About that atheism thing…

[Evoken]

Then I assume you are rejecting Jesus' claims of Divinity.

Yes, very much.

Yeah, I liked him, too

Careful there, or they'll think we are nazis


Evo

 

[Selaphiel]

Hey Sela,

Yeah, I know that ruling out Christianity or even all other religions due to lack of evidence doesn't necessarily needs to rule out a God itself who could have created the universe. I am aware of such a position but I am not really convinced by it or the arguments usually made for it like, say, Craig's Kalam or Edward Feser's Aristotelean proof. I am also comfortable with saying "I don't know" when it comes to questions such as "why is there something rather than nothing?" (a question which I think makes the implicit assumption that nothingness is the only possible default state of affairs).

Thanks for posting :e4e:


Evo

I expressed myself a bit clumsily. When I wrote "as you surely know", that was not meant as an accusation. It was meant in a sincere way, I'm quite certain that you know very well the difference between philosophical theism and a particular religion.

Out of curiousity, what do you take issue with in the five ways of St.Thomas? Or in the Kalam argument of Craig? Not implying that I think that they can simply be recited followed by "QED", but I am interested in hearing your view.

There are other conceptions of God as well of course. I'm writing my thesis on the problem of speaking of divine action in an age of scientific cosmology. So I have examined and are examining a variety of theological models, which from a Catholic perspective probably would seem like quite "liberal" (I really dislike that word, it doesn't really mean much) conceptions of God. Ranging from Whiteheadian conceptions of God to the conceptions of German idealism such as Schelling, Fichte and Hegel or a synthesis between these (the main thinker I'm analyzing is a synthesis of idealism and process theology).

As for the question of why there is something rather than nothing. I'm glad to see that your answer is agnostic. When it comes to this question, I think the atheistic response (as opposed to the agnostic response) must be more than a mere negation, the negation should at least be accompanied by non-theistic metaphysical alternatives.

I'm not sure theistic proofs really work myself. That is, I don't think there can be proof in the true sense of the word. That would be assuming a very finalist, in lack of a better word, theory of truth. On this I am probably leaning more towards pragmatism and truth as a progressive adventure (C. S. Pierce, A. N. Whitehead). I think such arguments ultimately can't be more than the attempt to express a conviction in a way that is rational in light of a current world view which again is informed by current cosmological models.

:e4e:

 

[noguru]

As some friends and fellow TOLers have noticed, some of whom have sent me messages asking about it (thanks! ), and for others who have yet to notice but who knew what I previously believed: I no longer consider myself a Catholic nor a theist.

As to what lead to this change, it had been some time in the making, reaching a tipping point about a year and a half ago. But the short of it is that I don’t see the hand of an all loving, knowing and powerful God at work in the world or what is said to be his Church; rather, I see a God who does his hardest to remain hidden and everything unfolding in a way that one would expect if such a God was not active in the world or simply didn’t exist. I find myself in an universe in which no process attests to God's activity within it.

As my faith in God, the supernatural and the Catholic Church waned, I came to a point where I realised that I was not being honest with myself if I continued on that path. The lack of evidence for God and for the supernatural reality entailed by the beliefs I was holding by faith lead to an internal conflict that kept piling up and by the end I came to realise that I was holding on to the faith due to an emotional attachment to it and not because I still believed in it. But there was no integrity to be found in that setup and I got nothing but cognitive dissonance out of it; so I let go.

While I am an atheist now, I do not consider myself a strong/militant atheist, that is, I don’t make the claim that I know for a fact that God does not exists. Nor do I have a penchant for bashing God or religion. Rather, my disbelief arises for the most part from a lack of evidence and this lack of evidence leads me to think the existence of God or the supernatural is unlikely and I thus live my life as if it doesn’t exists. But as new evidence can always emerge which can change one’s mind, I do not adopt the strong/militant stance as some atheists do.

I wasn’t sure at first what to write for this OP, my original idea was to write a longer post detailing everything but I opted instead for not writing an essay and for leaving things a bit less formal and open, letting the thread unfold by itself and then ride along with it.

The above is condensed for the sake of brevity but I’d be willing to expand on it. So, yeah, I’d be open to discuss things and answer any questions you may have about this change. Hopefully it can be done in a friendly, conversational and respectful manner :cheers:


Evo

Why did your realization of your "emotional attachment to faith" cause internal conflict?

