Hi again Otto Tellick, interesting post, let me see if I can get through this today, and sorry I missed your previous post.
So now you want evidence that all human concepts of god are made up.
Not really, although if you have such evidence I would be happy to look at it. No, this issue is raised by those that claim that the evidence that there are no gods is that people make things up. If this is the evidence provided for the absolute absence of god/s, then it logically follows that you need to demonstrate that all concepts of god are made up, just for starters. If the person claims that there are no gods because
SOME concepts are made up, then the argument falls on it's face, yes?
Well, at first blush that seems reminiscent of the Creationist who demands that all details of all evolutionary steps from fish to human be explicitly demonstrated with observable evidence, otherwise no evidence whatsoever can be deemed sufficient -- but that's just a knee-jerk reaction on my part. Moving on...
Sorry, but it is not that I am necessarily asking for evidence that all, rather it is that the burden of evidence is on those that make a claim.
For instance, the YEC making the claim that the absence of transitional fossils means that evolution is false, needs to show how this makes evolution false: he has a burden to provide substantiation for his claim.
Shall we look again at steps 9 and 10 of your epistemological algorithm? Or maybe it will suffice to consider that hypotheses, theories and similar assertions may justifiably be held when they are supported by / consistent with available evidence, and can be considered the better alternative in comparison to other assertions that are not consistent with the available evidence.
One is always allowed to state what they
think the evidence leads to, however that is still just a subjective opinion, rather than evidence. The best you could justify from this kind of opinon based analysis is agnostic atheist or agnostic theist: unsure but tending to believe pro or con based on personal world view rather than objective empirical evidence.
... and can be considered the better alternative in comparison to other assertions that are not consistent with the available evidence.
Just to be clear: if you are
convinced that an explanation is inconsistent with available evidence then you should be able to show that evidence contradicts the concept, but if it is just what you think based on your subjective view then you are still in agnostic territory.
Or Pseudoskeptic territory, thinking that your
opinion is sufficient justification for your view of a negative (or positive) claim.
We have an assertion here that human conceptions of a deity are all made up.
Yes, and I've dealt with this several times already.
Daily observations of various people asserting the existence of a deity, and describing its attributes, leave no doubt that these individuals are indeed making this stuff up -- they make claims that directly contradict their own previous descriptions, descriptions provided by other people, and various written records that describe attributes of deities. And of course, these written records all conflict with each other, and many of them contain internal inconsistencies in their various descriptions of deities as well.
Which only demonstrates that the god in question is not well understood, that the conflicts and inconsistencies are likely based, perhaps, on partial understanding and perhaps strongly susceptible to individual world views for how that partial understanding is conveyed to others. It is natural for people to frame unusual experiences within their usual experiences and the cultural concepts of the time.
What you need to demonstrate is that there is not a kernel of truth to all of these descriptions, and if you cannot show that for
ALL cases, then you have failed to make the case that several/many/most (you can't know how many) could have valid consistent concepts inside the overall description.
We could (as I suggested earlier) rely on just the logical and philosophical steps of your "algorithm", and observe that the notion of a "deity" has intrinsic properties in its "definition" that make it a "pseudo-entity", whose essential property is its lack of any objective property.
I'm assuming that what you "suggested earlier" was (
Message 37):
RAZD writes:
...
9. if you have a concept that does not seem tractable to forming scientific tests of validity, either because it is inherently untestable, or because of a lack of technology to make the test, and where the experience has not been repeated, then one is left at (7), with an unknown possibility at best, and the concept should be considered on philosophical grounds rather than scientific, if one is interested in pursuing it,
10. such philosophical considerations, to be valid, must be logically consistent and not contradicted by any known evidence,
...
Okay, here's where we are: the theist has an assertion of an entity with deliberate intentions and direct influence, whose actual intentions and influences are essentially not knowable by humans. Is that philosophically tenable? I would say no, because it is essentially nonsensical.
Which is just your opinion again about the possibility of the positive hypothesis, and this is not evidence for a negative hypothesis. If something is in truth unknowable then the default logical position is agnostic.
