabulary may help this process, for example, "agnosticism" and "weyken" are attempts to break out of the ongoing well-poisoning we drink from each tiome we discuss such issues. Unfortunately, agnosticism appears to have been so abused in its short existence that even people who call themselves agnostic tend to be confused as to what it really means - and ignorant of its origin in the scientific method of its day - while weyken is not yet widely known, although perhaps it - or some equivalent - eventually will be.
Fortunately, the scientific method, while far from foolproof ("fools can be so ingenious"), has the twin virtues of being self-correcting and having visibly improved the lot of mankind, four times over in the last hundred years, if you consider lifespans in the industrialized world. This opens the door to a wedge which ought to be compelling if only we had time to educate the great mass of mankind to these facts and sufficient awareness of the mental tools required to overcome the anguished hysterical rearguard defence of primitivism by the proponents of spirituality and all of its life-hating impoverishment of mankind. Unfortunately, realization of exactly how important this is and will be, appears confined to a small number of well educated people, and it may be too late in the cheap-fuel-availability based growth spurt we are coming to the end of, to change the outlook of mankind from considering only the few brief years that were our lot in all of the brutally nasty, religiously dominated past, to the perspective of centuries granted us by science and technology. This suggests a probable reversion to brutality and a resurgence of religiosity that will almost certainly follow the end of cheap fuel if we don't develop methods of benefiting from the much higher energy density available in space before we run out of cheap fuel.
If people were rational, this ought to be dominating and driving their every waking moment. Clearly it doesn't*, and the only rational conclusion to draw from this paradox is that we are not rational, no matter how much we tell ourselves that we want, or ought, to be. So imagining that our imaginary rationality can persuade other people who are clearly not just irrational but deluded is probably as delusional as the worst of the irrationally religious. This means that rather than asking if rational discourse is possible between atheist and theist, we should ask whether rational discourse is possible between atheists, be they never so close in their positions. I suspect that it isn't. Which is a very depressing kind of conclusion to be forced to, so we attempt to reject it.
Which is why I see little choice but to stubbornly continue to seek a possibly mythical personal rationality, and as part of that possibly futile and undoubtedly Sisyphean task, to attempt to find answers and arguments which might be helpful to myself and others whom I know and love, or at least am acquainted with and care for on the way. I find this a very rewarding process even though I don't know what the end will be, and even though reason tells me not to expect any end to be terribly good.
Kind Regards
Hermit*Atheists (and the atheists of the Church of Virus are no exception), like liberals everywhere, suffer from the problem of not being able to agree on any overriding goals no matter how trivial, because it is not a common cause that draws them together, but a common feeling of repression and rejection; along with the knowledge that things "ought to be better", coupled with an uncertainty of how to achieve that. Unfortunately, each and every one of us has our own ideas about how to implement "better", and worse, each of us has an individual sense of priority which differs from most others. As this intellectual soup is a much weaker motivation to cooperation than the shared compulsive delusions of the religious, and as every major social change in history has required a kernel of like minded people working together, I see major change driven by either atheism or liberalism as being unattainable in the brief period left to us in which to work. If we do manage to overcome the above, I suspect that David Lucifer's brilliant formulation of a compelling set of virtues and sins, compelling precisely because of their vagueness, which means that they can be accepted by most intelligent people, atheist and theist alike, as being applicable and sensible, will play a meaningful role in the process.
With or without religion, you would have good people doing good things and evil people doing evil things. But for good people to do evil things, that takes religion. - Steven Weinberg, 1999
Re:Is genuine debate between theists and atheists possible?
« Reply #3 on: 2006-12-28 07:43:00 »
Excellent responses, Mr. Lucifer and Mr. Hermit. Let me begin by addressing Mr. Lucifer, as that shall be shorter.
