/atheism/ - Atheism

Sure.

Sounds like fun, OP. Monitoring the thread.

Sorry guys, had issues with my ISP and TOR. Resuming. Pick a chapter.

>>12786

Atheism ofc

I wonder what angle they're going to go for. Atheists are cruel, miserable, irresponsible hedonists? All three at once?

Asian folk religion. Talk about generalizations.

Okay, Gnosticism first. Atheism tomorrow. Let me know if anyone has any issues reading it.

2/4

3/4

4/4

After the re-read, I think that was a bit boring. I'll throw some Atheism up, too.

Here, have a teaser for atheism. I'll try to get to the rest tomorrow.

>>12814

>mfw the Christian response

I can't believe it, I was seriously hoping they might try and say "well, ok, let's carbon date this document and see two it compares to the others" or "ok, lets study the original language and see if we can find common source documents".

But no, it basically says, "assume that the judgement of OUR early Christian councils is divine and infallible. You got it? Good. Now compare the God Inspired Orthodox documents to the filthy gnostic heresy (REEE). Do they look the same, do they?!? I think not. Case dismissed".

>>12864

>You married a christian?

I was a christian at the time, too. The past six years have been a fucking trip.

Sorry for the delay guys. Posting 1/8

>>12872

2/8

>>12873

3/8

4/8

>>12875

5/8

How can we refute such logick, guyze!

>>12876

6/8

>>12877

7/8

>>12878

and for the clencher!

>>12875

>Atheists argue the universe is random

No one does that. You're tearing down a strawman. The argument is that the universe isn't a product of design but that doesn't mean it's also completely random. The laws of physics is what keeps things in check.

>The First law of Thermodynamics shouldn't be described as X because science shouldn't be engaged in can or cannot statements

Why?

>Science deals with what is and is not

It also deals with what can and cannot. I would like to see you jump high enough to touch the moon or be able to turn your own shit into gold by spitting on it. There's a legit set of scientific reasons as to why you CANNOT do that.

>The whole About the World part

Science has advanced quite a bit since the time of Sagan and Russell and either way, the origins of the world and universe are separate from atheism but naturalistic ones are preferred as they're the most viable and common options outside of "goddidit"

>If one insists everything needs a cause

Except this one cause I arbitrarily decide didn't need a cause otherwise my whole fucking argument would collapse instantly

>About Ethics

Here's a proposition I pulled out of my ass. A bunch of super advanced ultra smart aliens have learned about absolutely everything there is to learn about. They know everything and thus are the absolute authority on everything. Nothing knows more than these aliens because by definition and for the same reason that you think there can be no prime mover before God, there can be no being smarter than these aliens.

These aliens have developed the 100% perfect moral system of all time. Literally nothing would ever go wrong under this moral system. However, humans haven't met these aliens yet or learned about their morality.

Thus whatever morals man comes up with would remain completely subjective and constantly changing but there would still remain a perfect system of morals from beings we haven't met yet. There's your answer to needing an absolute moral guidance. Now shut the fuck up and stop trying to use the book that said slavery was ok and selling your children for cattle was just family business as a means to live our lives.

>About Human Destiny

You die twice. Once when your body dies. The other when the last person forgets your name. So far the second way is the only way we know how to go on forever. Maybe one day medical science or some ultra trans humanist revolution will turn us all into immortal machines or whatnot but aside from all of that, most people just want to live their lives out long and well. Even theists want to do that.

>But console themselves in the belief that humanity's destruction is millions of years away

Stupid atheists working to make the world a better place even though they believe it's going to end millions of years from now (what's space travel?), don't they know that the Rapture is only a few years away! Buy gold! Bye!

>Nothing cannot cause something

I'd point to the very forefront of physics but I wouldn't want this guy to mangle it into some justification for more theological bullshit. This reminds me of a question I've been pondering but that's a time for later.

>Loyal Opposition

This is…surprisingly intellectually honest.

>What is the basis for beauty

I don't know. Personal taste. One person can find beauty in HR Giger's works while all the others horror. Another simply can't fancy a sunset no matter how hard he tries. Some people like some songs, others don't and prefer others. Beauty is subjective.