I realized that it was an emotional attachment for me many years ago, but recognizing that it was emotional attachment brought about its own type of liberty. I can accept and understand that emotional attachment, and still accept all empirical evidence for natural processes.

 

[noguru]

Yeah, well, I wasn't always a Christian myself. Growing up, while I was baptised Catholic as an infant, the faith was never forced on me and I was very much left to my own when it came to it. I didn't go to a Catholic school either. I grew up being rather indifferent towards religion in general. It was only around my late teenage years that I began taking things more seriously. Before embracing Christianity and later on the Catholic faith, I had dabbed in Satanism (the LaVeyan type, not the theistic type) and then Gnosticism, the deeper exploration of Gnosticism and it's history was what eventually lead me to Christianity and then Catholicism.


Evo

At catechism class when I was 12, I asked the teacher (since we were on the subject of Jesus sacrifice for us) "If Jesus was God and He knew he would live forever, then what exactly did He sacrifice by physically dying on the cross?" She grabbed me by the ear dragged me out into the hall and said "You are a bold young man!". Later in life I recognized how people's irrational personal ire about sincere accurate questions was a defensive mechanism they used as a facade to cover up their own cowardice. This is one of the reasons I went for the next 17 years as an agnostic/atheist.

About 6 years after returning to "faith" at 29, I had been reading Neale Donald Walsch's book "Communications With God", I started to consider other possibilities for the significance of the crucifixion and resurrection. Walsch dealt quite comprehensively with this exact subject in his book. It was/is the best explanation I have heard yet regarding my question as a 12 year old.

I know a lot of the mindless parroting jerks like Truster, OUC... are going to make some negative comments about this. But these same people are horrendous at answering any serious and far reaching question given to them. They seek the easy way out.

 

[noguru]

Quite correct, I overstated Enyart's position. He does believe that God will provide wisdom, guidance and such to those that seek.

Yes, what Hitler did was definitely sinister and ugly; one of the great examples of our capacity for performing evil acts.

Yeah, I liked him, too

How exactly do you determine that what you have is "wisdom guidance and such from God"?

 

[Evoken]

Hey TH,
I’ll do a similar thing for the sake of brevity and omit some parts for the same reasons as you

I think hope is a more worthy investment than futility and that given there is nothing in the measurable world to settle the question faith addresses it remains a superior context and choice both for settling value and purpose as well as the natural desire to continue.

Well, I don’t see it as an investment in futility at all; letting go of the faith didn’t lead me to descend into a state of permanent hopelessness and despair. Rather, I realized that there being no afterlife didn’t rob this life of meaning, but that it made it truly precious, unique and worth living. That the finality of death, far from being a source of despair or a license to “sin”, is a liberator which endows this life with meaning and propels one to fully embrace it and live it to the best of ones ability. That while there may not be a purpose given to us from above, we all find and make our own purpose in our walk of life and that such does not needs to depend on faith in God or the hope of an afterlife in order for it to have meaning and value for us.

That hope which you speak of must, like the trust we spoke of above, be grounded in something otherwise it may as well be a false hope; however worthy of investment such hope may appear to be in the surface.

No, I think witness/testimony on the point should be evidence worth considering for anyone who doesn't consider the source untrustworthy...

The issue here lies in the nature of the testimony and not so much in the trustworthiness of the person. Such testimony is not just inherently subjective but also as varied and contradictory as there are religions and denominations and there is no reliable way by which to test them even within one particular denomination. Such experiences are also often dictated more by the framework and culture that the person finds herself in (something which happens with miracles as well) and the individual’s subjective feelings than anything else.

When I was an atheist I had a few close friends who tried to bring me into the fold. I accepted that something remarkable was happening with them, believing them to be honest and earnest in their desire to share it with me, but I was (absent personal, subjective experience) unable to distinguish settle the matter resting on them.

Precisely. Hence why I give primacy to my own experience when it comes to testimony of this kind. It is not that I outright believe that the people who make the claim are lying (even tho societal pressure can lead some to do so), it is that I see no reason to believe there is something supernatural behind them. I don’t see such experiences as providing a reliable way by which one can know whether or not God or the supernatural is real.