First, the desirability of logical consistency cannot be, IMHO as a philosopher, the one axiom that matters, because it is contingent on your definition of what is "logical". What is logically inconsistent under boolean logic is quite different from what is logically inconsistent under many of the alternative logics that have been developed, such as ternary logic, paraconsistent logic, or fuzzy logic. In some logics it is considered "consistent" for a proposition to be both true and false (though there is scant evidence that such logical systems have any practical value or even represent aspects of the phenomenological world). There is some evidence that ternary logic may have advantages over boolean logic, but that's not the point (and beyond my current area of education). I think it fair to say that both Theists and Atheists claim to desire logical consistency, but do not agree on what constitutes logical consistency. Theists seem to operate under some form of paraconsistent logic, such that any two statements are consistent if they are the "Word of God", regardless of whether they would contradict each other under boolean logic. Thus, in their minds (and from an objective perspective as well), their beliefs ARE logically-consistent...there is no "double standard" for them. Thus showing them that their beliefs are inconsistent under a different system of logic is no good. Likewise, it does THEM no good to show us that their beliefs ARE consistent under their system, since we use a differently-defined axiom of consistency. For this reason I find genuine debate impossible, and for this reason I seek alternative means of conversion. Do you find me mistaken?
Now, to Mr. Hermit: first, I ask you as a side-question, have you read "The Structure of Scientific Revolutions" by Thomas Kuhn? I find I agree more with his characterization of science than I do with Popper's, having studied both somewhat at length. Kuhn's is a short book and I'd do it an injustice to attempt paraphrasing.
At any rate, I absolutely ADORE the term "weyken"...I whole-heartedly agree that change in language is necessary to fully implement a change in thought-patterns. For my part, I shall attempt to spread "weyken" among my sphere of influence.
To address your question of whether rational discourse is possible between atheists, I can say frankly that I disagree with you that it is impossible. Difficult, yes, for it would involve the meticulous laying-out of the whole set of axioms defining rationality, and mutual agreement to accept those axioms during the debate. Both would have to agree on what grounds a claim should be accepted or rejected, and both would have to adhere strictly to those grounds. That is all reason is, a set of rules of determining truth-values. Of course, reason is only brought into play under very specific and strict circumstances. Even Bertrand Russell, the great logician, felt that reason was good for little else than intellectual games and contests, used more to dress up arguments to look more persuasive than to actually alter the convictions of an opponent. It COULD be a much more effective tool if people desired it to be; if implemented rigorously throughout a person's education from a very young age (in other words, instilled as a dogma), it could very well function as the de-facto tool for altering the convictions of others. Whether or not that would be desirable is, well, debatable.
Ultimately, then, I quite agree with you that reason has little utility beyond the internal workings of the mind. So what then, if anything, can we do against religious convictions? Is our only hope to await the process of natural selection to take its course and allow the flaws in theistic mindsets to eliminate those memes from society? To, so to speak, let the viruses kill their hosts and hope that we, the uninfected, might survive somehow? Or is there an active role we can take?
Thank you both for your responses and kind words, I look forward to a future of constructive discussion among you.
Re:Is genuine debate between theists and atheists possible?
« Reply #4 on: 2006-12-28 11:53:42 »
Dear Perplextus
The use of "Mr" is, I suggest, unnecessarily stiff and formal (*coughs* and possibly inaccurate. More information than is generally available here is required for a reliable determination of the appropriate honorific.). So you are invited to refer to me as Hermit; or that damned hermit; or that insufferable, stiff-necked hermit; and everyone here will know what you mean.
While dropping hints, Lucifer is probably reasonably familiar with alternative logics in the abstract (no matter how Boolean he sometimes appears), and with formal logics in the computational sense, although it sometimes seems to me that he doesn't always apply this knowledge in the real world of on-line discourse.
I am very familiar with Kuhn, but consider him largely descriptive, and pardon the pun, normative, as opposed to Heisenberg and Popper, whom I see as, in Kuhn's terminology, paradigm breaking. So while to my mind, Kuhn is critical to a comprehensive understanding of the modern scientific environment* (as are a whole lot of other people, Russell, von Neumann, Turing and Shannon, not least), he did not make it to my deliberately abbreviated acknowledgement of the upsetting of the Platonic applecart which is what I was intending to convey, rather than merely Wissenschaftphilosophie (no matter how inappropriate merely would normally be). This list may be informative of Virian opinions: Go here Vote, View and rate books, web sites, people, organizations and more. and then choose "person".
