Theism, Agnosticism, & Atheism: Which Is Logically The Weakest?

[joe1776]

This is where your reasoning starts to become very suspect. Animals don't evolve to live in one big, unified society of genetic brotherhood.

Humans are one species of animal, not several. Moreover, there's no logic in the idea that we can't have a few unique characteristics, different from the other animals.

Humans evolved to live in small groups of closely related people who may come under threat from other humans and may have to compete for scarce resources. We didn't evolve to live in a technologically mediated global society full of WMD.

I recognize an upward trend in both moral and technical progress for humanity and then project that trend forward to make predictions. You're stuck in the past.

As we know, our thoughts are impacted significantly by in/out group divisions. Even when these divisions are transient and completely arbitrary we favour in-group and discriminate against the out-group. This makes perfect evolutionary sense.

Throughout human history morality has included things such as loyalty to your people and respect for authority, again things which are very important for survival, yet not conducive towards a global Humanist utopia. Limiting morality to questions of physical and emotional harm is erroneous.

The in-group, out-group theory should be discarded. It explains very little and leads to error. For example, Jon Haidt used it to make group pride a key virtue. He doesn't realize that group pride is disguised arrogance.

Think about it... we know intuitively that the man who is very proud of being Irish and Catholic would be just as proud if he, by some twist of fate, had been raised to think of himself as German and Lutheran. It's not that he sees his groups as wonderful. It's that HE is wonderful and they are HIS groups.

Why should we assume that conscience shouldn't instinctively 'punish' us for disobeying our leaders, or for not favouring a member of the in-group over the out group? Why should we assume that conscience doesn't push us towards vengeance rather than forgiveness?

When you get a bad feeling about an act you are considering, it's a signal that comes from the same part of the brain that signals you when a body part is injured. If your ankle hurts, you don't have a problem making the assumption that you injured it, do you?

Leaders give orders that are moral and immoral. Conscience will warn you when the order is immoral but disobeying a leader isn't always immoral.

Can you explain how your universal, humanistic morality aided survival for the first 95% of human history?

Why do you think it hasn't always been the same?

Read a history book or get on an aeroplane. There's a whole world of evidence out there.

Of course it exists. It is the world we live in.

You can't get more ivory tower abstraction than ignoring the entirety of human history simply because it is inconvenient for your thesis.

If it turns out this is all an illusion, and that this can be proved without a shadow of a doubt, then so be it. Until that point, we have masses of empirical evidence that there is a link between moral instincts and culture and very little evidence for the contrary.

You're getting frustrated and making smartass remarks instead of arguments.

 

[blü 2]

I find the idea that I'm a brain in a jar to be another such assumption.

That one raises an interesting point ─ who made the jar?

And an afterthought ─ the brain in the jar notion features in Lovecraft's tale 'The Whisperer in Darkness'.

 

[9-10ths_Penguin]

Hmm. I've thought about making a thread titled something like "Comparing theism to pink unicorns makes you sound like an idiot" for quite some time. I haven't created that thread for a variety of reasons, but the main reason is that I suspect the point would be lost on the audience that most needs to understand it. It's likely that some non-theists are incapable of understanding why this is an invalid comparison, and no amount of analogies will resolve that.

On that note, I'd like to introduce you to typical polytheistic gods: they are the ground you walk on and the air you are breathing. Of course, we know there's no evidence for the air we breathe or the ground we walk on. That's silly talk.

That is all.

So comparing theism to belief in fairies and pixies would be spot-on, then?

 

[Tiberius]

That one raises an interesting point ─ who made the jar?

Why, God, of course!

 

[blü 2]

Why, God, of course!

Who let Him out [His] jar?

 

[Tiberius]

God's God.

And God's God was let out of HIS jar by God's God's God, who was let out of HIS jar by God's God's God's God, who was let out of HIS jar by God's God's God's God's God, who was ...

 

[Quintessence]

So comparing theism to belief in fairies and pixies would be spot-on, then?

Penguin, you're not a fool. You know damn well this is precisely the opposite of what I'm saying.

 

[9-10ths_Penguin]

Penguin, you're not a fool. You know damn well this is precisely the opposite of what I'm saying.

I would have thought you recognize the place of fairies and pixies in the folklore and mythology of many polytheistic societies.

