The problem with atheism – No rational connection between the methodology and object

In regards to any knowable object, it is commonly understood that because of the way something exists it can be known in a certain way.
For example heat and cold. Due to its nature, it is perceived in certain ways (i.e. with thermometers). If you want to know what time it is, you can stare at a thermometer all day ...yet you will not be enlightened.

There is an epistemological great divide that separates all knowable things into two categories –those things we can control and those things we cannot control.

Some things we cannot control simply because we don’t have the technology or knowledge to control them yet (as one bumper sticker reads “Earth First. We can mess up the other planets later”). So in principle we could control them. But there are some things we cannot control even in principle.

For example the sun. In a physical sense it is vastly more powerful than us. Because we are conscious and can think however and the sun can’t, we tend to think that perhaps one day we might be able to control it. But if we are dealing with things that are conscious and in fact much more conscious than us, the controlled experiment would be irrelevant and useless. Imagine a being that is physically and cognitively much more powerful than we are. There is no way in the world that we can study them through a controlled experiment

As a simple example , take an ant and a human. Because of my advantages I assume I am more intelligent than the ant – I can divert the ant – it can crawl on my finger – I can catch it and control it. And throughout it all the ant appears to have no real way to understand human anatomy (the ant is not thinking “I am now walking on the finger of a human sapien sapien”). The ant is more conscious of my arm than I am (aware of topography like hairs and freckles ). But in terms of knowing that it is an arm, that it belongs to a body, that it belongs to a particular body etc etc .... all this is beyond the ants cognitive horizons . Similarly there is a sense that we may know about the topography of the earth and can also launch a few substantiative guesses about the surrounding universe– but what is it? Is the earth part of a cosmic body (as socrates suggests) What is the earth really? It’s not simply different knowledge – Like the ant knows the freckles and I know the hairs - It’s not like lateral or horizontal variation of knowledge. It’s a different order of knowledge. If there are things /beings in the universe that are physically and cognitively greater than ourselves , we can no more examine such things in a controlled environment anymore than an ant can bring me into an ant laboratory.
That is one aspect of things one cannot control, even in principle.


Another is it’s not possible for one to have experienced one’s own conception, therefore one cannot speak with absolute certainty where one came from. When something is the source of something else (in the biological sense) it sets up an epistemological relationship (a relationship of knowability). If I produce something, I know what I produce, but the product cannot know. The product depends on me to become informed. If you have absolute truth as a god as the source of everything it sets an asymmetrical epistemological relationship (meaning that god can know us perfectly, being the source of our existence, but we cannot symmetrically know god like he knows us).

In fact you design a scientific experiment based on what you are trying to understand because every knowable object is known in certain ways. So you design it around what you “think” will be the knowable qualities of the object.

For example the search for Brown Dwarfs (stars that never made it – the minor leagues of stellar bodies). There was actually a theory that they exist but they weren’t discovered. So astronomer Eric Becklin built his studies around what he felt were the knowable characteristics of brown dwarfs.


If we believe that everything has to be known through controlled experiments (bread and butter of empiricism), this limits the knowable universe to things that are less than us. When I choose a particular process to know, the very choice of a method predetermines the range and extent of things I can know. If I chose the thermometer as an instrument, that predetermines what I can know ( namely temperatures).

Similarly if I choose as my primary method of knowing the controlled experiment I am predetermining that I will only be able to know things that are inferior to me (since that is the only thing I can control)
There is something tragically comic about going out in the universe wielding the controlled experiment as the primary means of knowing and coming back reporting there is nothing out there but things we can control.
And of course the self referential incoherence of “only those things known by controlled empirical experiments can be accepted as the definitely known” – the problem is that that statement cannot be empirically verified – if you tried to empirically establish the philosophical claim you would have a text book example of circular reasoning.

