Atheism does not exist

[idav]

I don't think our brain can conceive of something "beyond existence". Just because some religious people like to describe god as "beyond existence" isn't a good reason, imo, to believe that god therefore can't exist.

There's more options:
1. Religious people simply have come up with a suitably mysterious description of god that shouldn't be taken literally-- since it's humanly impossible to do so. In this case "transcending existence" means roughly "God exists but in a more marvelous and mysterious way than the rest of us do."

2. God really has a way to "exist" beyond "existence" and in that case, the mere fact that we can't conceive or it, or do not currently have the correct words to describe whatever the heck it is he's doing, also shouldn't be taken as evidence of his inexistence.

I think there should be better balance between transcendence and immanence. One saying God is completely independent and separate from the material universe where as the other says God is fully present in the physical world. Because transcendence should mean, as you suggested earlier with "greater than", that god would be independent but have the ability to transcend within the material world. So both transcendent and immanent. A god completely removed may as well be deism.

 

[Willamena]

Again, you're ignoring context. I meant that the truth of the claim "the cat is on the couch" is not determined by a poll, but rather the location of the cat (i.e. "whether the cat is actually on the couch"). Do we have any infallible, absolute access to the location of the cat? No- and thats the point- we have our sensory evidence, which is fallible. If all the evidence points to the cat being on the couch, then for our purposes, the cat is "actually" on the couch.

"The cat is actually on the couch," yes, and its location is not dependent upon any imagined unknowable bird's-eye, god's-eye realm -- we went over this already.

 

[AmbiguousGuy]

"The cat is actually on the couch," yes, and its location is not dependent upon any imagined unknowable bird's-eye, god's-eye realm -- we went over this already.

You should've met my buddy Bennie. Bennie argued a lot like our new JTB friend. He knew there was a blue Indian elephant in his garage.

"But, Bennie, maybe you only think that you know there's an elephant in your gargage," I protested.

"What? I just told you. It's a true and justified belief. Why shouldn't I go ahead and know it?"

"I've got an idea," I offered. "Let's get a big group of the neighbors together, let them examine the garage, and tell us if there's an elephant in there."

Bennie gave me a sad look and did a tsk-tsk thing. "Dear, AmbigGuy, don't you realize that truth is not decided by consensus."

"Hmmm. OK, then, Bennie. OK. So how do we decide whether it's true or untrue that the elephant is in the garage?"

"Oh, that's easy. We just examine the evidence. If the elephant is actually in the garage, then we can know that he's in the garage. Please don't be disingenuous about this, AmbigGuy. All we have to do is look at the evidence."

"But I have looked in your garage, Bennie. And... well... there doesn't seem to be any elephant in there. So if you and I disagree about the elephant truth, how do we decide which one of us is right?"

"I have answered all your questions!!" he shouted at me. "Grow a pair and come back when you're ready to discuss the elephant seriously!"

Anyway, Bennie won't talk to me anymore. I seem to have upset him.

Isn't it so sad how a bit of contrary truth can come between friends.

 

[Willamena]

You say that JTB is an adequate characterization of knowledge. Are you really just ignoring all of the issues that have been brought up about it? Namely: What constitues adequate justification, and how do you know if something is true or not?

I genuinely believe that it's not significant one way or the other to a definition of knowledge how truth is determined, but just that truth is determined. Like a receipe, you don't have to know where the flour came from in order to bake a cake. I believe that's the intent of including truth in the definition--it doesn't explain, it just describes, knowledge.

In order to be able to say I know a thing, it must a) be true (the case), b) I must believe it, which is entailed by it being true, and c) I have to have justification for my belief (I can't have just read it on the back of a cereal box).

 

[AmbiguousGuy]

In order to be able to say I know a thing, it must a) be true (the case), b) I must believe it, which is entailed by it being true, and c) I have to have justification for my belief (I can't have just read it on the back of a cereal box).

I can say the same thing about my beliefs. I don't believe anything unless I consider it true and justified.

I think most everyone agrees. No one has beliefs or knowledge which aren't true and justified. Why would they?

Every once in awhile one may hear someone say, "I believe it even though it isn't true," but that would be a weird exception to normal ways of thinking.

 

[Willamena]

I can say the same thing about my beliefs. I don't believe anything unless I consider it true and justified.

I think most everyone agrees. No one has beliefs or knowledge which aren't true and justified. Why would they?

Every once in awhile one may hear someone say, "I believe it even though it isn't true," but that would be a weird exception to normal ways of thinking.

