I see no value in atheism

[Mohammad Nur Syamsu]

lol. I think I've said that I accept subjectivity about 100 times now, so I'm not sure what your point is with that.

You are fine with Dennett, as it is not my job to defend him and I have absolutely no affiliation with him whatsoever. I think it is foolish to put words into people's mouths, but that is your prerogative. As for insults toward me personally, though, I merely ask that you show why you feel that I reject subjectivity. The only honest way to do this (that is, assuming that you are actually being honest) would be to provide me with my comments that lead you to this belief. You refuse to do so.

It is just a fact that you reject subjectivity. It is a matter of fact issue. That you say I feel it demonstrates you don't accept subjectivity. I already provided comments, words you said, just now and before.

 

[leibowde84]

It is just a fact that you reject subjectivity. It is a matter of fact issue. That you say I feel it demonstrates you don't accept subjectivity. I already provided comments, words you said, just now and before.

Again, that is not true. You have cited 0 comments from me that express my rejection of subjectivity.

In fact, I do not reject subjectivity, and liking ice cream is an opinion. Can you provide the comments from me, or are you going to accept the FACT that you have no reason for your accusations about me?

 

[Mohammad Nur Syamsu]

I don't think that "I like ice cream" is a statement of fact, as it is most certainly a subjective opinion. Please provide the comment where I said otherwise.

You don't categorize between facts and opinion, because you don't have different rules attached to each. That you say it is opinion, does not preclude you from saying the existence of the love for icecream in the brain is fact.

You insisted agency was fact. In regards to the rock and the weather, there was in fact no agency, you said.

 

[Mohammad Nur Syamsu]

Again, that is not true. You have cited 0 comments from me that express my rejection of subjectivity.

In fact, I do not reject subjectivity, and liking ice cream is an opinion. Can you provide the comments from me, or are you going to accept the FACT that you have no reason for your accusations about me?

Is nonsense, several times I have quoted different things you said, which shows that you reject subjectivity. Like with where you held open the possibility for science to know morality or something, that everything will be scientific and objective, but you did not hold open the possibility for everything to become religious and subjective. All kinds of things you said trying to sideline subjectivity.

 

[leibowde84]

You don't categorize between facts and opinion, because you don't have different rules attached to each. That you say it is opinion, does not preclude you from saying the existence of the love for icecream in the brain is fact.

You insisted agency was fact. In regards to the rock and the weather, there was in fact no agency, you said.

I do

Is nonsense, several times I have quoted different things you said, which shows that you reject subjectivity. Like with where you held open the possibility for science to know morality or something, that everything will be scientific and objective, but you did not hold open the possibility for everything to become religious and subjective. All kinds of things you said trying to sideline subjectivity.

When did I ever say that it was impossible for all things to be subjective? I don't believe that.

 

[ArtieE]

Masterful debating tactic again.

Not a debating tactic. Just you telling us what kind of person you are. It says that your religion is Islam. We know that some Muslims claim there's nothing wrong with raping little girls to death, Muslim Man Rapes Child Bride Until She Dies, is this an isolated incident or don't any Muslims know the difference between right and wrong? Even here in this little town in Norway where I live there are Muslims and if they don't know murder is wrong and will just follow their subjective emotions and free will who knows what they might be able to do so we will have to take precautions.

 

[Mohammad Nur Syamsu]

Not a debating tactic. Just you telling us what kind of person you are. It says that your religion is Islam. We know that some Muslims claim there's nothing wrong with raping little girls to death, Muslim Man Rapes Child Bride Until She Dies, is this an isolated incident or don't any Muslims know the difference between right and wrong? Even here in this little town in Norway where I live there are Muslims and if they don't know murder is wrong and will just follow their subjective emotions and free will who knows what they might be able to do so we will have to take precautions.

I am not going to engage your creepy ideas about taking precautions. You are just trying to do anything to divert attention away from the simple logic of fact and opinion.

Fact uses a logic of cause and effect, between the thing the fact is about, and the model of the thing, which model is the fact. Opinion uses a logic of choosing, and is in reference to the agency of a decision.

