The Unreasonableness of Atheism

[Guest]

I don't see how you get around the notion that human life is an accident by proposing that it is an accident that a being exists who happened to have the ability and desire to create humans. Either both those positions involve thinking life is an accident or both are open to avoiding that characterization. For instance, if you propose that God - the one who wanted to make humans - has necessary existence, then it is just as possible in the metaphysical sense that the universe qua the aggregate of all things has necessary existence. You can't special plead your way out of your own problem.

...I'm pretty sure I get what you're saying here EA. And it's a good point. I'm interested in how much this argument is connected to the evidence we currently have before us though...

...let's use an example. Let's say that there is some sensible numerical mapping of gene sequences. (Don't know enough about the details of gene sequences to know whether that's a sensible idea or not, but either way go with it for the purposes of the situation...)

Let's imagine that - when inspecting areas of 'junk' DNA, we end up consistently finding a repeated sequence of unicode characters that always spells out 'God Made This' - over and over again, in every language known to man.

Crazy example, but still...
...would your argument still count if this 'evidence' was before us?

EDIT: I'm not trying to make out I'm 'on to something' here. I'm kinda meaning this as a sanity check (for myself!) and a clarifier more than anything else..

[_GoodK]

I
Atheists tend to be some of the most dry and boring people I know.

That's your persepective. Dry and boring is in the eye of the beholder. I find virtually every article in the F.A.R.M.S. review to be especially dry and boring. Especially Peterson's lengthy, tangent laden diatribe against Hitchens' God is Not Great.
And then I know people who can't get enough of "DCP".

Philosophy doesn't appeal to them for the most part.

Really? You really think that? I imagine most "atheists" arrive on "atheism" by doing just that, pondering deep philosophical questions. Dennet comes to mind. I'm pretty sure he is a professor of philosophy at the university he teaches at. Can't think of it right now.

Discussions about the "whys" of the universe don't tend to catch their interest.

I disagree Kevin. Here are questions I have asked, recently:

"Why would god create 25,000 different species of the grasshopper?"
"Why would god give my little sister bacterial meningitus, just to cure her of it later with the powers of the priesthood?"
"Why would the god that created everything in the Universe be so concerned with human mammals worshipping him under the right religious terms"

They got science to tell them the "hows," and that's enough for them.

I think this is a misconception. "Atheists" don't all revere science. They don't all rely on science. I am not very interested in science and evolutionary biology and I don't need to know Origin of Species by heart to ponder philosophical questions.

Simply thinking for myself has made it painfully obvious to me that every religion spreads it's own version of self serving falsehoods.

And some annonymous god who doesn't subscribe to any specific religion seems equally ludicrous to me. Science has nothing to do with that belief.

But for most people it isn't enough.

Why does there need to be some sort of divine plan for these people? Why should we expect to know how the Universe works? Because there are fairy tales out there that pretend to know, science should automatically be able to offer an alternative explanation?
That seems unreasonable.

[_Moniker]

Oh! Gad's in the thread! See, now, I'm just thinking of the philosophically minded theists and atheists on this board and MAD and it does seem to be that the majority of those on both boards that are interested in philosophical discussions are the atheists. Even on MAD where theists far outnumber atheists the theists don't really pose the questions or if they do their answers come straight from the Bible says so, or the Holy Ghost says so, or I talk to God and He says so....

[_Moniker]

GoodK, Dennett is at Tufts University -- philosophy and cognitive science.

http://ase.tufts.edu/cogstud/incbios/de ... nnettd.htm

[_EAllusion]

Atheists being boring and dry at least strikes a strong contrast with the common stereotype of atheists among the religious that paints them as libertine hedonists. God doesn't exist? Let's rob a liquor store and have lots of promiscuous sex!

[_Moniker]

A perfect example of what I'm talking about with the default of the Bible and religion for all questions:

http://www.christiandiscussionforums.or ... ost1822440

What is right and what is wrong? If the materialists had their way, right would be whatever supported your cause. As an individual that would be yourself, as a group that would be your group's agenda said it was.

But right transcends petty politics and the squabling at the PTA. Jesus told us what was right. And anything opposed to his teachings is wrong.

I am sooo used to seeing this type of thinking that it appears to be the norm, for me. It's all over most religious discussion boards and is the predominant thought from theists on MAD. If the answers are already spelled out for you in the Bible why question?

I've posed questions before on this board about sins and why they should be considered as such outside of the Bible says so -- there's little participation from theists or the ones that do participate revert back to God says so. THAT is boring.

[Guest]

never mind....

[_EAllusion]

...I'm pretty sure I get what you're saying here EA.

Are you saying this universe just accidentally happened? That's pretty unlikely.

Um, are you saying a God who had the ability and desire to create this universe just happened? That's pretty unlikely.

This is just one of a long list of arguments theists tend to use where they propose some problem for an atheist and insist they've solved it via God's magic without actually thinking through what they are saying. If the brute fact the universe produces life is so hard to grapple with, you gain nothing by simply burying that brute fact in the properties of a God and failing to account for it. It still is the same problem - namely why does existence have properties such that it leads to life? What God really is doing here is serving as a tailor-made hypothesis not at all different from explaining the existence of lightning by appealing to a being that creates lightning.

As for my view on design arguments in general, I'm with Elliot Sober:

philosophy.wisc.edu/sober/black-da.pdf

[_Ren]

What God really is doing here is serving as a tailor-made hypothesis not at all different from explaining the existence of lightning by appealing to a being that creates lightning.

Right, and I agree.

But would this still be true even in the outlandish example of unicode characters found in 'junk' DNA I mentioned earlier...?
Or in other words - assuming the possibility of a God that created the universe is even on the table, what 'state' would that universe have to be in to convince you it was the case? Or would 'secondary' evidence not be good enough - would God literally have to show him / her / itself to settle it? Would 'that' even settle it?

[_Tarski]

I don't think atheism is unreasonable. I just think it is one-dimensional.

Atheists tend to be some of the most dry and boring people I know. Philosophy doesn't appeal to them for the most part.

This is just the most insane statement I have heard yet from Dart.

1. I have read more philosophy books than any other kind of book.
2. I just now finished rereading Will Durant's Story of Philosophy: The Lives and Opinions of the World's Greatest Philosophers and what struck me was how many of the great philosophers were either atheists ( Carnap, Engels, Freidrich Nietzsche, Albert Camus, Sartre, Herbert Spencer, Heidegger, Diderot, Marx and more recently Bertrand Russel, Derrida, Richard Rorty, Goodman , McGinn etc) or held ideas about God so abstract that they were accused by church authorities of being atheists (Voltaire, Spinoza, Hume, Hegel).
3. Discussions with atheists in the past has convinced me that this is one crowd that is very likely to be familiar with philosophical issues especially epistemology and logic.
4. Of the professional philosophers that I personally know most are atheist/agnostic and the rest espouse a notion of God that is so impersonal as to be nothing but atheism in disguise.


This "boring atheist" is a concoction of Dart's imagination and based on his preconceptions.

And boring? BORING?
Does this include

Douglas Adams
Frank Zappa
Kurt Vonnegut
John Lennon
Dave Matthews
Robert A. Heinlen
Woody Allen
Ingmar Bergman
Alfred Hitchcock
Sir Ian McKellen

?????????????