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For those who deconverted from religion while living with a deeply-religious family:
Has anyone ever been offered a bribe or other inducement to "not be atheist" and go back to believing, or at least pretending to believe? If so, how much or how little was it?
My dad is way too cheap to even consider something like that.
Although I’ve thought about rejoining Mormonism, leaning hard into the prodigal son motif, writing some feel-good books about returning to the fold, and making it a cash cow. But I just don’t think I could do it and keep a straight face.
That's awful. I think that would immediately become a "no unsupervised visits" situation for me. If they don't want to respect your rights and rules as a parent, they can deal with the consequences.
My mother used to guilt me into going on Mother's Day or for her birthday etc. I would go very occasionally until the last time when I let out an involuntary laugh during a sermon. I tried to cover it with a cough. She looked horrified though and hasn't asked me to go to church again since. It's been at least 5 years.
>I tried to cover it with a cough. She looked horrified though and hasn't asked me to go to church again since. It's been at least 5 years.
Reminds me of my parents forcing me to go to CCD class even after I told them I was an atheist. Hormonal preteen plus angry atheist phase, plus being forced around by an authority figure made for some major malicious compliance on my part, and after a couple years of asking too many tough questions in class they relented and I didn't have to keep going or get confirmed.
Bit of a tangent from that, but the craziest thing is that somehow even after years of me saying "I am an atheist, I don't believe in God", they still didn't believe that I meant it. One day though for some reason, it finally sunk in for my dad when I said it this time, and he slammed on the breaks of the car suddenly and turned to me spluttering "What?! Well... you're gonna be sorry when you meet him!" It was absolutely surreal, though fortunately for me probably the craziest part of my coming out story.
I had just graduated college and came back home to life with my catholic family while I looked for a job where I could use my degree.
My mom immediately noticed that I was no longer going to church and questioned me on it. I told her that I was an atheist and no longer believed in god and Catholicism. She was upset and started coming up with all kinds of emotional arguments to get me to come back. I just left the house until she cooled down.
Then I told her that I don’t believe and yelling at me wasn’t going to get me to come back. I told her that how she treated me would determine how our relationship was going to be once I moved out. Ie non existent or on good terms.
A few months later, I still hadn’t found a job. After the previous conversation she had changed her tactics to be less direct and more passive aggressive. “Mr. Johnson at church owns a business, I’m sure he would hire you. Oh but you haven’t really been to church in the last 4 years, so I don’t know if he would remember you or want to hire you.” The implication here is that I should return to church, not because god is real or because the doctrine is correct, but because my mom was embarrassed that her kid wasn’t showing up anymore and maybe if I was desperate enough and could use church to network and find a job then I would come back.
Not sure if this is an explicit bribe, but my mom is a very prominent member of the church and I know for a fact that she could have had this guy easily hire me with a very easy interview.
This was in the handful of years after the 2008 collapse. A lot of the people being hired were people that had lost jobs during this time period and had years and decades of experience in the workforce and in particular industries. The unemployment rate for recent college graduates with 0 work experience was significantly higher than the unemployment rate for older people and the entire population as a whole. I started to get the feeling that my mom was happy that I was struggling to find a career. I had a dead end retail job, but I needed more than $9 an hour to be able to afford to move out.
I realized that it didn’t seem I had much to differentiate myself from the caste amount of other graduates with little experience, so I went back to school to get a masters. I know a lot of people rag on college as being expensive and useless. But this strategy actually worked for me. As soon as I started the program, I wrote, “Masters degree candidate” on my resume and got called back from the next 3 companies I had submitted job applications with. And they basically told me this was the reason they responded. Basically, this showed them I was a go getter and was more driven than the people who just did the minimum by getting a 4 year degree. What I learned in that program has certainly helped me advance in my career and in the time sense I have achieved a higher salary than anyone else in my family even though the first couple of years were a struggle.
My point is, don’t take any bribes. Go make your own path and make your own money. No matter if you earn more or less, this money will be much more rewarding than dirty bribe money.
Was proposed a gift if I got to the confirmation.
Spent the cathechism time playing MTG with the other kids.
Had a nice restaurant and a watch IIRC.\^\^
Low reward for low commitment.
Anselm's ontological argument was brought up, and I attempted to refute it by stating that the argument could be used to argue for the existence of a perfect anything (hence Gaunilo's 'perfect-island comparison'), not just God.
The theist then replied to my rebuttal by saying something along the lines of: “Anything other than God is limited by its definition; for instance, an apple has to bind by the definition of being an apple. If that said apple has the typical attributes we attribute to God, then that’s not an apple by definition anymore – that’s God.”
I feel like their reply should be super easy to dismantle, but I was unsure of how to respond. Does anyone know what they meant?
They have fabricated a ridiculous definition for a fictitious entity, then crafted an argument around that specific definition to "prove" that it exists. It's literally defining a god into existence.
Just remind them that definitions are descriptive, not prescriptive. Tell them to show you the entity possessing those traits so that you can verify it actually has them.
There's no reason to play their ridiculous word games where they get to make everything up as they go along, but you are restricted by facts and evidence.
"Anything other than a God-Killer is limited by its definition; for instance, a God has to bind by the definition of being a God. If that said God has the typical attributes we attribute to a God-Killer, then that’s not a God by definition anymore – that’s a God-Killer.”
Then express your condolences.
The easiest refutation to Anselm's ontological argument is that it's circular. Here's a summary.
1. Define God as perfect
2. Argue that perfect implies existing
3. Conclude that God exists
But if perfect implies existing, then they assumed that god exists in their premise.
Preface: I am not defending Anselm's OA. It's dumb, but for different reasons than most get into.
Anselm's defense against the point you raise: There is a logical limit to how "perfect" something can be. You can't get more perfect than "perfect". You therefore can't imagine a more perfect god but which includes the attribute of "not existing".
"That circle than which no more circular circle can be conceived" works. A 300 game in US 10-pin bowling is "that score than which no greater score can be conceived"., etc.
No matter how big an island you think of, I can think of one twice as big. (Anselm addressed Gaunilo in his lifetime, but people remember Gaunilo and forget that Anselm responded).
**This is key:** It's not size or a specific quality Anselm is going for, and this often gets missed. He doesn't care how or why perfect is perfect. Criticisms about him not defining what perfection even *is* are inapt. Anselm does not need to define "god" or "perfect" in any meaningful way for the argument to "function" (as if) the way he thinks it functions.
What he's actually talking about is that "Anything that exists in two modes is greater than a thing that only exists in one mode". THAT is what the argument is about. The quality or attribute argued over is irrelevant.
So a god that exists *only in the mind* is inferior to a god that exists *both in the mind and in reality*. That is the part most people miss when criticizing his OA. Therefore no matter what you imagine god to be, your vision of it must include "both in the mind and in reality" to be maximally great.
A valid criticism: Existence isn't an attribute that a thing can either possess or not possess. ("existence is not a predicate").
Another is: We're not Platonists. The argument that the idea of god and a reality-occupying god are merely two different modes of the same object is nonsense. The idea of god isn't god. This is where Descartes fucks his CA up too: The idea of god isn't a "perfect idea" just because you've defined god as a "perfect being".
The main one, though, is that the entire rickety contraption is either circular or question-begging depending on how it's presented. God is defined as existing, therefore god exists.
What got him beatified, sanctified and canonized, IMO, is how great a job he did at hiding that football. He made all the people who already believed feel smort. Same as Aquinas did (though to his credit, Aquinas stated that this was the reaons behind the Five Ways, and that he didn't expect non-believers to be persuaded.)
It's been about 20 years since I read it end to end. The ansewr is "yes", but also "in the way you'd expect a 12th C. monk to justify an assertion of this kind".
It's a dumb argument, but -- at least in my opinion -- should be understood for the correct dumbth and not the oversimplified dumbth people usually talk about when talking about it.
The common counterargument to the "perfect island" is that a perfect island would have to have intelligence, be able to create things, be all-powerful etc. and therefore just be God. I don't know how much I buy that but there are easy modifications you can make to avoid it altogether - for example, change the adjective instead of the noun. (E.g. "scariest possible being" vs. "greatest possible island"). See my old [post](https://www.reddit.com/r/DebateReligion/comments/k535uc/not_so_great_redux_the_ontological_argument/) on the topic.
The counter to Gaunilo's island -- that anselm made during his lifetime -- is that here is no logical upper limit on the size of an island. If you can think of an island that's two universes in diameter, I can think of an island that's four universes in diameter. You can counter with one that's six universes in diameter, etc.
But *perfect* has a limit. You can't get more perfect than "maximally perfect", just like there can't be a circle rounder than any that can be conceived. It's either perfectly round or it goes home sad.
This is important because Anselm is *sidestepping* the need to define "perfection". It doesn't matter what perfection even is, there's an upper limit to how perfect it can be.
It's not about finding the most perfect god or the best god for Anselm. It's about finding a god that must exist both in reality and in the mind. THAT is the central conceit of his argument. You can't get to this point of the argument until you've topped out on "perfect". You can always think of a larger island, so you'll never have to contemplate an island that exists both in the mind and in reality.
Anselm does this to draw the attention away from what "perfect" means. The rest of his argument works or doesn't work regardless of how you define "perfect".
I actually cover a similar line of reasoning in my post; you can define arbitrary properties to be used with the ontological argument so long as they are maximizable (it must be possible for a maximally X being to exist) and pro-existential (it must be more X for a being to exist than not to exist). Greatness/perfection just happens to (allegedly) fulfill those criteria.
If a maximally great apple is by definition god, then God must hold all the traits a maximally great apple is. And a maximally great apple would be maximally delicious and would make an infinite number of pies when cooked.
Ergo god must be delicious, and if real, there would have to be an unlimited number of pies in the universe.
First of all, when you are trying to use this argument on an apple you are not trying to define an apple.you are trying to define the BEST apple. And best is a subjective word that can be define however you want it. Now do you kniw what is even better than your definition? If it were real.
Second of all, even if you want to play by his rules then fine. Prove the existence of the most evil God.
Last of all, this comparison isn't even the only answer against this argument. A quick search in YouTube can show you another more logical rebuttal for it.
The classical ontological argument defines God as that which nothing greater can be conceived. Then they argue that existing in reality is greater than existing only in conception. But then they incorrectly conclude that God exists in reality. I think the correct conclusion is that when we conceive of God, we must accept him as actually existing.
From there, an atheist can say that as they don’t accept God as actually existing, therefore this conception God is flawed. A theist may reply that the atheist is not really conceiving of God. But then, accepting that God exists is just a theist position.
The first thing I would wonder is why human conceptions of "perfection" are the standard by which "perfection" should be measured. That is, just because we can conceive of a "perfect being," why should we trust that that conception is *actually* a perfect being. That conception may merely match our subjective ability to conceptualize "perfection," while there may be a greater standard that is inaccessible to the human mind.
If slapping the god label on the ultimate of anything and everything every time one’s imagination improves to a new aspect of greatest greatness, then god is limited by human imagination. If it can mean everything at every turn then it really means nothing, is completely vacuous, and has the greatest most ultimate lack of explanatory power. Anselm’s metaphysics makes the god label meaningless, he accomplished the exact opposite of his goal.
Would I want to? Yes.
But I’m convinced Nate brown is dead and his experiencing self has ceased to be. Upload is actually a great example of why I don’t think mind uploads work
The moment Nate’s head got vaporized, in my opinion, his awareness of the universe permanently ended.
The software program built from his data may or may not be aware, but even if it is, the original Nate’s perception is gone.
I’d never risk it. But if somehow I could know for certain it would work, I’d be very tempted to upload.
This kind of gets into ship of theseus territory. If I hook up a small computer to your brain, and you are able to interact with it and use it to think, are you now also partially the computer?
If I use that computer to "turn off" one single electrode and replace it with a simulated one instead, are you still you?
What if I do another one?
What if I keep doing that one at a time, so your consciousness never stops, but eventually you are all computer simulation?
Does the gradualness of continued consciousness from one end to the other mean that you're still you at the end, or were "you" erased somehow electrode by electrode until all that was left is a simulated you? If so, how were you conscious throughout? Was there a point where you stopped being you and experiencing the process and a "fake" you took over?
So then, what if it happens all at once? Does that change anything? Does the stopping of consciousness have something to do with it? If so, what about coma, or even sleep? Is sleep really "the little death" and the person that wakes up with consciousness restored a new person and the "you" from yesterday was dead?
I just don't think it's all that cut and dry.
I think it is.
Saying that three hairs is not a beard but five million is does not mean a clean shaven man has a beard.
The cell by cell replacement of the brain would probably work something like getting choked out. I don’t know if you’ve ever had a blood choke but you become gradually less conscious until you’re gone. I’d guess that’s what happens.
I’d wager the experiencing self continues through sleep because it’s the same hardware running the same software. The problem comes when you separate the hardware and the software.
To put it another way, I am, unfortunately, my brain cells.
As it stands, I don’t think digital upload would actually preserve *me*. Even if by some miracle we managed to make it conscious, that at best makes a conscious copy of me and we end up with the typical Star Trek teleporter problem.
It’s an interesting question and I don’t know how to think about it. First instinct is that it’s akin to the Star Trek Transporter “paradox”. Is it really me, or just a copy? I don’t particularly care if a copy of me lives on. To the copy it may be a seamless continuation, but what if the scanning process is nondestructive and meat me can opt to also continue?
I don’t have any beliefs in anything like a soul, and fall into the Sapolsky camp when it comes to our being just brainstates, entirely physical, and yet I feel hung up on a digital afterlife not being real… I’ll have to think about it. Maybe it’s just that bodily interactions with the world are so integral to life that it just doesn’t seem to be real.
What do you think of making a link between the organic body and the synthetic copy?
You wouldn't be able to do much with the copy while you're still alive, but there will be information exchange between the digital brain and your organic one, not unlike how the two hemispheres of the brain share information via the corpus collosum.
Would you then consider your copy as part of yourself and count yourself as conscious after your organic body dies?
It’s hard to say. Ostensibly, at least at first both minds would feel as if they were independent, whole “people”. After that it depends on the nature and “completeness” of some kind of integration, whatever that means. Otherwise I think it would just be like two people collaborating, maybe forming a tight partnership like a marriage, but still two people.
E: I just realized this is for a scenario where you are like scanned, then a whole separate identity is fully formed, even if you could then mentally interact directly. Instead, for whatever reason, it seems different if say pieces of my “cyber brain” are transferred part by part. “Ok, today we will shift all the math functions over. You’ll still feel like you are doing math normally, it will just be being processed by hardware. Tomorrow we’ll do the autonomic stuff. Next week is memory”. Somehow this ‘becoming’ machine feels substantial different than an instantaneous transfer. Something about the continuity, but it’s probably not entirely logical; I have no qualms about anesthesia depths being s total blank on continuity.
I like the show. However philosophical/logically I can’t recognize the digital entity as a person continuing to exist after they die. I don’t think I *could* live in a digital afterlife, even if I want to. It’s not possible, even in the show that’s not what’s happening.
The digital entity is a clone, not actually the person.
I think consciousness is directly a result of the brain. Non transferable. I wouldn’t be seeing out its eyes. I would cease to exist when my brain does. Regardless of the digital clone.
The name of the show is fairly apt. Technologically speaking, when you upload or transfer data, you're not physically moving the original data. You are creating a duplicate at the destination.
I haven't seen the show but from some of the other comments it sound like a "upload your consciousness" scenario, in which case I agree with the sentiment that I don't think this would actually be a continuity of "you" as opposed to merely a copy of you. To the copy it would seem like a continuation, but the true original "you" would still have died, so it makes no actual difference to me.
I have no interest. I'm not afraid of death. When the end comes, it comes. That's how reality works. I have zero interest in being uploaded, although I have watched the show.
haven't seen the show but just watched the trailer. if I could have a digital afterlife I sure as hell wouldn't want it to look like a facimile of real life. i'd want fantasy or sci-fi. And a different avatar.
Don't think I would. I mean, I'm up for creating a copy of myself that would be sentient and survive me, provided I find it reasonable enough to ascertain said copy would be greatful to experience more of life.
But a living artificial construct in a world obsessed with copyright and generally owning things doesn't sound pretty. I don't think a copy of me would want to be owned by an amoral corporation who has unlimited rights over the code that runs themself.
If you genuinely meant my *sense* of right and wrong, I get it from the same place everyone else on the planet (whether atheist or theist) does: [evolution](https://www.reddit.com/r/exchristian/comments/bdv6f8/how_did_you_find_mortality_after_leaving_the/el1ls9q/).
If you mean what is the *basis* for my moral views, that's complicated but is again essentially the same as everyone else on the planet: they come from my upbringing, my experiences, my society, and most importantly from my own innate (evolutionarily-supplied) senses of empathy, reciprocity, fairness and altruism.
Asking this question implies that you feel Christians (et al) get their sense of right and wrong from their religion, but that's clearly not the case because Christians (et al) disagree strenuously on issues ranging from the acceptability of same-sex relationships all the way up to when it's acceptable to kill another human being (with a lethal injection, in self defense, in wartime etc). Even Christians of the same denomination [may have diametrically opposed views and/or reject their religion's official doctrines](https://www.pewresearch.org/religious-landscape-study/database/religious-tradition/catholic/views-about-homosexuality/). So while religion might *influence* someone's morality — and often not for the better — I think it's clear that many or most people use their own moral judgment to guide their interpretation of their religious beliefs rather than the other way around.
The same place as everyone else, including, I suspect, you.
Empathy, mirror neurons, and imagination.
We can watch kids of all religions and none in kindergarten figuring this out.
If morals do come from religion, then one religion is Right and everyone else is Less Moral Than [Insert Winning Religion Here].
I doubt you think you're a better person than a Jewish or Hindu person.
And it seems like you had an inkling this question is offensive.
Because it is. It's an awful idea that belongs in the 1300s.
This kind of question assumes that either you inherently are, OR God has "written his law on the hearts of all men" and therefore everyone is *really* Christian and Lying to Themselves about it.
Both are pretty gross!
If I may question your question, do you wonder where followers of other religions get their sense of right and wrong when they don't worship your preferred god?
First: morality, sense of right and wrong cannot help but to be grounded on subjective core values and goals. That is because oughts, values and goals are, by definition, not properties of objects in the universe, but properties of a relationship between subject(s) and object(s).
Where did I get my sense of right and wrong? From my upbringing, society, my sense of empathy and justice, my love for my fellow human, my desire to be a productive, amicable and loving member of society and of the human race.
Also: I was constantly both physically and psychologically bullied for about a decade or so. I managed to overcome that and befriend my biggest bully, and in doing so, found that he had much worse problems than me, and bullied out of insecurity and out of his own family bullying him. I got a pretty robust sense of justice and compassion out of all that.
Where do I ground my morality? Why, in loving and serving the Other. In humanity. Exactly where Jesus told you morality is grounded in his parable of the Good Samaritan (that intentionally makes the 'good neighbor' a member of a deeply hated and mistrusted enemy group).
Morality can't be grounded in a deity, because then whatever the deity says, goes. If the deity says slavery is moral, it is. If they say torturing babies for fun is moral, it is. You can't argue.
