Are Atheists "Philosophically Limited"....?

Are atheists philosophically limited..?Over in the thread discussing the reasons for diminished creationist participation Has the bias made this forum essentially irrelevant? Phat says the following: I don’t want to single out Phat in particular because this charge of being philosophically limited is one that I have seen aimed at atheists before (doesn’t Karen Armstrong say something similar?) but I am not sure what it means exactly. Can anyone elaborate?Obviously I don’t see atheism as philosophically limited but until I know what is meant by that exactly it is difficult to say. Maybe it is philosophically limited in a way that I have not yet considered.Edited by Straggler, : No reason given.

Then you misunderstand "the atheistic position".See the reply from Trae Message 13 in this very thread.

What on Earth is "philosophical evidence".....?And I think you will find that the requirement is for evidence that is demonstrably able to lead to reliable conclusions rather than being simply empirical for the sake of empiricism.Unless a form of "evidence" can demonstrate that it leads to conclusions that are demonstrably superior to those derived from random chance how can it even qualify as "evidence" at all?

As long as we are conscious creative imaginative thinking beings I don't see how anything will rule out the need or appreciation "for anything philosophical". Why do you think it does? I don't see how the requirement that to qualify as a form of "evidence" something must lead to conclusions that are demonstrably superior to blind random chance precludes studying human nature. Nor can I see how that requirement can really be contended. Are you unhappy with that requirement?What forms of "evidence" did you have in mind with regard to atheists being "philosophically limited"? Can you give an example?Edited by Straggler, : No reason given.

I think your reply is succinct and insightful and worth drawing to the attention of other partrcipants in this thread.

Do you actually disagree that to qualify as a form of evidence something needs to be able to demonstrate that it leads to conclusions that are superior to blind random chance? OK. But why evidence for god/God/GOD rather than evidence in favour of (for example) mind control exacted by distant benevolent aliens trying to make us be nicer to each other? Seriously - Is one conclusion more evidenced that the other? As has been pointed out by others - It is the exact opposite!!!!It is you that ignores all of the possible causes and focuses exclusively on the subjectively preferred one of GOD. Meanwhile atheists see all such baseless potential answers as philosophically possible whilst giving significant weighting to those which have reliable evidence in their favour.Ask yourself this - Whatever it is that you think is indicative of the existence of GOD - What else could conceivably also account for that and are these alternatives any more or less evidenced than the theistic answer?Ask yourself that and you might get an insight into where it is we are coming from here.............

No no no. It is at the very heart of the "track". Without an evidential basis to distinguish one conceivable cause for something (e.g. your example of human altruism) from any other ALL are treated by the evidential atheist as equally probable - I.e not very. Picking any one unevidenced conclusion over any other is in effect no more reliable than randomly guessing. Only if there is an evidenced reason to consider a particular cause should it get elevated from philosophical possibility to something more practically substantial. But what about ALL of the other conceivable answers that don't involve gods/Gods/GOD at all? Why are you limiting yourself to one tiny subset of all the conceivable causes? Surely it is you that is philosophically limited when you ignore the (infinite?) number of other conceivable possibilities. There is no inherent restriction to material causes. There is simply a requirement that demonstrably reliable forms of evidence be the deciding factor. So how is someone who accepts ALL philosophical possibilities but who bases belief only on demonstrably reliable forms of evidence "philosophically limited"? Firstly evidence isn't about proof. I have never met an atheist who claims proof. Secondly - If you are going to take existence itself as a form of evidence then the basic question remains - "What is existence evidence of?" If there is a GOD "he" should be asking himself that very same question. "Why am I here and how did I come to be? Why is there something rather than nothing?"Such is the nature of existence. "Divine" or otherwise......Edited by Straggler, : No reason given.

Correct me if I am wrong - But your entire argument seems to be based on rejecting the requirement that to qualify as a form of evidence something should demonstrably and reliably lead to conclusions that are more reliable than blind random chance. Is this the case? If so what are you suggesting instead? Is "evidence" simply whatever one chooses to base ones beliefs upon? Is "evidence" nothing more than personal conviction? This is like comparing the question "What is art?" with "What is real?" Unless you are going down the solipsistic rabbit hole of claiming that "We are brains in a jar. Everything is entirely subjective. Nothing is real" - I fail to see why you think the comparison is valid. The fact that your ability to reason seems to be wholly dependent on your physical brain functioning correctly suggests otherwise.

