Why I am not an atheist.

[epronovost]

Scientific materialism is a tautological oxymoron.

Something can't be both tautological and an oxymoron. A tautology is a statement that is self evident (or a form of repetition). An oxymoron is a contradiction. You can't make a statement that is both self evident and contadictory.

 

[MikeF]

Every one of our natural, physical, mental, observations and logical deductions, are based on the nature of our means for observing. Wittgenstein said the eyeball is not in the eye's line of sight.

Let's not forget that we are also comparing our observations with the observations of billions of others, now and throughout history. Additionally, we build tools and instruments to supplement and expand the limits of our biological senses. We have a pretty firm handle on the reality around us.

In the true sense that there's nothing like the experience of color anywhere in the universe except in a brain, so too, and ironically, God doesn't exist anywhere in the universe except in a human brain.

That a human being can imagine and hold in their mind any number of possible un-real things is news to no one (your imagined entity you label "God" for example). That we can conceptually know and understand a real phenomena does not mean that everything in our head is real. That we categorize, quantify, and label real things as a way of organizing our thoughts does not mean that the wavelength of electromagnetic radiation we are collectively calling "red" is only in our heads and not a real thing. Electromagnetic radiation is real whether we are here to perceive it or not.

The brain that believes "color" exists "out there" while arguing that God doesn't, is living in an illusion from which it's incapable of freeing itself.

As I have with others, I would strongly encourage you to abandon your use of antiquated classic Philosophy and dive into what we actually know about the world in the 21st century. The more you know about the world, the better able you will be to draw sound conclusions. Have fun exploring!

 

[Unveiled Artist]

Fwiw, I have nothing but respect for the person in question. And my arguments here are in no way a critique of his beliefs, person, or intellect. The arguments here are an attempt to show that there's a fundamental error in the argumentation given to support atheism.

Ooh. Can you give an example of an error?
If it wasn't mentioned already?

 

[John D. Brey]

Dang! Finally! A vanquisher of wrong-headed conceptualism (WHC); a purveyor of TRUTH!!

When I used those particular words I was aware of precisely the error I assume you're addressing. And yet for the sake of brevity, and the point I was trying to make, I allowed a little white asininity, believing no one would call me on it since if they did, it would require a leap to a higher order of conceptualism concerning the topic at hand.

Once comprehended and turned over to a concept, the God of theology is no longer a persona, no longer a Who with whom we enter into a relation and from whom we receive a commanding revelation; rather, the conceptualized God is a What, an object to be seized and an authority to be invoked when attempting to justify what is otherwise unjustifiable. To clarify the contrast with Jewish teaching . . . the Holy One is the mystery of the Who, and not the principle of the what, as systematic theology often would have it. A Who can neither be grasped nor thematized, neither known nor appropriated.

David Patterson, Anti-Semitism and Its Metaphysical Origins, p. 57.​

As I stated in another message in this thread, God is no more a What outside of a human brain than is the color purple. Nevertheless, the existence of God inside a human brain is no less based on tangible realities, energies, design ramifications, than is the experience of the color purple.

Even though Jewish monotheism is utterly correct in her deepest intuitions, still, the immaterial God of Jewish monotheism can be experienced as a tangible reality, like say a color or a shape in the human brain, without that experience of God being falsified by the fact that the unity of the experience and its impetus are so difficult to decipher that to date the greatest scientific and theological minds have mostly given up the fight.

BTW . . . [blushing] I took up the fight with a sharpened izmel in the thread (become essay), Popper's "Systematic Observations."



John

 

[9-10ths_Penguin]

In a book I authored twenty-years ago, I pointed out that a successful argument against Darwinism and scientific materialism in general demands that the arguer step outside the circumscription of the principles and ideas that make Darwinism and scientific materialism appear to be viable in the first place.

Sure you did.

You aren't a presuppositionalist by any chance, are you?

 

[icehorse]

Scientific materialism is a tautological oxymoron. The arguments given in this forum (in a recent thread) to support atheism were likewise tautologically oxymoronic.

What that means, in a nut-shell, is that a person uses observations that are clearly, and undeniably, circumscribed within an impermeable cell membrane (of one kind or other) as the basis for positing what they consider viable truth statements about what exists on the other side of the impermeable membrane of their finite means of observation.

An atheist could viably claim they don't interpret the world of their experience as proof of a God who exists outside of and who created their world, without that claim in any way stepping out of line or creating a tautology or an oxymoron.