A deity is an entity with willful intent, responsible for the creation of reality as we know it, and this attribute in itself means that we cannot observe it directly in any objective sense, let alone have any direct, verifiable knowledge of its intent.
Which is an excellent argument for being an agnostic on the issue: insufficient evidence pro or con to make a logical decision, so let's leave the question open and move on.
But allow me to propose an alternative explanation (a theory, perhaps) about deities, which is consistent with the available evidence, and will (I hope) lend some support to those of us at position #7 on the Dawkins scale. I'm sorry I cannot go into rigorous evidentiary detail, but I hope most of the steps will involve topics familiar to you, so you can assess the availability of relevant evidence on your own. My hope is that given this explanation, we can cover all known instances of posited deities, and explain quite a lot more in addition.
Another 7: absolutely convinced that atheism is true. Fascinating. Lead on.
Reviewing what we are able to deduce about the past 3 billion years of known life on Earth, based solely on objective evidence and plausible natural processes, we see a progression in the nature of "awareness" (knowledge of environment) attributable to life forms. For the multicellular forms that develop mobile behaviors and specialized cells for perception and movement, the development of awareness shows an increase in the acuity and diversity of perception, a broadening of the range of movement behaviors, and a progressive elaboration of the cells that mediate between perception and movement:
- Initially, it's just a matter of chemical reactions to the medium in which the organism is situated; movement toward supportive environments and/or away from threatening environments is favored by natural selection.
- Over time, as organisms and their behavior repertoires become more complex, perception expands to additional modalities: temperature, tactile contact, vibration, light/vision, acoustics/audition.
- The specialization of cells that mediate between perception and behavior leads to greater advantage in natural selection as these cells form denser structures that improve both the speed and the appropriateness of responses to wider varieties of stimuli.
- As some species develop "socialized" patterns of behavior, it's possible to discern notions of intention: patterns of behavior that reflect some degree of construction or planning of steps on the part of individuals.
- At some point (with the introduction of Sapiens), the specialized mediation cells develop sufficient density and structure, and are connected to receptors and behaviors that are sufficiently tuned and adapted, to permit both the conception and communication of arbitrary symbols to represent and describe things and actions, leading also to the capacity for propositional logic and the ability to express questions and positive and negative assertions.
- Having positive and negative assertions, and descriptions using arbitrary symbols, the Sapiens organism also has the capacity to posit entities that are not observable and have no objectively verifiable basis -- in effect, Sapiens can talk about things that do not exist.
That culminating ability is a natural by-product of a skill that offers obvious advantages for language users whose vocabulary lacks specific terms for describing or making assertions about novel objects or events.
Yes, intelligence and the ability to think with symbols appears to be an emergent property of life, and that the selection process seems to guide organisms to this end: there are many species able to communicate with symbols, and we are becoming adept at understanding parts of this ability in other species.
There is also evidence one could cite showing how the universe seems to be seeded with the building blocks for biological life based on amino acids wherever conditions are suitable.
One of the essential functions of science is to create or adapt vocabulary as needed to meet specific needs for the communication of objective knowledge, and part of this process is to carefully delineate what a given term does not refer to, as well as what it does refer to.
Including the skeptical analysis of every proposition to see if it holds up, and not by prejudging a pro or con position based on opinion and subjective preconceptions from one's worldview.
And whenever there is an hypothesis that doesn't have sufficient evidence pro or con, the scientific approach is to adopt a "we don't know" approach while waiting for evidence.
But when it comes to assertions about a deity -- a willful entity whose intentions are somehow served by the creation and progression of this physical reality that we occupy, whose nature and intentions are unknowable but are supposed to be relevant to us somehow -- we might as well be talking about those "colorless green ideas" made famous by Chomsky.
That's your definition, which of course doesn't mean that it is true or false, it's just one of the possibilities.
If you want to assert that I have not presented an adequately rational and verifiable account for the conclusion that "all human conceptions of a deity are made up", I hope you can describe what is lacking here.
Evidence that this actually applies to all concepts of deities - for that kernel of evidence is still missing, and what you still have is your opinion about the possibility.
