Western Materialism

[TagliatelliMonster]

It confuses the mess out of me that so many folks feel that God and Science are incompatible.

Well... plenty of incarnations of "god" in fact indeed ARE incompatible with science.

The god of creationism is incompatible with biology.
The god Ra is incompatible with astronomy / physics
The god that sends the biblical flood is incompatible with physics and geology.
etc.

Whenever you have a god that interacts with the physical world, that god quickly ends up being incompatible with our observations in that same physical world.

 

[Rival]

Because it fits the evidence?

Evidence for what?

How can MN prove morality, ethics, human rights, justice, numbers, beauty, the good?

None of these concepts are accessible to MN but are essential to human societies.

If I torture you and say 'there's no scientific evidence why I shouldn't torture you' I'm sure you'd disagree, but not on the basis of science.

 

[TagliatelliMonster]

Saying you don't believe in God because God cannot be proved by naturalism (in any form I understand it) is a fallacy because naturalism is only made to study the material world, which God, as conventionally understood, is outside of, being immaterial. It's like trying to use a tape measure to weigh an object; you're using the wrong tool and concluding the object doesn't exist because you can't weight it with a tape measure.

But the thing is that this claimed immaterial god, in traditional theistic religions, very much interacts with the physical world. And those interactions would necessarily be detectable as it would require some kind of detectable manifestation in said world.

Also: what is the actual practical difference between something that doesn't exist and something that has no detectable manifestation whatsoever?

As the saying goes: the non-existent and the undetectable, look very much alike

 

[TagliatelliMonster]

The latter isn't reducible to parts, nor available to be studied using naturalistic methods.

He's asking which tool WOULD be useable to study it.
All you are doing is saying "that doesn't work". Ok. What DOES work?

Methodological naturalism is the scientific study of material.

Theology and much of philosophy is the study of immaterial (numbers, ideas, concepts, etc).

Are you saying your god only exists as an idea or an abstract concept?
So it doesn't exist outside / independently of a brain?

 

[Rival]

But the thing is that this claimed immaterial god, in traditional theistic religions, very much interacts with the physical world. And those interactions would necessarily be detectable as it would require some kind of detectable manifestation in said world.

Also: what is the actual practical difference between something that doesn't exist and something that has no detectable manifestation whatsoever?

As the saying goes: the non-existent and the undetectable, look very much alike

Theists see those interactions in various ways atheists do not. The workings of nature itself is often one, or the fact the universe exists at all, the idea of morality seemingly inherent in human societies and so on. We can measure the creation with the the scientific method and detect the creator, Gods, whatever, but the hand behind it is still immaterial. Just like we can hold physical money but the value we assign it cannot be physically felt, yet is very real in the economy. Paper money is itself worthless absent the value we give it. If you tested money under a microscope it'd just be paper or plastic or metal. But that's not what money actually is.

 

[TagliatelliMonster]

Evidence for what?

We only have evidence of material things.

How can MN prove morality, ethics, human rights, justice, numbers, beauty, the good?

Those aren't things that require "proving". They are abstract labels we use to refer to sets of actual real detectable things, like amounts of stuff or behaviors.

None of these concepts are accessible to MN but are essential to human societies.

I disagree. When we talk about ethics for example, we are talking about the very real, very physical, very demonstrable, impact of certain types of behaviors.

 

[Rival]

He's asking which tool WOULD be useable to study it.
All you are doing is saying "that doesn't work". Ok. What DOES work?

I've already answered this: philosophy and theology.

Are you saying your god only exists as an idea or an abstract concept?
So it doesn't exist outside / independently of a brain?

You're the one who believes abstract concepts don't exist outside the brain.

Your human rights are an abstract concept, so, again, according to you I'm free to torture you because your rights don't really exist.

 

[RestlessSoul]

I have found no exceptions to the observation that the only manner in which the immaterial is known to exist is as a concept or thing imagined in an individual brain. By definition it's not found in reality, the world external to the self.

I have found no exceptions to the observation that the only manner in which the material is known to exist, is as it is experienced in the consciousness of the observer.

By definition, that which you describe as external reality, can only be apprehended internally.