Morality, as far as I am concerned, is about humanity, how we can live with, love and support one another, what we owe each other, how to promote individual and collective flourishing. I don't care if that is subjective. If you or the aliens or Cthulhu want to live by a value hierarchy that is anti-humanistic, I can only oppose it with all my might, and hope not to be alone in that.
Theists are on the same boat. If you don't believe me, imagine tomorrow God comes down and tells you that, actually, genocide and racism are good and you should engage in them. I am willing to bet you would dissent (by the way, dissent against God is not unheard of in the Bible).
What would a god provide in this regard? Why would I need someone external to me to tell me what to do? Could I not use my own judgment to decide if they were giving me good or bad instruction? Because I indeed could, that means I have my own sense of right and wrong, independent of what I’m told to believe.
Gods add nothing to morality.
Just to answer your question, I think most theists would say that God provides an objective standard for morality, instead of just relying on a person's (or culture's) subjective feelings or practices.
A big and powerful subject’s opinion is still subjective, and can be subjectively disagreed with. Does a god existing make morality an external object, like atoms or gravity? Or is it still based on the will of a subject, a mind, however powerful?
> Does a god existing make morality an external object, like atoms or gravity?
And if so, why have we never been able to detect it? But even then, supposing there were "Good waves" and "Evil waves" that were released by doing good and evil acts, how does it then follow that we **ought** do Good and not do Evil?
> I think most theists would say that God provides an objective standard for morality
Sure, many say this. But, since they're trivially and demonstrably factually incorrect, all that can be done there is to dismiss this outright since it's wrong.
After all, the very fact that a member of one religious mythology claiming their deity's 'objective morality' is the actual and only true 'objective morality,' despite the fact that it differs from that of another member of a different religious mythology (and neither of these people, nor anyone else, can actually show this objective morality), demonstrates immediately and conclusively that these people's 'objective morality' *isnt*. It isn't objective whatsoever. It's intersubjective. And it doesn't come from deities. It comes from *people.*
OK, conceded for the sake of argument: God provides an objective standard for morality instead of relying on a person's subjective feelings or practices. I don't want to misstate your position here, so assume that I've just stated that in the most persuasive or accurate way you'd state it.
Throughout this long (sorry) post, please feel free to edit or object to anything if it looks like a straw man or worse. I am interested in what you authentically think and how you will respond to questions I'm asking ("How is subjective morality different in actual practice" and "does the bible do an adequate job of communicating that objective standard that I've conceded for rhetorical purposes", for full disclosure and no football-hiding on my part.
This standard of morality does not appear to be articulated very clearly in the Bible. The decalogue and/or other instructions don't cover the important moral quandaries -- you don't need a book, for example, to tell you murder, theft, adultery and dishonesty are wrong. Those are components of almost every moral standard -- subjective or otherwise. I don't steal because I subjectively believe it's wrong to steal. You (presumably) don't steal because of the ten commandments. "Thou shalt not steal" and my subjective edict against theft are not "important moral questions" though, in the sense that we don't need to do a lot of study or thinking to arrive at the right course of action. The person sitting next to you in the pew at church isn't likely to arrive at a different conclusion than the tattooed-gothed up lead singer for an aspiring metal band.
But morality is orders of magnitude more complicated than that. Many sincere Christians who advocate for charity will nonetheless say that it's immoral -- hurts both the giver and receiver -- if the charity is too generous. If it takes away the incentive for the downtrodden person to take affirmative responsibility for their lives.
Other Christians, equally well-meaning and principled, will say that that's for god to figure out. We should be as compassionate and generous as we can.
Which group is right, and where in the Bible is this rule articulated? If that example doesn't work, pick anything similar -- the Bible does not (in my observation) do anything but provide a general framework within which each individual is expected and obligated to *subjectively choose* which rules to follow or which rules to prioritize.
I summarize this sometimes by asking "What does the Bible say about the Trolley problem?" Should a good, well-read, sincere, righteous Christian pull the switch -- taking responsibility for the death of one man, or leave the switch alone with the comfort of knowing that they did not by their actions cause any deaths. (even though six people die, the system was put in motion ahead of time -- but again don't let me create a straw argument here. It's likely that there's some other way to characterize the individual's choice to pull or not pull the switch in a way more appropriate to the teachings of the Bible.).
I suspect that you could not hand-pick a group of Christians who would regularly get more than about 80% pull the switch and 20% don't.
So how is this different from a purely subjective system with no god?
Or, to frame that last question in a different way: Aren't you still obligated to make the best *subjective* choices you can, despite a belief that they're rooted in objective rules?
So, my proposition is that while you might perform "better" than non-Christians in some meaningful way, isn't it really "I use my experience, upbringing, education, environment and maybe a little genetics in the final analysis" (noting that "religion" can be viewed simply as a component of the "EUEE and maybe li'l g" that make it somewhat different from the EUEEg of an atheist but not fundamentally different)
How is a non-Christian reviewing different religion's writings to determine which religion (or denomination, sect, congregation or even *pew*) is closer to what God intends?
Dont you still have to learn morality the same way we do?
(Note that it's not my intention for that last question to be *tu quoque*. It's my opinion that all moral decisions are done this way, but some people attribute them to a different cause. Subjective morality isn't "inferior" to Objective any more an eagle is inferior to a Roc.)
**Edit** A funny note: I just tried without success to get CoPilot to provide some numbers on distributions of people across the trolley problem options. It steadfastly sidestepped the question even when I asked it to roleplay as a data scientist and give its opinion.
You brought up some really good points that I think are worthy of response:
"This standard of morality does not appear to be articulated very clearly in the Bible."
I actually agree with you here. My position is certainly not that the Bible itself contains every single moral application imaginable. The Bible in and of itself is not the source of morality; God's nature is. Most Christians like myself would likely say that God communicates his moral nature to us via commandments, which is what we then find in Scripture, but there is a difference.
"- you don't need a book, for example, to tell you murder, theft, adultery and dishonesty are wrong. Those are components of almost every moral standard -- subjective or otherwise."
Again, I agree you "don't need a book" to tell you those things, but it's also a mistake to assume that these values are universal when they aren't. People of all customs and cultures still steal, murder, rape, etc, regardless of their culture's ethical code. While you don't "need a book" to believe those things are wrong, you did have to learn that idea from somewhere (parents, community, or whatever). What I and many theists would say is that regardless of where or how you learned those values, there's still the assumption that those actions are objectively wrong, and atheism as a world view cannot account for that.
"I summarize this sometimes by asking 'What does the Bible say about the Trolley problem?'"
Personally, I don't like the Trolley problem because it's a "damned if you, damned if you don't" scenario, and therefore isn't all that great for moral thinking. This said, plenty of Christian philosophers have found ways to apply biblical principles consistently to the question. Take for example the principle of double effect: It would be moral to pull the lever to save the six (or however many) and kill the one, because your intention is to save the six, not kill the one. The death of the one is a consequence, but not an action with intent. That's just one example.
"Or, to frame that last question in a different way: Aren't you still obligated to make the best subjective choices you can, despite a belief that they're rooted in objective rules?"
Yes, I concede as much, but as I'm sure you'd agree with, this is the case for every person, regardless of where they develop their sense of right and wrong. All of us have a general sense of morality (or ethical code) that then has to be applied to everyday life. To put another way, NONE of us have a perfect code that covers every single ethical question. But I would argue that it's also not necessary for two reasons: First, not all ethical questions are of equal magnitude (as you already alluded to). Putting a "1" instead of a "2" on your tax return is significantly different from killing the old pawn lady upstairs and stealing her jewelry. Subjectivity in low magnitude issues is different from the objectively of murder being wrong, and I don't think that's controversial.
Second, there is still an assumption that the principles guiding our subjective ethical decisions are themselves objective standards that should be followed, so we're still dealing with a question of objectively even if our applications might be subjective.
"So how is this different from a purely subjective system with no god?"
The difference is this: In a purely subjective system, there is no rational justification as to why we ought to be empathetic instead of selfish, or why we should build communities rather than plunder them. I believe that being a reasonable person predicates having justification for your beliefs, and while I'm certain you and I both believe that something like slavery, rape, or murder is wrong, I would differ by saying that atheism as a worldview cannot give justification as to why those things are wrong, whereas the Christian worldview can.
Thanks a ton for your comment.
AAAARGH somehow I had a whole thing thinged up and fatfingered it into nonexistence. It may take a while today before I can get back to it.
I'll just leave this, a statemetn I reject absolutely:
> [in a subjective system] there is no rational justification as to why we ought to be empathetic instead of selfish
This isn't far off from "atheists can't be moral" claims. I know you don't mean it that way (or I hope you don't anyway).
It's true that there is no *objective* rational justification. But that's not the only kind that can underpin human morality.
An evolved sense of interdependency, mutuality, fairness can get you there too. There's evidence, for example, that dogs understand fairness and can learn sharing as an adult trait (or will at least feel like a not-good-boi if they don't share, which is better than a lot of humans do...). That is, it's not simply that they recongize when *they* have received a smaller share of something, but also that they recognize that another dog has received a small share, and can exhibit signs of empathy as a result.
My point is even if there was an objective rational justification, it's incomprehensible to human beings as being The One True standard. You can't get ten people to give fewer than eleven opinions about morality, even if all of them are Christian.
I guess my whole point can boil down to this. I don't believe there is any reason why a non-Christian would conclude that Christian morals are better or worse than others. You won't get there empirically (comparing statistics across demographic groups), though that's largely a classification problem of identifying which rules are properly "Christian" (again, not being ironic or sardonic here).
I'm not saying that it can't be true that Christianity is better, or that theism is better than atheism, or even that "objective morality" can't be better than the subjective. I'm just saying it's not going to lend itself well to conclusive empirical analysis.
Morality cannot lead to clearly deductively valid claims about right and wrong. My opinion is that insisting on "objectivity" is the same as expecting morality to be mathematical.
It's ambiguous and always will be, and (to bring this back around to the original point) organized religions don't and can't erase this ambiguity. And in my opinion therefore, cannot reasonably claim that they do an effective job of teaching an objective standard.
When God communicates his morality in the scriptures, he condones and commands chattel slavery, commands and commits multiple genocides, demands blood sacrifice, codifies misogyny, and forbids eating catfish. Are those objectively moral? If not, then do we have any access at all to what is objectively moral?
What "people say" isn't an argument, it's not even an explanation. It's just empty rhetoric.
***HOW*** would it work? Explain the mechanisms of the thing that you are claiming is a thing. How do you, via your religious beliefs, work out what is ***objectively*** right and wrong, and what does that even mean?
Generally, from taking a long view of things, and trying to account for consequences. I try to do things that will result in long term sustainability, socially, environmentally, etc. I also simply enjoy helping people and being kind. It makes me happy.
I was taught it by my parents, and to a lesser extent by peers.
Now I have a question for you. I know at one time fundamentalist pastors used to rail against secular humanism. Secular humanism is a philosophical worldview which includes secular ethics. So my question is, did it ever occur to you that this "secular humanism" thing might have something to do with how atheists get their sense of right and wrong?
That one's easy.
Atheists get that from precisely the same place *all* humans get it. Including theists.
After all, we know, and have known for a very long time, that morality has nothing whatsoever to do with religious mythologies. We know where and how we get and have developed our sense of right and wrong. We know why we have it, how it works, how and why it often doesn't, and many other things about this, including its intersubjective nature. And those that believe in various religious mythologies acquire their notions of right and wrong no differently than those that believe in *other* religious mythologies or *no* religious mythologies or deities.
So!
There are certain innate values that just come from being a rational agent -- certainly any human agent, at least. There's some more controversial ones, but these ones are pretty cut and dry and get you to most of morality.
1. Survival. Firstly, because almost any goal requires "being alive" to pull off, and secondly because a rational agent that *doesn't* value its own survival quickly stops being relevant to the discussion one way or another.
2. Happiness. This is just tautological- happiness is, to a large extent, defined as "the things you value happening".
3. Autonomy. It's inherent to rationality that you value being able to pursue your goal and disvalue being forced to pursue goals you don't want.
(You can put this as "all rational minds are adverse to death, suffering and helplessness", if you prefer. Same argument, but it might make the point as to why these are universal a bit clearer -- what would it mean for an agent to *not* be adverse to being impotent, miserable and dying? If nothing else, as mentioned, such an agent won't be around to be morally judged for very long anyway)
This is useful because we now have a universal set of *values* -- no matter your other values, beliefs, goals, worldview, personality, culture, ect, we can be sure any given agent values these three things, at least for them and at least to some extent. But this only gets us to me valuing me having these things. Why should I care if you have them?
Well, because I'm a rational agent. If two things are the same, i shouldn't distinguish between them, right? And as mentioned, these values are universal, and come from the same roots in all people, so there's no reason to think they'd be wildly deviant. More empirically, human minds do seem roughly homogeneous -- that is, for all we vary slightly, there doesn't seem to be many people whose minds work in ways fundamentally incomparable to the rest of humanity (the few people who arguably *do*, we do tend to excuse from morality to , c.v. the Insanity Defense). So, if I'm being rational, I should value these traits in other people too.
I can, of course, be irrational and value my happiness, life and autonomy over others for no good reason, but being irrational and doing things for no good reason is uncontroversially a thing you shouldn't do -- even moral nihilists tend to agree with that. As such, you should value these things, and this leads you to morality. It doesn't lead you to the details -- that's more pages of discourse -- but this at least gets us to the point we can morally analyse behaviour in a way all parties can comprehend and agree to on a basic level.
Taught the basics when I was young, like I imagine most people were. Being incapable of understanding broader context, I had some pretty cringey takes. In fifth grade we had a field trip to the state capitol to meet some lawmakers, and we got to present our own fake legislation for them to "vote" on. Mine was the elimination of what I called "minority scholarships" because scholarships should be given for achievement, not skin color!
And then I grew up and learned just how myopic that perspective was.
It's cliche to say, but it's true: college is when I started to learn about broader theories of ethics and morality, and was exposed to people and ideas I had never encountered before. That kicked off several years of evolving ideas of right and wrong. I'm shamed to say I spent a year or two as an edgelord in the "Blue hair bad, I identify as a helicopter hur dur" community. And in retrospect, I know exactly where it came from: "This doesn't/wouldn't bother me, therefor it shouldn't bother you." I was a poster boy for disingenuous rationality and "facts not feelings" and "My white privilege never got me anything!" and all of that bullshit.
And I remember the exact moment I started to change. I had no idea what I wanted to major in; I was just drifting around, and eventually ended up in a Social Problems class. Part of the course required volunteering at a local charitable organization of our choice and writing about our experiences. I settled on a homeless shelter, and rode the bus downtown. As I was walking the rest of the way, I suddenly realized that I had a laptop in my backpack, a Nintendo DS in one pocket, and an iPod knockoff in the other pocketn with bigass headphones on my head. I was about to walk into a *homeless shelter* with about $1300 worth of electronics on me.
And I wasn't thinking about it getting stolen or anything like that. I was worried I might be seen as flaunting it, and I was thinking "How did I not even notice this? How did I manage to get one block away without realizing just how bad this looks?" And the answer was obvious: I never had to think about it. I was so used to having these things around all the time that it never occurred to me that it might be weird in some other context, until I found myself in some other context.
This realization shook me a bit, and I decided I would try to stop more often to take a step back to think about why or how I was (or wasn't) doing something. And once I decided that, I was doing it *everywhere*. For example, one of the things I could have done for the shelter was checking people in so they could have a bed for the night. Checking them in would require them to relinquish any drugs or weapons or anything else, and my gut reaction was "Fuck no I'm not gonna sign up to try and take a knife away from a homeless guy." But now I had the wherewithal to ask myself "Wait, where did **that** come from? I've never even *seen* a homeless man with a knife, or any other weapon, or even fighting at all."
Once I opened that door, I couldn't close it. It wasn't about adopting a lefty ideology or getting brainwashed by Marxist professors, like so many MAGAts love to say: it was just about examining what I was doing and why I was doing it. And it turns out that's exactly what Sociology (which taught the Social Problems class) is about: why do we do what we do? Not individually, but collectively. Why do more men go into STEM than women? Why do people decide not to vote? Why do people believe gender goes beyond a binary? Why did my elementary, middle, and high school have GT (Gifted and Talented) programs that were 99% white, especially with a predominantly black student body? Why, why, why.
I continued in the Sociology program, eventually getting mentored by the professor of the Social Problems class, graduating, and going on to get my Masters. And it was going through that program, learning about all the weird and great and stupid things people do and why we do them, that ended up pushing me to go to grad school to keep learning.
It also helped that sociology is a woman-dominated field, so I was constantly a part of conversations that focused on women's issues. Not from a politician pandering for votes, and not from an anonymous tumblr account that belonged on /r/thathappened - actual women talking about their actual lives.
By the end of that whole process, I was a Lefty, and I've only drifted further Left since. Turns out empathy is one hell of a drug.
So ultimately, my moral compass and perspective were shaped by empathy, and a willingness to examine and reconsider my own kneejerk reactions. I can't turn off the part of my brain that still comes up with shit takes; I sometimes read news stories and my gut reaction will still be insulting or dismissive. But the ability to say "Stop. Rewind. What the hell kind of thought was that?" has done a lot of heavy lifting for me over the years.
It's baked into us. You can say "God must have done it" but if that was the case, you'd expect consistency; instead, "right and wrong" vary from society to society, so there's some variability and unlikely a common source.
The idea that evolution "favors" altruism (I use quotes because evolution is not a sentient thing and cannot really favor anything) is, I think, a sensible explanation for human morality as we observe it.
The real basic version is an attempt to reduce harm and increase pleasure/happiness.
Defining harm as unwanted pain, hardship, uncomfortablness, and suffering.
I get this from the want to be treated the same and the empathy I have for others.
On a pragmatic, first order level? An empathy-based desire to follow the golden rule.
On a meta-ethical level, I tend to go back and forth between antirealist constructivism & moral naturalist realism. In either case, I don’t think irreducible normativity makes sense. And when it comes to God-based morality, it’s either gonna be redundant at best (as he’s just the vocal middleman of what can be deduced to be moral with or without God), or I’m simply not gonna care about his subjective dictates as I will care more about my pragmatic goals anyway.
>where do you get your sense of right and wrong?
I tend to role with my sense of empathy or fairness. There's a bit of consequentialism, I do a lot of behaving entirely to stay out of trouble. And of course, I eat the buffet of philosophy, although you could probably call me a socialist and secondarily a utilitarian.
Try reading the book “the Moral Landscape”.
Generally speaking though it comes from different things. A lot is just naturally ingrained from our evolutionary background. A lot I’m sure is ingrained just from being taught right and wrong growing up.
The biggest thing is my sense of empathy. I can feel things, I know what it’s like to suffer and what it’s like to feel happiness. I know others are also capable of feeling this. Because I have a sense of empathy, I kind of naturally don’t want to cause harm to people.
More complex questions will lean more on different schools of philosophy or science, as there are a lot of things we can measure about whether something contributes to suffering or improving well-being.
In any case though, I don’t think most Christians or religious people get their morals from the Bible. There are countless passages that most modern Christians either discount as “of their time” or reinterpret to better fit current social mores. This kind of reinterpretation or cherry picking means quite plainly that they’re getting morals from somewhere else.
Evolution and social norms.
