10 Questions for Atheists and What do Atheists Believe:

Every shred of evidence points to evolution. No such evidence points to a god.

 

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The number of shreds tends to be relative to the degree that a topic is properly research.

To say the least, the lack of philosophical training provided for those in the discipline of science and the high ratio of established philosophers who incorporate some idea of transcendence/god in their philosophy, tends to indicate something


most scientists today are ignorant of philosophical issues. Though at the beginning of the twentieth century a professional scientist normally had a background in philosophy,
Today things are quite different, and the stars of modern science are more likely to have been brought up on science fiction ... the physicist who is a quantum mechanic has no more knowledge of philosophy than the average car mechanic.
-Lewis Wolpert, The Unnatural Nature of Science,

 

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Moderator's Note: In spite of the fact that the title of the subforum is "Religion," this is a science forum first. Anti-science diatribes like this may be considered trolling and may be deleted without warning

 

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But of course this speaks nothing about the advances made in understanding our world, our universe, where a knowledge of "God" is no longer deemed necessary?

At the beginning of the 20th century they were still debating the existence of atoms, not to mention the building blocks of those atoms.
As our understanding of our environment has increased, so the need for a "God" is reduced.

Where science goes, God seems to disappear.
Spooky, eh?
Ever wondered that there might be a reason for this other than your claim of lack of philosophical training?

 

what are those advancements of understanding?

And shortly after, they were also riding a lot of hype too.
Cells were thought to be merely simple constructs.
If they knew that a single cell has a more complex design than that of NYC's infrastructure perhaps they would not have been so optimistic.

what makes you say that god has disappeared?

On the contrary, the strongest arguments against god come from the social sciences (the problem of evil in the world, etc) and not from the physical sciences, which seem to borrow more from science fiction in their rebuttals.

Either way, a proper investigation of the philosophy that surrounds theistic claims clears up both camps.

If it didn't, you would expect to see science as diametrically opposed to religion (which despite the adamant hopes of certain persons here, is not the case).

 

As an example, feel free to pop your next response on some paper, pop it in the post, and I'll pick it up in a few days.

Irrelevant.

As was the atom. Our understanding improves.

But at least they discovered this, and are advancing our understanding.

If I push something out of my house, has that thing not disappeared from my house?
:shrug:

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Science does not need to argue against something that can not demonstrate its existence. We have been down this road before. You claim existence and until you can support it... well, so it goes on, I guess.

Please demonstrate how... or is this just another confidence statement?
Make a claim... support the claim... rebut counter interpretations of the evidence... cycle as necessary.

 

Sarkus
“

the mail service dispenses with the necessity of accepting god?
lol

dismissing the pursuit of philosophy in the heat of that hype indicates it was a bit premature - particularly when the answers they thought they would have by now are still in the mail (so to speak)
“

... and the mystery continues
:scratchin:

still a sad distance form making god a non-issue however

it appears you are still in the act of pushing, and as it happens when a small thing tries to push a big thing, they simply push themselves away while the larger remains stationary.

someone should explain that to Dawkins

yes we have been down this road before.
If you insist that the language of empirical reductionism is sufficient to explain all phenomena, please give evidence of things like your mind or justice.
(no rain cheques please)

well from the physical sciences, claims of god's non-existence can be dismissed since they don't have an absolute language to work with - namely everything we see and experience in this world cannot be reduced to simple issues of energy and mass - so if god doesn't measure up with our understandings of energy and mass, so what - neither does 99.9% of the universe either.

As for the social sciences, the arguments tend to be a bit more involved, but they basically boil down to one or more of the following

1. incorrect understanding of the nature of god (eg - if god exists why doesn't he do what I want him to)
   
2. incorrect understanding of the nature of the living entity (eg - this body which is subject to death is the final last word about me in terms of self)
   
3. incorrect understanding of the nature of this world (eg - if this world is god's creation, why do we have so much trouble with it fulfilling our desires)

 

Ah yes - I forgot that you gain strength of conviction from the fact that science doesn't have all the answers.
Logical fallacy, LG. But you know that.

Indeed it does.
"God did it!"
Aaah - mystery over.

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Don't confuse stationary for stubborn refusal to let go of the comfort blanket of one's belief.

Again you argue from a logical fallacy: present inability is not proof of impossibility.

Further, as has been explained to you, you need to DEFINE these terms - and then we will see what evidence is available.

Woooah! Slow down, LG.
Who is claiming god's non-existence?
Most atheists here don't.
Science doesn't. How can it if there is no evidence for its existence.

