Atheism does not exist

[Enai de a lukal]

But I really don't see how the JTB definition can ever be satisfied if we can't distinguish true beliefs from false ones.

We obviously can. Which is true-

"Lebron James was the 2013 NBA MVP"

or

"Martha Stewart was the 2013 NBA MVP"

Not any doubt here which is true and which is false. And if you never watch basketball (or Martha Stewart), then you can easily go to NBA.com and find out which is true.

Look, we all know there are such things as facts- this is beyond dispute, you can't even claim there are no facts without contradicting yourself- things like the fact that Lebron James won the 2013 NBA MVP, or the fact of whether the cat is on the couch or not.

The funny part is, people who argue that there are no facts and/or truths, as soon as they're done arguing, resume believing in facts and truths; life is impossible without believing, at least implicitly, that it is a fact that you get paid on the 1st and 14th of every month, or that Dec 25 is Christmas- or any number of facts and truths we readily acknowledge (and distinguish from falsehoods!!!) everyday.

Hi, Idav. I'm afraid I don't believe in facts.

Wait, so it is not a fact that there are no facts? So then there are facts, yes? At least one? This is a self-defeating position, and is disingenuous anyways.

As soon as you log off this forum and resume living your normal day-to-day life, you resume believing in facts and truths.

But JTB defenders have admitted that truth is not dependent upon consensus. So even if 99.9% of humanity believes it's false that the guy is Jesus incarnate, the guy can still know that he is Jesus, can't he?

Sure- if he is the incarnation of Jesus; that is, if there is sufficient evidence to justify this belief.

Of course, he probably won't find any such evidence, but if it existed, the fact that nearly everyone believes otherwise wouldn't mitigate the matter.

The existence of dispute over facts or truths doesn't tend to show, even in the slightest, that there are no facts or truths; as we all know, when there is a genuine dispute over a fact, someone is right and someone is wrong.

And anyone who tries to follow it is bound for confusion, in my humble

Humble? "The Big Bad Questioner", from whom countless "proponents of JTB" have fled in terror?

Buh-dum-cshh!

LOL...

yet provable opinion.

Provable? If its provable then prove it; if you've think you've done any such thing, I'm afraid you're living in La La Land. You've made some vague argument about how people can disagree and then we can't decide what the truth is... Except, provided we have relevant evidence, we can and do- each of us everyday do this- determine what the truth or fact of the matter is, who is right and who is wrong.

 

[Enai de a lukal]

Only one piece of data is sufficient: the true proposition.

No, because propositions don't have tags saying whether they're true or false. To see whether a proposition is true, i.e. "the cat is on the couch", or "Lebron James was the 2013 NBA MVP", we have to look to see how the world is- whether the cat is on the couch or not, whether Lebron James won the MVP award. How do we do this? Examining the evidence- we look at the couch and see if the cat is on it, for instance.

 

[Enai de a lukal]

Well, good. Neither am I.

Yes, you are. Let me jog your memory so you can provide a more adequate response;

All the various religions, and all the various mystics, ascribe transcendence to their respective god- even when immanence is predicated of a god, as in Christianity, it is subsumed under transcendence as the sine qua non of god; it is fair to say that transcendence is what distinguishes or characterizes god from non-god.

Now, trascendence consists in a variety of specific things; transcending language (ineffability), reason (incomprehensibility), and the universe (i.e. being, conditions, relations). Any X that transcends the universe, and is nonconditional and nonrelational, transcends existence/non-existence, and is thus a non-being. It cannot exist, by definition.

... We'd need another word for what it is doing, if you are going to be pedantic about it, but whatever something that "transcendently exists" is doing, it is certainly something different from the connotation of "not existing"-- which is what you then erroneously conclude.

You've asserted my conclusion is erroneous, but haven't said why. Logically, if something is doing something other then existing, then it is not existing. Pretty obvious, really.

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?

Obviously not. I'm saying that nothing can satisfy the attribute of transcendence as applied to the Christian concept of God (which is not really any real attribute anyways, but an absence of attributes or predicates in any conventional sense) and still exist.

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.