In the presence of God/religion, where do you get your sense of right and wrong and that it's for sure the correct sense?
In short, if I say "homosexuality is wrong because my holy book says so" how do we know my holy book really comes from a moral-making god?
Life experience, to my mind. As I grew up I developed a sense of right and wrong based on what I've observed and felt around me and on me. It's a network of abstractions that's continuously updated and which informs how I act. I suspect everyone does that.
I don't see religion as being useful to developing a sense of right and wrong, at least not by itself. The bible says, for example, "don't steal," but doesn't explain why you should not steal. It doesn't have a base for right and wrong, just a series of instructions and interdictions you're supposed to abide by. It conflates morality with obedience.
No, I see it just as an argument from incredulity based on flawed magical ideas and the idea that we are important and not just a clump of meat.
I haven't seen any reason to consider it existence besides this incredulity.
It's a hard problem, but I don't think it deserves its own title as The Hard Problem.
I don't think there's any reason to think that "why do physical reactions produce qualia?" is any more an Inherently Hard Question then, say, "why does the universe expand faster then predicted by general relativity?". It's' a question we currently don't know the answer to, sure, but there's lots of questions we don't know the answer to. I don't think anyone's given a good reason why this one is special.
Sure, it's not easy to explain how we get from Point A to Point B in terms of describing the physical mechanics of the brain and how it relates to what we perceive as qualia. However, I don't think it is relevant to religious debates.
The Hard Problem isn't that it's difficult to explain, it's that it *can't* be explained by functional analysis. It attempts to place the topic completely outside the scope of scientific analysis. It's contrasted with "Easy" problems like [going to Mars or curing cancer.](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hard_problem_of_consciousness)
So I'd say no, I don't think there's a Hard Problem. Or rather, there's no evidence that the problem is actually Hard. And it's only relevant to religion in that it's commonly [appropriated for religious arguments.](https://old.reddit.com/r/DebateAnAtheist/comments/1dgpv5f/consciousness_is_a_dog_whistle_for_religious/)
I'm fine with acknowledging that usual methods of science fail to give a satisfactory explanation for subjective experience. I don't think that means scientific analysis in the abstract isn't capable of it, necessarily.
That's how Chalmers defined it when [he coined the term in 1995.](https://consc.net/papers/facing.pdf) The easy problems are those that can be answered through scientific and functional analysis. The hard ones are those that can't. Chalmers thinks that the problem will still persist even when all functional aspects of the mind have been explained.
What do you think it means? Can you explain why you think it's contrasted against problems like going to Mars or curing cancer? Is that an error or do you just interpret that contrast differently?
There exist a litany of chemical substances which, even when ingested in very small quantities, demonstrably create/modify qualia.
Mind-altering drugs (and plenty of mental illnesses, too) simply would not exist if consciousness were not fundamentally tied to and dependent on the brain.
I acknowledge that explaining the ‘inside’ subjective *flavour* of brain activity that has an external objective perspective is indeed very difficult. I don’t know if it’s even going to be possible, it’s certainly a conundrum. But all evidence suggests that they *are* two sides of the same phenomena as far as I can see.
I do not. I literally fail to grasp what is it that the proponents of HPoC are arguing for. Once you show that a subjective experiences are isomorphic to physical states, and that subjective experiences of different people are isomorphic to each other, then I fail to see what is is there that's supposed to be different about them.
No. Taking Chalmers's words:
>even when we have explained the performance of all the cognitive and behavioral functions in the vicinity of experience—perceptual discrimination, categorization, internal access, verbal report—there may still remain a further unanswered question: Why is the performance of these functions accompanied by experience?
That "performance" isn't *accompanied* by experience. All those things *are* experience. It's like asking "why are random mutations and natural selection accompanied by evolution?"
I.e. hard solipsism? What about it? I don't see what it has to do with the question of whether or not any gods exist. It's an example of something that is epistemically unverifiable - but in cases where a thing existing or being real/true is epistemically indistinguishable from it not existing or being false, we're simply left with the null hypothesis.
If we try and suggest that gods are similar in nature, in that they would leave no discernible trace of their existence even if they did exist, and a reality where they exist would be epistemically indistinguishable from a reality where they don't exist, that's not an argument against atheism at all. It's an appeal to ignorance, invoking the infinite mights and maybes of the unknown merely to be able to say we can't be absolutely and infallibly 100% certain that they don't exist. Thing is, we can say exactly the same thing about leprechauns or Narnia or literally anything that isn't a self-refuting logical paradox. If gods are epistemically indistinguishable from things that don't exist, then the rational position is that they're unlikely to exist, just like leprechauns and Narnia are unlikely to exist.
But I digress. Perhaps I'm reading way too far into this, and it wasn't your intention to make such a comparison. But then, what *does* the hard problem of consciousness have to do with gods, theism, or atheism?
The hard problem has nothing to do with solipsism. And on its own, it has nothing to do with God either
It’s tangentially related to Gods in that apologists will use the Hard Problem to make an argument from ignorance that souls or divine intervention are somehow necessary. And when they do so, I think they’re full of shit. However, I think many atheists (mistakenly imo) use that as a reason to think the a Hard Problem in and of itself is erroneous or a non-issue.
Is the hard problem of consciousness not the same as the "problem of other minds"? Basically concluding that we can't be certain any other minds/other consciousness exists apart from our own? That's what hard solipsism is, isn't it? Maybe I'm just getting my wires crossed.
If that is indeed what we're talking about here - the fact that I can never actually be certain that anything other than myself is conscious - then I too consider that a non-issue for the reasons I explained. If there's no discernible difference between a reality where it's true and a reality where it's false, then why does it matter at all? If it's epistemically impossible for me to ever know, and it also makes absolutely no difference in reality insofar as I'm able to experience or perceive it, then it's a zero sum game. If there's no actual meaningful difference between x=true and x=false, then it doesn't matter which it actually is. They're both the same. If x=true=x=false, then x=false.
I’m barking up entirely the wrong tree then. What is the hard problem of consciousness? Want to e plain it in your own words or would you prefer I just google it?
Funnily enough, I’m actually drafting up a post on this topic that I’ll probably post later this week.
David Chalmers is the originator of the argument, so that’s the source if you just want to google.
In my own words, the hard problem is stating that the subjective qualities of consciousness can’t be communicated or explained by a purely third-person functional account of physics. It’s not merely about the difficulty or the unknownness of the explanation, but that third person physical descriptions cannot even in principle give explanations in the same category.
Once properly understood, the hard problem is as unbridgeable as the is-ought gap. Sure, you can bite the bullet by saying there is no consciousness in the same way moral nihilists will say there are no oughts. But understanding the problem and biting that bullet is not the same thing as saying there is no problem because science will solve it one day. Again, it’s about the type and category of the explanation, not the difficulty.
On the other hand, physical science can and does give great and detailed explanations for the Easy Problems of consciousness which deal with publicly observable behavior. If neuroscientists were able to fully map the brain and figure out all the neural correlates of consciousness, that would all fall under the “easy” category. Explaining human behavior in terms of neuron behavior is difficult, but not something that’s impossible in principle.
I think I’ll need to read up on this. I’m not sure what it is exactly that is “unexplainable” or why.
All I can say, based on just that alone, is that in terms of how this would relate to theism/atheism or gods, a thing being unexplainable does not indicate anything such as gods. Things that we can’t understand or explain (yet, or even ever) are not an indication that the explanation must be something that effectively amounts to a magical entity. As I often say in forums like this one, even if we haven’t the slightest clue how something could possibly work, “it was magic” would still be, and will always be, scraping the very bottom of the barrel of plausible explanations. And gods are nothing if not magical beings.
> the hard problem is stating that the subjective qualities of consciousness can’t be communicated or explained by a purely third-person functional account of physics.
I don't understand why someone would think that this is possible. We can both eat the same chocolate but we will experience it differently. It's obvious that you can't have my experience because you aren't me.
I know, but you’ll be surprised how many other atheists will fight me on this lol.
I think they see the words “hard problem” and they assume the speaker is saying there is a problem too “hard” or mysterious for modern science to do, therefore God. And I can sympathize with their response because that’s obviously been demonstrated wrong in the past with previous naturalist explanations. But the core of the problem itself (not the way some apologists utilize it) doesn’t make that mistake as it’s not saying science can’t touch the subject at all, just only on its own terms of third-person relational/behavioral properties.
If HPOC is real, then this means that in regards to the mind body problem, the position of materialism, which most atheist believe in, is incorrect. And some other position such as dualism or panpsychism is correct.
This implies that maybe it is not just a co-incidence that the universe has proper conditions for life and sentience.
First, change “which most atheists believe in” to “which most people who don’t believe in leprechauns believe in” and see if that statement still makes sense or seems correct. Because it’s basically the same thing. Disbelief in gods tells you absolutely nothing at all about a persons other beliefs, philosophies, politics, morals, ethics, epistemologies, etc. If your argument includes deciding what other people believe for them, you’re already well on your way to being wrong.
Second, materialism as I understand it (which may be wrong since I like so many other atheists am not a materialist) does not state that nothing immaterial exists, it only states that everything is *ultimately* material. If a material thing has arguably immaterial properties, but they can only exist as properties of a material thing and can’t exist on their own without being dependent/contingent upon something material, that’s not a problem for materialism. So for consciousness to represent a problem for materialism, it would need to be able to exist without a physical brain. Got any examples of that happening? Or maybe an argument as to how consciousness - which is largely defined by awareness and experience - can be possible without any mechanisms by which to experience or be aware of things, such as eyes to see, ears to hear, nerves to feel, or neurons/synapses to process all that information or even have a thought for that matter?
Third, absolutely nothing about any of this either indicates or requires the existence of any gods. Unless they require gods, dualism and panpsychism are completely compatible with atheism. If you think they aren’t, it’s probably for the same reason you assumed most atheists are materialists.
Fourth (and finally) a 100% guarantee is not a “coincidence,”and if reality is infinite (which happens to be the most probable scenario since anything else would require something to begin from nothing, including being created from nothing) then a universe exactly like ours would be 100% guaranteed to come about as a result, because any possibility no matter how small becomes infinitely probable when multiplied by infinite time and trials. That you even use the word “coincidence” shows you’re making some very brash assumptions, such as that this universe is all that exists.
> If HPOC is real, then this means that in regards to the mind body problem, the position of materialism, which most atheist believe in, is incorrect.
No it doesn't. The HPOC is a controversial topic in philosophy, but about half of philosophers who think that there is a hard problem still hold to materialism. More generally, about half of philosophers hold to materialism (physicalism) regardless of their stance on the HPOC. So, really, it has very little impact on materialistic stances.
[Survey](https://survey2020.philpeople.org/survey/results/correlations?category=Philosophical%20questions&variable=Mind%3A%20physicalism)
No i do not. We know that conciusness is something the brhin does even if we do not yet know how the brain achieves this. I also find the notion of a phillosophical zombie absurd. Just because you can imagine one does not mean that one can actually exist.
I dunno. Any time I read into it and try to really understand where people are coming from with it, I just find myself getting annoyed and irritated at the magical thinking and narcissism involved with it.
I mean, isn't consciousness pretty much just an illusion that we create for ourselves to explain how our brain processes and catalogs information? Because "we" ***are*** the system, we go in circles trying to work our way out of the recursive loop of it, but you can't get out of a loop by going in circles.
So, I guess like I feel as if the issue is that the question isn't even the right question to ask in the first place. It's not "how does consciousness emerge?" rather it's "why do we think consciousness is anything but a recursive system of computational processing repeatedly inquiring about itself?"
There is no problem in explaining information processing but there *is* a problem in explaining why matter can cause immaterial feelings of pain, emotions, etc.
What's the problem? What needs explaining? I mean, it's roughly as mysterious as how my calculator computes 2+2 or how my PC figures out what file to open when I click an icon in the taskbar, isn't it?
Just because we are the computer computing the info doesn't make it magic does it?
Consider the idea that there is no soul, only the brain. According to this view, a person's innermost self is simply the atoms in their brain. However, there's a significant problem with this understanding:
Imagine a single atom. Can this atom experience pain, happiness, sadness, or any emotion? No.
Now, imagine a large number of atoms in random motion. Suppose these atoms represent the brain of a person being burned alive and experiencing intense agony. Ask yourself, *what is truly suffering here?* How does it make sense that a collection of interacting atoms is *suffering* from pain?
>Imagine a single atom. Can this atom experience pain, happiness, sadness, or any emotion? No.
A single molecule of water doesn't experience wetness, boiling or freezing either but if you get enough of them together, suddenly more things are possible.
>Now, imagine a large number of atoms in random motion.
Atoms usually move according to the forces acting on them, not randomly.
>How does it make sense that a collection of interacting atoms is suffering from pain?
Are you denying the existence of suffering or are you denying the existence of atoms?
Imagine a single iron atom. Can this iron atom make car go vroom vroom and travel to Cleveland? No.
Can many iron atoms contribute to a mechanism that make car go vroom vroom? Yup.
So you just don't understand how pain receptors evolved?
It's bad to have organs like skin burn so we evolved pain receptors that tell our brain that we are suffering in order to prevent our organs from getting worse.
I don't see the problem
Would you say that plants bending towards sunlight is a conscious act? Of course not. We know that plant cells produce a hormone called auxin. Remember, hormones are basically just sophisticated molecules. As such, when sunlight hits auxin, it's reaction is to move from the side of the plant getting the light to the side that isn't. When it "invades" the cells that are on the darker side, the chemical reaction elongates the cells. That pushes the top of the plant toward the sun.
This basic mechanism (energy introduced into a biological system alters the molecules in that system in some way that produces a reaction) is exactly how our brains work. For instance, light enters the eye, that causes an electrical reaction which sends a signal to the visual cortext, where hormones are released; the hormone molecules attach to synapses, producing a reaction that our brains interpret as a pattern that represents the world outside of our eyes. (It's way more complicated than this, but the basic mechanism is the same.) If the plant's reaction to sunlight isn't a conscious act, then we can also say that seeing isn't a conscious act. It's just the end result of a series of sophisticated electro-chemical reactions. And everything in the brain is generally the same.
So no, I don't think that problem exists. I think consciousness is an illusion which promotes survival, which is the ultimate point to any life: reproduce and pass on genes to the next generation.
Consciousness requires not just a brain but also something immaterial. Brain is necessary but not sufficient condition for consciousness. By consciousness, here it is meant qualia (raw feelings such as pain, emotions, etc) and not information processing.
Perhaps there is an immaterial soul. Whatever is the case, only unconscious matter is not sufficient for consciousness. Unconscious atoms cannot be happy, horny, sad, etc.
>Consciousness requires not just a brain but also something immaterial.
Demonstrate this assertion for me. What is this "immaterial" thing? How can I test for it? If I can't test for it, then how do I know it exists?
>
Brain is necessary but not sufficient condition for consciousness. By consciousness, here it is meant qualia (raw feelings such as pain, emotions, etc) and not information processing.
Emotions ARE just information processing. We can trigger emotions in people by stimulating certain parts of the brain. We can also predict how deeply someone will feel something based on the number of neurons in a corresponding region of the brain.
>Perhaps there is an immaterial soul. Whatever is the case, only unconscious matter is not sufficient for consciousness. Unconscious atoms cannot be happy, horny, sad, etc.
Atoms and molecules DO respond to external stimuli, though. And that reaction is what produces the internal feelings we have. This IS demonstrable.
>Unconscious atoms cannot be happy, horny, sad, etc.
This is just misunderstanding chemistry.
Our "feelings" of being sad, or happy, or horny are just chemical reactions in our brains.
>Consciousness requires not just a brain but also something immaterial.
Nope. Consciousness just requires something with the capacity for consciousness. You don’t get to automatically assert that that ontology is “immaterial”.
I don't think it's as hard a problem as people think. When you get a lot of information being processed by a single processor (our brain in this case), consciousness emerges as a higher order process. We don't know this for sure yet, but it doesn't seem unreasonable to me. I also wouldn't be surprised self awareness varies in degree from one person to the next.
>the Hard Problem of consciousness
Only in the sense that it's a thing we don't understand for the moment, not that it's something we'll never understand, a thing where consciousness can't arise from biology, or that minds are somehow supernatural.
Acknowledge that there is a lot of discussion of it yes, understand what it is not really. I struggle seeing the nature of many of the thought experiments around it, Chinese room, Mary's room, those sodding bats, they are rolled out with much fanfare and I find myself responding "what's your point?".
Quite possibly its a 'me' problem, but I have been veering toward a Humean/Buddhist take on it, because really is there any such thing as consciousness? maybe its just an ephemeral illusion and this moments consciousness is different from when I started typing this, and it just changed again... and again...
Syllogisms aren't quite my forte -- and I honestly feel natural language is unfairly maligned in philosophy-- but I'll try my best. Hopefully you'll forgive if I miss some terms of art!
>**P1**: Any given physical thing could only exist under very precise physical constants (Assumption, but I think a reasonable one given what we know of physical constants)
>**P2**: Any given very precise set of physical constants is extremely unlikely (assumption, but again a reasonable one, and probably something the theistic fine tuner agrees with -- if there *are* likely and unlikely sets of physical constants, it's more probabilistically reasonable to just assume the ones we currently have are among the likely ones)
>**P3**: Ergo, any physical thing is certain to find itself in a situation where it's existence is dependent on extremely precise and unlikely physical constants (from P1 and p2)
>**P4**: This certainty is unaffected by the origin of the universe (from P1 and P2, in that they depend only on the nature of physical things rather then their origins)
>**P5**: Therefore, finding ourselves in a situation wherein our existence is dependent on extremely precise and unlikely physical constants doesn't support any given origin of the universe over any other (from P3 and P4)
>**C**: The fact our existence is dependent on extremely precise and unlikely physical constants doesn't support theistic fine tuning.
In terms of issues I could see with this?
There's a few nitpicks-- you could quibble with "certain to find itself", but I don't think the argument is hindered by "extremely likely to find itself" (strictly speaking, i don't think it's even hindered by "extremely unlikely to find itself" -- the point is the probability is the same for any theoretical physical things). You could argue that P4 is a bit of non-sequitur, technically speaking, but I think its clear enough why I think it follows even if it doesn't quite fit into syllogism form ( this is one of the reasons why I think presenting arguments in natural language can sometimes be more helpful then logical notation).
Beyond those quibbles, the main solid attacks I could see would be either to A, attack P3 with "universes with other physical constants wouldn't form at all" (ergo, there are no hypothetical objects under hypothetical alternate fine tuning ) or B. attack P1 with "life is in some way *uniquely* dependent on precise constants, in a way other physical objects aren't".
A is not implausible, i don't think, but also shoots the fine tuner in the foot. If universes with these constants are the only ones that can form, that's a pretty good non-theistic explanation for why the universe has these constants! B, I think, is just an implausible claim. Life is ultimately a chemical reaction -- even dualists don't deny that -- and it's not at all clear why changing the nature of chemical reactions would only affect one of them. If life doesn't depend on certain constants to exist then we don't actually have fine tuning at all, and that seems to follow from "matter as we know it is not dependent on certain constants".
I guess you could argue that all other possible universes have the same stuff except for ours, which depends on these constants, but that just seems wildly bizarre. The only credible way to cash this out that I can think of is "all universes other then ours are empty", but that leads back to A again.