This is because, for a number of reasons, I'm tending towards a catastrophist perspective of the near future (See e.g. Kunstler's "The Long Emergency" which I recommend to get onto the same page as me (Currently available 2nd hand on Amazon for $8.30)), because while I'm not nearly as convinced as Kunstler that disaster is necessarily inescapable, I do think that the reign of GWB has made it a lot more likely, and am concerned that the religious majority will consistently make bad choices until disaster does become inescapable. This is largely because I see many of the genetic preprogrammed behaviors we display, a tendency to religiosity being one, as being inappropriate or even harmful to us in the coming post-industrial world. While incompatible, I see the Scylla of the preceding Charybdis as being the replacement of humans as the dominant intelligence by spirothetes as almost inevitable, and given that we have not yet found a non-evolutionary modus for dealing with other humans, I see no reason to hope that we should be dealt with differently by our spirothetic successor (or, somewhat less likely, successors). (See also http://www.churchofvirus.org/wiki/SpirothetesAndHumans an uncompleted work which relates to this aspect of this discussion, although it is worth noting that I have no more objection to this process than I do to the fact that Homo Heidelbergensis was replaced by Homo Sapiens).
I'm delighted to have you with us and hope that the relationship is a long and happy one.
Kind Regards
Hermit
*I also strongly dislike the post-modernists' tendency to translate the dialog of the normal scientific method into a paroxysm of relativism, a tendency which Kuhne, being a follower of the Vienna school, specifically rejected (in the fronts-piece to the 3rd edition). So I'm cautious of introducing him into an on-line environment where, few members having the necessary background information, the appreciation of such subtlety is often lacking and very difficult to convey (which is perhaps why it tends to be more of an issue in the social science curricula rather than in the faculties of the harder sciences).
**While I suspect you would have understood what I meant anyway, in the light of a previous misunderstanding on this list, let me make it abundantly clear that I mean "fear" in the sense of "anticipatory regret" and "regretful concern about", not as in "terror and panic".
With or without religion, you would have good people doing good things and evil people doing evil things. But for good people to do evil things, that takes religion. - Steven Weinberg, 1999
First, the desirability of logical consistency cannot be, IMHO as a philosopher, the one axiom that matters, because it is contingent on your definition of what is "logical". What is logically inconsistent under boolean logic is quite different from what is logically inconsistent under many of the alternative logics that have been developed, such as ternary logic, paraconsistent logic, or fuzzy logic. In some logics it is considered "consistent" for a proposition to be both true and false (though there is scant evidence that such logical systems have any practical value or even represent aspects of the phenomenological world). There is some evidence that ternary logic may have advantages over boolean logic, but that's not the point (and beyond my current area of education). I think it fair to say that both Theists and Atheists claim to desire logical consistency, but do not agree on what constitutes logical consistency. Theists seem to operate under some form of paraconsistent logic, such that any two statements are consistent if they are the "Word of God", regardless of whether they would contradict each other under boolean logic. Thus, in their minds (and from an objective perspective as well), their beliefs ARE logically-consistent...there is no "double standard" for them. Thus showing them that their beliefs are inconsistent under a different system of logic is no good. Likewise, it does THEM no good to show us that their beliefs ARE consistent under their system, since we use a differently-defined axiom of consistency. For this reason I find genuine debate impossible, and for this reason I seek alternative means of conversion. Do you find me mistaken?
I agree there are many other things to discuss (such as which system of logic is most applicable) but if you can't agree on the most fundamental step (the desiriablity of logical consistency) then I don't think much progress is possible. That's what I meant by most important, not a sufficient but a necessary condition.
I am familiar with many different systems of logic: propositional, predicate, modal, probabilistic. I just found an extensive list of non-standard logics on Peter Suber's* site. Personally I find fuzzy logic to be most useful for everyday reasoning, I implicitly assign a truth value between 0 (false) and 1 (true) to everyone's beliefs where the midway point 0.5 serves a dual-role of "don't know" and/or "don't care".
I would not consider "two statements are consistent if they are the 'word of god'" to be a kind of logic at all. Or if it is, then logical consistency can mean pretty much anything.
I don't agree that most theists desire logical consistency when it comes to religious matters. The vast majority are content to shrug and chalk it up to "mystery" when confronted with obvious inconsistencies. Some good Catholic friends of mine even admitted the difficulty of reconciling this in a heart-breaking xmas letter this year. Two months ago an unexpected pregnancy ended in tragedy when their child was born with a congenital defect and lived only 6 hours. The pain and suffering of this event extended well beyond the immediate family and I'm pretty damn sure that no one involved deserved that kind of punishment. Sure maybe it is part of "god's plan" or some other reason, but all possible explanations are different ways of resorting to ignorance which just means that it appears inconsistent and we don't know how to resolve the inconsistency and retain some cherished belief like some all-knowing, all-powerful being cares about us.