Fairy - Wikipedia

Pixie - Wikipedia

Like gods, fairies had deep cultural roots and were used by those cultures to assign meaning and purpose to their experiences of the world around them, just as classical monotheists do with God today.

Personally, I draw a line between fabricated analogies for god-belief (e.g. the IPU and the FSM) and religious concepts that used to be widely and devoutly believed but have just fallen out of favour (e.g. pixies, fairies, Greek or Norse pantheons).

IMO, dismissing these now-obsolete but once-meaningful religious traditions as having nothing to do with the dominant religions of today is rejecting history. Not only did these beliefs fulfill many of the same societal and personal roles as monotheistic religion fulfills today.

And in some cases, the beliefs were so ingrained that they survived the conversion to Christianity and got incorporated into the local Christian belief system instead. For instance, in some areas, pixies were believed to be the souls of children who died unbaptized.

I think it's entirely valid to point out that these elements of pre-Christian, indigenous, nature-based religions are just as much a part of the spectrum of religious belief as the tenets of modern Islam and Christianity are.

 

[Quintessence]

I would have thought you recognize the place of fairies and pixies in the folklore and mythology of many polytheistic societies.

And you also know damn well that this isn't what the vast majority of folks mean when they bring it up as an argument. It's brought up as a knee-jerk way of dismissing something as nonsense. They don't mean what you are talking about here.

 

[9-10ths_Penguin]

And you also know damn well that this isn't what the vast majority of folks mean when they bring it up as an argument. It's brought up as a knee-jerk way of dismissing something as nonsense.

I see it differently. It's recognizing the similarity of the beliefs. It only works as a dismissive tactic if the believer has rejected the older belief as ridiculous.

It's pointing out that the believer has already dismissed the beliefs of others that were sincerely believed, deeply held, provided meaning, and were the focus of ritual or tradition, just like their own are. It's pointing out that there needs to be a substantial difference between the older and the modern belief if we're going to justify a difference in how we approach the two beliefs.

And even if the believer doesn't dismiss the older religious belief as false, it still works as a tactic: with any two mutually exclusive claims, we can ask what makes one more reasonable than the other. A claim doesn't need to be "nonsense" for us to say "claim A contradicts claim B, so they can't both be true, but they could both be false."

 

[9-10ths_Penguin]

@Quintessence - there isn't necessarily any dismissal in stepping back from a discussion about one particular religion and pointing out to the person arguing it that:

- other competing claims have been proposed that are incompatible with what they're arguing.

- if any evidence can be just as easily reconciled with that competing claim as with the one they're arguing, then they haven't demonstrated that their claim is true.

- if the two claims have equal support, then our approach to both claims should be the same (i.e. not accept either one).

 

[Augustus]

Humans are one species of animal, not several. Moreover, there's no logic in the idea that we can't have a few unique characteristics, different from the other animals.

There is logic in the idea that we didn't evolve to live as one big happy, peaceful family of genetic brotherhood based on individualistic, consequentialist ethics and modern conceptions of human rights.

These things are products of modernity, and we didn't evolve to live in a modern, technologically mediated world.

I recognize an upward trend in both moral and technical progress for humanity and then project that trend forward to make predictions. You're stuck in the past.

So are our basic cognitive functions.

Why do you think it hasn't always been the same?

Because 100% of the available evidence points against it.

The in-group, out-group theory should be discarded. It explains very little and leads to error.

It explains very much and has a very clear evolutionary purpose. Assuming it doesn't exist leads to a great many errors as anyone interested in making a better society has to deal with the world as it is, not how they would like it to be.

As well as the fact that it is self-evidently true, there is a lot of scientific evidence to support it:

Regardless of mechanism, these results provide strong evidence that mere categorization into ingroups and outgroups produces a wide-ranging set of ingroup-favoring biases. These biases emerge rapidly, are moderate to large effects, and do not require any supporting social information whatsoever. Equally importantly, our results suggest that group-relevant information is pervasively distorted by mere membership in a social group, a finding with disturbing implications. If children assume that members of the ingroup are more likely to perform good actions and are generally more likeable, if they are more likely to encode positive actions performed by ingroup members, then over time initial biases will take root by, in essence, shifting perception to produce confirmatory evidence. The minimal group effect must therefore be considered a powerful learning bias underlying the rapid internalization and entrenchment of social biases in the real world.

