Are Atheists "Philosophically Limited"....?

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The fact that we exist at all is evidence of something. Why have we come to exist at all. It is that "why" which is the big question and which philosophy and for that matter theology attempt to answer, but not with the scientific method. I agree that random chance is a possible answer but it isn't the only one.

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Attempting to answer a question is all very well, but philosophy and for that matter theology have not exactly done well in their attempts. I would add that the question itself is even poorly posed since it fails to explain what aspects of "us" seem to need special explanation.It seems to me that the biggest philosophical limitation is to be found on the other side of the tent, where reams of poor argument (including supposedly serious philosophy) is produced to attempt to defend the idea that God exists.

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.

We should be skeptical of the reasoning that has come from this process, and history shows us why we should be skeptical. Our natural reasoning is highly flawed, weighted as it is towards propagating genes - not navigating space or building skyscrapers. Our intuitive reasoning in these circumstances is terrible and we have to train our brains for at least a decade to be any good at them. For a species whose natural lifespan is about thirty years - that's not practical. Why? Can an intelligence not create brains that are poor at reasoning? Again you are limiting things philosophically. You are ruling out weighted probabilities as being able to produce animals that survive, fuck and murder, but we are not ruling out an intelligence, just pointing out the lack of support for that notion.

I always have trouble understanding why relative things are so deprecated in some people's minds. You see this usually with morality: if an objective morality tells us something is right or wrong, we should heed that. If a relative morality tells us the same thing, we should ignore it.Ignoring the question of how we come to the determination that "everything is relative" if it is "just a collection of atoms"*, why on Earth ought that to stop us from philosophising about these relative things? For instance, we might argue about the morality of a non-vegan lifestyle regardless of whether cows are "just a collection of atoms" or not.*ironically, I suppose we could do so via philosophy.

Wrong. Just watch history channel. We know a lot more of historical events than just the historical accounts. Archaeology is making huge discoveries about historical events. A prime example is the archaeological work that has been done over the last 30 years at the Battle of Little Bighorn. Archaeology, history, and Custer's last battle: the Little Big Horn reexamined
Archaeological Persectives on the Battle of the Little BighornThis research drastically changed what we thought we knew about a lot of the Little Bighorn Battle. Also, through scientific inquiry(archival science), unknown accounts of the Battle have surfaced in the last 50 years. Scientifically we can show that there is a reason to believe that they are actual accounts from actual participants. Through scientific analysis we also have been able to relook at the native accounts and see that they are much more accurate than they were given credence for during the first 100 years after the battle. The Last Stand: Custer, Sitting Bull, and the Battle of the Little BighornThe study of history is much more than reading accounts. Please do not belittle that which you know little about. The study of history is a multidisciplinary field that relies extensively on science in order to determine as close as possible the historical "facts".

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Facts don't lie or have an agenda. Facts are just facts

Good morning AZWell you outlasted me last night and I even had the advantage of one time zone. I also enjoyed the conversation. ThanksI got up this morning to find that I had 7 friends wanting to correspond. I had no idea I was so popular. I feel like Sally Field at the Oscars. I can't keep up with the replies that I'm getting so I'll do the best I can just responding here. I guess it's a matter of opinion about how much they got wrong. You claim that human reasoning has often shown itself to be faulty. That's true but then it seems to me that you are presupposing that what we learn from the scientific method doesn't involve human reason. Wasn't it human reason that conceived the scientific method in the first place? And once again, if we are just a combination of atoms and molecules organized by random chance there is still no reason to have any confidence in anything that comes from the study of other random collections of matter.For that matter, (no pun intended), you do agree that, regardless of how faulty it is, human reasoning exists. What is reason? You can't weigh or measure an idea. You can't put it in a test tube and study it. Reason or ideas can only be measured against someone else's reasons or ideas, just as we are doing on this forum. Sometimes reason can be verified scientifically but it still involved reason to be able to discern that.You claim that human reason is faulty but the point is that all we know, or think we know is from human reasoning including what we know from the scientific method. If reason then is the basis for all of our knowledge and reason is responsible for the scientific method then reason must be something be something else altogether. We can see the reaction in the brain when reasoning takes place but isn't that just like this computer. It took reason outside of itself for it to be able to compute.I’m sure there are better ways of describing philosophy but it seems to me that one way might be to call it the study of reason, and if we limit or reject that study we are missing out on what there is to gain by that study.

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Everybody is entitled to my opinion.

The scientific method was developed to try to prevent errors in reasoning. It is by no means a perfect system, but the stipulation that science be able to reproduce hypotheses before they might be accepted is what allows us to have confidence that our reasoning is valid. If we were just a random collection of atoms and molecules organized by random chance, then the Theory of Evolution would have been falsified years ago (If we were viable creatures made up of random atoms, then I'd have to agree there is a creator!).GDR. Really. Think about it. If you believe that the Theory of Evolution allowed for the random conglomeration of atoms to produce viable living organisms, then I think you might want to study upon it a bit more. The reason the scientific method is used by scientists is because it works. We know we can make mistakes. The scientific method helps us to correct them. You don't truly believe that scientists can just spout out hypotheses without being able to back up those claims with experimentation, do you?