*Many of you will recognize Suber as inventor of nomic.
« Last Edit: 2006-12-28 14:58:40 by David Lucifer »
It's hard to engage in a logical debate with someone who embraces logical inconsistency with a Whitmanian verve (Do I contradict myself? Very well, then I contradict myself, I am large, I contain multitudes). This embracing of logical inconsistency, and even self-contradiction, as proof of religious fidelity to faith, dates back at least to Tertullian ("The Son of God was born: there is no shame, because it is shameful. And the Son of God died: it is wholly credible, because it is inappropriate. And, buried, He rose again: it is certain, because impossible"), and his paraphraser Irenaeus ("I believe because it is absurd"), and is contemporarily typified in the infamous fundy bumper sticker ("God said it, I believe it, and that settles it!")
The main characterisic of successfully indoctrinated dogma is its status as the sole source of the premises upon which all allowable logical calculations are based. Such people are not amenabe to rational persuasion from inside their dogma box; if they cannot be persuaded to leave its confines (and a great many cannot, precisely because their self-identities and sense of self-worth have been inextricably bound within it), the sweet voice of reason is met with the interlocutionary equivalent of a child yelling "LaLaLa!" while sticking its fingers firmly in its ears. After all, following the Great Commission, they're not supposed to learn anything from anyone else; only to do their Divinely commanded duty to teach everyone else about their thing (Go ye therefore and teach all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Ghost, that whosoever believeith in Him shall not perish, but have everlasting life").
Oh, well; trying to debate proudly impervious Christian ignorance is far preferable to the Islamicist alternative of being condemned, as an atheist, to death for blasphemy and/or apostasy, and being offered, at swordpoint, the choices of conversion or death (or of dhimmitude (a second-class serfic subcitizenship, complete with a jizya cash tribute to be annually paid), if you were formerly a Christian or a Jew, which, I assume, does not apply to many here). At least these days, thanks to their confrontation with modernity, and subsequent domestication of their Medieval forcing-you-for-your-soul's-own-good tendencies, via the Enlightenment, a confrontation with which the Islamicist world has yet to engage, and even explicitly rejects, Christians are mainly to be found on the persuasion side (even while they forclose themselves against persuasion from their own cherished convictions), and not on the coercion side (unlike Wahhab/Qutb-infected Al Qaedans).
Re:Is genuine debate between theists and atheists possible?
« Reply #7 on: 2006-12-28 16:28:00 »
[Lucifer] I am familiar with many different systems of logic
[Hermit cheers loudly for Lucifer] Whoopee! Thanks for confirming this, it makes clumsy circumlocutions unnecessary.
[Hermit] Aside to Lucifer: Many theorists and practitioners, myself included, have found that the use of a fuzzy range from -1 (proved false) through 0 (unknown) to 1 (proved true) to be much more useful than a range of 0 to 1, as it greatly simplifies the mapping of "conventional" operators to fuzzy notation, aside from the systematic benefits it offers (for example, if a 0 is present it is replicated (as it should be) when multiplying probabilities, if a negative is present, it changes the sign. Any even number of negatives in the same term then correctly invert back to a positive. Any uneven number yield a negative result. etc.)
With or without religion, you would have good people doing good things and evil people doing evil things. But for good people to do evil things, that takes religion. - Steven Weinberg, 1999
Re:Is genuine debate between theists and atheists possible?
« Reply #8 on: 2006-12-28 18:43:50 »
[Hermit cheers loudly for Lucifer] Whoopee! Thanks for confirming this, it makes clumsy circumlocutions unnecessary.
[Lucifer] I hope you don't mean to be that patronizing.
[Hermit] Aside to Lucifer: Many theorists and practitioners, myself included, have found that the use of a fuzzy range from -1 (proved false) through 0 (unknown) to 1 (proved true) to be much more useful than a range of 0 to 1, as it greatly simplifies the mapping of "conventional" operators to fuzzy notation, aside from the systematic benefits it offers (for example, if a 0 is present it is replicated (as it should be) when multiplying probabilities, if a negative is present, it changes the sign. Any even number of negatives in the same term then correctly invert back to a positive. Any uneven number yield a negative result. etc.)
[Lucifer] Do you have any examples? I don't mind switching back and forth between (-1,1) and (0,1) but I prefer (0,1) because it maps to probabilities.
Re:Is genuine debate between theists and atheists possible?
