Question for an Atheist

[geo]

I've long given up trying to have a dialogue with Ant who continues to paint atheists as one-dimensional caricatures. He also equates atheism with nihilism and that's all fine. His arguments are really reductio ad absurdum rants.

Certainly some atheists depict believers as one-dimensional caricatures as well, and I think that's a shame. These kinds of conversations do frequently get bogged down in oversimplifications. There 's a discussion here somewhere about the role of spirituality in people's lives.

I really enjoyed Penny's earlier comments about the role of spirituality in her life which I thought was beautifully said. And isn't it a shame that she feels like she's putting her head on the chopping block by talking about her spirituality here?

Anyway, I was reading an essay by Wendell Berry this morning. Berry is a Christian, not that it really matters. He's obviously a very wise man, regularly quotes Milton, Shakespeare along with the Bible. I read somewhere that Wendell Berry has "a massively ambitious plan to save the earth with humility and simple living." He decries our crass commercialism and loss of spiritual values, and hopes for a return to simpler life, something I agree with. But his writings challenge me and my own tendency to dismiss anything that is remotely connected to religion. He makes ,me just a slight bit uncomfortable.

This following passage reminded me of this thread. Here, he talks about one of many "ignorances" that lead to our hubris:

"There are several other kinds of ignorances that are not inherent in our nature but come instead from weaknesses of character. Paramount among these is the willful ignorance that refuses to honor as knowledge anything not subject to empirical proof. We could just as well call it materialist ignorance. This ignorance rejects useful knowledge such as traditions of imagination and religion, and so it comes across as narrow-mindedness. We have the materialist culture that afflicts us now because a world exclusively material is the kind of world most readily used and abused by the kind of mind the materialists think they have. To this kind of mind, there is no longer a legitimate wonder. Wonder has been replaced by a research agenda, which is still a world away from demonstrating the impropriety of wonder."

Maybe he has a point? I think he does. However, I think what he calls "materialist" is something more along the lines of "mass consumer." I obviously don't believe for a second that an "atheist" or "empiricist" is necessarily bereft of spirituality. Indeed, I think we can easily make the argument that fundamentalist types have lost their sense of wonder and replaced it with magical thinking. There are extremes on both sides of the spectrum.

Here's someone's blog about Wendell Berry.

http://transitionvoice.com/2011/09/wend ... struction/

[etudiant]

In a sense, religion is the ultimate reductionism. It looks at the world, and sees so little of the magic of the universe, the known and the unfathomable, that an invented story is felt to be needed. Not an extravagant story mind you, but a minimal one; something to content those in a medieval, rural, pastoral society, but one rather simplistic by modern standards. All that might be is condensed into a slight narrative. Billions of possiblities must be held up to the light of an ancient pastoral legend. The athiest's universe is far larger, and more complex, and more interesting, than the religious one.

I disagree. I see reductionism as taking things apart and trying to understand the whole by understanding the parts. Religion is "mysteryism" to coin a new word. Religion says, "We can't understand it. Stop asking questions. Just accept that it's beyond you and don't be curious."

(edited to add:) I would guess that the deeper point you're getting at is that religion offers simplistic answers that don't have much explanatory power (i.e., they can't predict outcomes under various conditions, the measure of quality for scientific hypotheses) and therefore reduces the value of questioning. I agree with what I think you're saying, it's just not what the word reductionism means to me.

You're probably right about the meaning of the word. My point was that there are some who simply must refine the observed world into a very concrete, mechanical, easy to understand set of objects. Abstraction and uncertainty are anathema to them. Yet science keeps pointing out, year after year, how much of the universe is indeed an abstraction to our human experience, and how our simple mechanical ideas do not fit neatly into a larger reality. For these, religion has great appeal, because it provides an easily digestable narrative, very concrete, very simple.

[ant]

How can it be, ant, that in one of your posts not long ago you said there are atheists you admire, such as Alain de Botton? Yet to hear you talk, all atheists have this bad way of reducing life to mechanics and the selfishness of genes. I've not seen you provide any quotations from atheists to that effect, by the way. It's your own assessment of what they're really about, I suppose. What's striking about the line you're taking is that even fervent believers often admit that atheists can be good, moral people who love just as any human does.

Your tone is really off-putting, by the way.

It's amazing how certain atheist members of this site can generalize about religion and people of faith with as hash a tone as they like, and get thanked for it, but when I generalize atheists in a similar manner they start to cry foul.
Oh the humanity!!

Point taken yet?
Time for censorship so resident atheists can have at it without being called to the carpet about it?

I know I've been on the receiving end when I attempted to be more engaging, as you put it.

Yes, I can name several atheists that I greatly admire because they are much more open minded and accepting than the common lot.