As well you should--"to believe" means "to hold something to be true," and we don't believe without good reason. However, we do recognize that some propositions we believe have no inherent truth value, for example inferences like that the sun will rise tomorrow or things cast in the context of fiction. Or lies. In that case, the verb "believe" is meant to lend credibility to the proposition, rather than uphold its credibility. It's a context everyone uses, from time to time.

 

[idav]

I can say the same thing about my beliefs. I don't believe anything unless I consider it true and justified.

I think most everyone agrees. No one has beliefs or knowledge which aren't true and justified. Why would they?

Every once in awhile one may hear someone say, "I believe it even though it isn't true," but that would be a weird exception to normal ways of thinking.

You may find many people have beliefs that are justified but it is only true if it is factual regardless of what we think we know.

Even in a court case you can say guilty because of the justified evidence proving beyond a reasonable doubt yet people are even sometimes wrong then.

Any belief will always have some knowledge missing that makes it a belief to begin with, and the parts that are missing would be assumed to be true via faith or trust. Knowledge are the parts of any belief that are true, the parts you don't know to be true is faith.

Even if it is something little like I believe this person will be on time, it is trust but not factual, its a prediction based on belief.

 

[Enai de a lukal]

And your bare assertions do?

I'm not making bare assertions.

Just think about it. If you say that something is transcending existence, then that means it does "exist"... just in a different way.

Just think about it; if you say that something exists in a manner different from everything else that exists, this is logically equivalent to saying it doesn't exist. Thus, if God exists in a mode unique to himself, he does not "exist".

I don't know how you go from "It is transcendent" to "Therefore, it doesn't exist."

Because transcendence entails non-existence. "Transcending" all conditions and relations is non-being.

If it doesn't exist, then what were you just talking about?

A concept. And saying a concept "does not exist" is to say that there is nothing (i.e. in the world) that corresponds to or instantiates that concept.

Regardless, your whole argument is just based upon your take on a definition of "transcendent". I really don't think that some definition would get in the way of God existing, if god really existed.

LOL... Ok

You said uniquely. None of that is unique to my dog. All dogs poop, rack up vet bills, and eat food.

Except, the existence of other dogs doesn't account for the poop in your yard, or the vet bills on your table, the missing dog food in the bowl on your floor, and the fuzzy animal running around in your house. C'mon now, think about this stuff before you hastily pound out a response!

 

[Enai de a lukal]

But it isn't even working in this discussion about knowledge, since to date, no one has been able to tell us how truth is determined-- or rather, how anything can ever be known to be knowedge.

Um... What? Apparently you haven't been following. JTB is intuitive and straightforward, and the only forceful objections to it (i.e. Gettier type scenarios), have not been brought up here anyways. Honestly, I would hope that someone who appears to have at least some handle on the topic isn't being deceived by our self-important "Big Bad Questioner's" attempts to muddy the water. (BTW, The sorts of vague general skeptical concerns AmbiguousGuy is appealing to apply to any theory of truth, not just JTB- and not only are they not very forceful, they don't applty here anyways)

You say that JTB is an adequate characterization of knowledge. Are you really just ignoring all of the issues that have been brought up about it?

We haven't seen any real objections brought up, just strawmen.

Namely: What constitues adequate justification

That obviously depends on the claim in question- but there's no difficulty in saying what constitutes adequate justification for any particular case; justification for believing "the cat is on the couch" could consist in seeing the cat on the couch, for instance.

and how do you know if something is true or not?

Asked and answered, and this is sort of a "duh!" question anyways; "X" is true if and only if X, and the way we tell whether X obtains or not is by examining the evidence.

 

[Falvlun]

You may find many people have beliefs that are justified but it is only true if it is factual regardless of what we think we know.

Even in a court case you can say guilty because of the justified evidence proving beyond a reasonable doubt yet people are even sometimes wrong then.

Any belief will always have some knowledge missing that makes it a belief to begin with, and the parts that are missing would be assumed to be true via faith or trust. Knowledge are the parts of any belief that are true, the parts you don't know to be true is faith.

Even if it is something little like I believe this person will be on time, it is trust but not factual, its a prediction based on belief.

If you call something knowledge, doesn't that mean you think it's true as a matter of course?

So, what if I say "I know that nothing can travel faster than light". Basically everybody with a rudimentary knowledge of physics knows this. It is well justified and we consider it true.

But imagine that 100 years from now we find out that some things can move faster than light.

So, then, is it incorrect for me to say right now that I know that nothing can travel faster than light?