I have really no idea what that means. What transcendence often means in the theological contexts with which we are concerned is that God is beyond the universe, in the sense that he is not a part of the universe. He transcends, or is beyond, or not subject to, all the various features of being in the universe; temporality, spatial location, generation, corruption and growth, and so on.

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

No. To perform a conceptual analysis on the concept of a round square to show that a round square cannot, by definition, exist, does not require that there are any round squares. Similarly with transcendence and God- the concept logically entails non-existence, thus it could not be instantiated (i.e. exist).

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.

Are you a broken record? This is mistaken and silly. You should perhaps read up on the problem of negative existential statements; your argument here is essentially the pre-linguistic turn understanding of such claims- in other words, it is has been refuted and superseded by the predicate calculus. Look at this-

Nonexistent Objects (Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy)

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.

But no stray dog or any other dog, or any other object at all for that matter, could uniquely satisfy the conjunction of evidence I mentioned- perhaps one piece of evidence; for instance, your neighbors dog could account for the poop in your yard, but not the vet bills you receive in the mail, and so on- only the existence of your dog can uniquely satisfy the entire conjunction of relevant evidence.

But that criteria would be hard for many things we know to exist to meet. Why does it have to be unique?

Not at all. Everything which exists can satisfy the criteria, and nothing which does not exist can satisfy it. I'd say that's exactly what we want out of our criteria.

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.

You'll have to elaborate then- if you think there is some change in the world uniquely accounted for by some god/gods, such as the "creation" of the universe, then let's hear it.

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.

Of course it does, but as humans, we are not infallible, so sometimes we are mistaken. Another "duh!" moment here.

 

[idav]

So you disagree with the others about truth being determined by consensus?

The majority decides what is true?

No, why can't a minority be right? Chances might be slimmer but nothing is impossible so long as it is probable.

 

[Willamena]

No. Transcendence is the absence of any and all worldly relations or conditions. In other words, the absence of necessary features of being/existence.

Both transcendence and immanence are relations. Transcendence expresses truth as a state of unknowability. If, as you say, transcendence entails the absence of any and all worldly things, that doesn't exempt its relation to the presence of worldly things.

Transcendence (that a proposition may be true even though it cannot be known to be true) stands in contrast to bivalence (that a proposition must be either true or false).

 

[idav]

Belief follows truth like a moth to a flame, or like a magnetic bar to North.

Then that is kinda weird that belief can produce so many contradicting truths.

 

[Willamena]

No, because propositions don't have tags saying whether they're true or false. To see whether a proposition is true, i.e. "the cat is on the couch", or "Lebron James was the 2013 NBA MVP", we have to look to see how the world is- whether the cat is on the couch or not, whether Lebron James won the MVP award. How do we do this? Examining the evidence- we look at the couch and see if the cat is on it, for instance.

Propositions each have a tag saying they are both true and false, but only one will attain.

Meow.

 

[Enai de a lukal]

Propositions each have a tag saying they are both true and false, but only one will attain.

Meow.

Um.. What?

 

[Willamena]

Um.. What?

What what? The proposition "the cat is on the couch" is true if the cat is actually on the couch. If the cat isn't actually on the couch, then the proposition isn't true.

 

[AmbiguousGuy]

No, why can't a minority be right? Chances might be slimmer but nothing is impossible so long as it is probable.

You seem to be missing my point. You declared that "because of [...] peer confirmation, we can tell [who] is hallucinating and who is seeing objective reality."

(You also included 'objective experience' but that term doesn't add anything to your claim, since the hallucinator has objective experience all day long.)

So you are arguing that consensus determines truth. If more people believe in one direction than in another, you say the majority is the one 'seeing objective reality.'

You're arguing that consensus determines truth, but I don't agree with that.

 

[idav]

You seem to be missing my point. You declared that "because of [...] peer confirmation, we can tell [who] is hallucinating and who is seeing objective reality."

(You also included 'objective experience' but that term doesn't add anything to your claim, since the hallucinator has objective experience all day long.)

So you are arguing that consensus determines truth. If more people believe in one direction than in another, you say the majority is the one 'seeing objective reality.'

You're arguing that consensus determines truth, but I don't agree with that.

I don't think consensus determines truth but it helps in cases of hallucination because at that point your questioning the very nature of objective reality. It isn't even always an effective measure against hallucination since there are such things as mass hallucination. Good luck to someone figuring out that they are having a mass hallucination.