I'm sure there's some definite neuro-chemical signals that occur when someone finds something pleasing and the same would be true for all humans despite finding different things pleasing.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Katharine_Isabelle

>>12872

You know this book can also be thought of as a great reference book to arguments Christians can't easily defeat.

Every time a term is mentioned in passing, it's more ammunition you can look up if you need it.

Every time the book mentions a philosophical tenet, or term, and refutes it weakly, you know to google it for a strong argument.

>Practical Atheists

>Pratical atheists confess that God exists but believe that we should live as if he did not.

It's weird how this book references all these theoretical philosophical positions you won't see in real life. Most of the categories of atheists listed here believe in a God, but are just denying your conception of him!

>Atheists can be classified in other ways as well. Clasification can be done by the philosophy by which an atheist expresses his atheism.

Many of the listed schools of philosophy could mostly be followed by a Christian too. The economic theories of Marxism for example, if you ignored the anti-religion ideas and premise of a godless universe. You could even take Ayn Rand's conclusions and cherry pick the ones that agreed with your religious beliefs, reasoning that wise God created a universe that allows for his logical rules to be discovered.

>The Eternality of Matter

Lol if science isn't allowed to determine the universe appears to consistently follows natural laws and codify that as a fact, then what good is science? No conclusions could be drawn from results.

>The First Law of Thermodynamics is misstated. It cannot be rendered, "Energy can neither be created nor destroyed."

>And what is observed, according to the First Law is that the amount of actual energy in the universe remains constant.

In other words the author accepted the same principle, but wanted to show a way to avoid using certain words. The paragraph refuted itself.

Btw, I went to a religious debate where the Christian practically went by a bunch of the arguments in this section, and the Atheist philosophy professor was ready for his arguments.

You might still be wondering why the author would be worried enough to list the First Law of Thermodynamics? Well the professor pre-emptively brought it up as one of several arguments to quickly refute the argument that "God created the world and can do miracles, because he is a supernatural force beyond the universe."

(The implication being that God can't use his power to perform miracles if he is within the universe, because it would contradict various theological definitions of God, like that he is unchanging, or outside of the universe. The Christian had conceeded that God generally obeyed the laws of the universe. And if God is outside the universe, then he cannot interact with it because he would need to send energy, and since energy cannot be created or destroyed, he would be breaking his own laws. Moreover, he would cease to be unchanging by trying to affect the universe.)

The Christian debater seemed to have expected it, had avoided it, and didn't even bother to respond to that argument, so I didn't get to hear the fully developed Atheist argument. I get the feeling the professor had already thought up a Xanatos gambit with winning contradictions for every possible response, so the Christian just abandoned the argument and moved on to another point.

They both must have read the same book.

>Contradictory Concepts of God

This paragraph is only here to warn Theists not to pursue an argument that will backfire on them.

>The loyal opposition

Heh, it wouldn't be a stretch to surmise that the author has decided God created Atheists to refine the thinking of Christians.

Man, I knew Christian apologetics were shitty but I thought it was because you usually hear it from idiots. But no, it's retarded right to the source. It makes me wonder why no cynical atheist has come up with better arguments and used them to get filthy rich selling How to Pwn Atheists books. It'd be easy as fuck to outdo these chumps.

>>12887

>The argument is that the universe isn't a product of design but that doesn't mean it's also completely random. The laws of physics is what keeps things in check.

Actually no, that is the case. Design in the respect of William Paley (intelligent design) is a very decent understanding. Design as known throughout the western world from the Greeks to the pre-moderns comes in the form of Final Causality. If you reject Final Causality is does promote a complete randomness instead. There is no middle ground. It is either the concept is descriptive of reality or it isn't.

Can't say which this image is trying to get into but I wanted to chime in.

>>12923

>Why?

Because there is no neutrality between nature having this element to itself and nature not having this element to itself.

This is not about the mechanics of the universe or determinism but about purpose in the universe. Hence, "Final Causality".