 

[1137]

Sorry, consciousness is a material property of material brains. There is no consciousness in dead brains. Where did you hear that it is immaterial?

While I understand the popularity of this faith it is not only unevidenced but against logic. Why do you believe this?

 

[JustGeorge]

Well... plenty of incarnations of "god" in fact indeed ARE incompatible with science.

The god of creationism is incompatible with biology.
The god Ra is incompatible with astronomy / physics
The god that sends the biblical flood is incompatible with physics and geology.
etc.

Whenever you have a god that interacts with the physical world, that god quickly ends up being incompatible with our observations in that same physical world.

I think there's some assumption on the part of some non-theists as to what theists believe a God is. While some do indeed believe in a concrete 'being/s', many don't, and see their Gods within nature/natural processes.

Take Nataraja. Does everyone who honors him thing there's a giant dancing God in a ring somewhere? Maybe a few do. But I've talked to more that see him as representative of the forces of life, the movement of all things.


(Nataraja at CERN)

I think its hard to generalize all theists. Really, its hard to generalize atheists, too, because even then you find diverse opinions on what 'is'.

 

[Koldo]

Since spiritual suffering is a term to which you have chosen to assign zero value, we can disregard it for now;

It has zero value until it is properly defined. This is an old criticism of mine towards combining the word 'spiritual' with something else and pretending it has an agreed upon meaning... because it simply doesn't.

no point attempting to converse, if we are both speaking entirely different languages.

But even the most idealogically committed materialist must acknowledge a qualitative distinction between the mind and the body. So the observation that the increase in modern man’s material comfort may have come at the expense of ever greater mental distress, cannot be dismissed out of hand.

Which has no necessary connection to the sciences. Not to mention that it is disputable if we are actually living through greater mental distress nowadays.

 

[Heyo]

Why are most Western cultures materialist? They take Methodological Naturalism as some kind of baseline, which is a fallacy.

Why is this?

Spoiler: Profanity

 

[F1fan]

I've already answered this: philosophy and theology.


You're the one who believes abstract concepts don't exist outside the brain.

Sure, abstract concepts can exist on paper as written by humans. Notice these ideas are products of brains. Can you show any examples of ideas existing outside of a brain that also isn’t a product of a brain?

Your human rights are an abstract concept, so, again, according to you I'm free to torture you because your rights don't really exist.

They exist as a product of organized society. This means brains decided certain ideas are valuable and to be applied to all members. This is how gods came into existence as they were created to be used as a proxy for human authority.

 

[F1fan]

While I understand the popularity of this faith it is not only unevidenced but against logic.

Sorry, your belief is the unfounded faith. No consciousness is observed outside of living brains. There is no logic to assume consciousness is not a product of material processes.

Why do you believe this?

You have a strawman argument. I follow facts and observations, and reject implausible claims as you made. Notice your lack of evidence.

 

[Rival]

Sure, abstract concepts can exist on paper as written by humans. Notice these ideas are products of brains. Can you show any examples of ideas existing outside of a brain that also isn’t a product of a brain?

They exist as a product of organized society. This means brains decided certain ideas are valuable and to be applied to all members. This is how gods came into existence as they were created to be used as a proxy for human authority.

You are still assuming that abstract ideas are the product of 'brains'. This is far from a closed issue in philosophy and psychology. This is the nominalist vs realist argument and it has not been solved by anyone. Modern day Platonists believe that abstract objects are real and exist outside of us (the majority of mathematicians, for instance, believe mathematics is discovered not invented).

'Though there is a pervasive appeal to abstract objects, philosophers have nevertheless wondered whether they exist. The alternatives are: platonism, which endorses their existence, and nominalism, which denies the existence of abstract objects across the board. (See the entries on nominalism in metaphysics and platonism in metaphysics.) But the question of how to draw the distinction between abstract and concrete objects is an open one: it is not clear how one should characterize these two categories nor is there a definite list of items that fall under one or the other category (assuming neither is empty).'

Abstract Objects (Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy)

plato.stanford.edu

 

[1137]

Sorry, your belief is the unfounded faith. No consciousness is observed outside of living brains.

This doesn't even make sense, how can you be aware of brains (or anything else) without relying on consciousness?