But the minute they move from their particular, or even peculiar, interpretation of their world, to statements not dependent on, or subject to, their finite means of observations, they've moved into the netherworld of falsehood, tautology, and oxymoronicism.

John

I think this is all an elaborate strawman on your part. Either you don't understand science or you're deliberately misconstruing it?

 

[John D. Brey]

Let's not forget that we are also comparing our observations with the observations of billions of others, now and throughout history.

Nevertheless, as Karl Popper tried to get through to persons throughout his life, every single, solitary, creative thought, or act, steps outside of the communal processes that it thereafter lifts up to new heights through its singular and individual nature.

Additionally, we build tools and instruments to supplement and expand the limits of our biological senses. We have a pretty firm handle on the reality around us.

The technology we have today is freeing us to discuss things ---like the topic of this thread ---that have formerly required too large a bandwidth of knowledge and fact to be profitably addressed.

That a human being can imagine and hold in their mind any number of possible un-real things is news to no one (your imagined entity you label "God" for example). That we can conceptually know and understand a real phenomena does not mean that everything in our head is real.

As I've addressed it in this thread, the color purple is a true experience a person genuinely experiences. Furthermore, although the quality (qualia) of the experience has no imaginable semblance to the electromagnetic vibrations entering the eye, or the electrical impulses transferred to the neurons of the brain, nevertheless, the quality of the color purple is "real" in the experience of it.

A color blind person might receive the exact same stimuli to their neurons without experiencing the quality purple. And yet we wouldn't likely question the reality of the quality purple just because some people don't share the experience even if they share the cause of the experience.

The cause of God is like the cause of purple. Some people receive the exact same stimuli that cause some to experience God without they themselves experiencing God. In this sense we could speak of those who are "God blind" within the same legitimate scientific framework we might speak of someone being color blind.



John

 

[John D. Brey]

I think this is all an elaborate strawman on your part. Either you don't understand science or you're deliberately misconstruing it?

Could you break that down to an example I could address? Or quote the particulars of the statement that make you think that's the case?



John

 

[John D. Brey]

You aren't a presuppositionalist by any chance, are you?

I had to look up the word. But after a very brief perusal of the concept I could probably be fit into that straight-jacket if it comes in a large. <s>



John

 

[John D. Brey]

Ooh. Can you give an example of an error?
If it wasn't mentioned already?

In its simplest sense, it's the error of using finite means to believe you can make judgments about absolutes. For instance, a living cell, circumscribed by its cell-membrane, experiences nothing until what is experienced has passed through the transforming membrane of the cell.

Take the eyeball as a cell. There is no human being alive, nor has there ever been, who has direct experience of what exists outside the membrane that makes up the eye. Once an electromagnetic vibration passes through the membrane of the eye to find itself on the retina, all semblance to what the electromagnetic vibration was outside the eye has disappeared in the unity of the electromagnetic vibration and the retina.

A science minded person might say that scientists can measure the electromagnetic wavelength with measuring devices of their own device. And yet every single solitary measuring device will be subject to the same principle as the eyeball. Of course it will, since the eye itself is merely a contrived theory about what to do with electromagnetic waves. An eyeball is a measuring device with no more metaphysical veracity than any other device devised by a scientist.



John

 

[icehorse]

Could you break that down to an example I could address? Or quote the particulars of the statement that make you think that's the case?
John

your post #13

 

[John D. Brey]

A color blind person might receive the exact same stimuli to their neurons without experiencing the quality purple. And yet we wouldn't likely question the reality of the quality purple just because some people don't share the experience even if they share the cause of the experience.

The cause of God is like the cause of purple. Some people receive the exact same stimuli that cause some to experience God without they themselves experiencing God. In this sense we could speak of those who are "God blind" within the same legitimate scientific framework we might speak of someone being color blind.

As a person who has examined, studied, and attempted to understand color blindness, the eye and the optic system where it exists, might, with enough study, come to some fruitful theories as to the elimination of various kinds of color blindness, this person here, who has studied God, and God-blindness, all his life, entered this thread believing he has found a potential remedy for some strains of "God-blindness." A remedy, needless to say, that's not been properly identified and interpreted to date.



John

 

[John D. Brey]

your post #13

. . . I covered quite a few concepts there. What specifically caught your eye (so to say)?



John

 

[TagliatelliMonster]

The author's intent seemed to be to justify/explain his atheism? So as best I can tell, his intent, and his idea (in his thread on his atheism) are one and the same?