And of course "Final Causality" does not things specifically with a will as lines like "The heart functions to pump blood" is a statement of Final Causality and one that modern science rejects as actual reality (modern science referring to such lines as metaphorical).

By random, the pre-modern thinkers aren't saying things don't work on their own regularities (though if you look into the defense against Final Causality it certainly will make such a case like David Hume did) but saying that things in nature have no final causality (or no natural ends) to themselves.

>>12925

That's absurd though. Not only do you remove the possibility of final causality but you use an example that attests to its existence.

Patterns emerge because of regularities innate to its parts and how they manage to survive in their environment. It is precisely THROUGH the concept of final causality that self-organization comes about.

Further stating "it is completely impossible to isolate a single, final cause." does not attempt their reality but refutes the ability to clarify individual final causes within the system.

And to even state that we can't clarify what individual ones are BECAUSE of "an almost infinite set of factors and causes" is entirely baseless and makes assumption of humanity's ability to create a working test environment to grasp variables.

You can't have efficient causality without final causality as both terms are incoherent without one another. If A is the efficient cause of B, that is because generating B is the final cause of A, the end toward which A points.

Sources of the respective arguments:

>>12919

Aristotle 2,000 years ago.

>>12925

Biologist Dawkins's "god delusion," which was inspired by Hume's philosophy and Darwin's theory of evolution. I recommend it.

The thing about Aristotle is he was a pioneer, and had to invent new words from scratch. He sometimes made mistakes because he was not aware of certain phenomenon. He sometimes tried to fit all objects into categories and later philosophers would find certain contradictions. If he assumed animals had a final purpose that arose from their form he knew no better.

To the Greeks there were beautiful perfect laws behind the universe, resulting in perfect circular orbits and mathematical patterns. I doubt they yet fully fathomed how seemingly beautiful and complicated systems can arise from chaos, or how observer bias and our tendency to personalize nature can make mundane patterns appear more carefully designed.

The theory of evolution is descriptive, not normative. It therefore doesn't assume there has to be any defining purpose when multiple agents interact. The stock market is another complex reactionary system.

There does not need to be any single cause or rational reason for the index to plunge When multiple independent agents sell for various reasons. The index is just a changing number tied to the going rate, it can have multiple meanings or purposes for different individuals. If there seems to be a clearly defined purpose, that is only because a majority have found a consensus. Nothing in the universe says a changing variable has to have some inherent meaning, but the index still trends over time.

>>12928

>Final causality implies linearity. It implies a straight and clear line from A to B. Self-organization implies non-linearity. It basically goes into every possible direction.

It is a common mistake to understand final causality (and to a degree teleology itself)as linear. To help you here I would suggest:

http://philosophy.ucr.edu/wp-content/uploads/2013/07/Does-Efficient-Causation-Presuppose-Final-Causation.pdf

http://72.52.202.216/~fenderse/Narrative_Telos.htm

It would be a bit too comprehensive to go over here at once but I would like to assert, again, what I've told you: "If A is the efficient cause of B, that is because generating B is the final cause of A, the end toward which A points." If this is not the case then that is to say that A itself can have any effect on anything else at all or no effect at all, which we know to not be the case. The only two possible explanations out of such a scenario would be to point to defective examples of something (which has been accounted for for centuries) or confusing a effect of a thing for the effect of that things parts, which is more of a misunderstanding than a refutation. Without final causality you imply of efficient causality something nonsensical in modern physics.

>>12930

>being this disingenuous

Surely we can't source an argument based on the person who originally conceived the idea, can we? Else you'll be sourcing someone far older than Aristotle to assert a lack of an aim to things in nature.

Your long exposition lacks any substance. You basically assert "They did good for their time but made mistake. This other system, Evolution, is nice. People will prescribe purpose but that doesn't mean it exists in nature."

Yes all thinkers do make mistakes, Hume especially so. Both the Theory of Evolution and the Four Causes (Final Causality being one of them) are descriptive, not normative. And yes, things aren't real in reality just because people say so but that provides no argument for or against the concept's existence.

Also, actually recommending 'The God Delusion'? Don't stoop so low. Recommend something atheistic that has some intellectual back behind it and not just made to combat Evangelical Creationists.

