Are Atheists "Philosophically Limited"....?

Atheists, in my experience, are far more rigorous philosophers than theists.It seems more appropriate to say that philosophy is limited by atheists from collapsing into theology.The irony in Phat's complaint is that theists seem particularly perturbed by atheist commentary that accepts for argument's sake the existence of a creator and then proceeds to spell out the philosophically contradictory (or empirically contravened) consequences.The limits that atheists embrace are the limits defined by reason.Philosophy owes us much.

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Dost thou think, because thou art virtuous, there shall be no more cakes and ale?
-Shakespeare

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Real things always push back.
-William James

Speculation was a poor choice of words on my part. How about theorize based on evidence? The thought had occured to me as I have a sunscription to Scientific American and the Nov. issue was sitting here in my den. The headline on the front page is "Hidden Worlds of Dark Matter - An Entire Universe May be Interwoven With OUr Own".The last part is exactly what Christians have claimed all along, without any empirical evidence. Mind you we make other claims about invisible universe that aren't exactly scientific either. Edited by GDR, : No reason given.

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Everybody is entitled to my opinion.

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 agree with your post and you can see my reply to cavediver above.Put it this way though. When science theorizes about other universes and/or dimensions based on their findings, I find it encouraging when it might conceivably support my unfounded theistic speculations. There, how is that?

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Everybody is entitled to my opinion.

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

Ya just never know eh?

Well, the Higgs IS the god particle, after all......

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"Why don't you call upon your God to strike me? Oh, I forgot it's because he's fake like Thor, so bite me" -Greydon Square

Back to the topic theme, if anyone knows what it is. Or is this material actually on topic??? (I'm too philosophically limited to know).Adminnemooseus

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Perfectly put, Omni.Following my deconversion, I have found myself drifting further and further towards the strong-atheism position. This may be seen as a natural "re-bound" but the fact is that the more I consider any concept of deity*, the more (philosophical and physical) contradictions I find. The rational tentativity I hold for my statement "there are no planets in the Universe where one might find that 2+2=5" is of the same order as that I hold for my statement "there are no gods".*obvious exclusions are naturalistic "deities" such as the creator of the particular Matrix/"universe we in a test tube" we may inhabit - and such a "natural" creator is indistinguishable from a deist's demiurge/Prime Mover.

You do have to admit, though that the current facts that we now have propose that the sum total of knowledge and speculation of the known and unknown universe originate from one species on one planet. Namely us. As Sagan said,

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From this distant vantage point, the Earth might not seem of any particular interest. But for us, it's different. Look again at that dot. That's here, that's home, that's us. On it everyone you love, everyone you know, everyone you ever heard of, every human being who ever was, lived out their lives. The aggregate of our joy and suffering, thousands of confident religions, ideologies, and economic doctrines, every hunter and forager, every hero and coward, every creator and destroyer of civilization, every king and peasant, every young couple in love, every mother and father, hopeful child, inventor and explorer, every teacher of morals, every corrupt politician, every "superstar," every "supreme leader," every saint and sinner in the history of our species lived there — on a mote of dust suspended in a sunbeam.

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Granted, more intelligence and intelligent species will eventually be found.For now, however, all theories, beliefs, and speculations originate from one very tiny place in a very large reality. Logically, God need not exist, but what source of creativity do you replace Him with?

Why does it seem so hard (for some) to place the spark of creativity in man's own brain? Why does it have to be "outside" of ourselves? You give yourself, and all other humans, too little credit.

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You give yourself, and all other humans, too little credit.

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I would argue that we are giving ourselves too much credit.

Therein lies the problem. By limiting yourself and humans to a power that is outside of ourselves, and attributing to this power the collectively reasoning and creativity of humans, you limit your philosophy to that ONE power. By ascribing good deeds and evil deeds to the power of [an] omnipotent entity[ies] you actually reduce your philosophical argument to one notion: Everything is due to IT or the ultimate plan of IT.Ultimately it is the end of the argument.

Hi Phat,I think the opposite, look at all the wondrous things man has accomplished, yet there are those out there that want to give credit to aliens, god...ect. Is it so hard to imagine we built the pyramids, went from the Wright brothers first flight to the moon in less than 67 years, without help?Humans did all that and so much more on our own, some may have been inspired by the thoughts of god, Sistine chapel for example, but I see no difference between inspiration from god and inspiration from nature. We humans can be inspired by so many things, including but not limited to god.To think that god is responsible for all the wondrous things we have done is selling us, and him short. If you believe in god, wouldn't you think he would have gave us the ability to think and create on our own? Would this not be limiting yourself philosophically to think he is the only reason we are so great in many ways? I would rather think he would be proud of all the good things we have done, and saddened by all the bad.Edited by fearandloathing, : No reason given.Edited by fearandloathing, : No reason given.Edited by fearandloathing, : No reason given.

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"I hate to advocate the use of drugs, alcohol, violence, or insanity to anyone, but they always worked for me." - Hunter S. ThompsonAd astra per asperaNihil curo de ista tua stulta superstitione.

I would replace God with billions and billions (thank you, Carl) of curious human minds, freed from superstition and fear, looking up at the stars with a shiver of awe and thinking, "I wonder..." rather than "I worship".I won't live to see that day, more's the pity.All the greatest creations of humankind sprang from the secular impulse, the urge to take the world on its own terms and reach an understanding of it; the worst organized excesses of cruelty and destruction were born in the conviction that some "higher truth"--ideological or theological, but mostly theological--justified them.A sane man who sets out with the premise that the natural world is a book to read and understand does not conclude that the book instructs him to slaughter his fellows when they disagree; a man who starts out with the premise that the natural world is a stage where we are tested and punished or rewarded by the invisible and unknowable cannot arrive at sane conclusions, because he abandoned sanity with his first step.Without the atheist impulse that is native to our intellects, philosophers would still be trying to count angels on pins, and priests would still be sending scientists into exile or throwing them onto pyres. Philosophy owes whatever relevance it now has to the intellectual foundations of atheism, and organized religions are similarly indebted for whatever moral progress they have made.Atheists taught the world that the only things that go bump in the night are the things you can see when you turn on the light. If we ever emerge totally from what darkness we still inhabit, it will have been atheists, not theists, who led us there.

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Dost thou think, because thou art virtuous, there shall be no more cakes and ale?
-Shakespeare

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Real things always push back.
-William James