The problem with adding "true" as a criteria for something to be considered "knowledge" is that there is no way for us to know what is true or what is not. If "true" is a part of the definition of knowledge, then we would have to abstain from calling anything knowledge since we'd never know for sure whether it is true or not.

Of course, we do not abstain from calling things knowledge. We are content with considering things knowledge that we are certain of, things that we believe are true, due to whatever convincing reasons, evidences, or justifications that we have for it.

So "true" essentially means "justified", making it a superfluous addition to the definition.

And lastly, "knowledge" is a human construct. It represents the things that humans are certain about. I don't understand the belief that the word "knowledge" refers to some "true reality", rather than to, simply, "what humans believe to be consistent with reality".

If anything, that's the reality of this situation.

 

[Falvlun]

I genuinely believe that it's not significant one way or the other to a definition of knowledge how truth is determined, but just that truth is determined. Like a receipe, you don't have to know where the flour came from in order to bake a cake. I believe that's the intent of including truth in the definition--it doesn't explain, it just describes, knowledge.

It's not so much that I want to know where the flour came from as it is that I want to know how you know that it is flour.

If we define a cake as something that requires flour, then we need to make sure that we are really using flour when we make our cake. If it isn't really flour, then we can't call what we are making a cake, per the way we have chosen to define a cake.

In order to be able to say I know a thing, it must a) be true (the case), b) I must believe it, which is entailed by it being true, and c) I have to have justification for my belief (I can't have just read it on the back of a cereal box).

I think we see things similiarly, although you prefer to use the word "true" to describe it.

Your view is that our belief is what makes it true, right? This is in contrast to the normal view of truth, which as idav put it, "it is only true if it is factual regardless of what we think we know." In your version, it is only true because we think we know. Do I have that right?

If that is the case, then I agree. While I cannot fully relinquish my belief in a really real reality, it also seems the case that what we consider true is what we have made to be true.

 

[Falvlun]

I'm not making bare assertions.

Well, good. Neither am I.

Just think about it; if you say that something exists in a manner different from everything else that exists, this is logically equivalent to saying it doesn't exist. Thus, if God exists in a mode unique to himself, he does not "exist".

"If God exists in a mode unique to himself he doesn't really exist?" :areyoucra

If something has an attribute, then it necessarily exists in order to have that attribute. A non-existent thing has no attributes. You've just ascribed the attribute of "existing in a unique mode" to God. Does this mean you've just proven that he exists?

Because transcendence entails non-existence. "Transcending" all conditions and relations is non-being.

According to you.

Most religious people who claim that God is transcendent certainly don't mean that. I have a feeling they consider transcendence to be something akin to "existence +". God has existence plus something extra special besides.

A concept. And saying a concept "does not exist" is to say that there is nothing (i.e. in the world) that corresponds to or instantiates that concept.

Here's the problem: your argument requires God to exist in the first place in order to work.

Your argument requires God to have the attribute of transcendence. Transcendence is the thing that makes it so God can't exist. But how can God have the attribute of transcendence if he doesn't exist in the first place? And if he never had the attribute, then there is nothing barring him from existing.

For your argument to work, God must exist.

Except, the existence of other dogs doesn't account for the poop in your yard, or the vet bills on your table, the missing dog food in the bowl on your floor, and the fuzzy animal running around in your house. C'mon now, think about this stuff before you hastily pound out a response!

I am not talking about some stray dog. I am talking about my specific individual dog, Corporal. None of the things you have described point to him uniquely. I could have some other dog instead of Corporal, who is my dog just like Corporal, but who is not Corporal. He would do everything that you have described.

You stated that "The fact that no gods satisfy the following query- "what changes in the world are uniquely accounted for by your god/gods?" suffices to show that no gods exist."

By "uniquely" I assumed you meant "Something which nothing else could do."

But that criteria would be hard for many things we know to exist to meet. Why does it have to be unique? Maybe he likes doing the same sort of things that the wind does. Sometimes it is the wind blowing and sometimes it is God.

It also, of course, makes the assumption that you know for a fact that God hasn't done some unique things, like create the universe, for instance.

 

[Falvlun]

Asked and answered, and this is sort of a "duh!" question anyways; "X" is true if and only if X, and the way we tell whether X obtains or not is by examining the evidence.

Evidence, however, changes. We sometimes add evidence and we sometimes subtract evidence. If truth is determined by evidence, and evidence is changeable, does that mean the truth is changeable too?

Or does that mean that what we were calling "true" before the evidenced changed really wasn't "true"?