The whole point of spirituality is to give you another method of knowing, not those things that are inferior to you and can be controlled by you, but a method that allows you to study things that are greater than you.
For e.g. - suppose you want to get into a prestigious graduate school or trying to get a job in a particular firm that is extremely difficult competitive . There are books “the successful job interview”, “the successful graduate application” . And what is the common denominator? Trying to persuade or to somehow please them or impress them, to know what are their likes and dislikes, to somehow communicate “l will be good for you” “ I will please you “ etc ..... the point is that you have to satisfy them.
Now if for some company that’s true , what to speak of god?
How much more is the burden on us to make an impression on god? I mean suppose you entered an application interview for a graduate school and said “If you’re really lucky I may go here, and if you really want me, I’ll let you try and convince me that you are worth my trouble – go ahead I will give you five minutes” ... that’s probably not the best way.
Yet with something infinitely greater than graduate school , god, some people do exactly that. Like, “ ok if god exists I’ll give him two minutes.... I want to see a flash of light some thunder ... go ahead god , impress me”

So something is deeply wrong with this picture - it’s irrational because there is no rational connection between the methodology and the object one is trying to understand.

 

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I read through all this, and you did make some good points. However, I didn't see a problem with atheism. A problem with some particular atheists, yes, but not atheism in general. What you touch on at the very end isn't something I've ever asked or proposed. I don't pretend to know what to expect from God or what would qualify as proof of it. Rather, I come from ignorance. Rather, I ask theists to tell me what I should do, what I should read to get me convinced. And from what I've done, what I've been told from my Christian friends, what I've been told by my Muslim family, some of whom are formally trained in South Africa, I've still yet to be convinced by anything. That's my atheism, and I see nothing in your post that suggests a problem with it.

 

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so what was the methodology.
I mean what did you gather you were supposed to "do" in order to know god?

 

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Reading (Bible and Quran), praying (Muslim only, as far as I know there's no Christian equivalent), going to church/mosque (Mosque was part of the praying obviously, but there would be sermons similar to the ones given at Churches post prayer). That, along with discussions with my theist family and friends.

 

So what did you read exactly and how do you assess comprehension?
I mean you could say that reading plays an important part in any knowledge based discipline, but generally you see that assessment deals alomost exclusively with the issue of comprehension and application

praying for what?

I mean this is a bit simplistic.
Suppose I was a university student and I explained how I was doing everything just like the other students - reading, placing my backside in lecture halls etc - but I still didn't pass the exams so there was something wrong with the university or it was all some subjective issue ("faith" or whatever) ... I mean these things don't even begin to really address an analysis of how one approaches knowledge - rather it begins with "well what did you read?" "what did you hear?" "how did you apply what you read and heard?" etc etc

 

Half a fair point, except I've never ran into that problem and I've honestly never understood that problem in others. Reading, placing my backside in lecture halls and paying attention did let me pass the exams and get As. So I always assumed problems that other people had were external and independent from the method.

It's been a good couple of years so I don't remember exactly off the top of my head. Various suras and NT verses, no OT. No hadith as I wanted to be inspired by the source.

It doesn't work exactly like that. Praying is sort of a ritual that you do, a performance while reciting parts of the Quran. You don't pray for something. Rather you recite the opening surah, and then go on to recite other suras while praising Allah throughout. It's not until the very end where you perform dua that you ask for something. I always asked for the knowledge to be better and the forgiveness of my straying. Of course, there is the problem that praying is pretty much invalidated if you're not sincere. That whole time I didn't believe in God, but I was trying my best to put sincerity into it. Like, if you exist please hear this, or something like that you know? After all, it's how we're taught to pray as kids, by imitation, and that for most people seems to end up turning into belief. The thought was that if I did the same, it would do the same for me.

 

ashura

unless you studied something that you already knew, the simple act of placing your backside on a certain seat in a certain building or opening a book and sticking your nose in it certainly wasn't what made you get straight A's

well thats a bibliography but what about the content?
I mean I'm sure you could mention a few issues of comprehension from your lecture hall days

so how does praying "work"?