« Reply #9 on: 2006-12-28 23:16:33 »
So much.
First, to Hermit: I apologize if I applied the wrong honorific to you. I should know better than to assume. At your request I shall drop them; I felt formality to be appropriate given the disparity between our respective experience on this forum, but I will take your word that such formalities are unnecessary. Now I shall pause before addressing the rest of your points to address Lucifer and Salamantis.
To the two of you, I think you may have missed one of my attempts at a point, which is precisely that logical consistency can be defined arbitrarily, and it is only convention that dictates otherwise. I am currently a nominalist about logic, in that I do not weyken it applies to anything objective. According to my current state of understanding, it exists as a tool, and a tool of limited utility at that. It is a tool that is used and altered differently by all who lay their hands on it, and I consider that it is a mistake to dismiss the Theists as "illogical" because their reasoning is incompatible with our own (except in the cases mentioned by Lucifer of Theists that explicitly embrace illogic). I have scarcely met a Christian that does not consider him- or herself a reasonable person. Indeed, religion is perfectly consistent with itself, by definition; all teachings in scripture must be true, that is the first axiom of Christianity. From that, the definition of consistency is derived (tacitly, implictly--of course I admit no one has attempted to formulate a paraconsistent logic based on scripture). Most Theists would and do agree that logical consistency is desirable, and though they do not explicitly say so, I weyken that they are simply operating under a different definition of consistency.
Enough of that, however, for it is but a tangent to the matter at hand. We all agree that Theists and Atheists fundamentally disagree on some basic axioms of logic necessary for debate. It is neither here nor there to really figure out the nature of that disagreement, for this disagreemnt--by its very nature--cannot be solved by rational means. So what do we do?
Now let me engage Hermit's proposition that fear is a more powerful motivator than hope (or reason, presumably). Very well and good, I agree whole-heartedly. The problem at hand is that Theists simply aren't afraid of the same things we Atheists are. Try as we might, we can't make the true believers fear global warming, nuclear war, global pandemics, or any other worldly disasters. But I'm sure you already agree to that.
So, to put the trouble in a nutshell: Theists have a hope for something far greater than Atheism can offer (eternal life, eternal salvation), and fear nothing of this world. Their beliefs immunize them to our logic. What can we do to infect them? But wait. I'd like to start a new thread on this topic. Or has it been done? If it has, let me know and I'll search it out. If it has not, where should I post it?
-Perplextus
P.S. Hermit, I look forward to discussing spirothetes and our possible spirothetic future with you once I've read up more on the matter. And might I ask for some reading material on the ternary fuzzy logic you mention? Alas, my university seldom offers advanced logic classes and I've scarcely encountered detailed literature on the subject.
...So, to put the trouble in a nutshell: Theists have a hope for something far greater than Atheism can offer (eternal life, eternal salvation), and fear nothing of this world.
[Blunderov] May the slackness be with you.
Most theists seem very afraid of the idea that there may be people within the community who do not feel themselves bound by a moral absolute ie "god". To them, if there is no god then there is no policeman in the sky to prevent the world from descending into a Hyronymous Boschlike hell. To them, this is quite literally unthinkable.
There is a similar, although perhaps less erudite, discussion raging at
Tonio : In my view, "common ground" is only possible if all religious doctrines give up their claims to literal truth. Those doctrines try to define the world for people, interfering with science and rationality. when doctrines concern themselves solely with the purpose of life, instead of imposing a certain view of the world on beleivers, then we can start talking about "common ground."
To paraphrase Joseph Campbell, all religions are true in the metaphorical sense and false in the literal sense. Religious myths are metaphors designed to teach certain concepts and lessons. Here is Campbell: "The reference of the metaphor in religious traditions is to something transcendent that is not literally any thing. If you think that the metaphor is itself the reference, it would be like going to a restaurant, asking for the menu, seeing beefsteak written there, and starting to eat the menu."
Thoughtstream : "The very nature of faith and religion makes the whole question of truth moot. Hilariously so, though in a depressing fashion given the amount of ignorance that religion spawns and perpetuates in the world.
Truth is a thing sought, not created in the mind of someone who today would be relegated (even if wrongly) to a psychiatric institution. The more specific someone or group is regarding what they be to the answers to the kind of ultimate questions that philosophers largely agree are outside our epistemological limits (what we can know).