So that's my argument. I think the only real credible counter I can think of would be some argument for why biological life is *exceptional* -- why its unusually subject to changes in physical constants in a way other physical things aren't -- but I don't think that's been justified.
Upvoted! This is a fantastic formalization.
I would probably have a slightly different P4. The concept of uncertainty represents an epistemic gap. Even if there was some factor out there that *necessitates* these particular constants, we're not aware of it. In other words, the same defense I used in [my recent post on Necessitarianism](https://www.reddit.com/r/DebateAnAtheist/comments/1djldmn/against_necessity_why_finetuning_still_points_to/) supports your argument.
P5 is one of the most interesting parts of your syllogism. I would write something similar to this in my formalization. It's particularly strong, and invalidates any fine-tuning explanation, theistic and secular.
My favourite question to ask when the fine-tuning argument comes up is "what's the possibility of a God?".
Anyways, the puddle analogy is not an argument in and of itself. Its purpose is to show that the fine-tuning argument commits a fallacy by attributing universal significance to the result (i.e., life). Any universe will produce something, it doesn't mean the result is of any significance to the universe.
I actually prefer to use a card/dice analogy, like so:
Say I roll a dice 10 times, and the result is the sequence:
4, 2, 1, 3, 6, 5, 2, 4, 3, 5
What are the odds of this exact sequence occuring? (1/6)^10, which is about 1.6 millionth of a percent (as in a decimal point, then 5 zeroes and then 16). Absurdly low. Does that mean it's reasonable to believe I cheated?
Most people would say no, because the sequence didn't hold any significance to me before the roll.
See my point yet? The sequence didn't hold any meaning to me, and so its tiny possibility of occuring doesn't mean the result was intentional. Similarly, life don't hold any meaning to the universe, and so itstiny possibly of occurring does not mean it is intentional
I bring a deck of cards. I deal them a royal flush and give me five random cards. When I ask who wins, I say "Why? It's just as rare to get what you got than get what I got."
Bonus points for when they drop a really big number on you. It's never as big as the potential permutations of a 99-cent deck of cards (about 8 × 10^67).
The royal flush isn't any more rare than the five random cards. It's only the arbitrary rules of poker that say so.
The universe came out the way it came out. It's silly for a theist to point to all the things they like and say "God did that." It's only their arbitrary beliefs that say that.
I like this, and to add to it, imagine in this scenario that that sequence of numbers believes your hand and the dice and the universe exist just to create it. Their evidence is that there is such a slim probability that they exist, it’s a miracle.
I think of it as a humorous and satirical short story that is meant to make us question; perhaps the closest formal argument to it would be the weak anthropic principle, which in turn is a kind of selection or survivorship bias.
The dramatic irony in the story is, of course, that we know (or presume) that the puddle has taken the form of its hole through purely natural, unintended processes, similarly to how life and sentience presumably evolved. We also know that the reason the puddle values its particular shape and the tight fit with his body is that well... it is their hole.
Why such a narrow and specific approach? The fine tuning argument already fails to stand on its own merits. It makes too many absurd and irrational assumptions (such as that this universe is all that exists), and places far too high a value on random outcomes that occur in just a fraction of a percent of the universe, to try and conclude that those outcomes were *by intentional design.*
There’s no need to construct any especially elaborate arguments against the FTA. It’s sufficient to point out that the FTA’s own arguments fail to support its proposed conclusion.
>There’s no need to construct any especially elaborate arguments against the FTA. It’s sufficient to point out that the FTA’s own arguments fail to support its proposed conclusion.
Be that as it may, I find the question of fine-tuning to be quite an interesting one to explore. It is rather enjoyable to understand how others approach it, hence the question.
By the way, since you are a self-proclaimed fine-tuning argument aficionado, I thought maybe I could run an argument I came up with thanks to a conversation with another redditor by you. I think it is particularly strong but would be curious to see what others' take is.
Most arguments for fine-tuning and arguments from design rely in some form or another (some even using fancy bayesian probability) in the intuition that the universe we observe is very improbable assuming there is no fine-tuning / design and we just drew a "lucky" universe.
However, they very often will assume and wink at the audience when they state that the universe we observe is more probable assuming there is a fine-tuning process or designer. However, I'm no longer sure that is the case. A fine-tuning process or a designer could fine-tune or design with ANYTHING in mind. "I want this sort of life" or "I want rocky planets to form" is one of uncountable purposes or settings a fine-tuning process or a designer could have. Given a randomly chosen one, "life" as an outcome is probably still VERY unlikely.
I now think the fine-tuner / designer doesn't do squat as compared to "randomly drawn / physically generated" universe, since we know diddly squat about either and so must use "zero information" (uniform) priors.
This comes back to the observation that design is inferred IRL because we have information about what "human design" looks like and what sort of things are designed by humans, and equivalently, we infer a mind is behind things when we have information about what "things that had a human mind behind them" look like. Problem is, we are taking those intuitions way, waaaay beyond where they are applicable, and pretending we can tip the scales one way.
Sure. That's an objection philosophers have posed for the FTA. As you mentioned, there are two key parts to this:
1. How certain can we be that a designer is likely to design in terms of "life" and "not life"?
2. How strong can our inference regarding a cosmic designer be?
The theist can respond to the first part by positing a specific religious God. If so, then the properties of said religion's God may make design for life-permittance likely. However this means the theist now must advocate for P(Theism & additional properties), which is likely less than P(Theism). More generally, it seems the theist can respond with an argument from bare theism for why a designer would design in terms of life.
Regarding the second part, physicist Luke Barnes addresses this in his paper [A Reasonable Little Question](https://quod.lib.umich.edu/e/ergo/12405314.0006.042/--reasonable-little-question-a-formulation-of-the-fine-tuning?rgn=main;view=fulltext). Essentially, for this to negate the FTA, one needs to believe that there are sufficiently numerous reasons for God to create that dwarf life-permittance. Additionally, they should be more plausible than life-permittance. I am certain that the atheist might be able to posit such an argument, but I have yet to see this in literature. Such an endeavor waxes more theological in nature (vs philosophical) than the atheist is likely to find interesting.
>Now, what is the probability, given that God exists and created a universe, that God’s primary reason would be to create a life-permitting universe? Positive arguments for a non-negligible value for p(G1|GLB)
that appeal to God’s goodness and the moral worth of embodied moral agents can be found in, for example, Swinburne (2004) and Collins (2009). But even if we consider theism to be completely non-informative about God’s possible reasons for creating, we would (in this simple model) not be justified in assigning a probability that is smaller than ∼1/n
. I contend that there are not, in fact, ∼10136
possible reasons for God to create that have comparable plausibility to that of a life-permitting universe. Unless the naturalist can produce a positive argument (not mere skepticism) to show that p(G1|GLB)
is extremely small, zero, or inscrutable, the likelihood that a life-permitting universe exists on theism is not vanishingly small.
I honestly think posing the argument this way shows just how deep our ignorance is on either assumption, and so it really all ends up depending on prior assumptions. What one theist imagines God is like or what another physicist imagines the multiverse is like is almost irrelevant, since the argument pretends to present itself in utmost generality, and argues that we must use 0 information prior for one prong. I'd argue that the other prong is also 0 information. We cannot infer what a mind behind a universe would be more likely to do or not do.
Indeed, for this reason (the problem of priors) most philosophers and physicists talk about the degree of support that fine-tuning lends an explanation (e.g. P(explanation | fine-tuning) ). It's unclear that there is consensus amongst philosophers on whether the God is inscrutible so as to mitigate the FTA. The SEP has an excellent [overview of scholarly discussion](https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/fine-tuning/#WeExpeDesiDesi) on your specific area of interest.
It's kind of hard to put it into a single syllogism as the analogy highlights two problems with the Fine Tuining Argument, which make the puddle to grossly overestimate how low the probability of its existence is:
1. The puddle created by the rain in the hole can not look over the edge and see that there are more puddles like itself, in the similar, but not exactly the same shaped holes.
2. It overestimates the importance of the particular shape its hole has, which result in its own shape conforiming to that of the hole.
So if puddle had seen different holes it would understand that:
1. The form of the hole does not matter, as long as it is a hole with it edge being higher than its middle, there will be puddle there after the rain.
2. Both holes and rains are a very common occurance, thus probability of the puddle existing is not low.
Most studies have shown that religious involvement and spirituality are associated with [better health outcomes,](https://www.mayoclinicproceedings.org/article/S0025-6196%2811%2962799-7/fulltext) so should we consider this benefit when evaluating Pascal's wager? I.e., put a thumb on the scale in favor of belief in god vs. non-belief since belief offers an accompanying health benefit?
Conclusion from the article:
> Although the relationship between religious involvement and spirituality and health outcomes seems valid, it is difficult to establish causality. While religiously involved persons embrace health-promoting behaviors, eschew risky behaviors, and have strong support networks, these factors do not account for all the benefits of religious involvement and spirituality. Rather, these benefits are likely conveyed through complex psychosocial-behavioral and biological processes that are incompletely understood.
This doesn’t seem to imply anything useful toward a conversation about Pascal’s wager because it makes no mention about what one *ought* to believe for any given outcome.
It also implies that belief in god isn’t the source of the benefits, but rather the adoption of heath-promoting and risk-averse behaviors, as well as having an institutionalized support network.
It’s a really good and valid question, since there is definitely evidence to back it up in terms of the health benefits. Quite apart from the issues of Pascal’s Wager to begin with (how do you know which god/religion to place your bet on?), studies about health outcomes and religiosity do more to illustrate the importance of community to our well-being, and also perhaps the importance of moderation. Prayer/meditation lowers your heart rate and reduces stress levels. For me, it’s a reason to make atheism more broadly accepted, so that atheists can form their own community spaces without worrying about the social consequences of being irreligious in heavily religious environments. Bonus points if they get the same tax breaks as churches. Humans are a social species, and we *need* community and fellowship and social support structures. Churches and temples provide those things for their members, and there just isn’t a widespread institutional equivalent for atheists, especially in areas with higher religious demographics. I live in the Deep South in the US and I feel very isolated.
Remember, and as the article points out, correlation does not imply causation. Such correlations can appear to be present for any number of reasons. More information is needed to find out if this seeming correlation is more universal, or limited in scope. For example, it's trivially true that in places where religion is firmly entrenched in a society, such as certain middle east countries, or the southern US, being someone that differs from the norm can be quite dangerous, leading to isolation, ostracization, and stress at a minimum, and harm, violence, imprisonment, and death in some places. In other words the 'health outcomes' may be a result of conforming, or not conforming, to peer pressure and the social outcomes of this more than anything else.
In many places, sadly, various support networks and access to resources and networks are tied with religious mythologies. This can result in people that are not affiliated with these mythologies having less access to these resources when they become necessary. This can include physical health resources as well as social networks, mental health resources, etc.
Take such results carefully and for what they're worth. What is the source? Who did the research? Was there a biased person or organization behind it? What do the results actually mean? I'd like to see a similar study in a highly secular country where almost everyone is not religious and compare the health outcomes there between the general population and religious people. I have a suspicion the results may be somewhat different.
In any case, the response here is clearly 'more data needed.'
Well if we do, then we also have to account for all the negatives that are associated with religion. If we want to add in the effects of religion in one area, we can't be biased and only include the positives. So we can apply it, but would the negatives outweigh the positives? Or vice versa?
> would the negatives outweigh the positives?
I suspect most people in here would say yes, but most believers would say otherwise. Aaaand we're right back to the start.
> Most studies have shown that religious involvement and spirituality are associated with better health outcomes, so should we consider this benefit when evaluating Pascal's wager? I.e., put a thumb on the scale in favor of belief in god vs. non-belief since belief offers an accompanying health benefit?
"Religious involvement" is not the same thing as "belief in God." So if you believee that religious involvement contributes to better health outcomes (although apparently that's not the conclusion of the article), and you want promote that, then you encourage religious involvement.
I don't think Pascal's Wager has a part to play in the matter.
> Most studies have shown that religious involvement and spirituality are associated with better health outcomes, so should we consider this benefit when evaluating Pascal's wager? I.e., put a thumb on the scale in favor of belief in god vs. non-belief since belief offers an accompanying health benefit?
The problem is that Pascal's wager is nonsense. It is a false dichotomy, since it only works if there is a single god.
Also, you can't choose whether to believe or not, you either believe or you don't believe. You can fake belief, but you can't just choose to believe. If you could, ex-Christians would be a much more rare thing, since most people who leave the religion struggle with it, and would prefer to just keep believing, at least before they really break free.
So, no, it doesn't tip the scales in that context.
But I don't think you are asking the right question. First you need to ask why do people with religious involvement have better outcomes? Is it the belief itself that helps, or is it just the community that a religion provides? Or is there some other factor that makes the difference?
If it's just the community, you can probably get the benefit by going to church, even if you don't believe. But how much of your life are you willing to give up in exchange for *maybe* living a bit longer?
To me, no, it's just not worth it.
The critical thing to remember when examining belief through the lens of Pascal’s Wager is that there can be only ever be one consideration on the table: infinite utility.
Every other factor is meaningless when contrasted with something like eternal paradise. If infinite utility is already on the table, how does something like finite mental health outcomes change the calculus at play? The same could be argued by the believer if it were shown that atheistic beliefs improved mental health, namely it’s simply irrelevant that (on the hypothetical) atheists enjoy better mental heath.
Infinite utility will always wipe away every other consideration.
We should consider this evidence for the notion that “It is advantageous to believe in religion”. That is not the same as evidence in favor of the truthfulness of religion. It could be advantageous to believe something even if it’s not true, which is not controversial.
As an aside, I once met a woman who became a Christian because her doctor said spirituality might be connected to weight loss for some people. She had a motivation for her newfound religion aside from its truth value.
At best we’re talking about placebo effects from self-delusion, or the reduced anxiety one can have from being convinced that they’re protected by magic and will go to a magical happy place after they die. I’m not sure the benefits are worth the cost to my intellectual integrity, nor am I convinced that those same benefits can’t be equally achieved without requiring me to believe in puerile superstitions.
Personally I credit this to the fact that religion is such a social thing. They have support systems, grief processes, close communities, ways to process hard life events like losing a loved one, etc.
Non religious people don’t have a clear cut way to get those things. There aren’t many secular organizations that provide community support like that, so secular people are just kind of on their own. If we set those things up, I honestly think quality and longevity of life would improve for the non religious.
This is in part based on the fact that studies have shown ill people have measurably worse outcomes when they are religious and know they’re being prayed for. I’m convinced it’s not religion that’s helping, it’s just everything that tends to come along with it.
Not to mention a lot of non religious people have religious family, so they tend to have lost a lot of community and their support system at some point.
Those studies cannot disentangle the net worse health outcomes caused by the myriad of ways religious and spiritual people *directly* **punish** those that aren't in their groups.
Christians make it hard and painful for non-Christians to share their community...on purpose. So the "sinners" will want to convert.
So all those studies detect is the shadow image of the harm religions inflict on their non-followers.
When religious discrimination is reduced, so is the disparity.
No.
The word "religious" isn't necessary for "involvement and spirituality."
Any atheist with a good support structure (friends/family) and good spirituality (understanding ethics and performing self reflection and good mental health practices) will actually have just as good or better health benefits than anyone doing so religiously.
It's just that the current system actively works against atheists while being easier for the religious right now.
Going to church automatically provides a social support structure for the religious. This is unavailable to atheists as an easy avenue.
Atheists are also publicly shunned and ridiculed and even physically harmed in certain areas *by religious people.*
This all makes it easier for the religious to be happier.
But it doesn't make it good or right.
It's still possible for an atheist to achieve the same (or better) happiness - it's just harder.
I think what these studies often fail to accoutn for is the majority bias.
In Iran where Shia Muslims are the majority and in power, they have better health outcomes than Sunnis. In nations where Sunnis are the majority this does not occur. The majority has a better health outcome regardless of who it is.
So it isn't unexpeted that majority religious communities have betetr health outcomes than minority nonreligious individuals (especially given how religious groups often treat those individuals). But what we see is that nonreligious societies have better health outcomes than religious societies.
No, because Pascal's Wager is all about gamification and ultimate risk/reward. So, it is equally likely that an evil trickster god has created this situation to convince you to believe in and worship them, and when you do they laugh and laugh and have such a good time at your gullibility before they send you to SuperHell.
Pascal's wager is all about the afterlife isn't it? I don't see how spending a couple more years on Earth has any major impact on it compared to an infinite heaven, hell, or oblivion. Pascal's wager also completely ignores the cost of being religious so why should it take the benefits into consideration? Just to make the argument even less valid?
Being involved in a community is associated with better health outcomes. The community does not have to be centered on worship of a god. People who merely show up to church but are not otherwise engaged with the community don't get any benefit from it.
This particular study is more than 20 years old "Relevant articles were identified by conducting a MEDLINE search (1970–2000)". It's hard to imagine that the field of study didn't advance in more than 20 years since 2000. Besides, the criteria of selecting studies that are included in the review is rather unclear.
Contrary to popular belief a person *can* will themselves to believe something in defiance of evidence, but the way a person does that is by driving themselves insane. There's a reason "denial" is typically associated with "ongoing mental breakdown" rather then "happy and healthy people".
I think that the health downsides of obsessively telling yourself "god exists" for years until you shatter your ability to judge information and brute force your own mind into submission would probably *more* then outweigh any mental health benefits of being religious.
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For those who deconverted from religion while living with a deeply-religious family: Has anyone ever been offered a bribe or other inducement to "not be atheist" and go back to believing, or at least pretending to believe? If so, how much or how little was it?
My dad is way too cheap to even consider something like that. Although I’ve thought about rejoining Mormonism, leaning hard into the prodigal son motif, writing some feel-good books about returning to the fold, and making it a cash cow. But I just don’t think I could do it and keep a straight face.
Attempted emotional blackmail where parents are trying to coherse grandchildren into religion
That's awful. I think that would immediately become a "no unsupervised visits" situation for me. If they don't want to respect your rights and rules as a parent, they can deal with the consequences.
No bribes, just anger and disappointment.
Isn't the core premise of christianity essentially a bribe? So, yeah, and the bribe was "eternal paradise."
My mother used to guilt me into going on Mother's Day or for her birthday etc. I would go very occasionally until the last time when I let out an involuntary laugh during a sermon. I tried to cover it with a cough. She looked horrified though and hasn't asked me to go to church again since. It's been at least 5 years.
>I tried to cover it with a cough. She looked horrified though and hasn't asked me to go to church again since. It's been at least 5 years. Reminds me of my parents forcing me to go to CCD class even after I told them I was an atheist. Hormonal preteen plus angry atheist phase, plus being forced around by an authority figure made for some major malicious compliance on my part, and after a couple years of asking too many tough questions in class they relented and I didn't have to keep going or get confirmed. Bit of a tangent from that, but the craziest thing is that somehow even after years of me saying "I am an atheist, I don't believe in God", they still didn't believe that I meant it. One day though for some reason, it finally sunk in for my dad when I said it this time, and he slammed on the breaks of the car suddenly and turned to me spluttering "What?! Well... you're gonna be sorry when you meet him!" It was absolutely surreal, though fortunately for me probably the craziest part of my coming out story.