It is obvious that this creationist logic, the tried and tested scheme of understanding things throughout the ages, would work. Obvious also that challenges to this scheme are without complete reasoning. No other scheme than creationism was presented, only baseless assertions were made that morality could be fact. It is already formally established for literally thousands of years and among billions of people that good and evil cannot be made fact, in regards to Adam eating from the tree of knowledge of good and evil. The reasoning why this would be so is obvious, that it leads to equivocate fact with opinion, leading to an error of contradiction that force = freedom.

We can model the moon and the sun, these are matter of fact issues, but we cannot model anger, or love, these are matters of opinion. All who deny creationism are without validation of fact and opinion, and therefore without reason, including the evolution professors, well known atheist intellectuals, and all the rest.

 

[ArtieE]

It is obvious that this creationist logic, the tried and tested scheme of understanding things throughout the ages, would work. Obvious also that challenges to this scheme are without complete reasoning. No other scheme than creationism was presented, only baseless assertions were made that morality could be fact. It is already formally established for literally thousands of years and among billions of people that good and evil cannot be made fact,

What a curious thing to say when your own god clearly states in one of his own commandments in the Bible "you shall not murder" as if murder was actually wrong. Have you told God/Allah that murder isn't in fact wrong but that it just depends on the subjective opinion and free will of the person?

 

[Mohammad Nur Syamsu]

What a curious thing to say when your own god clearly states in one of his own commandments in the Bible "you shall not murder" as if murder was actually wrong. Have you told God/Allah that murder isn't actually wrong but that it just depends on the subjective opinion and free will of the person?

You are simply reading the factual assertion into the commandments, because you are so inclined to regard every moral statements as a factual statement.

God also clearly stated to not eat from the tree of knowledge of good and evil. He emphasized that as sin among sins, the original sin.

Which means that thousands of years ago people were already confronted with the likes of you who made every issue into an issue of fact, thereby replacing and destroying opinion, and they didn't like the sort of thing you do at all.

 

[ArtieE]

You are simply reading the factual assertion into the commandments, because you are so inclined to regard every moral statements as a factual statement.

So "you shall not murder" doesn't mean that murder is wrong?

God also clearly stated to not eat from the tree of knowledge of good and evil. He emphasized that as sin among sins, the original sin.

So you don't know the difference between good and evil because you haven't eaten from the tree of knowledge?

 

[ImmortalFlame]

Yes, yes... If you can hold a belief while still doubting that belief, then you can also hold a belief while remaining skeptic about it.

Not quite. Being skeptical requires withholding belief until you have good reason to accept it. If I say "I am skeptical of this claim", I am saying "I do not believe this claim until it is better demonstrated to be true".

Skepticism is doubting...you are trying to apply distuish the two, but if you are skeptic you have doubt. Skepticism however is more of a perspective, whereas doubt and faith are not necessarily. Thus, doubt is the better opposite of faith.

If doubt and skepticism meant the same thing, they wouldn't be different words. Doubt simply refers to a lack of certainty, and as I have already explained you can believe something on faith without absolute certainty. Doubt is not the opposite of faith.

 

[asier9]

I disagree with almost all of this. It does not take much thought to work out what is needed for people to get along with other people, animals etc. Religion is not needed for morals. In fact, I find that religion leads to atrophy of moral reasoning.

I agree with all of your list, but I see them as irrelevant to matters such as morality and meaning. Those are our own responsibility. One should not outsource them to religions. That is the lazy route.

1. Value and meaning are subjective. --> Accept
2. The subjective self and the human brain are one-in-the-same. --> Accept, if you replace brain with what the brain computes
   
3. The human brain is nothing more than physics and chemistry, evolved to aide us in survival. --> Accept, even though information processing (physical as well) is involved too

yet,for some reason, I always enjoy receiving a beatiful rose even if I am perfectly aware, deep inside, that it will land into the trash bean in a couple of days. I love my children very much even if I know, deep inside, that in a sufficient number of generations any legacy we might have left will be forgotten forever and that their smile is the product of some buzzing neurons.I enjoy pizza and cheese fondue a lot, even though I know, deep inside, that this feeling is the emergent property of a physical computational machine.

So what?

I am afraid, you are the (potential) nihilist. You cannot see that things can have value (for us, but still value nevertheless) without postulating an imaginary support of eternal value. I wonder if people believe just to keep this illusion of eternal, not biocentric value alive, somehow.