The success or failure of a religion depends not on its degree of truth, but rather on how successful it is at perpetuating itself. Religions are viruses, memes that, like genes, just try to spread. Look up the term 'jack-mormon' and the rules of who counts as technically Jewish and you will see."
Thoughtstream : "*Correction- should read: " the more specific... the kind of answers... the less likely they are to be true. A=A is true, and irrefutably so (even a god could not change that) but you cannot build much from there without making other axioms (math and logic require a few of these). Leibniz tried to build from A=A to a full system of philosophy and theology and failed.
Forgive my dual posts."
"Dialogue with mutual respect between parties are rare because of these requirements."
In all honesty, it's easier for a deeply committed Catholic, Muslim, Jew and Protestant to talk about religion and morals than it is for any of them to talk to an atheist - they all accept that the questions are meaningful, and have a general consensus on the type of evidence and reasoning that should be brought to bear.
Re:Is genuine debate between theists and atheists possible?
« Reply #11 on: 2006-12-29 15:35:19 »
Recently I've been finding out that atheists convincing theists is just about imposible. Atheists can't understand how Theists can think so irrationaly and Theist have had a certain way of thinking drilled into them by society and they don't want to become the outcasts of this majority group they feel sorry for Atheist, I've actually heard them say this on several occasions. They think Atheist will burn in hell, a civilization of evil underneath the crust of the Earth.
However I have heard stories of long serving christains and Fathers converting to Atheism, I think there is an autobiography about a guy who was christain for over 15 and then saw reason. Who knows how this happened with how stubborn they are.
On another note a theory I have about it is gathered from what I read in a book about psychology, it stated that the more people try to sway someone from their beleifs the tighter they hold on and the more desensitized they become to any arguments made against them. If this is true then by trying to convince Theists we are probably making it worse.
Re:Is genuine debate between theists and atheists possible?
« Reply #12 on: 2006-12-30 11:06:30 »
Bass- I think you have touched on a very good point: most Atheists do not understand how Theists think. This is a very pertinent problem rather infrequently adressed in the Atheist community. If we wish to have any hope of dissuading Theists from their socially-detrimental mind-sets, we shall have to, as a community, learn to understand the Theist view-point and treat it with some modicum of respect. All too frequently do I see Atheists off-handedly dismissing Theism as simply ridiculous (even Sam Harris could not veil his contempt in his widely-publicized "Why are Atheists so Angry?" debate). As contempitble as their position is, it does little good to our cause to take a patronizing and adversarial approach to the Theists. I weyken that your reference from the psychology literature is quite correct for the most part, in that direct attempts to rationally dissuade a person from his or her beliefs are almost certainly doomed to failure, regardless of how compelling the arguments may seem to those making them. From my perspective, it appearst that a better approach may be to develop a deeper and more sympathetic understanding of Theism, so that we can learn to exploit its own internal weaknesses. This is one of the reasons I am quick to defend Theism against those who wish to dismiss it as "logically inconsistent"; such a dismissal reveals a profound ignorance of the highly-developed (though bizarre and counter-intuitive) logical structure of most carefully-considered Theistic belief systems. Warped though they may be, most Theistic systems do manage internal consistency by arbitrarily redefining certain logical axioms, and it would perhaps behoove us to come to understand (and possibly even respect, at least to a degree) how they accomplish this in order to learn how to more effectively take them down. Perhaps we should take more seriously the metaphor of virology in seeking a cure for Theistic memes?
To the two of you, I think you may have missed one of my attempts at a point, which is precisely that logical consistency can be defined arbitrarily, and it is only convention that dictates otherwise. I am currently a nominalist about logic, in that I do not weyken it applies to anything objective. According to my current state of understanding, it exists as a tool, and a tool of limited utility at that. It is a tool that is used and altered differently by all who lay their hands on it, and I consider that it is a mistake to dismiss the Theists as "illogical" because their reasoning is incompatible with our own (except in the cases mentioned by Lucifer of Theists that explicitly embrace illogic).
I honestly don't understand your point here. Do you say the same thing about math? Is it arbitrary with no application to anything objective? Is it a mistake to dismiss the calculations of another group just because they have different arithmetic (say where the sum of 2 numbers is always 13)?
Bass- I think you have touched on a very good point: most Atheists do not understand how Theists think.
I bet most atheists were theists at one point and almost certainly most atheists were raised in theist families. Why do you think they don't understand how theists think?
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