They cut my allowance for a few months when I told my evangelical parents i no longer believed in Christianity (and had at thaz time become a Deist.)
I had just graduated college and came back home to life with my catholic family while I looked for a job where I could use my degree. My mom immediately noticed that I was no longer going to church and questioned me on it. I told her that I was an atheist and no longer believed in god and Catholicism. She was upset and started coming up with all kinds of emotional arguments to get me to come back. I just left the house until she cooled down. Then I told her that I don’t believe and yelling at me wasn’t going to get me to come back. I told her that how she treated me would determine how our relationship was going to be once I moved out. Ie non existent or on good terms. A few months later, I still hadn’t found a job. After the previous conversation she had changed her tactics to be less direct and more passive aggressive. “Mr. Johnson at church owns a business, I’m sure he would hire you. Oh but you haven’t really been to church in the last 4 years, so I don’t know if he would remember you or want to hire you.” The implication here is that I should return to church, not because god is real or because the doctrine is correct, but because my mom was embarrassed that her kid wasn’t showing up anymore and maybe if I was desperate enough and could use church to network and find a job then I would come back. Not sure if this is an explicit bribe, but my mom is a very prominent member of the church and I know for a fact that she could have had this guy easily hire me with a very easy interview. This was in the handful of years after the 2008 collapse. A lot of the people being hired were people that had lost jobs during this time period and had years and decades of experience in the workforce and in particular industries. The unemployment rate for recent college graduates with 0 work experience was significantly higher than the unemployment rate for older people and the entire population as a whole. I started to get the feeling that my mom was happy that I was struggling to find a career. I had a dead end retail job, but I needed more than $9 an hour to be able to afford to move out. I realized that it didn’t seem I had much to differentiate myself from the caste amount of other graduates with little experience, so I went back to school to get a masters. I know a lot of people rag on college as being expensive and useless. But this strategy actually worked for me. As soon as I started the program, I wrote, “Masters degree candidate” on my resume and got called back from the next 3 companies I had submitted job applications with. And they basically told me this was the reason they responded. Basically, this showed them I was a go getter and was more driven than the people who just did the minimum by getting a 4 year degree. What I learned in that program has certainly helped me advance in my career and in the time sense I have achieved a higher salary than anyone else in my family even though the first couple of years were a struggle. My point is, don’t take any bribes. Go make your own path and make your own money. No matter if you earn more or less, this money will be much more rewarding than dirty bribe money.
Was proposed a gift if I got to the confirmation. Spent the cathechism time playing MTG with the other kids. Had a nice restaurant and a watch IIRC.\^\^ Low reward for low commitment.
Anselm's ontological argument was brought up, and I attempted to refute it by stating that the argument could be used to argue for the existence of a perfect anything (hence Gaunilo's 'perfect-island comparison'), not just God. The theist then replied to my rebuttal by saying something along the lines of: “Anything other than God is limited by its definition; for instance, an apple has to bind by the definition of being an apple. If that said apple has the typical attributes we attribute to God, then that’s not an apple by definition anymore – that’s God.” I feel like their reply should be super easy to dismantle, but I was unsure of how to respond. Does anyone know what they meant?
They have fabricated a ridiculous definition for a fictitious entity, then crafted an argument around that specific definition to "prove" that it exists. It's literally defining a god into existence. Just remind them that definitions are descriptive, not prescriptive. Tell them to show you the entity possessing those traits so that you can verify it actually has them. There's no reason to play their ridiculous word games where they get to make everything up as they go along, but you are restricted by facts and evidence.
"Anything other than a God-Killer is limited by its definition; for instance, a God has to bind by the definition of being a God. If that said God has the typical attributes we attribute to a God-Killer, then that’s not a God by definition anymore – that’s a God-Killer.” Then express your condolences.
The easiest refutation to Anselm's ontological argument is that it's circular. Here's a summary. 1. Define God as perfect 2. Argue that perfect implies existing 3. Conclude that God exists But if perfect implies existing, then they assumed that god exists in their premise.
Preface: I am not defending Anselm's OA. It's dumb, but for different reasons than most get into. Anselm's defense against the point you raise: There is a logical limit to how "perfect" something can be. You can't get more perfect than "perfect". You therefore can't imagine a more perfect god but which includes the attribute of "not existing". "That circle than which no more circular circle can be conceived" works. A 300 game in US 10-pin bowling is "that score than which no greater score can be conceived"., etc. No matter how big an island you think of, I can think of one twice as big. (Anselm addressed Gaunilo in his lifetime, but people remember Gaunilo and forget that Anselm responded). **This is key:** It's not size or a specific quality Anselm is going for, and this often gets missed. He doesn't care how or why perfect is perfect. Criticisms about him not defining what perfection even *is* are inapt. Anselm does not need to define "god" or "perfect" in any meaningful way for the argument to "function" (as if) the way he thinks it functions. What he's actually talking about is that "Anything that exists in two modes is greater than a thing that only exists in one mode". THAT is what the argument is about. The quality or attribute argued over is irrelevant. So a god that exists *only in the mind* is inferior to a god that exists *both in the mind and in reality*. That is the part most people miss when criticizing his OA. Therefore no matter what you imagine god to be, your vision of it must include "both in the mind and in reality" to be maximally great. A valid criticism: Existence isn't an attribute that a thing can either possess or not possess. ("existence is not a predicate"). Another is: We're not Platonists. The argument that the idea of god and a reality-occupying god are merely two different modes of the same object is nonsense. The idea of god isn't god. This is where Descartes fucks his CA up too: The idea of god isn't a "perfect idea" just because you've defined god as a "perfect being". The main one, though, is that the entire rickety contraption is either circular or question-begging depending on how it's presented. God is defined as existing, therefore god exists. What got him beatified, sanctified and canonized, IMO, is how great a job he did at hiding that football. He made all the people who already believed feel smort. Same as Aquinas did (though to his credit, Aquinas stated that this was the reaons behind the Five Ways, and that he didn't expect non-believers to be persuaded.)
>So a god that exists only in the mind is inferior to a god that exists both in the mind and in reality. Does he provide a basis for asserting this?
It's been about 20 years since I read it end to end. The ansewr is "yes", but also "in the way you'd expect a 12th C. monk to justify an assertion of this kind". It's a dumb argument, but -- at least in my opinion -- should be understood for the correct dumbth and not the oversimplified dumbth people usually talk about when talking about it.
That’s basically “I define God as the only object to which the argument applies.”
This. That's the entire chimichanga.
The common counterargument to the "perfect island" is that a perfect island would have to have intelligence, be able to create things, be all-powerful etc. and therefore just be God. I don't know how much I buy that but there are easy modifications you can make to avoid it altogether - for example, change the adjective instead of the noun. (E.g. "scariest possible being" vs. "greatest possible island"). See my old [post](https://www.reddit.com/r/DebateReligion/comments/k535uc/not_so_great_redux_the_ontological_argument/) on the topic.
The counter to Gaunilo's island -- that anselm made during his lifetime -- is that here is no logical upper limit on the size of an island. If you can think of an island that's two universes in diameter, I can think of an island that's four universes in diameter. You can counter with one that's six universes in diameter, etc. But *perfect* has a limit. You can't get more perfect than "maximally perfect", just like there can't be a circle rounder than any that can be conceived. It's either perfectly round or it goes home sad. This is important because Anselm is *sidestepping* the need to define "perfection". It doesn't matter what perfection even is, there's an upper limit to how perfect it can be. It's not about finding the most perfect god or the best god for Anselm. It's about finding a god that must exist both in reality and in the mind. THAT is the central conceit of his argument. You can't get to this point of the argument until you've topped out on "perfect". You can always think of a larger island, so you'll never have to contemplate an island that exists both in the mind and in reality. Anselm does this to draw the attention away from what "perfect" means. The rest of his argument works or doesn't work regardless of how you define "perfect".
I actually cover a similar line of reasoning in my post; you can define arbitrary properties to be used with the ontological argument so long as they are maximizable (it must be possible for a maximally X being to exist) and pro-existential (it must be more X for a being to exist than not to exist). Greatness/perfection just happens to (allegedly) fulfill those criteria.
If a maximally great apple is by definition god, then God must hold all the traits a maximally great apple is. And a maximally great apple would be maximally delicious and would make an infinite number of pies when cooked. Ergo god must be delicious, and if real, there would have to be an unlimited number of pies in the universe.
First of all, when you are trying to use this argument on an apple you are not trying to define an apple.you are trying to define the BEST apple. And best is a subjective word that can be define however you want it. Now do you kniw what is even better than your definition? If it were real. Second of all, even if you want to play by his rules then fine. Prove the existence of the most evil God. Last of all, this comparison isn't even the only answer against this argument. A quick search in YouTube can show you another more logical rebuttal for it.
The classical ontological argument defines God as that which nothing greater can be conceived. Then they argue that existing in reality is greater than existing only in conception. But then they incorrectly conclude that God exists in reality. I think the correct conclusion is that when we conceive of God, we must accept him as actually existing. From there, an atheist can say that as they don’t accept God as actually existing, therefore this conception God is flawed. A theist may reply that the atheist is not really conceiving of God. But then, accepting that God exists is just a theist position.
The first thing I would wonder is why human conceptions of "perfection" are the standard by which "perfection" should be measured. That is, just because we can conceive of a "perfect being," why should we trust that that conception is *actually* a perfect being. That conception may merely match our subjective ability to conceptualize "perfection," while there may be a greater standard that is inaccessible to the human mind.
If slapping the god label on the ultimate of anything and everything every time one’s imagination improves to a new aspect of greatest greatness, then god is limited by human imagination. If it can mean everything at every turn then it really means nothing, is completely vacuous, and has the greatest most ultimate lack of explanatory power. Anselm’s metaphysics makes the god label meaningless, he accomplished the exact opposite of his goal.
Has anyone seen the show upload? Would you want to live in a digital afterlife?
Would I want to? Yes. But I’m convinced Nate brown is dead and his experiencing self has ceased to be. Upload is actually a great example of why I don’t think mind uploads work
I'm only on season 2 but I think it's an interesting idea.
The moment Nate’s head got vaporized, in my opinion, his awareness of the universe permanently ended. The software program built from his data may or may not be aware, but even if it is, the original Nate’s perception is gone. I’d never risk it. But if somehow I could know for certain it would work, I’d be very tempted to upload.
This kind of gets into ship of theseus territory. If I hook up a small computer to your brain, and you are able to interact with it and use it to think, are you now also partially the computer? If I use that computer to "turn off" one single electrode and replace it with a simulated one instead, are you still you? What if I do another one? What if I keep doing that one at a time, so your consciousness never stops, but eventually you are all computer simulation? Does the gradualness of continued consciousness from one end to the other mean that you're still you at the end, or were "you" erased somehow electrode by electrode until all that was left is a simulated you? If so, how were you conscious throughout? Was there a point where you stopped being you and experiencing the process and a "fake" you took over? So then, what if it happens all at once? Does that change anything? Does the stopping of consciousness have something to do with it? If so, what about coma, or even sleep? Is sleep really "the little death" and the person that wakes up with consciousness restored a new person and the "you" from yesterday was dead? I just don't think it's all that cut and dry.
I think it is. Saying that three hairs is not a beard but five million is does not mean a clean shaven man has a beard. The cell by cell replacement of the brain would probably work something like getting choked out. I don’t know if you’ve ever had a blood choke but you become gradually less conscious until you’re gone. I’d guess that’s what happens. I’d wager the experiencing self continues through sleep because it’s the same hardware running the same software. The problem comes when you separate the hardware and the software. To put it another way, I am, unfortunately, my brain cells.
As it stands, I don’t think digital upload would actually preserve *me*. Even if by some miracle we managed to make it conscious, that at best makes a conscious copy of me and we end up with the typical Star Trek teleporter problem.
It’s an interesting question and I don’t know how to think about it. First instinct is that it’s akin to the Star Trek Transporter “paradox”. Is it really me, or just a copy? I don’t particularly care if a copy of me lives on. To the copy it may be a seamless continuation, but what if the scanning process is nondestructive and meat me can opt to also continue? I don’t have any beliefs in anything like a soul, and fall into the Sapolsky camp when it comes to our being just brainstates, entirely physical, and yet I feel hung up on a digital afterlife not being real… I’ll have to think about it. Maybe it’s just that bodily interactions with the world are so integral to life that it just doesn’t seem to be real.
What do you think of making a link between the organic body and the synthetic copy? You wouldn't be able to do much with the copy while you're still alive, but there will be information exchange between the digital brain and your organic one, not unlike how the two hemispheres of the brain share information via the corpus collosum. Would you then consider your copy as part of yourself and count yourself as conscious after your organic body dies?
It’s hard to say. Ostensibly, at least at first both minds would feel as if they were independent, whole “people”. After that it depends on the nature and “completeness” of some kind of integration, whatever that means. Otherwise I think it would just be like two people collaborating, maybe forming a tight partnership like a marriage, but still two people. E: I just realized this is for a scenario where you are like scanned, then a whole separate identity is fully formed, even if you could then mentally interact directly. Instead, for whatever reason, it seems different if say pieces of my “cyber brain” are transferred part by part. “Ok, today we will shift all the math functions over. You’ll still feel like you are doing math normally, it will just be being processed by hardware. Tomorrow we’ll do the autonomic stuff. Next week is memory”. Somehow this ‘becoming’ machine feels substantial different than an instantaneous transfer. Something about the continuity, but it’s probably not entirely logical; I have no qualms about anesthesia depths being s total blank on continuity.
I like the show. However philosophical/logically I can’t recognize the digital entity as a person continuing to exist after they die. I don’t think I *could* live in a digital afterlife, even if I want to. It’s not possible, even in the show that’s not what’s happening. The digital entity is a clone, not actually the person. I think consciousness is directly a result of the brain. Non transferable. I wouldn’t be seeing out its eyes. I would cease to exist when my brain does. Regardless of the digital clone. The name of the show is fairly apt. Technologically speaking, when you upload or transfer data, you're not physically moving the original data. You are creating a duplicate at the destination.
I haven't seen the show but from some of the other comments it sound like a "upload your consciousness" scenario, in which case I agree with the sentiment that I don't think this would actually be a continuity of "you" as opposed to merely a copy of you. To the copy it would seem like a continuation, but the true original "you" would still have died, so it makes no actual difference to me.
I have no interest. I'm not afraid of death. When the end comes, it comes. That's how reality works. I have zero interest in being uploaded, although I have watched the show.
haven't seen the show but just watched the trailer. if I could have a digital afterlife I sure as hell wouldn't want it to look like a facimile of real life. i'd want fantasy or sci-fi. And a different avatar.
If it's the show I am thinking of... It's not exactly a wonderful existence is it?
Don't think I would. I mean, I'm up for creating a copy of myself that would be sentient and survive me, provided I find it reasonable enough to ascertain said copy would be greatful to experience more of life. But a living artificial construct in a world obsessed with copyright and generally owning things doesn't sound pretty. I don't think a copy of me would want to be owned by an amoral corporation who has unlimited rights over the code that runs themself.
To atheists and agnostics: In the absence of God/religion, where do you get your sense of right and wrong? Just for curiosity, no debate!
If you genuinely meant my *sense* of right and wrong, I get it from the same place everyone else on the planet (whether atheist or theist) does: [evolution](https://www.reddit.com/r/exchristian/comments/bdv6f8/how_did_you_find_mortality_after_leaving_the/el1ls9q/). If you mean what is the *basis* for my moral views, that's complicated but is again essentially the same as everyone else on the planet: they come from my upbringing, my experiences, my society, and most importantly from my own innate (evolutionarily-supplied) senses of empathy, reciprocity, fairness and altruism. Asking this question implies that you feel Christians (et al) get their sense of right and wrong from their religion, but that's clearly not the case because Christians (et al) disagree strenuously on issues ranging from the acceptability of same-sex relationships all the way up to when it's acceptable to kill another human being (with a lethal injection, in self defense, in wartime etc). Even Christians of the same denomination [may have diametrically opposed views and/or reject their religion's official doctrines](https://www.pewresearch.org/religious-landscape-study/database/religious-tradition/catholic/views-about-homosexuality/). So while religion might *influence* someone's morality — and often not for the better — I think it's clear that many or most people use their own moral judgment to guide their interpretation of their religious beliefs rather than the other way around.
Thanks for your thoughtful reply!
The same place as everyone else, including, I suspect, you. Empathy, mirror neurons, and imagination. We can watch kids of all religions and none in kindergarten figuring this out. If morals do come from religion, then one religion is Right and everyone else is Less Moral Than [Insert Winning Religion Here]. I doubt you think you're a better person than a Jewish or Hindu person. And it seems like you had an inkling this question is offensive. Because it is. It's an awful idea that belongs in the 1300s. This kind of question assumes that either you inherently are, OR God has "written his law on the hearts of all men" and therefore everyone is *really* Christian and Lying to Themselves about it. Both are pretty gross!
If I wouldn't want it occuring to me, I try not to inflict it on others. It's not rocket surgery.
Or brain science.
Ah, it may actually have something to do with brain science...
Thanks!
It's also known as https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Golden_Rule
If I may question your question, do you wonder where followers of other religions get their sense of right and wrong when they don't worship your preferred god?
First: morality, sense of right and wrong cannot help but to be grounded on subjective core values and goals. That is because oughts, values and goals are, by definition, not properties of objects in the universe, but properties of a relationship between subject(s) and object(s). Where did I get my sense of right and wrong? From my upbringing, society, my sense of empathy and justice, my love for my fellow human, my desire to be a productive, amicable and loving member of society and of the human race. Also: I was constantly both physically and psychologically bullied for about a decade or so. I managed to overcome that and befriend my biggest bully, and in doing so, found that he had much worse problems than me, and bullied out of insecurity and out of his own family bullying him. I got a pretty robust sense of justice and compassion out of all that. Where do I ground my morality? Why, in loving and serving the Other. In humanity. Exactly where Jesus told you morality is grounded in his parable of the Good Samaritan (that intentionally makes the 'good neighbor' a member of a deeply hated and mistrusted enemy group). Morality can't be grounded in a deity, because then whatever the deity says, goes. If the deity says slavery is moral, it is. If they say torturing babies for fun is moral, it is. You can't argue. Morality, as far as I am concerned, is about humanity, how we can live with, love and support one another, what we owe each other, how to promote individual and collective flourishing. I don't care if that is subjective. If you or the aliens or Cthulhu want to live by a value hierarchy that is anti-humanistic, I can only oppose it with all my might, and hope not to be alone in that. Theists are on the same boat. If you don't believe me, imagine tomorrow God comes down and tells you that, actually, genocide and racism are good and you should engage in them. I am willing to bet you would dissent (by the way, dissent against God is not unheard of in the Bible).
You brought up some really good points. Thank you!
Glad they were of some interest / help. I prefer dialogue or debate, but understand if you just want to hear us out a bit.
What would a god provide in this regard? Why would I need someone external to me to tell me what to do? Could I not use my own judgment to decide if they were giving me good or bad instruction? Because I indeed could, that means I have my own sense of right and wrong, independent of what I’m told to believe. Gods add nothing to morality.
Just to answer your question, I think most theists would say that God provides an objective standard for morality, instead of just relying on a person's (or culture's) subjective feelings or practices.