Throughout this thread you have alluded to some means of evidencing reality that is non-empirical. You have referred to it previously as "philosophical evidence". But I still have no idea what constitutes this form of "evidence" or why you think it is even capable of telling us anything about the existence of entities external to ones own mind. It is evidence and reasoning that makes our conclusions more reliable than blind random chance. It is conclusions made entirely on the basis of subjective conviction rather than evidence that are functionally equivalent to blind random guesses (I.e. just as unlikely to be correct). Why would we? Reason is very much part of the scientific method. Furthermore without the ability to reason there would be no scientific method in the first place. Science cannot derive itself. I would say philosophical reason has a great deal to add. It is theism which adds nothing and which imposes philosophical limitations. It depends what you mean by "learn". If you want to reliably "learn" about the nature of a reality that exists external to your own mind then philosophical reasoning can certainly aid you in working out how best to achieve that goal.And the result of that reasoning, combined with experience regarding what actually works, is the scientific method. The result of that reasoning is that we have learned to deeply distrust the human proclivity to leap to subjective conviction based conclusions. Conclusions such as those advocated by theists.Edited by Straggler, : Spellin 'n' grammar

But my question remains to you - How do you decide what does or does not constitute a form of evidence? Is something a form of evidence simply because it is believed to be so? How do you decide what qualifies as "evidence" and what does not? Evidence of what exactly?All of these things could be caused by any number of conceivable causes couldn't they? Why does your conviction that these things are evidence of God qualify them as evidence of God? Why are they not cosidered as evidence in favour of any of the other possible causes? We are not automatons!!! We are creative, imaginative, subjective, logically imperfect, biased, limited and intrinsically flawed beings. This is what makes us so delightfully human. But it is also what makes us so woefully unable to discern what is and is not real through human reason alone. This is exactly why we need evidence to keep us from indulging ourelves in conflating wishful thinking from "truth". Reason alone? No. I doubt anyone could have just sat in isolation and reasoned out the scientific method as we know it today. Certainly that is not how it actually came about.But the scientific method is undeniably able to lead to conclusions that are demonstrably superior to those derived from blind random chance. That is the absolutely key point to take on board. The evidence in question is continual comparison of results with reality.As to how the scientific method actually evolved - Well that was a combination of reason, trial and error, empirical success, empirical failure, common sense, abandonment of common sense where incompatible with reality, abandonment of cherished beliefs and methods in favour of more pragmatic ones etc. etc. etc. etc. In short - A long hard slog.But however you look at it - Human reason alone as a method to obtain "truth" has been found severely wanting. Conversely scientific methods have been found to be highly effective. Human imagination can open us up to all sorts of conceivable possibilities. But it is only through evidence and testing our creative inventions (hypotheses?) against reality that we can seperate the flights of creative and subjectively biased fancy from that which is actually real. Maybe. At the moment I think you are a bit unsure about what you mean by the term "evidence" and I suspect you are sort of advocating a form of rationalism (whether you realise it or not).But I may be pigeonholing you. So let's see where we get to.

The examples you have cited in this very thread provide classic cases of exactly the type of flawed human reasoning that the scientific method has been devised to overcome. Let’s consider one of your examples as a case in point. Let’s consider your citation of human altruism as evidence of God’s existence. I put it to you that this sort of conclusion is based on a form of subjective rationalistion that effectively reverses the role of evidence in the following way:Firstly select an observable phenomenon that requires explanation (e.g. human altruism). But rather than take the scientific approach of seeking the most reliable evidence available regarding the cause of this phenomenon instead do something very different. Make a massive subjective leap of logic regarding the cause of said phenomenon — In this case the conclusion that God is the cause of human altruism. But then, in order to rationalise this leap of logic, the original phenomenon requiring explanation (i.e. human altruism in this case) becomes the evidence upon which the subjectively preferred explanation is supported. So instead of an evidenced explanation for human altruism we instead end up with the notion that human altruism is itself evidence in favour of the existence of God.Now this sort of ‘reverse evidence’ thinking isn’t unique to theism. It is the exact same form of reasoning that results in crop circles being cited as evidence of alien visitation (for example). I suspect all of us are prone to justifying conclusions borne from subjective bias in this sort of way. And it is exactly because we know just how susceptible we humans are to such flawed and self-justifying reasoning that conclusions borne from such methods and claims of evidence made on the basis of such thinking should be deeply deeply mistrusted.It isn’t philosophically limited to be aware of the pitfalls innate to human reasoning. However I would argue that it is philosophically limited to ignore these pitfalls and embrace man’s proclivity for subjective self-justification as if it were somehow a path to more noble faith based truths.