1. Ah yes, the correct understanding only being available to those that believe in god?... believe to believe, LG.
   
   
   Which of course theists have an inside track on knowledge... from a book? Yet can offer no evidence to support their understanding of... how strange.
   
   

Again - it is elitist bullcr4p to believe that you might have a better understanding unless you can demonstrate it.
A scientist would rightly be ignored if he stood up, said he knew more about a subject and then sat down - unless he could demonstrate it.

But alas - you seem incapable.

 

This is anti-science rhetoric that has no support. Perhaps you'd care to support that claim rather than simply continue to make anti-science comments in a science board. Your trolling in this regard is getting tiresome and stretching the limits of toleration.

Your trolling and baiting comment in parentheses aside, there *are* certain claims of religious delusion that *are* diametrically opposed to science. If you dispute that, you are deluded. Period. If you're not deluded by whatever religious superstitions you hold to, please feel free to demonstrate how stopping the rotation of the Earth for a full day; virgin birth; zombie messiahs; flooding an entire planet while leaving no trace; and turning wives to pillars of salt is consistent with which branch of science.

You're the only person I've ever noticed that implies that non-believers assert that "reductionism" is sufficient to explain all phenomena. You invoke similar post-modernist mumbo-jumbo all the time, which really is just a variation of the argument from ignorance: you don't know how it was done and, since science (the only valid method of observing and explaining the universe) *hasn't* yet explained a phenomena, it must be [insert silly god].

The universe most certainly does. The energy and mass of the universe is precisely consistent with that which might be expected if there were no god to have a hand in it. Face it, you apply a god belief to your own ignorance and out of your own tendency to invoke a post-modernist, nonsensical and irrational view of the world and universe. In other words, you can figure it out so how dare anyone else exceed your own ego or reject your own superstitions. What nonsense.

This is complete and utter horse shit. But, it's what's expected from your own deluded perspective. You think that because sociologists, anthropologists, etc don't find your own god credible or necessary that they therefore don't understand it. This is complete horse shit. The opposite is more likely to be true and supportable by the evidence: it is the religious adherent that is less likely to understand the nature of religion and cult beliefs since they are deluded and biased by their own superstitions (i.e. you).

In other words, the religious practitioner is unqualified to assess his/her own superstitions or cults and is often unqualified to even engage in an intellectual discussion about their own superstitions or cults since they take an emic rather than an etic view.

I've been reviewing your posts more and more lately and it's becoming clear that you and a few others are really just here to bring an anti-science message to a science forum. This sort of behavior will have a low tolerance with me going forward.

 

Sarkus

actually I am talking about why philosophy was no longer deemed necessary due to the events of empiric discipline at the turn of the century

actually I am talking more about the need for philosophy

hence your argument for the impossibility of god suffers

however you want to define them, empiricism doesn't have the language to indicate either the mind or justice

your no evidence = limitations of empiricism.
IOW if empiricism cannot even indicate issues like the mind or justice, calling upon it to evidence god is futile from the start

actually these are all theoretical foundations. If you insist on theorizing on them in a different fashion, you simply end up with a scenario not too distant from a high school drop out battling their wits against a physicist.
IOW the claims or conclusions of the knowledge in question remain outside the challengers ability to either validate or invalidate.
:shrug:

 

Purely philosophical considerations, and philosophical "training" of the theological variety, have gradually disappeared from most scientific practice because they have repeatedly led to gross error and embarrassment, and proved to be impediments to productive research.

They have proven so worthless, in fact, that scientists are sometimes in danger of too carelessly dismissing any philosophical approaches at all to anything. They forget that it isn't human knowledge until it is understood by human beings.

Even so, the philosophical training of most top-flight scientists is far superior to the scientific training of most top-flight philosophers - let alone theologians.

They seldom make mistakes in basic logic and inference when talking about scientific matters, for example.

 

The carelessness of a scientist is when they lose sight of the very philosophy they are working out of.

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Especially when they start advocating that they have the monopoly of anything knowable in the world

Being a high priest, if not a bishop, in the cathedral of modern science— my university, the Massachusetts Institute of Technology —I can testify that a great many of what we sometimes like to call "the MIT family," faculty and students, believe that there is indeed no legitimate source of knowledge about the world other than modern science. This is as mistaken a belief as the belief that one cannot gain legitimate knowledge from anything other than religion. Both are equally false.
-J. Weizenbaum Ph.D.

 

Do you agree that they are both "equally false" ?

And granted that, unargued and in most contexts pretty dubious, how does that contradict my observation that most scientists are better trained in some kind of philosophy than most philosophers are in any branch of science ?