We differ here. That is, while you may not be hostile you are most definitely opposed because the premise here is the very thing, because whatever particulars you might retain a fondness for, they're unimportant absent the central truth that gives them real meaning for the faithful and as such can only be seen as being in opposition, if genially.

Fair point and I’d feel inclined to agree.

I think you may be conflating a great deal of dogma with what I'm talking about.

Perhaps. By “cornerstone” I took you to mean simply that unconditional trust in God which we touched upon earlier on. I didn’t take it to mean a body of dogmas. Even tho the object of that trust must be defined in some way and such must necessarily entail a set of beliefs about that object; a set of beliefs upon which that trust is meant to rest.

You know, Evo, "and your neighbor as yourself."

Of course…:cheers:


Evo

 

[Evoken]

I expressed myself a bit clumsily. When I wrote "as you surely know", that was not meant as an accusation.

Hey, no worries I didn’t take it as an accusation

Out of curiousity, what do you take issue with in the five ways of St.Thomas? Or in the Kalam argument of Craig? Not implying that I think that they can simply be recited followed by "QED", but I am interested in hearing your view.

Well, yeah that can definitely get long and complicated. But in any case, some admittedly general thoughts...

In general I find both tend to make certain assumptions about the nature of reality that seem rather dubious. As Sean Carroll pointed out to Craig in a recent debate, talking about the universe having a cause or things beginning to exist is not even false as it is very much the wrong vocabulary to use for these things. With respect to Aquinas's ways, in general I find that they depend too much on an Aristotelian physics/metaphysics that need not be assumed in this day and age (even though modern Thomists have kind of “dropped” the outdated physics part from Aristotle; ref. the four volume Intro to the Philosophy of St. Thomas by H.D. Gardeil).

But ignoring this and to speak about one example, like the third way of Aquinas, I think Alvin Plantinga's criticism of it is worth noting; the following is taken from his book God, Freedom and Evil, pp 77-80:

An even more impressive defect in the proof comes to light when we consider (2) and its relation to (3). In the first place

(2) Whatever can fail to exist, at some time does not exist

Why couldn't there be a contingent being that always has existed and always will exist? Is it clear that there could be no such thing? Not very. But even if we concede (2), the proof still seems to be in trouble. For

(3) If all beings are contingent, then at one time nothing existed

doesn't follow. What (2) says is really

(2) For every contingent being B, there is a time t such that B does not exist at t

From this Aquinas appears to infer (3) There is a time t at which no contingent beings exist. This is a fallacious inference it is like arguing from For every person A there is a person B such that B is the mother of A to There is a person B such that for every person A, B is the mother of A

The first seems reasonable enough, but the second is utterly outrageous; more to the present point, it does not follow from the first. Similarly here: suppose it's true that for each thing there is a time at which it does not exist; we can't properly infer that there is some one time such that everything fails to exist at that time. Aquinas' followers and commentators have tried to mend matters by various ingenious suggestions; none of these, I believe, is successful.​

This problem Plantinga highlights also applies to the modern argument from change that Thomists like Edward Feser make, which seeks to establish the existence of God not from a linear series of causes (as the Kalam does) but from a hierarchical series of causes. The illustration he uses seems misguided but elaborating such would make this post far longer than it already is.

In any case, as I said above this can get quite complicated and long. But just a few thoughts.

I'm writing my thesis on the problem of speaking of divine action in an age of scientific cosmology. So I have examined and are examining a variety of theological models, which from a Catholic perspective probably would seem like quite "liberal" (I really dislike that word, it doesn't really mean much) conceptions of God. Ranging from Whiteheadian conceptions of God to the conceptions of German idealism such as Schelling, Fichte and Hegel or a synthesis between these (the main thinker I'm analyzing is a synthesis of idealism and process theology).

Sounds interesting, and it looks like you are really enjoying the ride. I think I oversaw in one conversation that you were having on your profile (don’t remember with whom) that you are soon going to become Lutheran minister? Congrats and good luck with your thesis . What moved you to the Lutheran Church if you don’t mind me asking?

As for the question of why there is something rather than nothing. I'm glad to see that your answer is agnostic. When it comes to this question, I think the atheistic response (as opposed to the agnostic response) must be more than a mere negation, the negation should at least be accompanied by non-theistic metaphysical alternatives.

