Atheist/Anti-theist/Agnostic Troper Group

Has anyone read Thomas Paine's The Age of Reason?

I've seen Jesus Camp-it was unsettling. I read The Age of Reason and liked it-lots of amusing critiques, especially the part where he points out that no one says where the dead who rose from their graves after Jesus' resurrection went. They just disappear. As he asks, did they try to get their property back, or go home and live with their spouses? No idea. Zombies come, zombies go.

I picked up the "The God Delusion" a while back, although I didn't finish it. Dawkins' arguments are solid, though I think he may have been mistaken about the full context of John Adams' "best of all possible worlds if only there were no religion in it" quote, and his politics are a little more of a mixed bag.

But my spiritual liege would have to be Steve Shives. I highly recommend his "An Atheist Reads…" series (his recent analysis of Ray Comfort is pure gold). You might also like his "Five Stupid Things About…" series, although again, the politics are a mixed bag for me.

edited 9th Aug '14 4:27:30 PM by Robotnik

I've never read The God Delusion nor any of the other major "New Atheist" books. On the quote: what John Adams actually wrote was this: "Twenty times in the course of my late reading have I been on the point of breaking out, “This would be the best of all possible worlds, if there were no religion at all!!!” But in this exclamation I would have been as fanatical as Bryant or Cleverly. Without religion, this world would be something not fit to be mentioned in polite company, I mean hell." This is the worst sort of quote mine-it changes what he said completely. Dawkins probably didn't know that or do this intentionally, but it speaks poorly of his research and needlessly opens him up to criticism. He's been the victim of such quote mining himself many times, so you'd hope he would do better.

I've enjoyed Shives' readings of various apologetics books. Regarding politics, Dawkins and Shives both seem to be center-left, which appears to be the usual (with a minority of anarchists, libertarians, Marxists and Objectivists). I guess I'd align most closely with that, although not without reservations.

edited 2nd Sep '14 3:31:09 AM by Fireblood

Yeah, I tend to lean more toward the "Objectivist kind of atheist" than the "progressive kind of atheist", although I wouldn't actually identify myself as an Objectivist, as it does seem to be a very…harsh philosophy.

As I think I've mentioned, I was raised in a conservative Christian family, and while some of my political positions have done 180s, a lot haven't.

If you're referring to Ayn Rand's Objectivism, it's also just bad philosophy. As in, it's rationally inconsistent to both believe in Objectivism and believe that other people should believe in Objectivism — it's not in your own self-interest for other people to reject altruism. And that's not even getting into all the dubious reasoning used to try to justify it.

What other kinds of objectivism are there? Taking an objective as opposed to a subjective stance on something (which is technically impossible)?

I have to agree. Rand seemed to view her personal preferences in many cases as "objectively true" among other problems. One thing I noticed that seems odd is her empiricism, i.e. the view that all knowledge is derived from sense experience and no inborn traits or ideas exist. Yet at the same time she seemed to fault people (to put it mildly) for disagreeing with her philosophy. However if the truth cannot be reasoned out from self-evident first principles (rationalism) such disagreements are inevitable, and the result of a person's past experiences (life history, upbringing, etc.) Rand seemed to have no compassion or understanding regarding this, but it would be a logical result of her empiricism.

Could you rephrase the second half? I'm not sure I understand the reasoning that Rand's logic was self defeating

Well she seemed to think people should realize that her ideas were right just by considering it, but empiricism says we know things by sense experience, not simply self-reflection. I hope that's clearer. Of course, I may be getting things wrong-I'm no expert on her philosophy.

Oh I see. A she was a proponent of empiricism?

Yes, that was part of her philosophy.

I'm no expert, either, but piece of logic re: Ayn Rand and empiricism seems sound to me.

It does sound like Objectivism is incoherent, but most of the arguments I've heard made against it (at least, the ones made by Steve Shives and "Atlas Left") boil down to emotional appeals and/or insults.

edited 3rd Sep '14 7:42:49 AM by Robotnik

Objectivism is just Social Darwinism in different colors. It's simply Might Makes Right with a "freedom" as the justification to let the weak suffer.

Empiricism doesn't mean we should all necessarily come to different conclusions; we don't have to have the exact same experiences to be seeing the same basic world that works in the same fundamental way. That's the basis of science.

Science, though, bases its ideas on the principle of repeatability: if you can't repeat it, it's not science. You can't say, only looking out for my own self interest has worked for me, it must work for everyone; and dismiss other people who say they've tried that and it didn't help them. (Also, having a philosophy that breaks down if everyone uses it and then expecting everyone to use it has its own problems...)

Anyway. I tend to a liberal egalitarian philosophy. Nobody should be favored from the start, and everyone should be treated alike (no clanism, nationalism or sexism); and people should have as much freedom as they can. But if you negatively affect other people's freedom— which includes efforts to reduce education (educated people have more freedom to pursue what they wish) and social mobility— we're going to need some boundaries.

One's senses might not be an infallible means of determining the truth, but if you try to come to a conclusion without them you're just pissing in the breeze.

...unless the conclusion is purely mathematical/logical.

I don't think "Socrates is a man, all men are mortal, therefore Socrates is mortal" is pissing in the breeze. You have to interpret the sensory data somehow; the scientific method does not come from sensory data.

I have no problem with using sensory data, or science, which relies upon it. Believing that we get knowledge only from sensory data, however, seems fundamentally unsound.

"Socrates is a man" is empirical data, as are "all men are mortal"*. Logic may not be directly based upon the senses, but the rules and postulates all had to be observed.

So it's more that all knowledge originates from the senses in some way, but occasionally there's some (or a lot of) assembly required. I don't know if that counts as strict empiricism. I have a pretty loose definition of that because I count maths and simulations as sort of second-degree empirical knowledge based on observed rules.

*Or rather, "all tested men have so far proved to be mortal, thereby extrapolating from the data we will assume the rule holds true for all"

edited 4th Sep '14 9:10:34 AM by Elfive

That doesn't count as strict empiricism in my book, no. Empiricism means, as far as I'm aware, "all knowledge comes from the senses"; therefore science isn't empiricist because the scientific method itself is something produced by the mind. It uses empirical data, true, but it itself isn't not the result of observation.

But the scientific method on it's own doesn't tell you anything. It's just that - a method of analysing empirical data, derived through the senses, to arrive at the truth.

And how do most people learn about the scientific method? Through their senses. How did the people who came up with it derive it? With knowledge they got from their senses on which predictive methods worked the best. And say you have an idea. That alone isn't knowledge. You need to test it. That relies on data. The senses.

You run a simulation and it presents the results. You read the results. Senses.

I mean, can you think of a single thing a brain in a jar with no external inputs at all would actually know?

Descartes would say the same cogito. I'm not sure (still thinking about it) but I think that brain in a jar would be pretty sure thoughts exist, for example (assuming logic, if they don't and it's thinking that way, that's a Logic Bomb).

I agree with desdendelle, that doesn't seem like strict empiricism. Historically it was more than just "all knowledge is derived from the senses." The corollary of that was the belief in the human mind being a blank slate (or near enough) without inborn qualities of any kind. All that seems clearly wrong, and modern empirical (heh) data backs me up-the language faculties appear to be innate, for instance. Now of course the ideas empiricism reacted to (which said for instance that all people have innate knowledge of God) were not without their flaws either. It seems like many reactions go too far in the other direction, however.

edited 4th Sep '14 6:17:47 PM by Fireblood