Are Atheists "Philosophically Limited"....?

How does anybody who thinks about these things do that. We go with what we know and try to come to most reasonable conclusion. I believe it as it seems the most reasonable answer to me. I agree that reasonable people will come to different conclusions. I agree, but would add that it might be worth considering an underlying reason for the fact that we are so "delightfully human". When we consider that, we might come to a subjective belief or we might not, but it’s still worth considering. No problem with that, although once again I would add that it often seems that the more we know the more we are aware of what we don't know. Certainly scientific methods bring more conclusive answers. That assumes of course that the only reality that exists is the reality that we perceive. Thank you. That is a fair statement and so helpful. It is a form of rationalism as I don't give it priority to the scientific method, but see it as being both distinct but complimentary.

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Everybody is entitled to my opinion.

I look forward to the day. Yes. Finally a really easy answer. I'm just saying that rules that work well are more indicative of intelligence than are rules that don't work well.
To the last question - no, they are what they are and they've gotten us this far.

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Everybody is entitled to my opinion.

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Evolution occurs. Get used to it. I believe it

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So stop pretending that it doesn't.

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Evolution occurs. Humans differ. So what?

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So your arguments make assumptions which you know to be false.
Thus they are obvious rationalisations. So what does it say about your theism that you should be forced into such a position ?

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The idea of there being "something instead of nothing" that came about from a non-intelligent source requires special pleading. So yes, I do invoke special pleading but so does any other answer that attempts to explain the first cause for existence.

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That depends on the features used to infer causation. If the same features were found in something that was presumed to be uncaused then there would indeed be special pleading. I'm not aware of any argument for a non-intelligent cause of the universe that has that flaw. So all you have is an unsubstantiated tu quoque.

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As you seem to agree though with this statement, the drive for additional success in reproduction is a natural law, one that we can expect to see replicated in other organisms.

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I do NOT agree. I categorically and absolutely disagree. There is no such natural law.

It says I'm a theistic evolutionist. What's your point? Our space time universe had a T=0. Where else do we see that? OK then - natural selection appears to be a consistent feature in nature.

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Everybody is entitled to my opinion.

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It says I'm a theistic evolutionist. What's your point?

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Why does being a theistic evolutionist require you to make arguments based on assumptions you know to be false ? I thought that it just showed that you had a need to present a pretence of rationality for a belief that was not rationally supportable.

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Our space time universe had a T=0. Where else do we see that?

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What exactly is the relevance of this claim ? It looks to be an admission of error, but I'd rather you were clearer about it.

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OK then - natural selection appears to be a consistent feature in nature.

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Another unclear claim. Your argument was that natural selection required some basic law of nature which you assert must be due to pure chance or God (a false dilemma) and that therefore you could equate godless natural selection to pure chance (a non-sequitur). How does this claim - itself unclear - help you there ?

How can you say this? Where do you get the idea that atheists believe that our ability to reason and examine evidence comes from blind random chance? That just tells me you have little knowledge about where our ability to think comes from. DO you think that Crows solving puzzles or Elephants finding water or Chimps sharing food or becoming upset at unfairness are products of some outside intelligence and not the 'reasoning' ability of those animals brains?I don't think you understand how the brain works. If you did, you might have realised that it makes mistakes in reasoning quite a bit. That it isn't and doesn't have to be a product of some intelligence, especially since you would have to question why a superior intelligence would craft such a faulty product (not just humans but animals as well being faulty).The point is, we reason and animals reason because our brains have connections between nuerons that send signals to each other through chemical and electrical impulses. These connections are reinforced and built upon the base pattern we are born with, that includes the ability to learn and process information, and to hunger and move. Many of these basic impulses we share with all animals...ex. The desire to mate, hunger/thirst, aversion to danger, etc. The complexity of our brains are the product of millions of years of evolutionary history. You can see that in the development of our human lineage. We don't just pop into existence with these brains. Our environment and social needs have weeded out those ancestors of ours who could not compete. We are the byproducts of this variation and selection.As far as evidence being a product of random chance, I would sincerely question your ability to reason if you believed that evidence just came to be randomly. Besides the fact that you a ppear to me to contradict yourself when you say, "I agree that evidence and reasoning make our subjective opinions more reliable than blind random chance. I'm just saying that if our evidence and reasoning are only products of blind random chance..."Who is saying Nature is consistent? or Natural Laws? Are you? Do you think that scientists randomly choose what evidence to pursue when using the scientific method? How do scientsists choose what experiments to run? Do you know? That leads us to the path of scientific anarchy. Who is to say what is true then or who is right? Without the scientific method, how does a scientist correct mistakes made by himself or others? If you believe that humans are falible, then surely you believe that we should compare notes and investigate claims..I would hope. Evolution is a consequence of nature and physical laws. There is only so much food....there are only so many mates...there is only so much energy....the environment changes with changes in orbital patterns...etc.