>>12932

>"If A is the efficient cause of B, that is because generating B is the final cause of A, the end toward which A points."

Except of course that this misses two very common problems, the third variable problem and the direction of causality. With the latter, all we can say is that A happens after B, not that it necessarily causes B.

But the real problem here is the third variable problem, where non-linearity mostly comes from. A linear model of A causing B would only work if you have two variables and a direct relation between them, which isn't always the case. In fact, in biology and chaos theory, this is seldom to never the case.

Let me give you an example who your assertion is completely useless in non-linear processes. Pic related is a picture of Rayleigh-Benard cells. They are a pattern that emerges when you heat up silicon oil, which makes hexagonal convection cells.

There is however one thing to keep in mind: 'a pattern emerging from heating up silicon oil' is not the same thing as 'heating causes patterns'. This is because, for the Rayleigh-Benard convection to work, the silicon oil also needs to cool down. This creates a feedback loop, where the oil is heated up, and cooled down continuously.

Now, if we go back to your assertion, we see a problem. Instead of 'A', I'm going to fill in 'heating', and instead of 'B', I fill in 'the Rayleigh-Benard convection', I get "If heating is the efficient cause of the Rayleigh-Benard convection, that is because generating the Rayleigh-Benard convection is the final cause of heating, the end toward which heating points.". Now, I'm going to ignore for a moment that heating can be used for all sorts of things, and that this proposition by that fact alone is completely wrong.

I'm going to return to the feedback loop I pointed towards earlier. We've already established that we don't need just heating, we need a continuous sequence of heating-cooling-heating-cooling etc. etc. So where's the final cause in there?

If it's either heating or cooling, you're missing half of the final cause, by which it cannot be final. If you say it's the whole process, it cannot be final, because 'final' is just about the most opposite of 'continuous' you can possibly get. If you have 5 minutes of heating and cooling, and you point towards the final instance of cooling, the pattern breaks down after that, so that seems like the exact opposite of a cause.

So, in short, what is the final cause in a the Rayleigh-Benard convection?

>>12944

*picture screwed up, sorry

>>12932

The point wasn't to put down Aristotle's arguments for being old. The point was to remind you that later philosophers build off the earlier ones and it is even more dangerous to search for truth by going ever backwards in time when Aquinas has been discredited, rather than moving forward.

Teleology in nature is an illusion, or at best a helpful simplification. Things are more safely or accurately explained by material or efficient causes than formal or final causes. Technically, one exception is enough to invalidate a model you know.

Aristotle was a guy who believed in the four elements. He thought smoke rises into the sky because its made of air and air wants to rise to reach its final resting place, and objects fall because they're partly made of earth and they stop falling and are at rest when they reach their final resting place. He looked for teleological causes to explain "why," in everything.

>>12940

>Does this theory make any testable claims?

Yes. It is a descriptive principle in metaphysics that asserts that substances in nature have a disposition towards a range of effects and reliably carry out those ranges of effects. This is not to say other things relate towards fulfilling it (such as soil for an acorn) but rather what specific substances bring to the table. This is how the line "the final cause of an acorn is a tree" comes to be (ignoring the generalization of the transition from acorn to grown tree for sake of ease). If there were no final causes then A would not be a sufficient condition for B. This means that if final causes did not exist, then there would be no causal regularity or causal necessity. There is no reason for what the oak adds in causation to make cats or black daisies.

Surely people can not think on final causality much or not look into it much but once you reject it outright it's totally incoherent, much like Hume denying causality itself.

And of course something having final causality relates to its shape, material, and most definitely that which brings it about. That is to say, the other three of Aristotle's Four Causes.

>>12945

I don't mean to discourage you, I applaud you for putting so much thought into your post, but it suffers from a very basic issue.

>So, in short, what is the final cause in a the Rayleigh-Benard convection?

Final Causality has nothing to do with events, but substances. Your example of feedback loops is sadly a non-starter as the situation is misunderstood by you from the get-go.

>the third variable problem and the direction of causality.