Alas, that sort of reasoning is just an extension of your survival instinct and natually selected, exactly like your belief in God. An adaptation to protect aganst nihilism for the ones at risk of it. Your natural crutch, so to speak.

So, again, do you think that everything you love, or wonder, today will lose any value if you lose your faith tomorrow?

Ciao

- viole

So both of you are in the denial camp, then?

If you accept any of them you really have to accept all three of them if one is being logically consistent. That should be rather obvious.

So here is the thing he wasn't speaking about one's mere beliefs, but rather what is ontologically true. If God really exists then objective truth and love really exist--it actually turns out that in Christianity through the Trinity they are one and the same thing and moral laws are every bit as objective as physical laws. On the other hand, if God doesn't exist then these things are nothing more than illusions produced by one's brain chemistry. However if we assume the latter as being true then it actually leads to a contradiction so it can't, in fact, be true. Nevertheless the point is if you believe those things are true then you can see logically that goodness is simply what you choose it to be. Rape and murder could be just as "good" as consideration and respect. It is all in the mind of the individual

Jared Jammer's point is very valid it doesn't take a lot of thought for one to reason all of this out for themselves.

 

[Bunyip]

So you are in the denial camp, then?

So here is the thing he wasn't speaking about one's mere beliefs, but rather what is ontologically true. If God really exists then objective truth and love really exist. If God doesn't exist then these things are nothing more than illusions produced by your brain chemistry.

No, that doesn't work. They do not need to be objecive under you definition to have weight, value and even objecivity.

However if we assume the latter as being true then it actually leads to a contradiction so it can't, in fact, be true. Nevertheless the point is if you believe those things are true then you can see logically that goodness is simply what you choose it to be. Rape and murder could be just as "good" as consideration and respect. It is all in the mind of the individual

Jared Jammer's point is very valid it doesn't take a lot of thought for one to reason all of this out for themselves.

 

[asier9]

No, that doesn't work. They do not need to be objecive under you definition to have weight, value and even objecivity.

We if you say so then it must be true. I stand corrected by your mere assertion to the contrary.... is that really what you hoped I might reply? Give me a break, dude. Why even bother posting such a joke of a comment at all--unless you felt emotionally compelled to do so in order to persist in your denial?

 

[Bunyip]

We if you say so then it must be true. I stand corrected by your mere unsubstantiated assertion.... is that really what you hoped I might reply? Give me a break, dude. Why even bother posting such a joke of a comment at all--unless you felt emotionally compelled to do so in order to persist in your denial?

Denial of what? Values do not need to be the objective dictate of God in order to exist. In the Socratic view morals, ethics and values can be drawn from reason alone.

Love, which was one of your examples was around a long time before Christianity.

Is the only reason you can think of not to murder people because the bible says so?
Speaking of unsubstantiated assertions - you have not even established that the entity you are attributing morals to even exists.

 

[Looncall]

So both of you are in the denial camp, then?

If you accept any of them you really have to accept all three of them if one is being logically consistent. That should be rather obvious.

So here is the thing he wasn't speaking about one's mere beliefs, but rather what is ontologically true. If God really exists then objective truth and love really exist--it actually turns out that in Christianity through the Trinity they are one and the same thing and moral laws are every bit as objective as physical laws. On the other hand, if God doesn't exist then these things are nothing more than illusions produced by one's brain chemistry. However if we assume the latter as being true then it actually leads to a contradiction so it can't, in fact, be true. Nevertheless the point is if you believe those things are true then you can see logically that goodness is simply what you choose it to be. Rape and murder could be just as "good" as consideration and respect. It is all in the mind of the individual

Jared Jammer's point is very valid it doesn't take a lot of thought for one to reason all of this out for themselves.

For successful human functioning, morality must be a social construct. That morality is not objective is evident by the wide variation in what societies consider moral. Some consider it a good idea to chop important bits off their daughters, for example.

Religious types would do well to think of more than one individual at a time, and to think of realities instead of abstractions. Dealing in abstractions leads to cruelty to people, as we see in the atrocities of the catholic church.

 

[Mohammad Nur Syamsu]

So both of you are in the denial camp, then?

If you accept any of them you really have to accept all three of them if one is being logically consistent. That should be rather obvious.