Or my observation that most philosophy has been removed from the training of scientists and the practice of science because of its track record of impeding research and causing major mistakes ?

Weizenbaum - whose field (AI) is normally included in the sciences more for lack of anywhere else to put it than similarity to, say, biology - even so would not take kindly, I think, to philosophers curbing his research and telling him what is and is not possible in the programming of computers.

And his complaint is a strange one. He claims that modern scientists commonly believe that the extinction of humans would be no great loss if self-reproducing machines of superior intellect had been created to replace them. I have met no such scientists, and I think they are very rare. They certainly do not represent science, or its philosophies.

 

sure
the scripture won't help you reformat your hard drive

not sure on what basis you say that
due to the high saturation of science in intelligent circles, and it's forming a mandatory component of all curricullums (all in the name of getting a job in today's society of course), I can't see how you could argue that a scientist is better trained in philosophy. A scientist is not required to study philosophy, simply because there is no career requirement for it.

perhaps in some cases, but it also paves the way for a grander type of error, as indicated by Weizenbaum

that is precisely what you have in some circles of neuroscience - persons telling a biologist what is possible (aka brain as a computer) on the strength (all in the name of philosophy, ideology or perhaps religion) of AI. To quote further from Weizenbaum ...

I think that this phenomenon has contributed to science's inability to provide an idol which the faithful can worship as truly representative of their common faith. Now recently, within my lifetime, the computer has appeared, and it seems to me that the computer fills that need. Modern man has seen that machines which physically destroy and reconstruct his environment — the steam-shovel, for example — are made in his own image. The steam-shovel has an arm and a hand, and it digs into the ground, picks up objects and so forth. Clearly, it is a kind of imitation of a certain aspect of man. But the computer takes things a step farther. When instructing a computer to think (if I may use that term for a moment) in imitation of human thought, we cross a subtle line.

I am not aware how that is a substantial claim from Weizenbaum's work - basically he pioneered a model for creating a program that was capable of fooling people into thinking they were communicating with a real person. He was more cynical of what this actually achieves in regards to AI than some of his peers

 

They do a little philosophy - in particular, they have to learn how to frame a logical argument, handle inductive proofs, etc - but also quite a bit of exposure on the way.

Philiosophers, on the other hand, and especially theologians, often haven't the slightest exposure to science. They get evidence and proof mixed up, theory and data, basic stuff like that.

? Who is telling whom what, there, and where's the philosopher - the AI guy?

It is a specific claim in the essay you've been quoting.

 

Iceaura

And for some strange reason they can't discuss anything philosophical outside of their professional interest (aka empiricism) ....

Even if you view that some theistic rebuttals of evolution are inept, at least they have the ability to begin discussing it.
This warrants a degree of "exposure". The evidence is that it is in the curriculum.
“

You've never encountered the model of the computer being used in the scientific discussion of consciousness?

once again, I am not aware how that is a substantial claim from Weizenbaum's work

 

Most don't.

Used ? Sure. But what about the question ?

You seem to have been waving at some kind of point connected with the observation that no scientist welcomes philosophical nonsense interfering with their research. Now Weizenbaum is in a peculiar field of "science", with some odd features more common to weapons engineering than, say, biology, but my guess is he would not have a whole lot of time for a philosopher's version of what was and was not theoretically possible in his field.

It is a specific claim in the essay you quoted. You can read it there. I have no familiarity with the guy otherwise, or his work. I just read the essay you quoted from.

 

Iceaura
“

If they didn't begin to discuss these things you couldn't complain about their ideas on the subject
“

the point is that philosophy states the "why" of something.
the science of it is the "how" of something.

If it cannot be demonstrated how something works, science has nothing practical to do with it ... unless of course one is taking a sojourn into philosophy ..

specific perhaps
substantial perhaps not

 

The point was not to complain about their "ideas". The point was that they have no relevant ones, because they have no familiarity with even the basics of the field.

And the world is full of philosophers who think they can tell when that premise holds. They used to do a lot of damage. It was troublesome getting them out of the labs, and their philosophies out of any role in guiding research. Why invite them back ?

Now if you have a minute, there's still the matter of making sense out of this:

I can't find the philosopher in there, or any other relevant analogy. Clarify ?

 

iceaura
“

if they had no familiarity, they couldn't begin to lodge a rebuttal

Hence at a particular time, being pro-empirical was necessary.
I think we are rapidly approaching the antithesis of that phase

You have persons in AI telling persons in biology what is and is not possible (and not on the strength of "how")