What I've said about truth is it exists independent of what we think. Science does seem to know a bit about the brain to the point of determining when the brain is not functioning properly, so objectively we can show it. Then again science uses consensus but it is the best we have, true reality exists without the need for us to know about it.

 

[AmbiguousGuy]

We obviously can. Which is true-

"Lebron James was the 2013 NBA MVP"

or

"Martha Stewart was the 2013 NBA MVP"

You're joking, I presume. You've spent most of your brief career here fleeing from my questions, and you want me to answer such a silly little question as you pose here?

Um.... nah.

Look, we all know there are such things as facts- this is beyond dispute

For the undeclared prophet of God, all things are beyond dispute. (But I'm enjoying your performance.)

Wait, so it is not a fact that there are no facts? So then there are facts, yes? At least one?

I assume you've recently suffered a stint in academia -- perhaps even hanging out more than is wise in the Philosophy Department? I rarely encounter young men so confused as those who have been through that.

Of course, he probably won't find any such evidence, but if it existed, the fact that nearly everyone believes otherwise wouldn't mitigate the matter.

He has, of course, found all the compelling evidence that he requires in order to know himself to be Jesus.

Alas, God's Actual and True Prophet has appeared here in the forum to declare his evidence non-existent.

What fun. Dueling gods.

...as we all know, when there is a genuine dispute over a fact, someone is right and someone is wrong.

There's that 'we' again. You can't get comfortable with the notion that we're all alone with truth, can you.

Provable? If its provable then prove it;

Already proved it. And if you disagree, I'm afraid you're living in La La Land.

...if you've think you've done any such thing, I'm afraid you're living in La La Land.

Sorry. I beat you to it.

Does anyone here remember when we were children? It went like this:

Prove it!

No, you prove it!

I already proved it!

No you didn't! I proved it, and you're too dumb to know it!

Sometimes I don't miss childhood so much.

You've made some vague argument about how people can disagree and then we can't decide what the truth is... Except, provided we have relevant evidence, we can and do- each of us everyday do this- determine what the truth or fact of the matter is, who is right and who is wrong.

Find the courage to answer my questions. When you are ready to engage me, let me know.

 

[AmbiguousGuy]

I don't think consensus determines truth but it helps in cases of hallucination because at that point your questioning the very nature of objective reality.

Have you ever tried to imagine hallucination? I have. And when I imagine it, I imagine that it's indistinguishable from regular old reality.

Here's the most frightening question I asked one of the JTB champions: If 95% of the people say that there is NO cat on the mat, with 4% abstaining, but you plainly see a cat on the mat, then is it true or false that the cat is on the mat?

You can see why such a question is frightening, especially to those who cling to the belief that they can know the truth in some absolute sense.

What I've said about truth is it exists independent of what we think.

I don't see it that way. My best guess is that physical stuff exists independently of what we think, but 'truth' is wholly a phenomenon of the human brain.

Just my view of it. I think it makes better sense to see it that way.

...true reality exists without the need for us to know about it.

That's a fine opinion, and I tend to share it. But do you know about the Bizarro God? The Bizarro God just likes to futz around with us. He makes us think there is a 'true reality' out there, but really there isn't. We're more like a dream of his and so is everything else.

So here's my question for you: Do you say it's impossible that the Bizarro God exists as I've described Him?

 

[idav]

That's a fine opinion, and I tend to share it. But do you know about the Bizarro God? The Bizarro God just likes to futz around with us. He makes us think there is a 'true reality' out there, but really there isn't. We're more like a dream of his and so is everything else.

So here's my question for you: Do you say it's impossible that the Bizarro God exists as I've described Him?

Highly improbable since reality appears to be normalized unlike dreams. Of course that scenario gives almost a hundred percent chance that we won't be able to tell the difference. Like I said of the hallucinating thing earlier, there is that .1% chance that maybe a person hallucinating is actually seeing the truth for the first time and it's all there rest of us trapped in an illusion. I don't mind those odds, I'm 99.9% sure we are in an objective reality regardless of the infinite scenarios where we are not.