John

Whenever you are ready to stop being vague and actually get concrete on this supposed "error" people ask you about............................................................

 

[A Vestigial Mote]

The brain that believes "color" exists "out there" while arguing that God doesn't, is living in an illusion from which it's incapable of freeing itself.

You should find a way to express yourself more succinctly and directly, without all the comma-delimited side-bars. The above was better than much of the other things you have written, which is why I quoted this alone. There's too much the wade through in your other postings.

I completely understand that color only exists as a product of the mind's interpretation of "actual reality" (whatever that is - various states of vibrations/energies/"strings"/whatever), however - what can you possibly believe that a lack of such understanding informs one about any "god" that might exist? The only thing you can actually state (provided your summation is correct and you can properly demonstrate that) is that an error is being made in judgment on one subject (regardless the actual subject matter - i.e. "God") while adherence to or acceptance of equally improbable or unknowable quantities is also in play.

Just because you can point out that someone is making some sort of logical leap in accepting one thing (though I highly doubt that @Evangelicalhumanist doesn't grasp the entirely subjective nature of something like "color") that has no verifiable basis in whatever "objective reality" is, while rejecting the idea of "God," does not even remotely serve as evidence that God's existence is even somehow probable. That's just ridiculous. And if that isn't the bridge you're trying to build... then why not just leave "God" out of it and make the simple point that the person you are talking about is accepting things that have no basis in reality and go about the business of providing evidence of that? Why bring "God" into it, specifically? And if you turn to "He did it first!" then you're being foolish. If the problem is the epistemological roots of the knowledge being discussed, then that is where the problem is... the problem IS NOT with the idea of "God." Unless it is - and then that's on you.

 

[TagliatelliMonster]

Scientific materialism is a tautological oxymoron. The arguments given in this forum (in a recent thread) to support atheism were likewise tautologically oxymoronic.

What that means, in a nut-shell, is that a person uses observations that are clearly, and undeniably, circumscribed within an impermeable cell membrane (of one kind or other) as the basis for positing what they consider viable truth statements about what exists on the other side of the impermeable membrane of their finite means of observation.

An atheist could viably claim they don't interpret the world of their experience as proof of a God who exists outside of and who created their world, without that claim in any way stepping out of line or creating a tautology or an oxymoron.

But the minute they move from their particular, or even peculiar, interpretation of their world, to statements not dependent on, or subject to, their finite means of observations, they've moved into the netherworld of falsehood, tautology, and oxymoronicism.



John

I have no idea what you are trying to say.

 

[John D. Brey]

Which brain believes that "color" exists "out there" while arguing that God doesn't? Mine doesn't.

When you look at a little red corvette do you always remind yourself she's not red? <s>



John

 

[John D. Brey]

I have no idea what you are trying to say.

And I have no idea why? So we're in a pickle. <s>



John

 

[Unveiled Artist]

In its simplest sense, it's the error of using finite means to believe you can make judgments about absolutes

You'd have to use unscientific and philosophical analogies since I'm pretty simple minded for lack of a better word.

Are you saying using "earthly" concepts, ideas, and so forth to determine spiritual realities such as god's existence?

Somewhat like saying god does not exist because I don't see it with my naked eye?

 

[TagliatelliMonster]

The cause of God is like the cause of purple. Some people receive the exact same stimuli that cause some to experience God without they themselves experiencing God. In this sense we could speak of those who are "God blind" within the same legitimate scientific framework we might speak of someone being color blind.

Except people who aren't color blind can all agree on what "purple" is and what it isn't.
The religious obviously can not. Not even within the same religion. Not even within the same denomination of the same religion.

Also, we understand the concept of "color". We KNOW what it is that makes us see "purple". To the point of being able to "blindly" set up things of which we can predict accurately that people will perceive it as "purple".

Nothing even remotely similar can be done with gods.

This fits with the hypothesis that gods aren't backed by anything real, while things like perceived colors ARE backed by things that are actually real.

To the point even of being able to accommodate for the color blind.

Case in point, I have a software company. We build and distribute a retail software product to manage inventory, accounting etc. We make use of styling to reflect validation errors. We do this with colors. We also have an optional setting that changes these validation styles from colors to icons. We do this, because we know that the color blind won't be able to see the validation styles if only colors are used.

So our model of what colors are, and how perception thereof actually works, has explanatory power and predictability.

Your god model has NOTHING of the sort.


So no, it most definitely is not a proper analogy. It might sound nice at first glance, but clearly this wasn't well thought through.