Consequences of ‘minimal’ group affiliations in children

You're getting frustrated and making smartass remarks instead of arguments.

That you interpreted that as a 'smartass remark' rather than a point about why one perspective has far better evidence in support of it than the other seems to be part of the problem.

 

[joe1776]

There is logic in the idea that we didn't evolve to live as one big happy, peaceful family of genetic brotherhood based on individualistic, consequentialist ethics and modern conceptions of human rights.

You haven't offered a logical argument to oppose mine that humanity's long-term moral trend is upward leading eventually to global harmony. Why is humanity bound to be stuck forever in our current state or for an apocalyptic future do you think?

These things are products of modernity, and we didn't evolve to live in a modern, technologically mediated world.

I'm not sure what "these things" are.

So are our basic cognitive functions.

What functions are those exactly and how do you see them as static?

Because 100% of the available evidence points against it.

If you'd make arguments rather than exaggerated claims with no support, we'd have a better debate.

It [in group, outgroup theory]explains very much and has a very clear evolutionary purpose....

The in-group theory isn't worthy of being called a theory because it added nothing that we didn't already know back when we called it "tribalism." Moreover, tribalism is possibly the greatest threat we have to the survival of our species. So, your claim of a "very clear evolutionary purpose" for in-groups (tribalism) is baffling. Can you explain it?

tribalism: ▸ very strong loyalty that someone feels for the group they belong to, usually combined with the feeling of disliking all other groups or being different from them (macMillan)

 

[Augustus]

You haven't offered a logical argument to oppose mine that humanity's long-term moral trend is upward leading eventually to global harmony. Why is humanity bound to be stuck forever in our current state or for an apocalyptic future do you think?

Because humans didn't evolve to live in a global community of perfect harmony.

If you have any evidence to the contrary, then present it (and, no, evidence of a historical trend does not necessitate this trend continuing forever).

What functions are those exactly and how do you see them as static?

The kind of scientifically documented things you claim don't exist as they are inconvenient.

If you'd make arguments rather than exaggerated claims with no support, we'd have a better debate.

Present some evidence to the contrary then.

The in-group theory isn't worthy of being called a theory because it added nothing that we didn't already know back when we called it "tribalism." Moreover, tribalism is possibly the greatest threat we have to the survival of our species. So, your claim of a "very clear evolutionary purpose" for in-groups (tribalism) is baffling. Can you explain it?

Do you agree with the findings of the paper?

Call it what you like, the fact remains it is a powerful influence on our thinking, as that scientific paper demonstrated. Even small children assigned to completely arbitrary groups display strong evidence of it impacting their cognition.

Why do you think it is baffling that something with a very obvious benefit to survival in the environment we evolved to live in exists?

You can't understand why group cohesion was important to human survival? You can't understand why it benefits survival to be cautious of outsiders?

You keep on arguing as if we evolved to live in the modern world, rather than a much more primitive one. In-group loyalty was not the greatest threat to survival in the world we evolved to live in.

 

[joe1776]

Because humans didn't evolve to live in a global community of perfect harmony.

I asked for an argument and you repeated your claim. Your claim would be the conclusion to an argument. You must supply the premises and evidence if you have any. Otherwise you are repeating an unsupported claim.

Present some evidence to the contrary then.

When you make a claim the burden of proof is yours.

Call it what you like, the fact remains it is a powerful influence on our thinking, as that scientific paper demonstrated. Even small children assigned to completely arbitrary groups display strong evidence of it impacting their cognition.

You advise me to call it what I like. I prefer to call it tribalism. You're offering an "in-group theory" when all you have is a new label on old knowledge.

Why do you think it is baffling that something with a very obvious benefit to survival in the environment we evolved to live in exists?

Tribalism isn't baffling at all. We've known for centuries that cooperation benefits survival but the opposite side of the tribalism coin is competitive prejudice against other groups that threatens the survival of our species.

The causes of most war have been these arrogant positions:

Our tribe is superior to theirs!
Our nation is superior to theirs!
Our race is superior to theirs!
Our religion is superior to theirs!