And if that's the case, then apparently evidence doesn't really tell us what is true or not.

 

[Willamena]

It's not so much that I want to know where the flour came from as it is that I want to know how you know that it is flour.

Is that true? Do you want to know that?

If we define a cake as something that requires flour, then we need to make sure that we are really using flour when we make our cake. If it isn't really flour, then we can't call what we are making a cake, per the way we have chosen to define a cake.

If we take flour as a requirement of cake, we have looked away from "baking a cake" and turned our attention to "dissecting a cake," even to the extent of dissecting the flour. Different practice, that.

Definition on one hand, analysis on the other.

I think we see things similiarly, although you prefer to use the word "true" to describe it.

Your view is that our belief is what makes it true, right? This is in contrast to the normal view of truth, which as idav put it, "it is only true if it is factual regardless of what we think we know." In your version, it is only true because we think we know. Do I have that right?

If that is the case, then I agree. While I cannot fully relinquish my belief in a really real reality, it also seems the case that what we consider true is what we have made to be true.

 

[AmbiguousGuy]

As well you should--"to believe" means "to hold something to be true," and we don't believe without good reason. However, we do recognize that some propositions we believe have no inherent truth value, for example inferences like that the sun will rise tomorrow or things cast in the context of fiction. Or lies. In that case, the verb "believe" is meant to lend credibility to the proposition, rather than uphold its credibility. It's a context everyone uses, from time to time.

Sure. That's an issue we haven't even broached yet in this discussion. Words mean all sorts of things, as they are used in all sorts of ways.

But 'knowledge' is stiff enough that we can pretend it will stand still long enough for us to try and define it.

'Believe' is iffier. "I believe I'll have another drink," means something quite different from "I believe in you, Jesus," or "I believe the Dodgers will win this year." ('To believe in' is a different verb from 'to believe' but I used it anyway, just to be sure the waters are sufficiently clouded.)

Anyway, as you know, it's all just words standing on the backs of words... all the way down.

 

[AmbiguousGuy]

You may find many people have beliefs that are justified but it is only true if it is factual regardless of what we think we know.

Hi, Idav. I'm afraid I don't believe in facts. I hear people all the time claiming that this thing is factual or that thing is factual -- often opposite things -- but all I do is listen and marvel that we humans really believe we can know stuff.

Even in a court case you can say guilty because of the justified evidence proving beyond a reasonable doubt yet people are even sometimes wrong then.

Can you tell when the jury was wrong and when not? I mean, can you tell with absolute certainty?

Or do you only have a personal opinion that the jury was wrong?

 

[AmbiguousGuy]

Asked and answered, and this is sort of a "duh!" question anyways; "X" is true if and only if X, and the way we tell whether X obtains or not is by examining the evidence.

Yet every time I inform you that the evidence has been examined and X has been found to obtain, you deny that X obtains.

It's a curious thing, the way you deny the evidence while proclaiming the necessity of the evidence.

 

[AmbiguousGuy]

The problem with adding "true" as a criteria for something to be considered "knowledge" is that there is no way for us to know what is true or what is not. If "true" is a part of the definition of knowledge, then we would have to abstain from calling anything knowledge since we'd never know for sure whether it is true or not.

That is the essence of it. Whoever made that defintion needs to do some rethinking.

And anyone who tries to follow it is bound for confusion, in my humble yet provable opinion.

 

[Willamena]

I think we see things similiarly, although you prefer to use the word "true" to describe it.

Your view is that our belief is what makes it true, right? This is in contrast to the normal view of truth, which as idav put it, "it is only true if it is factual regardless of what we think we know." In your version, it is only true because we think we know. Do I have that right?

If that is the case, then I agree. While I cannot fully relinquish my belief in a really real reality, it also seems the case that what we consider true is what we have made to be true.

Responding to the rest of this...

My view is just the opposite: the judgment "true" is what makes a proposition a belief. Truth is already in place before we believe--which is the same as saying that the world is already concrete or actual before we become aware of it (form a proposition). Mind, by "the world" I don't refer to an imagined unknowable state.

 

[9-10ths_Penguin]

I can say the same thing about my beliefs. I don't believe anything unless I consider it true and justified.

I think most everyone agrees. No one has beliefs or knowledge which aren't true and justified. Why would they?

Every once in awhile one may hear someone say, "I believe it even though it isn't true," but that would be a weird exception to normal ways of thinking.

In general, when people have false beliefs, they (mistakenly) believe that they're true.