I have the feeling this topic has moved away from "Are Atheists "Philosophically Limited"....?" and what is meant by that comment, to attempts at debating evolution issues.Remember, this is the Faith and Belief Forum, not a science forum. Please direct any comments concerning this Administrative msg to the General Discussion Of Moderation Procedures (aka 'The Whine List') thread.Thank you
AdminPD Edited by AdminPD, : Revised for thread reopening.

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.

I don't want to get dragged off topic again so I want to be careful how I reply. I think you are turning the subject around by suggesting that it isn't atheists that are philosophically limited but theists.I don't see approaching the question of altruism from a scientific one. Science might go into the brain and find the triggers etc, that show altruism at work but it will always come back to the point of why are we the way we are. To go further than that is subjective no matter what conclusion we come to. If we decide that there are only material causes in the world we have to rationalize that leap of logic.IMHO either a theist or an atheist can accept the concept of human reason gaining knowledge philosophically. It isn't evidenced in the way that scientific knowledge is but it can be at least hinted at by the human psyche.I'm coming to the conclusion that IMHO it is individuals that limit themselves, regardless of their theistic or atheistic beliefs.

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Everybody is entitled to my opinion.

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):

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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.

This is probably the crux of our issue. I don't agree that the scientific method will ever answer the underlying "why" we can be altruistic, or perceive something as beautiful etc. Science can only answer how it happened or how it might have happened. Let's assume that your example can be demonstrated scientifically. I agree that at one level it would say why altruism happens but there is a deeper level of why involved. For example why is gene propagation a good thing? Why does it matter at all? Why does it matter that we continue to exist? Even though we might be able to discern it happening we can't know why it is true. IF we are simply a more or less accidental product of matter and energy then why does anything like altruism matter? (If you don’t like the word accidental use another one. It is the best I can come up with at the moment. )Could this be an instance where an atheist might be philosophically limited in that he wouldn’t be able to consider why things are the way they are because he thinks he has already answered the question, and doesn’t consider that there is any question left to be answered? Sure there are material causes but that doesn't rule out other possible causes. I agree that I have no explanation of how the material and the immaterial interact. But if we assume for a minute that there is an intelligence that has created and maintains the universe, and that we are a product of that intelligence, it seems reasonable to suggest that there would be all sorts of things that we won't have an answer for. (The link didn't work by the way.)Thanks for the wiki summation of Kant's views. Essentially I agree and I think you would as well except where we would disagree is in the following. I do think that God has revealed himself both non-materially through our minds but also materially through Jesus.(I think we have stayed mostly on topic on than this so hopefully we will be forgiven this transgression. ) I agree completely with that and acknowledge I have a bias. However everyone lives with that bias and we form a world view based on it. Hopefully we remain open to having our bias adjusted as we gain information.The interesting thing is that I believe that I have a very sound basis for my bias and I know that you feel the same about yours. It keeps the world interesting doesn't it?

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Everybody is entitled to my opinion.

Consider this, if we accept that there are ‘truths’ we can or may never know, then doesn’t it make sense to first establish if and how we can actually do know something? The ‘ology of how we know something is science. If one cannot establish what is or what it means ‘to know’ then every opinion and assertion is equally valid. Therefore, it a mistake to look at science as the pursuit of materialism when it is instead a pursuit of determining and evaluating knowledge. It may not be strictly the case, but it appears to be that this is practically the case. If there is no objective component that can be evaluated by others then there is no mechanism for demonstrating shared reality. Sure, you and I could hold some shared belief (science doesn’t insist shared beliefs are impossible, in fact the opposite is the case), but holding a shared belief doesn’t make that belief ‘true’.

No. Really, no. The word repeated is giving you too much trouble. Instead of ‘repeated’, think ‘verified the method’ or ‘reviewed and duplicated’. The ‘repeat’ is part of science determines if something is objective. If no one can duplicate or verify the findings then those findings could hardly be called ‘objective’, how could they? This is not about science having nothing to say about the past. That is a bastardization and complete failure to understand of how science actually works.

I get that you like you like CS Lewis. What I don’t get is why you think he has anything valid to say about science. Scientific laws are models and explanations. He might have just as well said, no script on its own ever made a movie.

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This may be put in the form that the laws of Nature explain everything except the source of events. But this is rather a formidable exception.

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Did you even read this? Do you actually believe that Newton’s Law of Gravity does not explain the source of the event of an object falling?

Rather than reply to each I'll reply to all. The OP asks the question of whether or not atheists are philosophically limited. I think in discussion we came to the conclusion that neither theists or atheists are necessarily philosophically limited.I don't pretend to have a science background and I won't always get the lingo right. You seem to have a problem with the word repeated but I'm happy to use any of your other suggested words.I understand that science can produce objective answers that philosophy and theology can't. I get that. I have no idea how you got the idea that I think C S Lewis has anything to say about science. I understand that the Law of Gravity is scientific. My only point is to ask the question of whether or not a law requires a law giver, and that is a philosophical or theological question that can only produce a subjective result.I'm afraid we are going to get our knuckles rapped for going off topic again. Edited by GDR, : No reason given.

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Everybody is entitled to my opinion.