But going back to my point about atheisism reduced to meaningless, mindless, chemical creatures who live a fool's life because everything is relative and illusory is as bad, if not worse than a belief in an Old Testament god

Is it not true that at the core of atheism is evolutionary motive, and that's it?
What is Love to an atheist? Can it really be anything more than one dementional to him?
I'm certain with some elequence we can flower it up a bit. But reduced to its lowest terms we've explained it away as sexual drive to keep our selfish genes alive. True or false?
I get the feeling that there is a touch of atheistic shame here in admitting this
Why? Why dance around it?
Is love for art/ poetry advantageous for our species? How so?
We've already determined that a random act of kindness is nothing more than group cooperation.

[Dexter]

What is Love to an atheist? Can it really be anything more than one dementional to him?

What is Love to someone who thinks there might be some kind of deity but doesn't believe in any specific religion?

Is love for art/ poetry advantageous for our species? How so?

What is love for art to someone who thinks there might be some kind of deity but doesn't believe in any specific religion?

We've already determined that a random act of kindness is nothing more than group cooperation.

But it's more for someone who thinks there might be some kind of deity but doesn't believe in any specific religion?

If you want to criticize atheists, then come out with your claims about the way the world really is. Otherwise you've just got some vague notion that something more must be out there. How does that give your life more meaning?

[etudiant]

It seems to me ant, that you are putting all your money on one horse. Either we accept some sort of sci-fi explanation of reality , or else we are more or less mindless beings, incapable or higher human attributes. It all comes from a diety of some sort, or it doesn't come at all. Yet the things your are describing- love, fellowship, appreciation of the arts- are definitely human attributes. One does not need a god to subscribe to these things. And in my experience, subscribing to religion is no guarantee that one will feel, or display these characteristics; the spectrum of human behavior applies to all. This is an area for human psychology, not cosmology.

[ant]

It seems to me ant, that you are putting all your money on one horse. Either we accept some sort of sci-fi explanation of reality , or else we are more or less mindless beings, incapable or higher human attributes. It all comes from a diety of some sort, or it doesn't come at all. Yet the things your are describing- love, fellowship, appreciation of the arts- are definitely human attributes. One does not need a god to subscribe to these things. And in my experience, subscribing to religion is no guarantee that one will feel, or display these characteristics; the spectrum of human behavior applies to all. This is an area for human psychology, not cosmology.

I don't believe you need religion in your life to experience illusory meaning, like Dexter experiences.
That's what it is, right?

Quite the contrary, I do believe we are capable of higher human attributes. I think we will attain greater understanding as we continue to evolve ( unless we extinguish ourselves in the process)
That's why I'm not putting my eggs in the Atheist's "There Certainly is No God" basket.

On a personal note, it doesn't matter to me if you have a god in your life or not.

I really do, honestly, sense an element of shame when an Atheists fundamental core is reduced for all to see

I've reduced it here and have asked for verification from resident atheists.
All I've seen is diversions.

I don't know you, but lets say you're married. What more is your love for your spouse other than a means to a biological end, in hopes your future genes are better?
Lust
Reproduction
Survival
Reporduction by offspring
Rinse and repeat...,

Any transcendental meaning you may have adopted to pretty up your path is illosury.
True or false?

[ant]

What is Love to an atheist? Can it really be anything more than one dementional to him?

What is Love to someone who thinks there might be some kind of deity but doesn't believe in any specific religion?

Is love for art/ poetry advantageous for our species? How so?

What is love for art to someone who thinks there might be some kind of deity but doesn't believe in any specific religion?

We've already determined that a random act of kindness is nothing more than group cooperation.

But it's more for someone who thinks there might be some kind of deity but doesn't believe in any specific religion?

If you want to criticize atheists, then come out with your claims about the way the world really is. Otherwise you've just got some vague notion that something more must be out there. How does that give your life more meaning?

I actually asked DWill these questions, but you clearly intercepted them to avoid answering them.
Absurd but understandable.
A button on your panel clearly has been pushed.

[johnson1010]

Ant, what you seem to be pushing for here is for meaning to be more than what intelligence like ours attribute to it.

You want to frame this discussion in terms of raw biology and ignore everything about us which makes us interesting.

Here:

I have a son. It is true that he is a thinking piece of meat. It is true that my love of him totally hangs on the fact of what we are: humans. The emotions i have for him are a chemical reaction in my brain, forged through millions of generations of evolution which have fine tuned the chemical machinery of my body to feel a passionate love for my offspring, which ultimately does reduce to the drive of reproduction.

It is true that his value is only apparent to humans, and not all of those either. (and our cats). It is true he's nothing other than a self-sustaining chemical reaction. It's true that he is a local product of this planet with no long lasting enduring impact on this earth, and certainly not beyond it. but none of that changes anything about how i feel.

