Positions

[SGOS]

Science is great. But can it be used to argue the atheist position?

The majority of atheists don't have a position, only strong atheists who make the claim that there is no god.  The majority of atheists are only without a belief.  That's not really a position.  It's neutral.  However, it might be argued that weak atheists take the position that it's unreasonable to have a position that is unfounded.

Theists just say religion and science answers different questions. That there is no contradiction.  

Theists say a lot of things.  Some of it is true, some of it is just silly.  The above is silly, because religion is quick to intrude into science whenever it chooses, and it continually ends up with egg on the face for doing so.  Why they can't stop doing this to themselves is a mystery.   Science doesn't go out of it's way to address god issues since there is no proof for a god to begin with, but it often does contradict precious Bible myths.

When dealing with potential scientific questions, religion feels especially compelled to answer when an answer is not known.  If science has not yet discovered an answer, religion makes one up that always has the common thread behind it that God did it, while science leaves the question unanswered.  Sometimes science comes up with the wrong answer, but the trademark of science is to correct it's mistakes when new information becomes available, rather than cling to an answer that can no longer be supported, which is where religion ends up shooting itself in the foot.

Religion tends to come around and accept the undeniable realities of science eventually, but it often takes 500 years for them to do it.  But even then, it still accepts reality for the wrong reasons.  It's more like they accept it because popular sentiment has come to agree with science and forsaken religion's position.  The reason this is wrong is because it's a fallacy of the argument from overwhelming numbers.

It should be an argument from evidence, not an argument from popular opinion.

[Solitary]

Well, the basic failure is lack of a really strong definition of "free will" and what that means. There is no real conscensus on what free will is.

Is that really a problem? If it is, can't we  just settle on a definition an go on?

There is no way to distuinguish between a person who says he experiences free will but does not have it, and a person who says he experiences free will and does have it. Both would act exactly the same. Just because people think they have free will doesn't automatically mean they have it.

Too me that is not so satisfying. That the pro-physical explanation stops when encountering a non-distinguishability like this.

What if we follow both paths?

1. A person experiences free will and doesn't have it.

This would be saying free will does not exist. How do we prove that?

2. A person experience free will and has it.

This is the original premise.

The problem with free will is that people don't understand what it means that something is determined. It's not that simple with A causes B, it's more like 10 billion events cause B. An example: When an apple falls, why does it fall? Because the earth has gravity, because the stem withers, because it is dried by the sun, because it grows heavier, because the wind shakes it etc.

 We have evolved, however, as cognitively improvisational tool users, dependent on identifying actions we would take that would lead to immediate payoffs. So our minds evolved to represent situations in a way that highlighted the element in the nexus that we could manipulate to bring about a favored out come.

The brain is a bounded machine, and the world is a confusing place, full of data and distractions. Intelligence is the ability to parse the data so that it makes just a little bit more sense. Like will power, this ability requires the strategic allocation of attention. One final thought: In recent decades, psychology and neuroscience have severely eroded classical notions of free will. The "unconscious" mind, it turns out, is most of the mind. And yet, we can still control the spotlight of attention, focusing on those ideas that will help us succeed. In the end, this may be the only thing we can control.

More on this later, I have to eat breakfast.

Experiments have shown that a network of high-level control areas of the brain begins to shape upcoming decisions long before they inter awareness. This challenges the whole notion of free will and the associated religious teachings about sin and redemption.  If our brains are making our decisions for us subconsciously, how can we be responsible for our actions? Is free will an illusion?

While "conscious will" may be an illusion, it can be argued that our material selves do still possess a kind of free will. Every decision we make is the result of very complex calculations made by our conscious and unconscious (body) brains working together. That calculation relies on input from our immediate circumstances and our past experiences.

So the decision is uniquely ours, based on our specific knowledge, experience, and abilities. This seems pretty free to me. While others can influence us, no one has all the data that went into calculations except our unique selves, not even psychologists. Another brain operating according to the same decision algorithms as ours would not necessarily come up with the final decision, since lifetime experiences leading up to that point would be different.

 

Solitary

[SGOS]

More on this later, I have to eat breakfast. Solitary

Free will says you don't have to. :-D

[Seabear]

Hello,

I'm an agnostic right now but would like nice strong arguments for either side. The atheist position seems a little more likely to provide these.

This is a bit of an open-ended, vague question. Have you done any reading at all on the subject?  Any thoughts of your own here?