When it comes to that question, what I see is that neither side really believes that there ever was nothing; rather they both end up with something that has existed eternally, God for the theist and the universe or some form of energy/material reality for the non-theist. I don’t see the incoherence in ending up with that necessarily existing reality as a “brute fact” where the explanatory chain ends in more or less the same way the theist ends up with God as a “brute fact” (Keith Parsons had an exchange with Edward Feser which touched on this issue and it basically lead to this). The question about something existing rather than nothing being answered with "I don't now" seems to me to emerge at some level for both sides, where we end up with a "brute fact" that simply is.

I'm not sure theistic proofs really work myself. That is, I don't think there can be proof in the true sense of the word. That would be assuming a very finalist, in lack of a better word, theory of truth.

Yeah, well even when I was a Catholic I never saw those proofs as being so in the mathematical sense of the word. I saw them mostly as pre-ambles to faith; or at least as a way to show that belief in God was not unreasonable.

Take care :e4e:


Evo

 

[Evoken]

Why did your realization of your "emotional attachment to faith" cause internal conflict?

Hey noguru ,

Well, it wasn't really like that. As I said in my OP, it was "the lack of evidence for God and for the supernatural reality entailed by the beliefs I was holding by faith" which lead to the conflict. The emotional attachment I spoke of was what kept me in the faith, so to speak, in spite of the fact that I no longer believed. The emotional comfort of the hope for an afterlife, the beauty of the mass and Catholic tradition, the intellectual stimulation I derived from theology, etc all those things I was emotionally attached to and it was fuelling a confirmation bias in myself by which I was very much trying to avoid coming to terms with the fact that I no longer believed.

Hope that clarifies things and thanks for posting :cheers:


Evo

 

[Damian]

Evoken,

Have you decided to reembrace Ayn Rand's philosophy of "rational egoism?"

 

[Damian]

Its because I've been brainwashed from a young child. Its because I'm scared of hell. And how society will react. Its because I feel that's its a safer bet, the safer side of the Pascal's Wager.

Just curious. How would your society react if you were to publicly espouse atheism?

 

[Damian]

Then I assume you are rejecting Jesus' claims of Divinity.

Jesus never claimed to be God.

 

[Damian]

There are other conceptions of God as well of course. I'm writing my thesis on the problem of speaking of divine action in an age of scientific cosmology. So I have examined and are examining a variety of theological models, which from a Catholic perspective probably would seem like quite "liberal" (I really dislike that word, it doesn't really mean much) conceptions of God. Ranging from Whiteheadian conceptions of God to the conceptions of German idealism such as Schelling, Fichte and Hegel or a synthesis between these (the main thinker I'm analyzing is a synthesis of idealism and process theology).

You might be interested in "The Vindication of Absolute Idealism" by Timothy L. Sprigge.

 

[Evoken]

Evoken,

Have you decided to reembrace Ayn Rand's philosophy of "rational egoism?"

Hey Damian, not really as I remember finding it a bit restrictive


Evo

 

[Repentance]

Just curious. How would your society react if you were to publicly espouse atheism?

Call me misguided and I'll too call myself that

 

[Selaphiel]

(2) Whatever can fail to exist, at some time does not exist

Why couldn't there be a contingent being that always has existed and always will exist? Is it clear that there could be no such thing?

I would agree that 2) is false. For something to be contingent does not necessarily imply that it had a beginning in time, and thus there was a time when it did not exist. It rather implies that even if said contingent thing existed at all times, its existence is in some way derivative from another thing. It could of course derive said existence from another contingent thing. I do however think that it becomes problematic to postulate an infinite regress of contingent things. I do think the idea of there having to be an ultimate reality, a necessary reality in the sense that it does not derive its existence from anything else. A reality whose existence is its essence. What this reality amounts to is of course another question, but I do think this insight is ultimately correct.