 

[Falvlun]

You don't automatically believe that I have pain, because that pain is a chunk of the world that has been presented to you only in words that I've spoken (keyed) to you. But that second chunk, the fact that I've said words to you, you'd believe that because it's been your immediate experience.

A hypothetical proposition can be false, usually as demonstration, but trust me, all the chunks of the world that you actually believe are 'true'.

Belief follows truth like a moth to a flame, or like a magnetic bar to North.


A firm grasp of relativity reveals the truth in any set of circumstances.

How does this work when two people hold mutually exclusive beliefs, such as god and no god?

 

[Falvlun]

I have really no idea what that means. What transcendence often means in the theological contexts with which we are concerned is that God is beyond the universe, in the sense that he is not a part of the universe. He transcends, or is beyond, or not subject to, all the various features of being in the universe; temporality, spatial location, generation, corruption and growth, and so on.

"He transcends"? How exactly can something ever transcend if transcendence precludes the possibility of existing?

EDIT:
Perhaps this example will help you understand my objection, since your comparison with a sided circle showed that you didn't get it the first time around.

Imagine an argument that goes:
1. Anyone who pitches a 500 mph fastball cannot exist.
2. Theodore pitched a 500 mph fastball.
3. Therefore, Theodore cannot exist.

Can you spot the problem?

(Also, just to note, besides the issue with the fact that you somehow believe its convincing that your personal definition and understanding of a word proves that god can't exist, there is also the slight problem that god need not be described as "transcendent".)

 

[Willamena]

How does this work when two people hold mutually exclusive beliefs, such as god and no god?

I'm not sure what isn't working for you, so stop me if I'm off base. "The world" to each of us is the sum of a cache of information stored in memory. We are each a unique repository of the world, and propositions are chunks of that.

For the person for whom "god" is real, in whatever way they have realized it, they have realized a 'true' chunk of the world. For the person for whom "no god" is real, in whatever way they have realized it, they have realized a 'true' chunk of the world, even if it is only the negation, "Your chunk is false." That's not to say each has realized the same thing, or realized it in the same way.

Does that answer your question?

 

[idav]

Does that answer your question?

Are you saying truth is relative?

 

[Enai de a lukal]

you want me to answer such a silly little question as you pose here?

Um.... nah.

Wow I'm shocked... Wait, did I say "shocked"? I meant to say "completely unsurprised".

For the undeclared prophet of God, all things are beyond dispute. (But I'm enjoying your performance.)

Cute. No response. No counter-argument. Just more chest-puffing and avoidance.

I assume you've recently suffered a stint in academia -- perhaps even hanging out more than is wise in the Philosophy Department? I rarely encounter young men so confused as those who have been through that.

That's special for you. Anything on topic to say, or just irrelevent personal anecdotes?

He has, of course, found all the compelling evidence that he requires in order to know himself to be Jesus.

Are you using the phrase "he requires" as weasel language? If he has sufficient evidence to this particular belief- performing miracles, etc. whatever that would have to constitute here- then it doesn't matter what other people happen to think.

It's ironic what you said above, since judging by your limited participation on this thread, you may well have had some slight acquaintence with academia, enough to perhaps have been impressed by "the argument from hallucination" or some such in an introduction to philosophy class, and now you come here eager to show what you've learned...

Unfortunately, such vague general skepticism about truth and facts is- as I've said- competely disingenuous, and obviously false; in fact it is just self-contradictory and nonsensical... You probably should've stayed in school a bit longer. (on the other hand, refusing to read educational materials on subjects with which you're unfamiliar probably doesn't lend itself to an easy experience in school...)

Alas, God's Actual and True Prophet has appeared here in the forum to declare his evidence non-existent.

More petulance.

No, you prove it!

I already proved it!

No you didn't! I proved it, and you're too dumb to know it!

Sometimes I don't miss childhood so much.

When you're done grandstanding, you could simply refer to the post in which you think you "proved it".

Find the courage to answer my questions. When you are ready to engage me, let me know.

 

[Enai de a lukal]

What what? The proposition "the cat is on the couch" is true if the cat is actually on the couch. If the cat isn't actually on the couch, then the proposition isn't true.

And how do we know whether the cat is on the couch? Via mystical intuition? We know the cat is on the cat by looking at the couch; in other words, examining the evidence.