The Oatmeal on religion

[ant]

Dexter, interbane, you need to stop being so angry and belligerent.

My screen smolders with your rage.

Do you have something intelligent to add or are you here just to dog-pile?

[Dexter]

I'm not sure your intellect is vigorous enough to define reality.., yours, mine, or anyone elses. Quite frankly, you aren't even in the ballpark with philosophers of old who were certain of only one thing - that they could be certain of NOTHING.

We get it - you despise the institution of religion.
Now go out into the real world and do something about it. I'd truly respect that more than I would the posting of cartoons of ridicule.

You're being a little baby so I know there's no point in discussion with you, but I find it entertaining.

Once again, you don't understand burden of proof. Do you believe the tenets of Islam, or a hundred other religions, even if they were not mutually contradictory? Of course not. They would have the burden of proof.

[johnson1010]

Here comes cranky ol' Ant with more scolding...

Tell us again how angry we are.

Tell us again how beligerent we are.

Tell us again what you see in the mirror.

[Chris OConnor]

Ant, I despise foolish thinking no matter how you wrap it. So yes I despise the institution of religion. But I also despise the fact that grown adults believe it is somehow more elite and intellectually sophisticated to say (and I hear this all the time), "I'm not religious. I don't belong to any church or attend any sort of church services. I'm spiritual. I believe in a higher power..." Equal nonsense. I say these people should join a church and hang out with their fellow mystics so that they get some benefits to their nutty and unsupported beliefs.

[Robert Tulip]

philosophers of old who were certain of only one thing - that they could be certain of NOTHING.

Hi ant, welcome back to the fray, I hope you are rested up and refreshed and ready to stick it to those dibbity atheists.

If I may correct you on your massive error that I quote here, you obviously are dreaming up your own fantasy philosophy, as the entire Platonic tradition of logic is based on certain knowledge. Logic rests on axioms, things so simple that we must assume them to be true without doubt. For Plato, his first axiom comes from the thought of an earlier philosopher by the name of Parmenides of Elea.

Parmenides held that we can be certain there is one reality. This is the logical axiom upon which Greek philosophy was based. It is the direct opposite of your ‘certainty of nothing’, which Parmenides castigates as the ‘way of seeming’ in contrast to the ‘way of truth’ that he personally recommends. Aristotle extended Parmenides’ axiom of the one by formulating the logical principle of non-contradiction, that a statement cannot be true and false. Modern science, including atheism, has a direct line of descent from this ancient logic, especially in the assumption that if a claim conflicts with abundant corroborated observation then the claim is false. That is why science rules out the supernatural and sees religious faith as delusional.

You seem to want to imagine old philosophers as postmodern relativists, certain of nothing, believing contradictions, hung up in the void of relativism that postulates the mistaken view that something can be true for me and false for you. Plato refutes relativism, this canard that nothing is certain, in his dialogue with Protagoras, a sophist who argued ‘man is the measure of all things’. Against Protagoras’s pragmatic relativism, Plato pointed out that objective knowledge is certain.

www.openingmind.com/memcontris/ParmenidesPoem.doc
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Parmenides ... y_of_Truth

[DWill]

Wait a minute, Robert--I have a t-shirt my daughter brought me from Greece. It bears a maxim written in Greek on the front, with a subscript translation that reads: "The only thing I know is that I know nothing_--Socrates. We all know that t-shirts don't lie. In fact, they might lie a little bit, as wikipedia says that Socrates didn't make this statement so flatly. But the article goes on to detail the theme in Plato's writings of Socrates tweaking others for saying they have certain knowledge while admitting that he himself has none.

Also wanted to shine a Haidt-light (yes, that rhymes) on this topic. The author of our current NF selection, Jonathan Haidt, gives us a way out of the echo chamber that's created by too insistently harping on the supernatural beliefs of religion. He says at the end of Chapter 11: "If you think about religion as a set of beliefs about supernatural beings, you're bound to misunderstand it." I can't comment yet on his chapter that's specifically about religion, but this has pretty much been my view of the matter all along.

[Robert Tulip]

I know nothing_--Socrates

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/I_know_that_I_know_nothing

Socrates does not claim to have no knowledge of anything. In fact, he knows many things, as he is presented in Plato's dialogues. His requests for justification and evidence are addressed to specific claims about sweeping difficult topics such as the nature of justice and love. He started from an assumption of ignorance and doubt about conventional views, applying the Socratic Method of hypothesis elimination, steadily identifying and eliminating claims that lead to contradictions. The Socratic method searches for general, commonly held truths. This is a sound methodology when you are analysing the real meaning of complex ideas.

It does not mean that Socrates suspected the world might not exist, which is a corollary of claiming to have no knowledge. In fact, Socrates agreed with Parmenides that there is one reality given for us to know.

This is not Socrates

[DWill]

Simple test, Robert: Is Socrates at any time in the dialogues dogmatic about having the truth? You know these better than I do, so I'm just asking. If he doesn't do what you've been trying to, that is establish a basis for dogmatism regarding truth, you can't enlist him on your side. The habit of searching for the truth, getting closer to what might be the truth, discarding the more obviously wrong assumptions--that is a fair description of the Socratic method and it deserves to be emulated, but it doesn't imply final arrival on the part of an individual. In Socrates' hands, doesn't it imply a certain humility toward the whole project? That would be a wise course for anyone to take, since other or later thinkers will tend to overturn things the philosopher has said, which certainly happened to Plato. Isn't it after all the art of the dialogues that is most admired today, more than fundamental truths they they contain?