Things can only be important to other things which are capable of valuing them. The storm does not value the rays of sun which made it's existence possible. Volcanoes are not thankful to magma, or tectonic pressure. Rainbows don't appreciate water droplets. Only intelligences are capable of valuing things. Value is not universal, or transcendental. Value is not a pillar of reality. it isn't a law of physics. It isn't enforced from on high.

It is the product of intelligence. My son's value is not universal. But it is objective. It is a real thing. It is the real existence of the subjective value all his friends, relations, pets, and admirers place on him. It is not illusory just because it has no bearing on what happens in the center of the galaxy. It is URGENTLY important to me, to my wife and the rest of our family. It doesn't extend to the non-living parts of our house, or the figments of our imagination, such as god. It matters to the only things which it is POSSIBLE for things to matter, other intelligences. The fact that our love is a product of our biology does not invalidate it, any more that vision is a product of our biology. Both are still vitally important.

The fact that they have physical roots does not make them hollow. The fact that ONLY our lives, and not the whole of creation, have been irrevocably changed by his birth does not make it empty. WE value him. That is a product of physics and chemistry, but then so is ALL value.

I don't understand why things having a root in reality should make them empty, or illusory. Have you really thought about the way you are framing this, Ant?

Lets use this frame work to discuss something else.

When Richie is hit by a car, is it not true that he is ONLY experiencing Force=Mass times Acceleration? Isn't it true that any feelings he has about it are only the paltry functions of a lump of meat in his skull, and are therefore illusory and empty? If he cries out in pain, isn't that JUST the reaction of a lump of man-shaped flesh reacting to external stimuli?

Ant, you are looking at the cells and forgetting that they make up a human. Yes we certainly are physical objects. Objects which have assigned value to things that are important to us. We are the arbiters of what is valuable. There is no higher authority (on earth at least), and so if it matters to us, it matters to the only thing which is capable of assessing value: intelligence.

[Kevin]

They resort to as i've said "cowardly atheism" by claiming Agnosticism. But their rhetoric betrays their claims of agnosticism.

I haven't been paying attention and missed your earlier pronouncement(s). I'd like to respond to this one though, hopefully not out of context. I'm not sure what you're saying. I tend to think agnostics are the level-headed ones out of the bunch. After all, who knows? Anyway, believers and non-believers both tend to bind at the hips Christianity(most often) with the question of whether or not there is a Creator. It is not cowardly to say that the Bible along with other christian evidences are far from persuasive; intellectually, morally, and spiritually repellent at worst. At best, silly. It's not cowardly to say these things, and of course atheists love to say them! But It's not cowardly to say too that well sure maybe there was a Creator. Or is it? No... I don't think so. Agnostic. But like I said, I can't make out where you're going with the term "cowardly atheism".

[etudiant]

I don't believe you need religion in your life to experience illusory meaning, like Dexter experiences.
That's what it is, right?

Quite the contrary, I do believe we are capable of higher human attributes. I think we will attain greater understanding as we continue to evolve ( unless we extinguish ourselves in the process)

Ok, fine. Then why do these have to come from God? Maybe these higher attributes come from humanity. God is surplus to your arguments if you see such capability already. Indeed He is an awkward add on if we consider that there is significant evidence out there that describes our psychological behavior, but none that documents a sci-fi type cosmology.

That's why I'm not putting my eggs in the Atheist's "There Certainly is No God" basket.

On a personal note, it doesn't matter to me if you have a god in your life or not.

I really do, honestly, sense an element of shame when an Atheists fundamental core is reduced for all to see

I've reduced it here and have asked for verification from resident atheists.
All I've seen is diversions.

Actually, I've seen some well reasoned arguments that haven't as yet met with much of a rebuttal.

I don't know you, but lets say you're married. What more is your love for your spouse other than a means to a biological end, in hopes your future genes are better?
Lust
Reproduction
Survival
Reporduction by offspring
Rinse and repeat...,

Any transcendental meaning you may have adopted to pretty up your path is illosury.
True or false?

You continue to attribute things to atheists in general, such as the "selfish gene" notion, and humans as mere bonobo apes, and an insistance that we see life as an "illusion". Maybe some subscribe to these ideas, but I doubt very many. I certainly don't.

You seem to say that unless one accepts your idea of a god, then they must be plowing through life in a dreary fashion, having no higher thoughts than the above listed ape. That God is the inspiration for these desirable human attributes. But where are your arguments? Those here, and no doubt in many places elsewhere, have insisted they do have a spiritual and esthetic dimension, without the benefit of a coach up in the cosmos. I'll add that I do too- and these don't depend on an imagined being.

The universe is a huge mystery, one we may never really understand. But reducing it to a faint mythology is not going to move us in the direction of knowledge, and is really a waste of whatever little conscious awareness we have.