So here is the thing he wasn't speaking about one's mere beliefs, but rather what is ontologically true. If God really exists then objective truth and love really exist--it actually turns out that in Christianity through the Trinity they are one and the same thing and moral laws are every bit as objective as physical laws. On the other hand, if God doesn't exist then these things are nothing more than illusions produced by one's brain chemistry. However if we assume the latter as being true then it actually leads to a contradiction so it can't, in fact, be true. Nevertheless the point is if you believe those things are true then you can see logically that goodness is simply what you choose it to be. Rape and murder could be just as "good" as consideration and respect. It is all in the mind of the individual

Jared Jammer's point is very valid it doesn't take a lot of thought for one to reason all of this out for themselves.

That wasn't Jared's point, at least not in the topic of this thread. And it's nonsense that objectivity in regards to the spiritual domain has the same meaning as objectivity in regards to the material domain. Objectivity in regards to the spiritual domain means like fairness, not caring more for the one than for the other. Objectivity in regards to the material domain means to make an accurate copy of the material thing to words, mathematics, pictures.

Creationism is divided into 2 parts, the creator and the creation.

creator
chooses
the existence is opinion
spiritual domain

creation
is chosen
the existence is fact
material domain

So using these lists you can see that the universe is chosen, meaning it could have turned out differentlly, meaning it could also have been chosen not to make the universe at all. A fact is a 1 to 1 copy of a material thing. There is the actual moon and a book about the moon containing the facts about it in the form of words, pictures and mathematics. In essence the book is a copy of the moon to a different form. The actual moon is the cause, and the book is the forced effect.

An opinion is arrived at by choosing about what it is that chooses. For example the opinion "the painting is beautiful". The opinion was arrived at by choosing from several options like "ugly", "beautiful" etc. Each answer would be logically valid, the logic validity of opinions depends on that it is chosen, and not forced. The word "beautiful" refers to a love of the way the painting looks. Which means in expression of emotions the love is choosing the word "beautiful". So love is the spiritual, and the existence of this love is a matter of opinion in turn.

So you can see that facts can never apply to the spiritual domain, because facts require force, cause and effect, while the spiritual domain is free per definition, because all what is in it chooses. To say "it is a fact that the soul exists", is to impose the logic of force on decisions, because force is inherent in the logic of facts. That means it is to say that force = freedom, which is an error of contradiction.

 

[viole]

So both of you are in the denial camp, then?

If you accept any of them you really have to accept all three of them if one is being logically consistent. That should be rather obvious.

So here is the thing he wasn't speaking about one's mere beliefs, but rather what is ontologically true. If God really exists then objective truth and love really exist--it actually turns out that in Christianity through the Trinity they are one and the same thing and moral laws are every bit as objective as physical laws. On the other hand, if God doesn't exist then these things are nothing more than illusions produced by one's brain chemistry. However if we assume the latter as being true then it actually leads to a contradiction so it can't, in fact, be true. Nevertheless the point is if you believe those things are true then you can see logically that goodness is simply what you choose it to be. Rape and murder could be just as "good" as consideration and respect. It is all in the mind of the individual

Jared Jammer's point is very valid it doesn't take a lot of thought for one to reason all of this out for themselves.

Everything we feel is the product of electrochemical processes within a kilogram of organized matter. Your belief in God, my love for my kids, everything. Cut a bit of that disgusting looking mass of neurons, and you will turn into another being.

You seem to say that if those things are not objective, then they have no value. Well, this is a non-sequitur. I love chocolate and hate migraines, and how my brain computes appreciation of chocolate and hate for migraines does not seem to be vilified or reduced by the same brain's realization that they are not objective Universal properties written in the sky by an invisible god. And even if it were vilified, that would be the result of a chemical computation, too.

So, if by attributing universal value to very human things, like morality, you intend to disprove the materialistic theory of the mind, you would just beg the question.First you need to prove that there is such a thing as objective morality.

Where is your evidence?

Ciao

- viole

 

[Mohammad Nur Syamsu]

Everything we feel is the product of electrochemical processes within a kilogram of organized matter. Your belief in God, my love for my kids, everything. Cut a bit of that disgusting looking mass of neurons, and you will turn into another being.
- viole

It's upside down, feelings do the choosing, and thereby choose the way the brain turns out. The brain has an organization for choosing. That means that if you take away the organization.....then nothing can be chosen, and indeed then the question of feelings does not apply, but not in the way you say.