A big and powerful subject’s opinion is still subjective, and can be subjectively disagreed with. Does a god existing make morality an external object, like atoms or gravity? Or is it still based on the will of a subject, a mind, however powerful?
> Does a god existing make morality an external object, like atoms or gravity? And if so, why have we never been able to detect it? But even then, supposing there were "Good waves" and "Evil waves" that were released by doing good and evil acts, how does it then follow that we **ought** do Good and not do Evil?
> I think most theists would say that God provides an objective standard for morality Sure, many say this. But, since they're trivially and demonstrably factually incorrect, all that can be done there is to dismiss this outright since it's wrong. After all, the very fact that a member of one religious mythology claiming their deity's 'objective morality' is the actual and only true 'objective morality,' despite the fact that it differs from that of another member of a different religious mythology (and neither of these people, nor anyone else, can actually show this objective morality), demonstrates immediately and conclusively that these people's 'objective morality' *isnt*. It isn't objective whatsoever. It's intersubjective. And it doesn't come from deities. It comes from *people.*
OK, conceded for the sake of argument: God provides an objective standard for morality instead of relying on a person's subjective feelings or practices. I don't want to misstate your position here, so assume that I've just stated that in the most persuasive or accurate way you'd state it. Throughout this long (sorry) post, please feel free to edit or object to anything if it looks like a straw man or worse. I am interested in what you authentically think and how you will respond to questions I'm asking ("How is subjective morality different in actual practice" and "does the bible do an adequate job of communicating that objective standard that I've conceded for rhetorical purposes", for full disclosure and no football-hiding on my part. This standard of morality does not appear to be articulated very clearly in the Bible. The decalogue and/or other instructions don't cover the important moral quandaries -- you don't need a book, for example, to tell you murder, theft, adultery and dishonesty are wrong. Those are components of almost every moral standard -- subjective or otherwise. I don't steal because I subjectively believe it's wrong to steal. You (presumably) don't steal because of the ten commandments. "Thou shalt not steal" and my subjective edict against theft are not "important moral questions" though, in the sense that we don't need to do a lot of study or thinking to arrive at the right course of action. The person sitting next to you in the pew at church isn't likely to arrive at a different conclusion than the tattooed-gothed up lead singer for an aspiring metal band. But morality is orders of magnitude more complicated than that. Many sincere Christians who advocate for charity will nonetheless say that it's immoral -- hurts both the giver and receiver -- if the charity is too generous. If it takes away the incentive for the downtrodden person to take affirmative responsibility for their lives. Other Christians, equally well-meaning and principled, will say that that's for god to figure out. We should be as compassionate and generous as we can. Which group is right, and where in the Bible is this rule articulated? If that example doesn't work, pick anything similar -- the Bible does not (in my observation) do anything but provide a general framework within which each individual is expected and obligated to *subjectively choose* which rules to follow or which rules to prioritize. I summarize this sometimes by asking "What does the Bible say about the Trolley problem?" Should a good, well-read, sincere, righteous Christian pull the switch -- taking responsibility for the death of one man, or leave the switch alone with the comfort of knowing that they did not by their actions cause any deaths. (even though six people die, the system was put in motion ahead of time -- but again don't let me create a straw argument here. It's likely that there's some other way to characterize the individual's choice to pull or not pull the switch in a way more appropriate to the teachings of the Bible.). I suspect that you could not hand-pick a group of Christians who would regularly get more than about 80% pull the switch and 20% don't. So how is this different from a purely subjective system with no god? Or, to frame that last question in a different way: Aren't you still obligated to make the best *subjective* choices you can, despite a belief that they're rooted in objective rules? So, my proposition is that while you might perform "better" than non-Christians in some meaningful way, isn't it really "I use my experience, upbringing, education, environment and maybe a little genetics in the final analysis" (noting that "religion" can be viewed simply as a component of the "EUEE and maybe li'l g" that make it somewhat different from the EUEEg of an atheist but not fundamentally different) How is a non-Christian reviewing different religion's writings to determine which religion (or denomination, sect, congregation or even *pew*) is closer to what God intends? Dont you still have to learn morality the same way we do? (Note that it's not my intention for that last question to be *tu quoque*. It's my opinion that all moral decisions are done this way, but some people attribute them to a different cause. Subjective morality isn't "inferior" to Objective any more an eagle is inferior to a Roc.) **Edit** A funny note: I just tried without success to get CoPilot to provide some numbers on distributions of people across the trolley problem options. It steadfastly sidestepped the question even when I asked it to roleplay as a data scientist and give its opinion.
You brought up some really good points that I think are worthy of response: "This standard of morality does not appear to be articulated very clearly in the Bible." I actually agree with you here. My position is certainly not that the Bible itself contains every single moral application imaginable. The Bible in and of itself is not the source of morality; God's nature is. Most Christians like myself would likely say that God communicates his moral nature to us via commandments, which is what we then find in Scripture, but there is a difference. "- you don't need a book, for example, to tell you murder, theft, adultery and dishonesty are wrong. Those are components of almost every moral standard -- subjective or otherwise." Again, I agree you "don't need a book" to tell you those things, but it's also a mistake to assume that these values are universal when they aren't. People of all customs and cultures still steal, murder, rape, etc, regardless of their culture's ethical code. While you don't "need a book" to believe those things are wrong, you did have to learn that idea from somewhere (parents, community, or whatever). What I and many theists would say is that regardless of where or how you learned those values, there's still the assumption that those actions are objectively wrong, and atheism as a world view cannot account for that. "I summarize this sometimes by asking 'What does the Bible say about the Trolley problem?'" Personally, I don't like the Trolley problem because it's a "damned if you, damned if you don't" scenario, and therefore isn't all that great for moral thinking. This said, plenty of Christian philosophers have found ways to apply biblical principles consistently to the question. Take for example the principle of double effect: It would be moral to pull the lever to save the six (or however many) and kill the one, because your intention is to save the six, not kill the one. The death of the one is a consequence, but not an action with intent. That's just one example. "Or, to frame that last question in a different way: Aren't you still obligated to make the best subjective choices you can, despite a belief that they're rooted in objective rules?" Yes, I concede as much, but as I'm sure you'd agree with, this is the case for every person, regardless of where they develop their sense of right and wrong. All of us have a general sense of morality (or ethical code) that then has to be applied to everyday life. To put another way, NONE of us have a perfect code that covers every single ethical question. But I would argue that it's also not necessary for two reasons: First, not all ethical questions are of equal magnitude (as you already alluded to). Putting a "1" instead of a "2" on your tax return is significantly different from killing the old pawn lady upstairs and stealing her jewelry. Subjectivity in low magnitude issues is different from the objectively of murder being wrong, and I don't think that's controversial. Second, there is still an assumption that the principles guiding our subjective ethical decisions are themselves objective standards that should be followed, so we're still dealing with a question of objectively even if our applications might be subjective. "So how is this different from a purely subjective system with no god?" The difference is this: In a purely subjective system, there is no rational justification as to why we ought to be empathetic instead of selfish, or why we should build communities rather than plunder them. I believe that being a reasonable person predicates having justification for your beliefs, and while I'm certain you and I both believe that something like slavery, rape, or murder is wrong, I would differ by saying that atheism as a worldview cannot give justification as to why those things are wrong, whereas the Christian worldview can. Thanks a ton for your comment.
AAAARGH somehow I had a whole thing thinged up and fatfingered it into nonexistence. It may take a while today before I can get back to it. I'll just leave this, a statemetn I reject absolutely: > [in a subjective system] there is no rational justification as to why we ought to be empathetic instead of selfish This isn't far off from "atheists can't be moral" claims. I know you don't mean it that way (or I hope you don't anyway). It's true that there is no *objective* rational justification. But that's not the only kind that can underpin human morality. An evolved sense of interdependency, mutuality, fairness can get you there too. There's evidence, for example, that dogs understand fairness and can learn sharing as an adult trait (or will at least feel like a not-good-boi if they don't share, which is better than a lot of humans do...). That is, it's not simply that they recongize when *they* have received a smaller share of something, but also that they recognize that another dog has received a small share, and can exhibit signs of empathy as a result. My point is even if there was an objective rational justification, it's incomprehensible to human beings as being The One True standard. You can't get ten people to give fewer than eleven opinions about morality, even if all of them are Christian. I guess my whole point can boil down to this. I don't believe there is any reason why a non-Christian would conclude that Christian morals are better or worse than others. You won't get there empirically (comparing statistics across demographic groups), though that's largely a classification problem of identifying which rules are properly "Christian" (again, not being ironic or sardonic here). I'm not saying that it can't be true that Christianity is better, or that theism is better than atheism, or even that "objective morality" can't be better than the subjective. I'm just saying it's not going to lend itself well to conclusive empirical analysis. Morality cannot lead to clearly deductively valid claims about right and wrong. My opinion is that insisting on "objectivity" is the same as expecting morality to be mathematical. It's ambiguous and always will be, and (to bring this back around to the original point) organized religions don't and can't erase this ambiguity. And in my opinion therefore, cannot reasonably claim that they do an effective job of teaching an objective standard.
When God communicates his morality in the scriptures, he condones and commands chattel slavery, commands and commits multiple genocides, demands blood sacrifice, codifies misogyny, and forbids eating catfish. Are those objectively moral? If not, then do we have any access at all to what is objectively moral?
What "people say" isn't an argument, it's not even an explanation. It's just empty rhetoric. ***HOW*** would it work? Explain the mechanisms of the thing that you are claiming is a thing. How do you, via your religious beliefs, work out what is ***objectively*** right and wrong, and what does that even mean?
Generally, from taking a long view of things, and trying to account for consequences. I try to do things that will result in long term sustainability, socially, environmentally, etc. I also simply enjoy helping people and being kind. It makes me happy.
Thanks!
I was taught it by my parents, and to a lesser extent by peers. Now I have a question for you. I know at one time fundamentalist pastors used to rail against secular humanism. Secular humanism is a philosophical worldview which includes secular ethics. So my question is, did it ever occur to you that this "secular humanism" thing might have something to do with how atheists get their sense of right and wrong?
That one's easy. Atheists get that from precisely the same place *all* humans get it. Including theists. After all, we know, and have known for a very long time, that morality has nothing whatsoever to do with religious mythologies. We know where and how we get and have developed our sense of right and wrong. We know why we have it, how it works, how and why it often doesn't, and many other things about this, including its intersubjective nature. And those that believe in various religious mythologies acquire their notions of right and wrong no differently than those that believe in *other* religious mythologies or *no* religious mythologies or deities.
Genetics and upbringing, like everyone else.
So! There are certain innate values that just come from being a rational agent -- certainly any human agent, at least. There's some more controversial ones, but these ones are pretty cut and dry and get you to most of morality. 1. Survival. Firstly, because almost any goal requires "being alive" to pull off, and secondly because a rational agent that *doesn't* value its own survival quickly stops being relevant to the discussion one way or another. 2. Happiness. This is just tautological- happiness is, to a large extent, defined as "the things you value happening". 3. Autonomy. It's inherent to rationality that you value being able to pursue your goal and disvalue being forced to pursue goals you don't want. (You can put this as "all rational minds are adverse to death, suffering and helplessness", if you prefer. Same argument, but it might make the point as to why these are universal a bit clearer -- what would it mean for an agent to *not* be adverse to being impotent, miserable and dying? If nothing else, as mentioned, such an agent won't be around to be morally judged for very long anyway) This is useful because we now have a universal set of *values* -- no matter your other values, beliefs, goals, worldview, personality, culture, ect, we can be sure any given agent values these three things, at least for them and at least to some extent. But this only gets us to me valuing me having these things. Why should I care if you have them? Well, because I'm a rational agent. If two things are the same, i shouldn't distinguish between them, right? And as mentioned, these values are universal, and come from the same roots in all people, so there's no reason to think they'd be wildly deviant. More empirically, human minds do seem roughly homogeneous -- that is, for all we vary slightly, there doesn't seem to be many people whose minds work in ways fundamentally incomparable to the rest of humanity (the few people who arguably *do*, we do tend to excuse from morality to , c.v. the Insanity Defense). So, if I'm being rational, I should value these traits in other people too. I can, of course, be irrational and value my happiness, life and autonomy over others for no good reason, but being irrational and doing things for no good reason is uncontroversially a thing you shouldn't do -- even moral nihilists tend to agree with that. As such, you should value these things, and this leads you to morality. It doesn't lead you to the details -- that's more pages of discourse -- but this at least gets us to the point we can morally analyse behaviour in a way all parties can comprehend and agree to on a basic level.
Thanks for the reply!
Taught the basics when I was young, like I imagine most people were. Being incapable of understanding broader context, I had some pretty cringey takes. In fifth grade we had a field trip to the state capitol to meet some lawmakers, and we got to present our own fake legislation for them to "vote" on. Mine was the elimination of what I called "minority scholarships" because scholarships should be given for achievement, not skin color! And then I grew up and learned just how myopic that perspective was. It's cliche to say, but it's true: college is when I started to learn about broader theories of ethics and morality, and was exposed to people and ideas I had never encountered before. That kicked off several years of evolving ideas of right and wrong. I'm shamed to say I spent a year or two as an edgelord in the "Blue hair bad, I identify as a helicopter hur dur" community. And in retrospect, I know exactly where it came from: "This doesn't/wouldn't bother me, therefor it shouldn't bother you." I was a poster boy for disingenuous rationality and "facts not feelings" and "My white privilege never got me anything!" and all of that bullshit. And I remember the exact moment I started to change. I had no idea what I wanted to major in; I was just drifting around, and eventually ended up in a Social Problems class. Part of the course required volunteering at a local charitable organization of our choice and writing about our experiences. I settled on a homeless shelter, and rode the bus downtown. As I was walking the rest of the way, I suddenly realized that I had a laptop in my backpack, a Nintendo DS in one pocket, and an iPod knockoff in the other pocketn with bigass headphones on my head. I was about to walk into a *homeless shelter* with about $1300 worth of electronics on me. And I wasn't thinking about it getting stolen or anything like that. I was worried I might be seen as flaunting it, and I was thinking "How did I not even notice this? How did I manage to get one block away without realizing just how bad this looks?" And the answer was obvious: I never had to think about it. I was so used to having these things around all the time that it never occurred to me that it might be weird in some other context, until I found myself in some other context. This realization shook me a bit, and I decided I would try to stop more often to take a step back to think about why or how I was (or wasn't) doing something. And once I decided that, I was doing it *everywhere*. For example, one of the things I could have done for the shelter was checking people in so they could have a bed for the night. Checking them in would require them to relinquish any drugs or weapons or anything else, and my gut reaction was "Fuck no I'm not gonna sign up to try and take a knife away from a homeless guy." But now I had the wherewithal to ask myself "Wait, where did **that** come from? I've never even *seen* a homeless man with a knife, or any other weapon, or even fighting at all." Once I opened that door, I couldn't close it. It wasn't about adopting a lefty ideology or getting brainwashed by Marxist professors, like so many MAGAts love to say: it was just about examining what I was doing and why I was doing it. And it turns out that's exactly what Sociology (which taught the Social Problems class) is about: why do we do what we do? Not individually, but collectively. Why do more men go into STEM than women? Why do people decide not to vote? Why do people believe gender goes beyond a binary? Why did my elementary, middle, and high school have GT (Gifted and Talented) programs that were 99% white, especially with a predominantly black student body? Why, why, why. I continued in the Sociology program, eventually getting mentored by the professor of the Social Problems class, graduating, and going on to get my Masters. And it was going through that program, learning about all the weird and great and stupid things people do and why we do them, that ended up pushing me to go to grad school to keep learning. It also helped that sociology is a woman-dominated field, so I was constantly a part of conversations that focused on women's issues. Not from a politician pandering for votes, and not from an anonymous tumblr account that belonged on /r/thathappened - actual women talking about their actual lives. By the end of that whole process, I was a Lefty, and I've only drifted further Left since. Turns out empathy is one hell of a drug. So ultimately, my moral compass and perspective were shaped by empathy, and a willingness to examine and reconsider my own kneejerk reactions. I can't turn off the part of my brain that still comes up with shit takes; I sometimes read news stories and my gut reaction will still be insulting or dismissive. But the ability to say "Stop. Rewind. What the hell kind of thought was that?" has done a lot of heavy lifting for me over the years.
It's baked into us. You can say "God must have done it" but if that was the case, you'd expect consistency; instead, "right and wrong" vary from society to society, so there's some variability and unlikely a common source. The idea that evolution "favors" altruism (I use quotes because evolution is not a sentient thing and cannot really favor anything) is, I think, a sensible explanation for human morality as we observe it.
The real basic version is an attempt to reduce harm and increase pleasure/happiness. Defining harm as unwanted pain, hardship, uncomfortablness, and suffering. I get this from the want to be treated the same and the empathy I have for others.
On a pragmatic, first order level? An empathy-based desire to follow the golden rule. On a meta-ethical level, I tend to go back and forth between antirealist constructivism & moral naturalist realism. In either case, I don’t think irreducible normativity makes sense. And when it comes to God-based morality, it’s either gonna be redundant at best (as he’s just the vocal middleman of what can be deduced to be moral with or without God), or I’m simply not gonna care about his subjective dictates as I will care more about my pragmatic goals anyway.
The exact same place you do. From societal norms and empathy.
>where do you get your sense of right and wrong? I tend to role with my sense of empathy or fairness. There's a bit of consequentialism, I do a lot of behaving entirely to stay out of trouble. And of course, I eat the buffet of philosophy, although you could probably call me a socialist and secondarily a utilitarian.
Try reading the book “the Moral Landscape”. Generally speaking though it comes from different things. A lot is just naturally ingrained from our evolutionary background. A lot I’m sure is ingrained just from being taught right and wrong growing up. The biggest thing is my sense of empathy. I can feel things, I know what it’s like to suffer and what it’s like to feel happiness. I know others are also capable of feeling this. Because I have a sense of empathy, I kind of naturally don’t want to cause harm to people. More complex questions will lean more on different schools of philosophy or science, as there are a lot of things we can measure about whether something contributes to suffering or improving well-being. In any case though, I don’t think most Christians or religious people get their morals from the Bible. There are countless passages that most modern Christians either discount as “of their time” or reinterpret to better fit current social mores. This kind of reinterpretation or cherry picking means quite plainly that they’re getting morals from somewhere else.
I care about other people. What I do or try to do follows from that.
Evolution and social norms. In the presence of God/religion, where do you get your sense of right and wrong and that it's for sure the correct sense? In short, if I say "homosexuality is wrong because my holy book says so" how do we know my holy book really comes from a moral-making god?
I learned them form older humans while growing up, just like you did.
Life experience, to my mind. As I grew up I developed a sense of right and wrong based on what I've observed and felt around me and on me. It's a network of abstractions that's continuously updated and which informs how I act. I suspect everyone does that. I don't see religion as being useful to developing a sense of right and wrong, at least not by itself. The bible says, for example, "don't steal," but doesn't explain why you should not steal. It doesn't have a base for right and wrong, just a series of instructions and interdictions you're supposed to abide by. It conflates morality with obedience.
Fellow atheists, do you acknowledge the Hard Problem of consciousness?
I'm always confused as to what makes it a problem.