Fair point. But I don’t think it is off topic exactly. Because I think the reason that some theists see atheism as philosophically limited is because of the distinction atheists tend to make between knowledge and belief on the basis of demonstrably reliable forms of evidence. If you are seeking a reliably evidenced answer rather than a subjectively preferred one why wouldn’t you seek a scientific answer to any question that is able to be physically investigated? And why are we the way we are is exactly the question science has sought to investigate and answer. Why humans (and other species) are altruistic is the subject of much evolutionary research. I don’t see how a scientifically evidenced answer (e.g. that altruism benefits gene propagation within a social species) can be described as equally subjective to a faith based answer to the same question. Firstly we know for an absolute fact that there are material causes in the world.Secondly we know that humans have a long and undistinguished history of erroneously invoking non-material causes to things that they don’t understand. This hardly inspires confidence in our ability to accurately discern such things. Wherever there is an unknown you can bet that a human will invoke an unknowable and very probably be wrong.Thirdly the idea of immaterial causes has a rather fundamental problem of being completely unable to explain how the immaterial and the material could possibly interact. Essentially one is confronted with the mind-body problemI think you might be interested to see what Kant’s take on this (summed up by Wiki):

quote:

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To the rationalists he argued, broadly, that pure reason is flawed when it goes beyond its limits and claims to know those things that are necessarily beyond the realm of all possible experience: the existence of God, free will, and the immortality of the human soul. Kant referred to these objects as "The Thing in Itself" and goes on to argue that their status as objects beyond all possible experience by definition means we cannot know them. To the empiricist he argued that while it is correct that experience is fundamentally necessary for human knowledge, reason is necessary for processing that experience into coherent thought. He therefore concludes that both reason and experience are necessary for human knowledge.

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Well that is probably true. But recognising mans proclivity for subjective bias when reasoning seems like a very basic step to discerning between knowledge and belief. I think it is this that lies at the heart of most disagreement between theists and atheists.

Science can answer "why" in the sense of explaining why observable phenomenon are as they are in terms of cause and effect. Can I ask why it is that you think these things matter? If there is a God that simply finds himself to exist then why does anything like existence or altruism matter? Because he has decided it does? From a purely personal or human perspective it matters a great deal. It matters a great deal for no greater "why" than because we have decided that such things are important. I would argue the exact opposite. I would argue that it is because we don't have any ready made "Goddidit" reason for anything that we have to philosophically wrestle with our own answers to questions and take responsibility for the consequences those answers result in. "Rule out" in the sense of disprove? No. But the relentless overturning of human claims of immaterial causes does rather suggest that we should be deeply deeply skeptical of further such claims. Those who do not learn from history are doomed to repeat it. And the mind-body problem remains a significant stumbling block for such reasoning. I would argue that this is a result of the sort of flawed reasoning discussed previously in Message 113It is a common to simply dismiss all differences of opinion as differences in equally valid world views. But some world views have a more secure evidential foundation than others. And some world views embrace subjective bias more than others. Some world views are based on demonstrably successful methods of investigation and some are based on methods of "knowing" that are demonstrably flawed. Ultimately not all world views are going to result in equally correct conclusions. It certainly does. God forbid that everyone should think like me!! I wouldn't know what to do with myself anymore.

I had to pick up on this.The extrapolation of our mathematical models of reality has a proven track record of demonstrable success. It has led to numerous verifiable discoveries, new technologies and increased understanding. If a hypothesis is founded on the basis of a mathematical model then there is good reason to consider that evidenced speculation worthy of further investigation and consideration.Theistic inferences on the other hand have a long and undistinguished history of being wrong whenever they make claims about observable reality. Those who choose to believe theistic conclusions regarding aspects of some undetectable reality do so despite, not because of, this woeful track record.It's all about demonstrable reliability and what does and does not constitute evidence in that respect.

I shall keep a lookout for the newspaper headlines declaring that: "Large Hadron Collider Finds Evidence of Heaven"