>With the latter, all we can say is that A happens after B, not that it necessarily causes B.

?

So what are you trying to say here? That "correlation does not equal causation" can be pressed to deny causality as intelligible and that it is difficult to assert accurately what does what in causality? These objections are absurd and simplistic. It amounts to "there are struggles in getting sound results, so the premise is wrong".

>But the real problem here is the third variable problem, where non-linearity mostly comes from. A linear model of A causing B would only work if you have two variables and a direct relation between them, which isn't always the case.

I already gave you reading material to show you were mistaken on non-linearity being an issue. When grasping A causing B we're not dealing with an elementary school grasp of causality but recognize that A has things unique to itself that it can bring about (I'm referring to A as a whole, not A's parts here, though if you wish to be a reductionist then be my guest) under differing circumstances. Granted grasping what it can do in nature is difficult, it is not impossible and does not make "A causing B" too simplistic but rather isolated.

Again, check out my links I posted for you before. You'll enjoy them.

>>12946

>The point wasn't to put down Aristotle's arguments for being old.

I never assumed you did, or at least never consciously did.

>The point was to remind you that later philosophers build off the earlier ones and it is even more dangerous to search for truth by going ever backwards in time when Aquinas has been discredited, rather than moving forward.

This assumes a linear progression in academic discourse that to a degree exists but has become so varied with people having splitting ideas and whatnot that it is simply disingenuous. A great many systems have been built up on faulty premises and to ignore this would be to misrepresent the situation as a whole.

>Things are more safely or accurately explained by material or efficient causes than formal or final causes.

As I've already asserted, efficient causation is unintelligible without final causality so it's either they reject it and go off the deep end or say they reject it and yet still use it.

>Aristotle was a guy who believed in the four elements.

I don't really get why you wish to talk about him so much. It's not like there hasn't been CENTURIES of thinkers who expanded on his ideas. Do you attribute people defending particle physics or particles themselves to people defending Democritus himself? Democritus was pre-Socrates, there is no clue what bullshit he likely believed, but his theory of the a-tom was novel and greatly expanded on as time went on.

I've thought of another way to apply the four causes:

Material cause = chemistry/periodic table of elements (as a noun)

Formal cause = geometry; elements/electron orbitals table (as a noun)

Efficient cause = physics; chemistry/catalyst in a reaction (as a verb)

Final cause = theology; intelligent design; diagnostic (as an adjective)

Electrons on the periodic table are an example of where the material and formal causes overlap under chemistry. I see how this model can help to separate kinds of causes.

Remember also this discussion stemmed from from this picture:

>>12875

Best reduced to:

>….some of what seems random waste may have a good purpose.

>Animal manure makes good fertilizer.

>>12963

>As I've already asserted, efficient causation is unintelligible without final causality so it's either they reject it and go off the deep end or say they reject it and yet still use it.

Either the final cause is a diagnosis, or it does not exist. It sounds ambiguous and is a troublesome concept.

I think the trouble comes from Aristotle trying too hard to shoehorn every possible cause into one or more of these categories. The final cause became a catch-all.

To demonstrate, Aristotle could use it for explaining why an "eternal" object kept its inertia (for that is its nature). Or why a decimal can approach number without ever reaching it (for it is eternally in its nature to increase without reaching it). He could explain that birds fly because it is their nature, and why they are preyed upon by bigger birds.

>the final cause of an acorn is a tree

Except when the acorn is rotting, or is to be roasted in a fire, or to satisfy a man's appetite. Until the acorn's final moment, the philosopher still has to make a judgement call as to what the final cause will be. Or what final cause he will pay attention to. This cause is the most interpretive, and requires an observer to be meaningful.

I take it there are objects that do not naturally cease to exist. As long as they exist you can change the diagnosis whenever necessary. Endless cyclical processes are shoehorned in along with things that meet their natural end. As long as the stock indexes rise over time you can say the final process is to rise, but at any moment until the index is abolished you can change your diagnosis.

Therefore final causes can be N/A and 1) some things do not have a final cause 2) some things have multiple final causes

Only after a thing perishes can we safely say a particular object had more of a particular final cause than another. Until that time the "final cause" could change on a moment to moment basis, depending on its state.