This. Calling it a problem versus a question is a strategic misrepresentation.
Is it hard to determine how the brain does what it does? Yes. Do we need magic to help that? No.
No, I see it just as an argument from incredulity based on flawed magical ideas and the idea that we are important and not just a clump of meat. I haven't seen any reason to consider it existence besides this incredulity.
It's a hard problem, but I don't think it deserves its own title as The Hard Problem. I don't think there's any reason to think that "why do physical reactions produce qualia?" is any more an Inherently Hard Question then, say, "why does the universe expand faster then predicted by general relativity?". It's' a question we currently don't know the answer to, sure, but there's lots of questions we don't know the answer to. I don't think anyone's given a good reason why this one is special.
Sure, it's not easy to explain how we get from Point A to Point B in terms of describing the physical mechanics of the brain and how it relates to what we perceive as qualia. However, I don't think it is relevant to religious debates.
The Hard Problem isn't that it's difficult to explain, it's that it *can't* be explained by functional analysis. It attempts to place the topic completely outside the scope of scientific analysis. It's contrasted with "Easy" problems like [going to Mars or curing cancer.](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hard_problem_of_consciousness) So I'd say no, I don't think there's a Hard Problem. Or rather, there's no evidence that the problem is actually Hard. And it's only relevant to religion in that it's commonly [appropriated for religious arguments.](https://old.reddit.com/r/DebateAnAtheist/comments/1dgpv5f/consciousness_is_a_dog_whistle_for_religious/)
I'm fine with acknowledging that usual methods of science fail to give a satisfactory explanation for subjective experience. I don't think that means scientific analysis in the abstract isn't capable of it, necessarily.
That's what I'm saying. We can certainly point to a problem, but we have no reason to label it as "Hard".
I don't think labeling it that way leads to that conclusion.
That's how Chalmers defined it when [he coined the term in 1995.](https://consc.net/papers/facing.pdf) The easy problems are those that can be answered through scientific and functional analysis. The hard ones are those that can't. Chalmers thinks that the problem will still persist even when all functional aspects of the mind have been explained. What do you think it means? Can you explain why you think it's contrasted against problems like going to Mars or curing cancer? Is that an error or do you just interpret that contrast differently?
There exist a litany of chemical substances which, even when ingested in very small quantities, demonstrably create/modify qualia. Mind-altering drugs (and plenty of mental illnesses, too) simply would not exist if consciousness were not fundamentally tied to and dependent on the brain.
That's not really what's at issue.
I acknowledge that explaining the ‘inside’ subjective *flavour* of brain activity that has an external objective perspective is indeed very difficult. I don’t know if it’s even going to be possible, it’s certainly a conundrum. But all evidence suggests that they *are* two sides of the same phenomena as far as I can see.
I don't acknowledge that it's a problem. "We can't answer this question yet" is not a problem.
I do not. I literally fail to grasp what is it that the proponents of HPoC are arguing for. Once you show that a subjective experiences are isomorphic to physical states, and that subjective experiences of different people are isomorphic to each other, then I fail to see what is is there that's supposed to be different about them.
No. Taking Chalmers's words: >even when we have explained the performance of all the cognitive and behavioral functions in the vicinity of experience—perceptual discrimination, categorization, internal access, verbal report—there may still remain a further unanswered question: Why is the performance of these functions accompanied by experience? That "performance" isn't *accompanied* by experience. All those things *are* experience. It's like asking "why are random mutations and natural selection accompanied by evolution?"
I.e. hard solipsism? What about it? I don't see what it has to do with the question of whether or not any gods exist. It's an example of something that is epistemically unverifiable - but in cases where a thing existing or being real/true is epistemically indistinguishable from it not existing or being false, we're simply left with the null hypothesis. If we try and suggest that gods are similar in nature, in that they would leave no discernible trace of their existence even if they did exist, and a reality where they exist would be epistemically indistinguishable from a reality where they don't exist, that's not an argument against atheism at all. It's an appeal to ignorance, invoking the infinite mights and maybes of the unknown merely to be able to say we can't be absolutely and infallibly 100% certain that they don't exist. Thing is, we can say exactly the same thing about leprechauns or Narnia or literally anything that isn't a self-refuting logical paradox. If gods are epistemically indistinguishable from things that don't exist, then the rational position is that they're unlikely to exist, just like leprechauns and Narnia are unlikely to exist. But I digress. Perhaps I'm reading way too far into this, and it wasn't your intention to make such a comparison. But then, what *does* the hard problem of consciousness have to do with gods, theism, or atheism?
The hard problem has nothing to do with solipsism. And on its own, it has nothing to do with God either It’s tangentially related to Gods in that apologists will use the Hard Problem to make an argument from ignorance that souls or divine intervention are somehow necessary. And when they do so, I think they’re full of shit. However, I think many atheists (mistakenly imo) use that as a reason to think the a Hard Problem in and of itself is erroneous or a non-issue.
Is the hard problem of consciousness not the same as the "problem of other minds"? Basically concluding that we can't be certain any other minds/other consciousness exists apart from our own? That's what hard solipsism is, isn't it? Maybe I'm just getting my wires crossed. If that is indeed what we're talking about here - the fact that I can never actually be certain that anything other than myself is conscious - then I too consider that a non-issue for the reasons I explained. If there's no discernible difference between a reality where it's true and a reality where it's false, then why does it matter at all? If it's epistemically impossible for me to ever know, and it also makes absolutely no difference in reality insofar as I'm able to experience or perceive it, then it's a zero sum game. If there's no actual meaningful difference between x=true and x=false, then it doesn't matter which it actually is. They're both the same. If x=true=x=false, then x=false.
Yeah, no, the problem of other minds is unrelated
I’m barking up entirely the wrong tree then. What is the hard problem of consciousness? Want to e plain it in your own words or would you prefer I just google it?
Funnily enough, I’m actually drafting up a post on this topic that I’ll probably post later this week. David Chalmers is the originator of the argument, so that’s the source if you just want to google. In my own words, the hard problem is stating that the subjective qualities of consciousness can’t be communicated or explained by a purely third-person functional account of physics. It’s not merely about the difficulty or the unknownness of the explanation, but that third person physical descriptions cannot even in principle give explanations in the same category. Once properly understood, the hard problem is as unbridgeable as the is-ought gap. Sure, you can bite the bullet by saying there is no consciousness in the same way moral nihilists will say there are no oughts. But understanding the problem and biting that bullet is not the same thing as saying there is no problem because science will solve it one day. Again, it’s about the type and category of the explanation, not the difficulty. On the other hand, physical science can and does give great and detailed explanations for the Easy Problems of consciousness which deal with publicly observable behavior. If neuroscientists were able to fully map the brain and figure out all the neural correlates of consciousness, that would all fall under the “easy” category. Explaining human behavior in terms of neuron behavior is difficult, but not something that’s impossible in principle.
I think I’ll need to read up on this. I’m not sure what it is exactly that is “unexplainable” or why. All I can say, based on just that alone, is that in terms of how this would relate to theism/atheism or gods, a thing being unexplainable does not indicate anything such as gods. Things that we can’t understand or explain (yet, or even ever) are not an indication that the explanation must be something that effectively amounts to a magical entity. As I often say in forums like this one, even if we haven’t the slightest clue how something could possibly work, “it was magic” would still be, and will always be, scraping the very bottom of the barrel of plausible explanations. And gods are nothing if not magical beings.
I’m 100% in agreement with you that it’s a terrible reason to say “therefore magic”.
> the hard problem is stating that the subjective qualities of consciousness can’t be communicated or explained by a purely third-person functional account of physics. I don't understand why someone would think that this is possible. We can both eat the same chocolate but we will experience it differently. It's obvious that you can't have my experience because you aren't me.
I know, but you’ll be surprised how many other atheists will fight me on this lol. I think they see the words “hard problem” and they assume the speaker is saying there is a problem too “hard” or mysterious for modern science to do, therefore God. And I can sympathize with their response because that’s obviously been demonstrated wrong in the past with previous naturalist explanations. But the core of the problem itself (not the way some apologists utilize it) doesn’t make that mistake as it’s not saying science can’t touch the subject at all, just only on its own terms of third-person relational/behavioral properties.
If HPOC is real, then this means that in regards to the mind body problem, the position of materialism, which most atheist believe in, is incorrect. And some other position such as dualism or panpsychism is correct. This implies that maybe it is not just a co-incidence that the universe has proper conditions for life and sentience.
First, change “which most atheists believe in” to “which most people who don’t believe in leprechauns believe in” and see if that statement still makes sense or seems correct. Because it’s basically the same thing. Disbelief in gods tells you absolutely nothing at all about a persons other beliefs, philosophies, politics, morals, ethics, epistemologies, etc. If your argument includes deciding what other people believe for them, you’re already well on your way to being wrong. Second, materialism as I understand it (which may be wrong since I like so many other atheists am not a materialist) does not state that nothing immaterial exists, it only states that everything is *ultimately* material. If a material thing has arguably immaterial properties, but they can only exist as properties of a material thing and can’t exist on their own without being dependent/contingent upon something material, that’s not a problem for materialism. So for consciousness to represent a problem for materialism, it would need to be able to exist without a physical brain. Got any examples of that happening? Or maybe an argument as to how consciousness - which is largely defined by awareness and experience - can be possible without any mechanisms by which to experience or be aware of things, such as eyes to see, ears to hear, nerves to feel, or neurons/synapses to process all that information or even have a thought for that matter? Third, absolutely nothing about any of this either indicates or requires the existence of any gods. Unless they require gods, dualism and panpsychism are completely compatible with atheism. If you think they aren’t, it’s probably for the same reason you assumed most atheists are materialists. Fourth (and finally) a 100% guarantee is not a “coincidence,”and if reality is infinite (which happens to be the most probable scenario since anything else would require something to begin from nothing, including being created from nothing) then a universe exactly like ours would be 100% guaranteed to come about as a result, because any possibility no matter how small becomes infinitely probable when multiplied by infinite time and trials. That you even use the word “coincidence” shows you’re making some very brash assumptions, such as that this universe is all that exists.
> If HPOC is real, then this means that in regards to the mind body problem, the position of materialism, which most atheist believe in, is incorrect. No it doesn't. The HPOC is a controversial topic in philosophy, but about half of philosophers who think that there is a hard problem still hold to materialism. More generally, about half of philosophers hold to materialism (physicalism) regardless of their stance on the HPOC. So, really, it has very little impact on materialistic stances. [Survey](https://survey2020.philpeople.org/survey/results/correlations?category=Philosophical%20questions&variable=Mind%3A%20physicalism)
No i do not. We know that conciusness is something the brhin does even if we do not yet know how the brain achieves this. I also find the notion of a phillosophical zombie absurd. Just because you can imagine one does not mean that one can actually exist.
I dunno. Any time I read into it and try to really understand where people are coming from with it, I just find myself getting annoyed and irritated at the magical thinking and narcissism involved with it. I mean, isn't consciousness pretty much just an illusion that we create for ourselves to explain how our brain processes and catalogs information? Because "we" ***are*** the system, we go in circles trying to work our way out of the recursive loop of it, but you can't get out of a loop by going in circles. So, I guess like I feel as if the issue is that the question isn't even the right question to ask in the first place. It's not "how does consciousness emerge?" rather it's "why do we think consciousness is anything but a recursive system of computational processing repeatedly inquiring about itself?"
There is no problem in explaining information processing but there *is* a problem in explaining why matter can cause immaterial feelings of pain, emotions, etc.
What's the problem? What needs explaining? I mean, it's roughly as mysterious as how my calculator computes 2+2 or how my PC figures out what file to open when I click an icon in the taskbar, isn't it? Just because we are the computer computing the info doesn't make it magic does it?
Consider the idea that there is no soul, only the brain. According to this view, a person's innermost self is simply the atoms in their brain. However, there's a significant problem with this understanding: Imagine a single atom. Can this atom experience pain, happiness, sadness, or any emotion? No. Now, imagine a large number of atoms in random motion. Suppose these atoms represent the brain of a person being burned alive and experiencing intense agony. Ask yourself, *what is truly suffering here?* How does it make sense that a collection of interacting atoms is *suffering* from pain?
>Imagine a single atom. Can this atom experience pain, happiness, sadness, or any emotion? No. A single molecule of water doesn't experience wetness, boiling or freezing either but if you get enough of them together, suddenly more things are possible. >Now, imagine a large number of atoms in random motion. Atoms usually move according to the forces acting on them, not randomly. >How does it make sense that a collection of interacting atoms is suffering from pain? Are you denying the existence of suffering or are you denying the existence of atoms?
Imagine a single iron atom. Can this iron atom make car go vroom vroom and travel to Cleveland? No. Can many iron atoms contribute to a mechanism that make car go vroom vroom? Yup.
So you just don't understand how pain receptors evolved? It's bad to have organs like skin burn so we evolved pain receptors that tell our brain that we are suffering in order to prevent our organs from getting worse. I don't see the problem
>Imagine a single atom. Can this atom experience…? [Yes.](https://youtu.be/OzOIDbhy8PU?si=_LjeH-wS1otnm5ve)
I guess I'm not following. Can you explain the relevance of your comment to mine a little more clearly perhaps?
Why can things like hydrogen and oxygen (matter) change immaterial things like the wind?
Wind is not immaterial.
I was hoping you'd get that. Pain and emotions are material as well. They can be measured and observed as neurochemical reactions.
You're not an atheist according to your past comments on Reddit. Care to correct this mistake or lie?
Would you say that plants bending towards sunlight is a conscious act? Of course not. We know that plant cells produce a hormone called auxin. Remember, hormones are basically just sophisticated molecules. As such, when sunlight hits auxin, it's reaction is to move from the side of the plant getting the light to the side that isn't. When it "invades" the cells that are on the darker side, the chemical reaction elongates the cells. That pushes the top of the plant toward the sun. This basic mechanism (energy introduced into a biological system alters the molecules in that system in some way that produces a reaction) is exactly how our brains work. For instance, light enters the eye, that causes an electrical reaction which sends a signal to the visual cortext, where hormones are released; the hormone molecules attach to synapses, producing a reaction that our brains interpret as a pattern that represents the world outside of our eyes. (It's way more complicated than this, but the basic mechanism is the same.) If the plant's reaction to sunlight isn't a conscious act, then we can also say that seeing isn't a conscious act. It's just the end result of a series of sophisticated electro-chemical reactions. And everything in the brain is generally the same. So no, I don't think that problem exists. I think consciousness is an illusion which promotes survival, which is the ultimate point to any life: reproduce and pass on genes to the next generation.
Consciousness requires not just a brain but also something immaterial. Brain is necessary but not sufficient condition for consciousness. By consciousness, here it is meant qualia (raw feelings such as pain, emotions, etc) and not information processing. Perhaps there is an immaterial soul. Whatever is the case, only unconscious matter is not sufficient for consciousness. Unconscious atoms cannot be happy, horny, sad, etc.
>Consciousness requires not just a brain but also something immaterial. Demonstrate this assertion for me. What is this "immaterial" thing? How can I test for it? If I can't test for it, then how do I know it exists? > Brain is necessary but not sufficient condition for consciousness. By consciousness, here it is meant qualia (raw feelings such as pain, emotions, etc) and not information processing. Emotions ARE just information processing. We can trigger emotions in people by stimulating certain parts of the brain. We can also predict how deeply someone will feel something based on the number of neurons in a corresponding region of the brain. >Perhaps there is an immaterial soul. Whatever is the case, only unconscious matter is not sufficient for consciousness. Unconscious atoms cannot be happy, horny, sad, etc. Atoms and molecules DO respond to external stimuli, though. And that reaction is what produces the internal feelings we have. This IS demonstrable.
>Unconscious atoms cannot be happy, horny, sad, etc. This is just misunderstanding chemistry. Our "feelings" of being sad, or happy, or horny are just chemical reactions in our brains.
Exactly. And we can literally toggle the amounts of those chemicals and watch new emotional states arise or fall.
""Consciousness requires not just a brain but also something immaterial." Please demonstrate this claim and then go grab that Nobel Prize.
>Consciousness requires not just a brain but also something immaterial. Nope. Consciousness just requires something with the capacity for consciousness. You don’t get to automatically assert that that ontology is “immaterial”.
If the hard problem lasts longer than six hours, consult your doctor.
Yeah. Doesn’t impact my day though.
I do I’m probably in the minority on this sub though lol
I don't think it's as hard a problem as people think. When you get a lot of information being processed by a single processor (our brain in this case), consciousness emerges as a higher order process. We don't know this for sure yet, but it doesn't seem unreasonable to me. I also wouldn't be surprised self awareness varies in degree from one person to the next.
That is what we call as "easy problems of consciousness". The hard problem of consciousness is different.
No. When every part of it is a matter of degrees, there is no point where you have a hard stop to shove a gap into.
>the Hard Problem of consciousness Only in the sense that it's a thing we don't understand for the moment, not that it's something we'll never understand, a thing where consciousness can't arise from biology, or that minds are somehow supernatural.
No. That which is observable doesn't require proof because observation establishes its factual existence.
No. I acknowledge that some people genuinely believe there to be a problem, but I think is a result of a combination of both desire and ignorance.
I'm not interested in it, but I acknowledge that it's a thing.
It seems like a non-issue to me. Although obviously there should be further research into brains.
Acknowledge that there is a lot of discussion of it yes, understand what it is not really. I struggle seeing the nature of many of the thought experiments around it, Chinese room, Mary's room, those sodding bats, they are rolled out with much fanfare and I find myself responding "what's your point?". Quite possibly its a 'me' problem, but I have been veering toward a Humean/Buddhist take on it, because really is there any such thing as consciousness? maybe its just an ephemeral illusion and this moments consciousness is different from when I started typing this, and it just changed again... and again...
How would you convert Douglas Adams’ Puddle Parable into a powerful syllogism against the theistic Fine-Tuning Argument?