Happily, tribalism is weakening. The most obvious evidence of it is that, while the problem hasn't been completely wiped out, religions are getting along better today than at any time in the past.

Citizens of the future will cooperate as members of one group: the global community.


Angela Merkel understands the problem: German Chancellor Angela Merkel said nationalism remains the key threat to the global order, setting herself up as President Donald Trump’s main adversary in Europe for another year. (Bloomberg)

 

[Augustus]

You advise me to call it what I like. I prefer to call it tribalism. You're offering an "in-group theory" when all you have is a new label on old knowledge.

As usual, you ignored the scientific evidence.

Do you disagree with the findings of the paper?

Tribalism isn't baffling at all. We've known for centuries that cooperation benefits survival but the opposite side of the tribalism coin is competitive prejudice against other groups that threatens the survival of our species.

The causes of most war:

Our tribe is superior to theirs!
Our nation is superior to theirs!
Our race is superior to theirs!
Our religion is superior to theirs!

Happily, tribalism is weakening. The most obvious evidence of it is that, while the problem hasn't been completely wiped out, religions are getting along better today than at any time in the past.

Citizens of the future will cooperate as members of one group: the global community.

The problem with you calling it 'tribalism' is that you appear to be confusing ideologies, like religions and nationalism, with scientific research which explains a fundamental aspect of human cognition.

No matter how much you deem it inconvenient, wishful thinking doesn't change the underlying mechanics of human cognition.

 

[joe1776]

The problem with you calling it 'tribalism' is that you appear to be confusing ideologies, like religions and nationalism, with scientific research which explains a fundamental aspect of human cognition.

You misunderstand.

Tribalism is a category. It refers to the propensity of people in groups, like nations and religions,to take pride in their group and, at the same time, hold prejudice against competing groups.

I ignored the research you offer because it's irrelevant to our debate. I don't doubt its findings because they aren't surprising. They would be just as valid if we thought of it as research on tribalism.

theory -- one or more ideas that explain how or why something happens (causes)

The in-group concept describes what happens (the behavior), it doesn't tell us how or why it happens. If I'm wrong, this is your chance to explain the theory.

 

[Augustus]

You misunderstand.

Tribalism is a category. It refers to the propensity of people in groups, like nations and religions,to take pride in their group and, at the same time, hold prejudice against competing groups.

I ignored the research you offer because it's irrelevant to our debate. I don't doubt its findings because they aren't surprising. They would be just as valid if we thought of it as research on tribalism.

Well if you declare any scientific evidence that goes against your ideology 'irrelevant', no wonder you are so confident.

The in-group concept describes what happens (the behavior), it doesn't tell us how or why. If I'm wrong, this is your chance to explain the theory.

The research shows it is an intuitive behaviour whereas your beliefs rest on the idea that our intuitions can only lead to a global utopia.

You want to abstract an incredibly narrow view of 'moral' intuitions (which you limit to things which match your own view of morality) from the totality of human instincts which evolved for survival in a vastly different environment.

Human behaviour is influenced by a great many factors, many of which are not conducive to a global utopia.

 

[joe1776]

Well if you declare any scientific evidence that goes against your ideology 'irrelevant', no wonder you are so confident.

Well, I don't do that. I declared your research irrelevant for the reason I gave.

The research shows it is an intuitive behaviour whereas your beliefs rest on the idea that our intuitions can only lead to a global utopia.

My opinions are not utopian nor do I believe that moral intuitions are the only kind we have. I have no idea how you got those ideas although I can see that they create strawman arguments, easier for you to attack.

 

[Augustus]

Well, I don't do that. I declared your research irrelevant for the reason I gave.

Declaring research that shows "tribalism" is hardwired into our brains "irrelevant" to an idea that global harmony is inevitable doesn’t say much for your depth of thought on the issue.

My opinions are not utopian nor do I believe that moral intuitions are the only kind we have. I have no idea how you got those ideas although I can see that they create strawman arguments, easier for you to attack.

The fake strawman defence...

Most people would view the idea that global harmony and a permanent end to violence are inevitable as utopian.

Replace utopia with "World of global harmony" and the point still applies though so it matters not a bit.

As for the second fake strawman, why is global harmony inevitable "because intuition" when many of our intuitions are not conducive to global harmony as they evolved to help us survive in a very different environment?