This is where the history of science comes in. At one point there were two camps, the Rationalists and the Empricists. A decent breakdown can be found here. Rationalists argued that by applying human reason one could ferret out the truth without need to rely on our sense experiences. The Empiricists argued that you must test these ideas against sense experience where these observations trumping our rationale. In Empirical thought, no matter how solid or logical the reasoning may be, if it contradicts sense experience then it is thrown out.If you think about it, it is easy to see why Empiricism beat out Rationalism. If we stuck to Rationalism we would never suggest that light can act as both a wave and a particle. What Empiricism works around is our inherent biases, our expectations of what is true and not true. That's just it. Much of what we know has been learned through Empiricism, not Rationalism. The answer was not in our head. It was out in the physical world. How so? How is reason outside of the brain? You seem to be using the Ontological Argument, the most famous example being the idea that unicorns really exist because we can form the image of one in our head. That is, unicorns have to exist outside of the human brain because we are able to form the mental image of one.

I tried to make this point earlier. As a theist I'm not limiting myself in any way about either philosophical evidence. I just add on at the end that it is my opinion that there is something else beyond that philosophical, (or for that matter scientific), truth.The question is what is the root cause of human reason. Is it random chance or intelligence? There is the old expression that says "beauty is in the eye of the beholder". Beauty is a subjective view. There is no demonstrably reliable form of evidence to tell us what is beautiful. For that matter why do we view anything as beautiful? If someone bases all of their belief on demonstrably reliable forms of evidence then they don't accept all philosophical possibilities. As I pointed out in my last paragraph there is no proof for subjective views. I might view love of my neighbour as a good thing, whereas someone else might see it as a weakness. Who is right? Who is wrong? Does it vary according to the situation? Are there any absolutes? ...just as I have no proof for my theism. As to the question, it is of course philosophical, so the answer is going to be philosophical. We all know the Descartes quote, "I think therefore I am". I think he is saying that we exist only because we reason that to be the case and we reason with our mind. A reasoning mind is central then to our existence and yet we can't measure, weigh or dissect reason. As I said to AZPaul3, we can only measure reason against other reason. That suggests to me that reason is something external to our physical world. That seems to me to be one possible conclusion. Maybe he does.

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Everybody is entitled to my opinion.

I'm not completely following you. Can you explain what you're getting at? Of course not, but it seems to me that science starts off with human reasoning and then the work begins to either support or reject the reasoning experimantally. It still all starts with reason.

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Everybody is entitled to my opinion.

But what step in judging beauty are neurons not involved? If we took away a person's brain are they still able to judge beauty?It would seem to me that the ability to judge beauty is an emergent property of the material, physical brain. In fact, our every attempt at modeling human intelligence has involved the manipulation of some physical medium like semiconductors. Reasoning is something we do like football, skydiving, or napping. Reason is the agreed upon rules for the activity just as football has rules. I don't see anyone claiming that football is immaterial, so I don't see why reason would be any different.

Except it seems to me that most empirical knowledge was born out of a rational idea. Even the fact that light can be a particle or a wave required the rational idea of trying the double split experiment. Essentially though I agree, as the little I know of QM is completely non-intuitive. An idea is not a physical thing. It isn't a part of the brain. That is where it is generated but it isn't a physical thing. We all have ideas that reflect reality and we all have ideas that don't. Just so you know - the unicorn doesn't.

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Everybody is entitled to my opinion.

Rationalism may be involved in inspiration, but it is not involved in the gaining of knowledge. The path of science is littered with ideas born of rational thought and tossed out through empiricism. If you were using Rationalism then you would not need the double slit experiment or the results of the experiment. That's the whole point. This contradicts what you said before:"We can see the reaction in the brain when reasoning takes place but isn't that just like this computer. It took reason outside of itself for it to be able to compute."If I am not mistaken, you are arguing that Reason is a thing that exists outside of our brains. Am I wrong?

Don't crow too loud over this, GDR. Remember my initial response to the OP: Message 38

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Other than for the intellectual entertainment and argumentative joy of it all, philosophy produces nothing of value for our species. Being philosophically limited in actuality has no meaning.

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So, yes, I am guilty ... of nothing. Nothing wrong in studying to build an H-bomb. The effort led directly to a greater understanding of particle physics, the Stanford Linear Accelerator and FermiLab, and to the full theory of Stellar Nucleogenesis.What the politicians (christians all, btw) chose to do with that knowledge was not a science decision. One could see things this way if one ignores the reaching effects of science on society.I see the situation as a humanist enlightenment borne of the acknowledgement that the human condition is universal. We are all the same species with all the same pains, needs and desires as shown to us by the sciences of Evolution, Medicine, Psychology.

No All attempts at modelling human intelligence require input and if the input is the same we will get the same result. Two people can look at the same thing and one will think it is beautiful and one won't. Same input but different results. Our models of human intelligence don't produce subjective results. Football rules are standard and have to be transmitted one way or another. It was human reason that are at the root of the rules in the first place and it was subjective reasoning that devised the rules. (The rules didn't have to be what they are.)

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Everybody is entitled to my opinion.