 

There is a branch of knowledge dealing with how we learn; the branch is comprised of findings from psychology, pedagogy, didactics, medicine, economics, philosophy and some others. It is a fairly popular field of interest, people are interested in how to learn, how to teach others, and how to learn better.

Internet sites are devoted to the topic, such as Study Hacks, skills4study, Study Guides and Strategies, universities have pages devoted to the topic (e.g. *).

As an example, I have here the book Accelerated Learning Systems and it lists six steps necessary in the process of successful learning (I have the book in a translation and I am translating back into English, so the terms here in my post may not be the same as in the English version):

1. Mental preparation that enables succesful learning
2. Adapting facts to one's abilities
3. Studying the material
4. Memorizing key facts
5. Showing that one knows
6. Assessing how one has learned

Each step is then discussed from various aspects and detailed instructions given on how to do this and that - e.g. how to set goals, how to plan study time, how to relax, how to make notes, tricks for memorizing etc.


So you see, some people do think there is more to passing exams than just "reading, placing my backside in lecture halls and paying attention".

 

LG, are you really claiming that it is rational to believe in the superstitous and /or supernatural?

 

LG, your prose wanders around various subjects, but is merely allegory.

Your post falls on the first hurdle too, 'In regards to any knowable object...'

You didn't establish what was 'knowable' before going off to use an analogy.

You also seem to imply from the title of your post that atheism is an active viewpoint. That is not so, people who have never considered the existance of god are atheists, so you seem to be falling into the same old trap of attributing more to the term than is correct.

 

Sure you can. Just randomly divide the people in hospitals into two large groups. Have people pray to a deity asking for one group to get better. Compare the results between the two groups. If the group that is prayed for recovers/survives better with any statistical significance, you have evidence that your deity exists and answers prayers. If there isn't any difference then you have evidence that either your deity doesn't exist, or it doesn't answer prays asking for people in hospitals to be healed. However it turns out, congratulations - you have performed a controlled experiment that has given you more information about our proposed deity.

 

Is that true? Suppose I divide a group of people [e.g. cancer patients] into two groups: I give them a treatment that I believe is good for cancer. Out of 1000 people only one person is cured. Did the treatment work? Did it fail?

 

Too simplicistic. You are not allowing for spontaneous remission, the fact that some patients may have been incorrectly diagnosed and a host of other factors.

You should think a bit more become asking silly questions. ! Are you aware of what it nmeans to have control groups, double-blinfd trials and so on ?

Ina nutshell, your question makes no sense, so it cannot be answered.

 

Do you think that this is what religions say - "Well, this is not consistent with the Laws of Nature, so there must be an unobservable, illogical supernatural universe full of beings who capriciously toy with the workings of the natural universe just to assert their superiority." -? And that every person who believes in God thinks that way?

What would be such extraordinary evidence that science would accept?
I mean, how could they even recognize it as evidence, if it is extraordinary?

So much for accepting the extraordinary ...

 

I'm not sure exactly what you mean here. Are you saying that 1 person in the treated group survives and zero people in the untreated group survive? If that's what you mean then no, the treatment probably did not work. You might want to look up "statistical significance calculations" for details on how you determine whether or not something was a real effect or simply random chance.

 

Not all of them, surely, but a very very large number. Just look around at this board for all the people who try to argue that god must exist because science can't explain where species came from, or how the universe got here, or any number of other things that theists want to attribute to the supernatural.

By "extraordinary" he simply means evidence that is extraordinarily convincing. Things like people with missing limbs regrowing them when they pray to a certain god, followers of a certain god who are able to consistently make specific, unambiguous prophecies about the future, or other things along that line.

Such subjective internal experiences are very unconvincing for most people. They are not extraordinarily convincing.

 

and what happens every time a proper study is conducted? Right god comes out dead even. Look at the 2006 Harvard study.

 

Yes, there have been a number of studies that tried to show a connection between prayer and recovery. All failed.

 

Yes they did and will continue to do so because
A) there is no god
B)a god exists but ignores us
If there is a third rational reason I'd love to hear it. But I don't really expect to.

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