[Robert Tulip]

Simple test, Robert: Is Socrates at any time in the dialogues dogmatic about having the truth? You know these better than I do, so I'm just asking.

Although this may seem a diversion from the point of this thread, I think it is actually quite relevant, because the cartoon about religion opens up questions about the nature of philosophy and truth, presenting a pointed mockery of false dogma.

The terms 'dogmatic' and 'truth' are actually difficult to properly understand. Consider my dogmatic assertion that the universe exists. I am absolutely certain of it, and equally certain that anyone who disagrees is completely wrong. Many facts in astronomy are true. So I hold the existence of the universe as an unshakeable dogma and absolute truth. But this has an element of the ridiculous about it, because anyone who doubts the existence of the universe is insane, in view of the abundant weight and coherence of evidence.

Dogma is something that applies more to belief than knowledge, to claims that are uncertain rather than the intelligible truths of reason. But dogma has been corrupted by religion to require forcible acceptance of false doctrines. By contrast, Plato has Socrates assert that his knowledge is defensible by pure logic and insight, entirely contestable by reason.

Plato presents Socrates in The Republic as claiming that philosophy provides a path to certainty, through the ascent from the shadowy ordinary realm of appearances to the light of intelligible truth. For Socrates, the highest truth is the idea of the good. Once we understand the good, which Plato associates with the ideals of love, beauty and truth, we attain a philosophical perspective where knowledge is virtue. Such a perspective is based on the view that ideas are real, something that modern empirical thought often rejects. Yet for example we can see that mathematical truths are discovered not invented, and so somehow already exist eternally in nature as Platonic ideas, waiting to be articulated in the symbolic representation of logical proof.

If he doesn't do what you've been trying to, that is establish a basis for dogmatism regarding truth, you can't enlist him on your side.

I am only dogmatic about obvious axioms, such as the existence of the universe and the reliability of abundantly corroborated observation. Bob Dylan articulated a simple axiom when he prophesied with his pen that the future now will later be past. These axioms provide a logical foundation for systematic philosophy. I am not dogmatic about claims that are open to rational doubt. This is all in line with the Socratic attitude of evidence-based skepticism about popular assumptions.

The habit of searching for the truth, getting closer to what might be the truth, discarding the more obviously wrong assumptions--that is a fair description of the Socratic method and it deserves to be emulated, but it doesn't imply final arrival on the part of an individual. In Socrates' hands, doesn't it imply a certain humility toward the whole project?

A focus on evidence and logic is inherently humble, recognising that knowledge is partial. But a little learning is very different from none. With simple axioms there is no room for doubt. A foundation in necessary truths, what Kant called synthetic a priori judgments, is the prerequisite for any sensible discussion.

That would be a wise course for anyone to take, since other or later thinkers will tend to overturn things the philosopher has said, which certainly happened to Plato.

The only claims from Plato that I am aware of that have been overturned are his speculative theory of fundamental physics and the myth of Atlantis in the Timaeus. Claims that Plato's theory of ideas has been refuted are just ignorant.

Isn't it after all the art of the dialogues that is most admired today, more than fundamental truths they they contain?

Sadly yes, because contemporary society is relativist and insists dogmatically that no one can know what is good. The scientific enlightenment threw out the baby with the bathwater when it rejected Plato's theory of ideas, severely impoverishing the depth of insight and wisdom in modern philosophy. Popper's fallacy was to say that some people had been wrong in their claims to know what was good, therefore no knowledge of the good is possible. This attitude has been a practical and pragmatic basis for the modern philosophy of science and the dynamism of technology, but its fundamental flaw is a rejection on principle of any concept of the sacred. Without some sense of connection to the ultimate truth of reality, traditionally the central goal of religion, we have no basis to assess the merits of conflicting values.

Unfortunately the Abrahamic faiths have polluted our sense of connection to the ultimate by holding false dogmas as absolute truth. This is why basic contestability about religious claims is so essential to base ethics in a coherent idea of the good.

[DWill]

You still don't answer the question I was most interested in: what is the attitude of Socrates in the dialogues? Does he want to convince us that he knows certain things beyond doubt, or does he want to stimulate us to think and not lazily accept the conventional answers? If the latter, then you would also have to say this is Plato's ideal, since to him Socrates was the noblest thinker who lived.

As for what Plato was wrong about, as you read The Republic, don't you get a healthy dose? I haven't read the whole thing, but is his prescription for the ideal society in any way mirrored in our present ideals? This doesn't mean his state is not interesting to read about or that The Republic is not valuable historically, but right? I just don't see it.

Looking at the theory of forms briefly, we can say that ideas are objective things because you and I can talk about an idea we name. But a realm of ideas existing separately from any being's ability to perceive them through the senses is so extravagant I can't think of a reason in the world to consider it.

I would wager that is just a start at a list of what Plato was wrong about. What else would you expect from even the most brilliant thinker of 2500 years ago?