Of course, the Whiteheadians (at least the "orthodox" ones) would say that there is a sense in which it is true that there is an infinite regress of what it calls actual events. There is no creatio ex nihilo for them. The metaphysical reasons for postulating God are different and of course the concept of God is radically different as well. For them, God follows as a necessary actual entity from the fact that in Whiteheadian metaphysics the ideal forms (think Platonism except that in Whitehead the forms only have ideal existence unless they are realized in an actual entity) and the ultimate metaphysical principle called creativity need an ultimate actualization so to say. They are everlastingly actualized in God. This is very superificial, and thus inadequate in many ways, going into more detail would require a more in-depth look at Whitehead's metaphysics.

Sounds interesting, and it looks like you are really enjoying the ride. I think I oversaw in one conversation that you were having on your profile (don’t remember with whom) that you are soon going to become Lutheran minister? Congrats and good luck with your thesis . What moved you to the Lutheran Church if you don’t mind me asking?

That is correct. As for enjoying the ride on this thesis, in some ways yes, in other ways no. As I studied the material, it quickly became apparent that the sheer amount of available material seems to stretch out into infinity in all directions. It almost becomes impossible to say something without being constantly reminded of how that particlar statement is bound up with particular philosophies, views of science, language and so forth.
The topic is also quite atypical for Lutheran theology, which historically has been quite skeptical of such philosophical topics. Then again, I'm not really a zealous Lutheran. I'm almost more Weslyan than Lutheran in my theology and in my view on the role of reason and experience when doing theology.

As for the Lutheran church. I'm from Norway. I do not know if you are aware of the Lutheran history in Scandinavia, but Norway, Sweden and Denmark have deep historical roots in Lutheran "folk church" ("volkskirche") tradition. The Lutheran church was the state church in Scandinavia from the early days of the reformation (1536 in Denmark/Norway) until only few years ago.

:e4e:

 

[PureX]

There have been many excellent comments so far on this thread. Much of what I would have pointed out has already been mentioned. But I'll add a few odds and ends, anyway.

The concept we call "God" is in part defined as that which is greater than we are. Which would logically mean that when anyone proclaims that they "know God", they are lying (both to themselves, and to us) because they can't know that which is greater than their knowledge, their perception, and their own intellect. And it's for this reason that I have long since chosen to avoid organized religions. (They are generally dishonest and incoherent in that they are constantly proclaiming that they "know God".)

I suspect that you understand my complaint.

But once we leave the phony "answers" of religion, we are still left with the questions, and more importantly, with our inability to answer them. And that matters, because 'answering them' is what we humans live to do. It's how we survive and thrive, and it has become, to a significant degree, why we want to live. We want to know what's going on. We want to know why things are the way they are. We want to know what it all means. We want to know things like why we suffer, and why we love, and why we have to die.

The concept of "God" isn't just about imagining answers to these kinds of questions and then pretending they ARE the answers. That's religion. The concept of God, for those who have the courage, is a kind of embodiment of all those questions. God is not the answer, God is the conundrum. The challenge. The great mystery. And we humans were designed to pursue it by the creative machinery of existence, itself. It's who we are.

It's fine that you have determined to set religion aside. And for a time you may even be able to set the idea of "God" aside, too. But you are an intelligent and articulate person, and you didn't get that way by accepting make-believe answers or by avoiding the questions all together. And so you are not going to be able to live without seeking after "God": without pursuing the great mystery of being one way or another.

And so I bid you godspeed on that journey, as a fellow traveler.

 

[kmoney]

I haven’t read the book but I know that Enyart holds to both the open view and the dispensationalist view. I think he is a cessationist, as they are called, because he believes that the gifts like talking in tongues are no longer given to believers. But I take it that he does believes that God is involved in human affairs, that he answers prayers, that he seeks to have a personal relationship with humans and the like. Of course, the idea is not for God to do everything for us, absolving us of any kind of responsibility; rather that some indication that he is there and doing something in the world would be evident if he, as it is believed in the Christian faith, is an active God.


Evo

If cessationism is correct, as Enyart believes, what action by God would you be looking for? What would the evidence be? Because cessationism would take away the most obvious signs, like miracles, etc.

 

[Town Heretic]

Well, I don’t see it as an investment in futility at all

You may make it entertaining, but absent more than this life whatever you do is only a process to distract and enliven until you wink out, as everything eventually will and to no real end.

; letting go of the faith didn’t lead me to descend into a state of permanent hopelessness and despair.

No reason for it to. The inevitable isn't something to despair over, if that's what you think of it, but it is a context that should rationally disappoint. The urge to survive is primal and can't be reasoned away. Eventually that will produce its own dissonance or should.