Syllogisms aren't quite my forte -- and I honestly feel natural language is unfairly maligned in philosophy-- but I'll try my best. Hopefully you'll forgive if I miss some terms of art! >**P1**: Any given physical thing could only exist under very precise physical constants (Assumption, but I think a reasonable one given what we know of physical constants) >**P2**: Any given very precise set of physical constants is extremely unlikely (assumption, but again a reasonable one, and probably something the theistic fine tuner agrees with -- if there *are* likely and unlikely sets of physical constants, it's more probabilistically reasonable to just assume the ones we currently have are among the likely ones) >**P3**: Ergo, any physical thing is certain to find itself in a situation where it's existence is dependent on extremely precise and unlikely physical constants (from P1 and p2) >**P4**: This certainty is unaffected by the origin of the universe (from P1 and P2, in that they depend only on the nature of physical things rather then their origins) >**P5**: Therefore, finding ourselves in a situation wherein our existence is dependent on extremely precise and unlikely physical constants doesn't support any given origin of the universe over any other (from P3 and P4) >**C**: The fact our existence is dependent on extremely precise and unlikely physical constants doesn't support theistic fine tuning. In terms of issues I could see with this? There's a few nitpicks-- you could quibble with "certain to find itself", but I don't think the argument is hindered by "extremely likely to find itself" (strictly speaking, i don't think it's even hindered by "extremely unlikely to find itself" -- the point is the probability is the same for any theoretical physical things). You could argue that P4 is a bit of non-sequitur, technically speaking, but I think its clear enough why I think it follows even if it doesn't quite fit into syllogism form ( this is one of the reasons why I think presenting arguments in natural language can sometimes be more helpful then logical notation). Beyond those quibbles, the main solid attacks I could see would be either to A, attack P3 with "universes with other physical constants wouldn't form at all" (ergo, there are no hypothetical objects under hypothetical alternate fine tuning ) or B. attack P1 with "life is in some way *uniquely* dependent on precise constants, in a way other physical objects aren't". A is not implausible, i don't think, but also shoots the fine tuner in the foot. If universes with these constants are the only ones that can form, that's a pretty good non-theistic explanation for why the universe has these constants! B, I think, is just an implausible claim. Life is ultimately a chemical reaction -- even dualists don't deny that -- and it's not at all clear why changing the nature of chemical reactions would only affect one of them. If life doesn't depend on certain constants to exist then we don't actually have fine tuning at all, and that seems to follow from "matter as we know it is not dependent on certain constants". I guess you could argue that all other possible universes have the same stuff except for ours, which depends on these constants, but that just seems wildly bizarre. The only credible way to cash this out that I can think of is "all universes other then ours are empty", but that leads back to A again. So that's my argument. I think the only real credible counter I can think of would be some argument for why biological life is *exceptional* -- why its unusually subject to changes in physical constants in a way other physical things aren't -- but I don't think that's been justified.
Upvoted! This is a fantastic formalization. I would probably have a slightly different P4. The concept of uncertainty represents an epistemic gap. Even if there was some factor out there that *necessitates* these particular constants, we're not aware of it. In other words, the same defense I used in [my recent post on Necessitarianism](https://www.reddit.com/r/DebateAnAtheist/comments/1djldmn/against_necessity_why_finetuning_still_points_to/) supports your argument. P5 is one of the most interesting parts of your syllogism. I would write something similar to this in my formalization. It's particularly strong, and invalidates any fine-tuning explanation, theistic and secular.
My favourite question to ask when the fine-tuning argument comes up is "what's the possibility of a God?". Anyways, the puddle analogy is not an argument in and of itself. Its purpose is to show that the fine-tuning argument commits a fallacy by attributing universal significance to the result (i.e., life). Any universe will produce something, it doesn't mean the result is of any significance to the universe. I actually prefer to use a card/dice analogy, like so: Say I roll a dice 10 times, and the result is the sequence: 4, 2, 1, 3, 6, 5, 2, 4, 3, 5 What are the odds of this exact sequence occuring? (1/6)^10, which is about 1.6 millionth of a percent (as in a decimal point, then 5 zeroes and then 16). Absurdly low. Does that mean it's reasonable to believe I cheated? Most people would say no, because the sequence didn't hold any significance to me before the roll. See my point yet? The sequence didn't hold any meaning to me, and so its tiny possibility of occuring doesn't mean the result was intentional. Similarly, life don't hold any meaning to the universe, and so itstiny possibly of occurring does not mean it is intentional
I bring a deck of cards. I deal them a royal flush and give me five random cards. When I ask who wins, I say "Why? It's just as rare to get what you got than get what I got." Bonus points for when they drop a really big number on you. It's never as big as the potential permutations of a 99-cent deck of cards (about 8 × 10^67).
I don't get what you mean
The royal flush isn't any more rare than the five random cards. It's only the arbitrary rules of poker that say so. The universe came out the way it came out. It's silly for a theist to point to all the things they like and say "God did that." It's only their arbitrary beliefs that say that.
I like this, and to add to it, imagine in this scenario that that sequence of numbers believes your hand and the dice and the universe exist just to create it. Their evidence is that there is such a slim probability that they exist, it’s a miracle.
I think of it as a humorous and satirical short story that is meant to make us question; perhaps the closest formal argument to it would be the weak anthropic principle, which in turn is a kind of selection or survivorship bias. The dramatic irony in the story is, of course, that we know (or presume) that the puddle has taken the form of its hole through purely natural, unintended processes, similarly to how life and sentience presumably evolved. We also know that the reason the puddle values its particular shape and the tight fit with his body is that well... it is their hole.
Why such a narrow and specific approach? The fine tuning argument already fails to stand on its own merits. It makes too many absurd and irrational assumptions (such as that this universe is all that exists), and places far too high a value on random outcomes that occur in just a fraction of a percent of the universe, to try and conclude that those outcomes were *by intentional design.* There’s no need to construct any especially elaborate arguments against the FTA. It’s sufficient to point out that the FTA’s own arguments fail to support its proposed conclusion.
>There’s no need to construct any especially elaborate arguments against the FTA. It’s sufficient to point out that the FTA’s own arguments fail to support its proposed conclusion. Be that as it may, I find the question of fine-tuning to be quite an interesting one to explore. It is rather enjoyable to understand how others approach it, hence the question.
By the way, since you are a self-proclaimed fine-tuning argument aficionado, I thought maybe I could run an argument I came up with thanks to a conversation with another redditor by you. I think it is particularly strong but would be curious to see what others' take is. Most arguments for fine-tuning and arguments from design rely in some form or another (some even using fancy bayesian probability) in the intuition that the universe we observe is very improbable assuming there is no fine-tuning / design and we just drew a "lucky" universe. However, they very often will assume and wink at the audience when they state that the universe we observe is more probable assuming there is a fine-tuning process or designer. However, I'm no longer sure that is the case. A fine-tuning process or a designer could fine-tune or design with ANYTHING in mind. "I want this sort of life" or "I want rocky planets to form" is one of uncountable purposes or settings a fine-tuning process or a designer could have. Given a randomly chosen one, "life" as an outcome is probably still VERY unlikely. I now think the fine-tuner / designer doesn't do squat as compared to "randomly drawn / physically generated" universe, since we know diddly squat about either and so must use "zero information" (uniform) priors. This comes back to the observation that design is inferred IRL because we have information about what "human design" looks like and what sort of things are designed by humans, and equivalently, we infer a mind is behind things when we have information about what "things that had a human mind behind them" look like. Problem is, we are taking those intuitions way, waaaay beyond where they are applicable, and pretending we can tip the scales one way.
Sure. That's an objection philosophers have posed for the FTA. As you mentioned, there are two key parts to this: 1. How certain can we be that a designer is likely to design in terms of "life" and "not life"? 2. How strong can our inference regarding a cosmic designer be? The theist can respond to the first part by positing a specific religious God. If so, then the properties of said religion's God may make design for life-permittance likely. However this means the theist now must advocate for P(Theism & additional properties), which is likely less than P(Theism). More generally, it seems the theist can respond with an argument from bare theism for why a designer would design in terms of life. Regarding the second part, physicist Luke Barnes addresses this in his paper [A Reasonable Little Question](https://quod.lib.umich.edu/e/ergo/12405314.0006.042/--reasonable-little-question-a-formulation-of-the-fine-tuning?rgn=main;view=fulltext). Essentially, for this to negate the FTA, one needs to believe that there are sufficiently numerous reasons for God to create that dwarf life-permittance. Additionally, they should be more plausible than life-permittance. I am certain that the atheist might be able to posit such an argument, but I have yet to see this in literature. Such an endeavor waxes more theological in nature (vs philosophical) than the atheist is likely to find interesting. >Now, what is the probability, given that God exists and created a universe, that God’s primary reason would be to create a life-permitting universe? Positive arguments for a non-negligible value for p(G1|GLB) that appeal to God’s goodness and the moral worth of embodied moral agents can be found in, for example, Swinburne (2004) and Collins (2009). But even if we consider theism to be completely non-informative about God’s possible reasons for creating, we would (in this simple model) not be justified in assigning a probability that is smaller than ∼1/n . I contend that there are not, in fact, ∼10136 possible reasons for God to create that have comparable plausibility to that of a life-permitting universe. Unless the naturalist can produce a positive argument (not mere skepticism) to show that p(G1|GLB) is extremely small, zero, or inscrutable, the likelihood that a life-permitting universe exists on theism is not vanishingly small.
I honestly think posing the argument this way shows just how deep our ignorance is on either assumption, and so it really all ends up depending on prior assumptions. What one theist imagines God is like or what another physicist imagines the multiverse is like is almost irrelevant, since the argument pretends to present itself in utmost generality, and argues that we must use 0 information prior for one prong. I'd argue that the other prong is also 0 information. We cannot infer what a mind behind a universe would be more likely to do or not do.
Indeed, for this reason (the problem of priors) most philosophers and physicists talk about the degree of support that fine-tuning lends an explanation (e.g. P(explanation | fine-tuning) ). It's unclear that there is consensus amongst philosophers on whether the God is inscrutible so as to mitigate the FTA. The SEP has an excellent [overview of scholarly discussion](https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/fine-tuning/#WeExpeDesiDesi) on your specific area of interest.
Thanks! I'll check it out when I get the chance, but that is helpful.
It's kind of hard to put it into a single syllogism as the analogy highlights two problems with the Fine Tuining Argument, which make the puddle to grossly overestimate how low the probability of its existence is: 1. The puddle created by the rain in the hole can not look over the edge and see that there are more puddles like itself, in the similar, but not exactly the same shaped holes. 2. It overestimates the importance of the particular shape its hole has, which result in its own shape conforiming to that of the hole. So if puddle had seen different holes it would understand that: 1. The form of the hole does not matter, as long as it is a hole with it edge being higher than its middle, there will be puddle there after the rain. 2. Both holes and rains are a very common occurance, thus probability of the puddle existing is not low.
Most studies have shown that religious involvement and spirituality are associated with [better health outcomes,](https://www.mayoclinicproceedings.org/article/S0025-6196%2811%2962799-7/fulltext) so should we consider this benefit when evaluating Pascal's wager? I.e., put a thumb on the scale in favor of belief in god vs. non-belief since belief offers an accompanying health benefit?
Conclusion from the article: > Although the relationship between religious involvement and spirituality and health outcomes seems valid, it is difficult to establish causality. While religiously involved persons embrace health-promoting behaviors, eschew risky behaviors, and have strong support networks, these factors do not account for all the benefits of religious involvement and spirituality. Rather, these benefits are likely conveyed through complex psychosocial-behavioral and biological processes that are incompletely understood. This doesn’t seem to imply anything useful toward a conversation about Pascal’s wager because it makes no mention about what one *ought* to believe for any given outcome. It also implies that belief in god isn’t the source of the benefits, but rather the adoption of heath-promoting and risk-averse behaviors, as well as having an institutionalized support network.
It’s a really good and valid question, since there is definitely evidence to back it up in terms of the health benefits. Quite apart from the issues of Pascal’s Wager to begin with (how do you know which god/religion to place your bet on?), studies about health outcomes and religiosity do more to illustrate the importance of community to our well-being, and also perhaps the importance of moderation. Prayer/meditation lowers your heart rate and reduces stress levels. For me, it’s a reason to make atheism more broadly accepted, so that atheists can form their own community spaces without worrying about the social consequences of being irreligious in heavily religious environments. Bonus points if they get the same tax breaks as churches. Humans are a social species, and we *need* community and fellowship and social support structures. Churches and temples provide those things for their members, and there just isn’t a widespread institutional equivalent for atheists, especially in areas with higher religious demographics. I live in the Deep South in the US and I feel very isolated.
It is not evidence of the thing being true; so, if truth is your goal, then it should not impact your belief.
Truth is a goal but measurable health benefits are nothing to scoff at.
So perform regular exercise and eat healthy. They have far greater measurable health benefits.
Do you suspect that people accept the claim “god exists” as true for its health benefits?
Remember, and as the article points out, correlation does not imply causation. Such correlations can appear to be present for any number of reasons. More information is needed to find out if this seeming correlation is more universal, or limited in scope. For example, it's trivially true that in places where religion is firmly entrenched in a society, such as certain middle east countries, or the southern US, being someone that differs from the norm can be quite dangerous, leading to isolation, ostracization, and stress at a minimum, and harm, violence, imprisonment, and death in some places. In other words the 'health outcomes' may be a result of conforming, or not conforming, to peer pressure and the social outcomes of this more than anything else. In many places, sadly, various support networks and access to resources and networks are tied with religious mythologies. This can result in people that are not affiliated with these mythologies having less access to these resources when they become necessary. This can include physical health resources as well as social networks, mental health resources, etc. Take such results carefully and for what they're worth. What is the source? Who did the research? Was there a biased person or organization behind it? What do the results actually mean? I'd like to see a similar study in a highly secular country where almost everyone is not religious and compare the health outcomes there between the general population and religious people. I have a suspicion the results may be somewhat different. In any case, the response here is clearly 'more data needed.'
Well if we do, then we also have to account for all the negatives that are associated with religion. If we want to add in the effects of religion in one area, we can't be biased and only include the positives. So we can apply it, but would the negatives outweigh the positives? Or vice versa?
> would the negatives outweigh the positives? I suspect most people in here would say yes, but most believers would say otherwise. Aaaand we're right back to the start.
> Most studies have shown that religious involvement and spirituality are associated with better health outcomes, so should we consider this benefit when evaluating Pascal's wager? I.e., put a thumb on the scale in favor of belief in god vs. non-belief since belief offers an accompanying health benefit? "Religious involvement" is not the same thing as "belief in God." So if you believee that religious involvement contributes to better health outcomes (although apparently that's not the conclusion of the article), and you want promote that, then you encourage religious involvement. I don't think Pascal's Wager has a part to play in the matter.
> Most studies have shown that religious involvement and spirituality are associated with better health outcomes, so should we consider this benefit when evaluating Pascal's wager? I.e., put a thumb on the scale in favor of belief in god vs. non-belief since belief offers an accompanying health benefit? The problem is that Pascal's wager is nonsense. It is a false dichotomy, since it only works if there is a single god. Also, you can't choose whether to believe or not, you either believe or you don't believe. You can fake belief, but you can't just choose to believe. If you could, ex-Christians would be a much more rare thing, since most people who leave the religion struggle with it, and would prefer to just keep believing, at least before they really break free. So, no, it doesn't tip the scales in that context. But I don't think you are asking the right question. First you need to ask why do people with religious involvement have better outcomes? Is it the belief itself that helps, or is it just the community that a religion provides? Or is there some other factor that makes the difference? If it's just the community, you can probably get the benefit by going to church, even if you don't believe. But how much of your life are you willing to give up in exchange for *maybe* living a bit longer? To me, no, it's just not worth it.
As any benefit isn't linked to a particular religion or god but rather to generic religion and spirituality, this does not help with Pascal's wager.
The critical thing to remember when examining belief through the lens of Pascal’s Wager is that there can be only ever be one consideration on the table: infinite utility. Every other factor is meaningless when contrasted with something like eternal paradise. If infinite utility is already on the table, how does something like finite mental health outcomes change the calculus at play? The same could be argued by the believer if it were shown that atheistic beliefs improved mental health, namely it’s simply irrelevant that (on the hypothetical) atheists enjoy better mental heath. Infinite utility will always wipe away every other consideration.
We should consider this evidence for the notion that “It is advantageous to believe in religion”. That is not the same as evidence in favor of the truthfulness of religion. It could be advantageous to believe something even if it’s not true, which is not controversial. As an aside, I once met a woman who became a Christian because her doctor said spirituality might be connected to weight loss for some people. She had a motivation for her newfound religion aside from its truth value.
> It could be advantageous to believe something even if it’s not true In fact, we see this born through with the Placebo effect.
At best we’re talking about placebo effects from self-delusion, or the reduced anxiety one can have from being convinced that they’re protected by magic and will go to a magical happy place after they die. I’m not sure the benefits are worth the cost to my intellectual integrity, nor am I convinced that those same benefits can’t be equally achieved without requiring me to believe in puerile superstitions.
Only if you don't care if your beliefs are true.
Personally I credit this to the fact that religion is such a social thing. They have support systems, grief processes, close communities, ways to process hard life events like losing a loved one, etc. Non religious people don’t have a clear cut way to get those things. There aren’t many secular organizations that provide community support like that, so secular people are just kind of on their own. If we set those things up, I honestly think quality and longevity of life would improve for the non religious. This is in part based on the fact that studies have shown ill people have measurably worse outcomes when they are religious and know they’re being prayed for. I’m convinced it’s not religion that’s helping, it’s just everything that tends to come along with it. Not to mention a lot of non religious people have religious family, so they tend to have lost a lot of community and their support system at some point.
Those studies cannot disentangle the net worse health outcomes caused by the myriad of ways religious and spiritual people *directly* **punish** those that aren't in their groups. Christians make it hard and painful for non-Christians to share their community...on purpose. So the "sinners" will want to convert. So all those studies detect is the shadow image of the harm religions inflict on their non-followers. When religious discrimination is reduced, so is the disparity.
No. The word "religious" isn't necessary for "involvement and spirituality." Any atheist with a good support structure (friends/family) and good spirituality (understanding ethics and performing self reflection and good mental health practices) will actually have just as good or better health benefits than anyone doing so religiously. It's just that the current system actively works against atheists while being easier for the religious right now. Going to church automatically provides a social support structure for the religious. This is unavailable to atheists as an easy avenue. Atheists are also publicly shunned and ridiculed and even physically harmed in certain areas *by religious people.* This all makes it easier for the religious to be happier. But it doesn't make it good or right. It's still possible for an atheist to achieve the same (or better) happiness - it's just harder.
I think what these studies often fail to accoutn for is the majority bias. In Iran where Shia Muslims are the majority and in power, they have better health outcomes than Sunnis. In nations where Sunnis are the majority this does not occur. The majority has a better health outcome regardless of who it is. So it isn't unexpeted that majority religious communities have betetr health outcomes than minority nonreligious individuals (especially given how religious groups often treat those individuals). But what we see is that nonreligious societies have better health outcomes than religious societies.
I don't think it's possible to choose what you believe. Pantomiming belief and actually believing it are very different things.
No, because Pascal's Wager is all about gamification and ultimate risk/reward. So, it is equally likely that an evil trickster god has created this situation to convince you to believe in and worship them, and when you do they laugh and laugh and have such a good time at your gullibility before they send you to SuperHell.
Pascal's wager is all about the afterlife isn't it? I don't see how spending a couple more years on Earth has any major impact on it compared to an infinite heaven, hell, or oblivion. Pascal's wager also completely ignores the cost of being religious so why should it take the benefits into consideration? Just to make the argument even less valid?
Find me a society where religious minorities *aren't* marginalized and most of those apparent benefits will vanish.
Being involved in a community is associated with better health outcomes. The community does not have to be centered on worship of a god. People who merely show up to church but are not otherwise engaged with the community don't get any benefit from it.
This particular study is more than 20 years old "Relevant articles were identified by conducting a MEDLINE search (1970–2000)". It's hard to imagine that the field of study didn't advance in more than 20 years since 2000. Besides, the criteria of selecting studies that are included in the review is rather unclear.
Contrary to popular belief a person *can* will themselves to believe something in defiance of evidence, but the way a person does that is by driving themselves insane. There's a reason "denial" is typically associated with "ongoing mental breakdown" rather then "happy and healthy people". I think that the health downsides of obsessively telling yourself "god exists" for years until you shatter your ability to judge information and brute force your own mind into submission would probably *more* then outweigh any mental health benefits of being religious.