If you are going to also assert that, because of whatever I may have left out, I must call myself an agnostic, meaning that I must allow some possibility for the existence of a deity, our discussion might be left in an odd state: your assertion entails some sort of description for a possible entity, and this description, in my view, must be made up, especially if it involves any attribution of willful intent, and more so if this intent is supposed to have direct relevance or impact on my day-to-day life. Conversely if you want a maximally "generalized" entity -- this deity is simply the thing that accounts for everything we can't explain on objective, naturalistic grounds -- you're just pushing a god-of-the-gaps idea, and I don't see any value in that.
And yet curiously, neither the opening post nor strict logic, requires a positive hypothesis to have a negative hypothesis, all it needs is a negative hypothesis for the burden of proof to kick in: you have made a claim that does not appear to be based on evidence, and unless you can supply the actual objective empirical data that demonstrates the validity of your position, then the invisible chasm of pseudoskepticism opens under you.
Bear in mind that if there is any basis at all for the opposite position ("not all human conceptions of a deity are made up"), this would need to be followed up with how these non-made-up conceptions were formed, (Be specific, so we know how to recognize the difference between made-up and not-made-up!)
Ah, but you see we are not talking about the well-known part of making a positive claim and supporting it with evidence, we are talking about the equal burden to provide supporting evidence for ANY negative claim.
If you are making the assertion that the concepts of X are all made up then the burden is on you to support your claim with more than opinion.
If you make the claim that Y does not exist because all concepts of X are made up then you ALSO need to show how this "X-is-made-up" claim shows that Y does not exist.
Bottom line: Onifre and I (and some others here, presumably including Straggler) will continue to allow that you may hold any personal (internal, subjective) notions you like regarding the possible existence and attributes of deities, according to your own "idiolectal" gyrations of entities defined only by negations, but we won't agree that your personal notions are sufficient reason to label us as "agnostic", because the only basis for that label is your own personal notion of a deity.
Curiously, that is not the argument on this thread. My beliefs are irrelevant to why you claim to be an atheist - I'm betting you considered yourself an atheist long before you met me - and thus
my beliefs and personal opinions are irrelevant to your need to demonstrate evidence for your non-neutral position, to answer your burden of proof.
One last point to elaborate my evolutionary explanation of awareness, for those who are concerned about the notion of purpose: The development of intentional behavior brings with it the ability to form a sense of purpose, and to perceive purpose in the actions of others. Purpose is an "emergent property" of Sapiens, and (presumably) of any other organism that might happen to follow a similar path of cognitive development. As members of the Sapiens species, we establish purpose. We create it.
Amusingly I fully agree with your evolutionary explanation, as it is part of my personal opinion of reality.
As Dawkins would say, there is no need to posit a deity. To the extent that our sense of purpose leads to behavioral patterns conducive to our continued existence as a species, natural selection favors this property of our current evolutionary status.
If there is no need to posit a deity, there is also no need to posit the actual absence of a deity, and a skeptic can just say there is no reason to form a decision at this time.
The default logical position is agnostic until there is reason\evidence\proof that pro or con is a supported claim.
Pretending otherwise, for any of your beliefs, while continuing to apply this same standard to science or the beliefs of other people is being a pseudoskeptic.
We have some ability to mold our sense of purpose -- and our particular intentions -- in order to achieve the best overall result for survival as members of a dominant species living in a highly interdependent network of countless species on a finite planet. We are learning that natural selection can (and often does) produce better results than intentional design, and that greater diversity is generally better than reduced diversity.
Again, I fully agree: if the purpose of the universe is to develop sentient beings capable of spectuacular thoughts, then evolution is a self-repairing mechanism that doesn't need constant tweaking.
In this context, something that essentially amounts to the golden rule is our best first intention, applicable not only to other people but to life in general, as far as this is possible. Ultimately, "do unto others..." isn't a religious doctrine; it is an ecological imperative.
With different results for different species eh?
Recap: Another 7: absolutely convinced that atheism is true. No evidence that the claim is true other than personal opinion.
Enjoy.
we are limited in our ability to understand
by our ability to understand
Rebel American Zen Deist
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