This model is unsafe, and could easily lead to ambiguous wording like, "What is the final cause of disease?"

When you say it is to destroy an organism, reproduce and spread to another, the virus sounds sentient, with a host of creationist implications.

>I've thought of another way to apply the four causes:

You're a bit mistaken for how to grasp some of the four causes. What it properly is is:

>Material Cause: What an object is made out of.

>Formal Cause: The shape that makes an object what it is.

>Efficient Cause: That which brings it into being.

>Final Cause: What the object specifically does.

To call material, formal and efficient causes "chemistry, geometry, and physics" somewhat hits on the issue but still misrepresents it a bit. Further, taking the final cause as theology or intelligent design misrepresents all included concepts. Theology is the study of religious thought in its various forms, intelligent design is the notion that complexity in nature cannot be founded by natural processes, and final causality is what innate regularity an object has. Diagnosis is a different sort of thing as well as a diagnosis is a willful imposition onto how certain things in nature are classified and final cause asserts that there is something internal to an object's form which will have the result in the same outcome consistently which implies something innate rather than imposed.

>Remember also this discussion stemmed from from this picture:

???

The topic I brought up came about here >>12919 or arguably here >>12875

Now take what I said of Efficient Causality. Science can help us understand the world and thus understand what the final cause of objects are but if there are no established final causes we cannot grasp what does what and so cannot make sense of efficient causality.

>The final cause became a catch-all.

It's a specific definition that defines one specific thing about an object.

>To demonstrate, Aristotle could use it for explaining why an "eternal" object kept its inertia (for that is its nature).

>could use it

All academic terms can be misused or given faulty answers.

>the final cause of an acorn is a tree

>Except when the acorn is rotting, or is to be roasted in a fire, or to satisfy a man's appetite.

That does not change the final cause of acorns. Simply because things don't reach their ends does not mean their ends did not exist. And as my first link in >>12932 expresses, deficiencies of individual examples of a thing (a deformed acorn) can weigh into different results but that doesn't change what we perceive of the nature of acorns. This is expanded on in greater detail on page 2 of that same link. And acorns being used in different ways does not change its nature either.

>Until the acorn's final moment, the philosopher still has to make a judgement call as to what the final cause will be.

You're applying final causes to individual examples of things rather than other examples of the same thing. Maybe I misled you to say "the final cause of AN acorn" and for that I apologize. When talking about what objects are (their essence, that is to say) we must speak of objects generally so to grasp the core of the situation. For example, we must see through all the crappy triangles I draw to realize that that isn't necessarily exactly what a triangle is (is doesn't need to be made in pen as I did, it doesn't need to be uneven, etc) so we must look through those examples of a triangle to grasp the essence of what it means to be a triangle. Same with specific things that arise in nature.

Sadly it seems much of what you wrote rests upon this misunderstanding. Again, I'm sorry to confuse you.

>This model is unsafe, and could easily lead to ambiguous wording like, "What is the final cause of disease?"

Only if it is misused, but that applies to any system. Take for instance my comment to >>12945 that the Four Causes deal with describing substances (unlike Humean causality, which describes events). "Disease" is a disorder of biological function/structure, which would get the same response from myself and people discussing the Four Causes that I gave to convection. It is important then to discuss substances related to disease such as the innate things that bring them about.

>When you say it is to destroy an organism, reproduce and spread to another, the virus sounds sentient, with a host of creationist implications.

This has literally no connection to creationism. Creationists like Paley (The Darwin of Intelligent Design, I guess I could describe him as) work under the modern framework that there are no final causes. You seem to be confused what Creationism even is. And to respond to your claim that they sound sentient, it could be taken like that mistakenly and that IS a common mistake. It is more accurate to understand it as things in nature making specific causes occur. That is to say that those things in nature are directed towards specific ends innately, without some will.

Alright, finally.

Ironically enough, the largest group of religions gets the shortest chapter in the book.

>>13062

>>13063

I'll do feminism next if we can keep it from becoming a shitfest.