Don't be intellectually lazy and come empty-handed to an internet forum and expect people to educate you.

[Solitary]

Oh we can definitely show religions to be wrong when they make specific claims about the nature of consciousness.  Religions say that consciousness comes from a spirit soul according to you?  That is a nonsense claim with no basis in reality.

The nonsense argument isn't that strong though, is it? Here we have something that is hard to explain and when one party comes up with a solution you throw nonsense at it instead of providing your own theory or disproving the solution. That leads us nowhere, I think.

Many atheists acknowledges that the full theory of consciousness is yet to be presented. Is it then scientific at this stage to rule out the possibility of a spirit soul providing it? One can be determined that science will one day prove consciousness to be a purely physical product, but until we know, the scientific position must be as always, have all doors open. What do we gain to throw rubbish at each other?

My agnostic position remains in the question of consciousness, since no side can provide strong arguments.

If a soul provides consciousness and is immaterial and doesn't depend on a body or brain to exist, then how could drugs effect it, or a bump on the head, or brain damage. When a machine is working does it show it has a soul, and when it stops the soul continues? If we had a soul that causes consciousness how could neurologists probing the brain cause emotional responses? How could they control the movement of your body etc. Science already knows consciousness is a physical process. Just common sense shows that to be true. No brain function your dead and not conscious. As far as New Age gurus saying we have a field around us, this is true, but it's the same for a dead person and a rock at the same temperature. Solitary

[Solitary]

Hello,

I'm an agnostic right now but would like nice strong arguments for either side. The atheist position seems a little more likely to provide these.

 :-D Welcome aboard Humble Bee! Seeing how 6,000+ years of recorded history and way things are in the world now show that without a God or gods nothing would be any different in the past or now. Even if there is some kind of God or gods what good are they if they have no effect on the world or us? You are using the very old God of the gaps argument to be an agnostic. Faith is believing without evidence, and atheism is no belief without evidence.

And you are caught right in the middle because you want proof there is no God. If something doesn't exist it can't be proven it doesn't exist, but is that a reasonable position to have when that means anything can exist without evidence. Do you believe in all the Pagan Gods? We believe in one less than you do if you don't for the same reason or reasons you don't believe in the gods.  Religion is based on black and white magical Neanderthal thinking that is fallacious.  Solitary

[Solitary]

Science is great. But can it be used to argue the atheist position?

Theists just say religion and science answers different questions. That there is no contradiction.

Theism is a direct contradiction to science because it is based on faith with no reliable evidence. What is the theist position on evolution? How many times in school did everyone get the correct answer to different questions? Where has religion ever agreed with science? They even have  different words to convey the meaning different of science to make everything mystical and magical like "soul" that is immortal instead of mind that isn't to support their unsubstantiated dogma with not a thread of evidence to back it up. Science deals with reality, not superstitious nonsense, so no it can't argue the atheist position. If there is no evidence, science assumes it doesn't exist. Solitary

[Solitary]

There are no arguments for atheism, only arguments against theism. The only thing you have to do to be an atheist is not believe in things that have no evidence for them. It's ridiculous that you even have to say it, but that's how normal religion has become; that nobody ever has to mention that they don't believe in dragons, but that people ask for evidence to prove that there is no god, even though it's more reasonable to believe dragons exist than gods, because at least they make sense.

Ah. Is that the weak athesist position? You should not have to provide evidence.

But a strong position should produce evidence, right?

Atheism is not a strong position because if there is reliable evidence to believe in God we would. And why doesn't God show Himself to the world if He does indeed exist. Science and atheism are beliefs based on evidence not absolutes like religious faith does. You are comparing apples to oranges a logical fallacy. Solitary

[Solitary]

The only thing you have to do to be an atheist is not believe in things that have no evidence for them.

What about things that are hard to explain? Like consciousness. Science does not fully understand it. Religions say they do. No position can provide the type of evidence that the scientific model requires.

What?  Religion fully understands consciousness without any evidence, and science doesn't with the science of neurology. I'm sure you mean saying we have a soul means consciousness is fully understood. How so? Science can show that consciousness is a physical event from brain activity that can be change by physical events. Religion says a soul is separate from the body with no evidence what-so-ever. All higher life forms are conscious, do they have a soul? Solitary

[Solitary]

Nice answer!

Can I ask you, what does the word "god" mean to you, anyway? There's more meanings to the word than there are people, and they all mean something completely different.