There is no logic to assume consciousness is not a product of material processes.

Thats what all the logic suggests. You cannot reduce the certain to the doubtable, the known to what we know through it. Things with contradictory properties cannot be the same thing.

You have a strawman argument. I follow facts and observations, and reject implausible claims as you made. Notice your lack of evidence.

There's plenty like the properties of matter vs consciousness (such as spacial vs not, deterministic vs autonomous), two way causality (such as placebos and CBT), free will (such as the ability to veto an order from the brain to body), and so on.

Physicalism is invalid because: there is no empirical evidence exclusive to Physicalism and it relies on blind faith; minds and brains have mutually exclusive, contradictory properties; minds cannot reasonably or pragmatically be reduced to matter; minds and brains both influence each other in both directions; we have free will, which cannot occur under Physicalism; behavioral modernity cannot be explained by material evolution; emergence cannot explain the mind/brain relationship; immaterial things exist; and because of the unnecessary harm caused by ideas like determinism, Nihilism, Materialism, Consumerism, and rejecting science that doesn't match our beliefs.

 

[Copernicus]

Much of Asian spirituality is non-theistic, though, so I think the reported statistics about atheism in the region don't necessarily mean that Asian cultures aren't more spiritual than Western ones. Buddhism, Taoism, Confucianism, and Jainism are all examples of the non-theism of Asian spirituality. In most cases, I would classify a deeply practicing Buddhist as "spiritual" in one sense or another even if they didn't believe in any deities.

That hasn't been my experience at all, although the type of Buddhism popular in the West does tend to be more atheistic. Mahayana Buddhism does not have a creator god, but it usually does include belief in devas. That isn't surprising to me, since Buddhism competed with Hinduism for adherents, but you will find depictions of gods in Buddhists all over Asia in paintings, figurines, and statues. Also, there is a debate over whether Bodhisattvas are essentially functional divine beings in terms of how Buddhists relate to them. If one believes in the cycle of rebirth, then one tends to believe in the existence of spiritual entities or some sort that can exist independent of physical bodies.

Unless one defines "spirituality" in a way that necessitates belief in a personal deity, I don't think statistics about theism and non-theism per se tell us much, if anything, about the prevalence of spiritual practices in a given country or region.

The OP is somewhat vague on these points, but Rival has already associated spiritualism with belief in God and rejection of at least philosophical materialism. I don't think the case has been made at all that Western cultures is more materialist than Eastern cultures. In my opinion, that claim is grounded in a common stereotype that Westerners have of other cultures, particularly Asian ones.

 

[IndigoChild5559]

Eased our physical suffering. Arguably, at the expense of ever greater mental and spiritual suffering.

I have no idea what you are talking about.

 

[F1fan]

You are still assuming that abstract ideas are the product of 'brains'. This is far from a closed issue in philosophy and psychology. This is the nominalist vs realist argument and it has not been solved by anyone. Modern day Platonists believe that abstract objects are real and exist outside of us (the majority of mathematicians, for instance, believe mathematics is discovered not invented).

'Though there is a pervasive appeal to abstract objects, philosophers have nevertheless wondered whether they exist. The alternatives are: platonism, which endorses their existence, and nominalism, which denies the existence of abstract objects across the board. (See the entries on nominalism in metaphysics and platonism in metaphysics.) But the question of how to draw the distinction between abstract and concrete objects is an open one: it is not clear how one should characterize these two categories nor is there a definite list of items that fall under one or the other category (assuming neither is empty).'

Abstract Objects (Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy)

plato.stanford.edu

I asked for examples of abstract concepts existing outside of human brains or not being products of brains and you had none.

I am not convinced by the wishy washy ponderings of philosophy since they can make their own rules and conclusions.

So i take it you have no factual basis for claiming abstract concepts exist outside of human brains?

 

[Rival]

I asked for examples of abstract concepts existing outside of human brains or not being products of brains and you had none.

I am not convinced by the wishy washy ponderings of philosophy since they can make their own rules and conclusions.

So i take it you have no factual basis for claiming abstract concepts exist outside of human brains?

When you throw out Philosophy you throw out any respectability imo.

Have a nice day.