Rather, I realized that there being no afterlife didn’t rob this life of meaning, but that it made it truly precious, unique and worth living.

If life wasn't that with faith I think you chose the wrong one prior. Or, I don't think a death sentence necessarily or should elevate anything in life, though it can certainly focus someone who hasn't been paying the right sort of attention to the value of it.

That while there may not be a purpose given to us from above, we all find and make our own purpose in our walk of life and that such does not needs to depend on faith in God or the hope of an afterlife in order for it to have meaning and value for us.

I certainly found value and meaning as an atheist. We're built for it. But it's a lesser value and meaning in that context is a bit thin given the end game. And worse, it's an unnecessary choice, rationally.

That hope which you speak of must, like the trust we spoke of above, be grounded in something otherwise it may as well be a false hope; however worthy of investment such hope may appear to be in the surface.

Sure, but there's no reason to believe the hope of the faithful is a lesser one and without being able to make that distinction the admittedly manufactured hope of the faithless is a lesser thing. Or, the worst case failure of the faithful is ground zero of the atheist.

The issue here lies in the nature of the testimony and not so much in the trustworthiness of the person. Such testimony is not just inherently subjective but also as varied and contradictory as there are religions and denominations and there is no reliable way by which to test them even within one particular denomination.

I don't agree that the testimony is contradictory, by which I mean the experience of God, only the way people relate to God and relate that experience of God through a particular dogmatic context or filter.

Such experiences are also often dictated more by the framework and culture that the person finds herself in (something which happens with miracles as well) and the individual’s subjective feelings than anything else.

Where I'd say a fellow who has never seen a ship might describe one as an island with strange trees and moving about, but the underlying reality of the ship is what he's speaking to and experienced.

I give primacy to my own experience when it comes to testimony of this kind. It is not that I outright believe that the people who make the claim are lying (even tho societal pressure can lead some to do so), it is that I see no reason to believe there is something supernatural behind them.

There's no reason to see no reason. That goes back to the original proposition. Now it may be that most people across the whole of history have been wrong on the point, that a relative sliver have seen through a biologically or psychologically produced delusion of sorts. But I wouldn't bet on it and see no objective gain in doing so.:think: Except that if you credit them at all you can't be comfortable in your new life, can you.

I don’t see such experiences as providing a reliable way by which one can know whether or not God or the supernatural is real.

I don't see how, rationally, there can be any other way that satisfies, the empirical being unsuited to the point.

By “cornerstone” I took you to mean simply that unconditional trust in God which we touched upon earlier on.

I do believe that if you love your wife you don't tend to hire a PI to follow her about, but back at hand...

I didn’t take it to mean a body of dogmas. Even tho the object of that trust must be defined in some way and such must necessarily entail a set of beliefs about that object; a set of beliefs upon which that trust is meant to rest.

I think the dogma of God is a fairly simple one for Christians but we're not even really having that particular a discussion. At this point we're mostly arguing about the objective distinctions in value between a theistic and atheistic model.

We are, across the sweep of our history, demonstrably creatures in search of meaning, value and purpose. God meets those in a way than His absence simply, rationally cannot. And absent a means for determining where the truth lies, the better context is a choice rationalists are free to make...of course I'd also argue that there's a wealth of experience to be had in relation that should inform the adherent and make the follow through convicting and suggest if that is absent the approach to God should be seriously reconsidered on the part of that adherent to whatever dogma left them stranded.

:cheers:

 

[Nick M]

But the short of it is that I don’t see the hand of an all loving, knowing and powerful God at work in the world

The very fact that there is a world should tell you something. The Boeing 777 didn't create itself out of nothing. It was designed and built.

rather, I see a God who does his hardest to remain hidden and everything unfolding in a way that one would expect if such a God was not active in the world or simply didn’t exist.

What has man's reaction been to God when he did interact in a much more obvious way? For example, ignore the creation, but instead reaction to the creator. Most examples are found before Acts and the casting away of Israel.

 

[Nick M]

As for evidence about a particular God being present and loving, I experience that in relation on a daily basis and have since the day of my conversion.

Even when the Tide are on the short end of the stick following the Iron Bowl?