As agnostic the term may mean anything that is plausible. Hard to rule out something that can't be proven wrong.

E.g. what is the "Life Force"? The force that seems to drive conscious beings. What happens to it at death? One second the body was alive, the next dead. What is the physical difference? This "life force" could be god. Not saying or proving, but it's a theory.

Life is provided by energy and this energy cannot be destroyed or created. But this isn't consciousness. The physical difference is that one is functioning and the other isn't. Again, a God of the gaps argument. Solitary

[Solitary]

You are well versed!

Can you help me point out the error in this "proof" which bothers me. Get's me stuck.

1. If humans have free will, it's origin is either physical or non-physical.

2. All humans experience the freedom of choice and that they can think freely. Nothing suggests that their will should not be free. One who contradicts this, having the will not being free, must provide evidence for it and also solve the problem of what happens with ethics and moral in society if nobody did anything out of free will.

3. A will with physical origin (e.g. brain chemistry) can not be free because a strict physical explanation requires determinism, which means that the wills of humans are just a consequence of physical processes. (Randomness is not the same as choice.)

4. Since free will cannot have physical origin and the fact that it exists makes us conclude that the origin of free will is non-physical.

First of all you are assuming we have freewill. You are also assuming we make choices based on either or, when there are multiple reasons we make choices. We make choices based on our history, biology, emotions, knowledge and reasoning, not just an on off switch. In that sense we have free will, but it's nothing like what religion says about it. We live in a society and make choices based on the morals we learn of the society we live in. A tiger that kills humans doesn't get to live because it is responsible for the deaths not because it has freewill.

You idea of determinism is that there is just one thing that determines a choice or action when it is determine by a history of events. You are correct that randomness is not the same as choice, but you are assuming choices are based on randomness because of it being a physical process which is not correct because reasoning is taking that randomness into consideration before making a choice. Why can't freewill have a physical origin? We are a physical being not a ghost. Solitary

[Mister Agenda]

Oh we can definitely show religions to be wrong when they make specific claims about the nature of consciousness.  Religions say that consciousness comes from a spirit soul according to you?  That is a nonsense claim with no basis in reality.

The nonsense argument isn't that strong though, is it? Here we have something that is hard to explain and when one party comes up with a solution you throw nonsense at it instead of providing your own theory or disproving the solution. That leads us nowhere, I think.

Accepting nonsense leads us nowhere. There is a fallacy known as the argument from ignorance, which basically goes 'you don't have an explanation so you should accept my explanation'. Like if I can't account for what happens to hundreds of people who go missing in NYC every year, someone else's theory that many of them are abducted by aliens has to be taken seriously because hey, at least they have an explanation.

It's understandable why primitive peope got the idea their bodies contain an invisible spirit divisible from their physical form. Every night they had experiences where they seemed to be wandering around doing stuff while their bodies were asleep. We have pretty good reason these days to think that's not what is actually happening when we're dreaming. The original mystery a spirit would have been the proposed solution for has been solved.

[Solitary]

Religion is wrong all of the time.

Problem is we can't know that right? Religions say consciousness comes from a spirit soul. You say this is wrong. Must you not have evidence for saying that?

Of course we can know that. We have consciousness because we have a brain-body, and anything that effects the body effects the brain and consciousness. How can religion know we have a soul and science can't even though it knows we are conscious and what causes it. Where does soul come into the picture with science? Solitary

[Solitary]

If we have no free will, we can not choose to be ethical or moral or not, and neither can society.

Nice!

But isn't there a problem that if we so to speak know there is no free will, now one can be held responsible for anything. If a person steals your car, should you have it back and he get punished? No, because this was coming, nothing conscious could stop it, the person could not choose not to steal the car.

We can be held responsible because we did do whatever. A tiger or pit bull is responsible for what it does, and even a rock falling and killing someone is responsible for the killing. One is held responsible because they did the deed and, because they are alive and have free will, but to protect society they are put away or executed, not because some religion says they need to be punished.

There is no justice only injustice, and what we call justice is the belief in retribution as taught by religion, or to satisfy our lust for revenge based on our emotions.  Of course a person can choose not to steal a car, not because of free will, but because he has reasoned it out and "determined" that it is wrong to do so because he wouldn't want it done to himself or loved ones. Solitary

[Solitary]

More on this later, I have to eat breakfast. Solitary

Free will says you don't have to. :-D

He! He! I know, I did it anyway because my unconscious mind told me to.  :shock:  Solitary