After Atheism
Congratulations. You figured out the universe runs on physics, not magic.
Given your background and normal human psychology, that may be an impressive feat. It took memore than 20 years.
Please enjoy resisting, debunking and openly mocking religion.
But don’t stop there.
Now you’re living in the real world, and there are real problems here. In the real world, there is no rule that says the good guys win in the end. We live in a world beyond the reach of God, things can go very wrong, and we need your help.
“Critical thinking” is just the start. The rabbit hole of better thinking goes deeper. There aremathematical laws of thought, a mainstream cognitive science of how we depart from them, and experiments showing us how to do better.
Aiding the slow death of religion and superstition is also just a start. We face more pressing concerns, like the fact that every few decades we invent a new technology that can destroy our entire species.
After atheism comes adulthood, with all its challenges and its opportunities. Want to be a hero? Good. We need heroes. Here’s what you do.
http://commonsenseatheism.com/?p=16355
On the other hand, this is the rotting foundation of his moral vision:
My Latest Thoughts on Desirism
I’ve finally come to admit that I probably won’t continue to record the Morality in the Real World podcast, which intended to explain the moral theory of desirism. People ask me if I still “believe in” desirism, so let me explain my current thinking. First, a few reminders:
Desirism never posited anything more than the standard, reductionistic, scientific picture of the world.
Given that most uses of moral terms refer to things that don’t exist (categorical imperatives, divine commands, etc.), my MitRW co-host Alonzo Fyfe several years ago proposed a set of “reforming definitions” for moral terms intended to (1) capture something similar to what most people had meant when using moral terms, but (2) capture a set of processes thatactually exist. This is standard practice in moral philosophy: see Rawls, Brandt, Railton, etc.
Most moral theories treat acts as the primary objects of moral evaluation, but Alonzo’s reforming definitions made motives (“desires”) the primary object of moral evaluation, ala Adams (1976).
Alonzo’s reforming definitions construed (non-moral) “value” as a relation between desires and states of affairs, such that a state of affairs has value just in case it is desired.
The existence of a desire is a state of affairs, and according to desirism desires are the primary objects of moral evaluation. A desire is”morally” good, on the desirist view, if it tends to fulfill other desires. This phrase “tends to fulfill” needs quite a bit of fleshing out, which is what we started to do in our podcast. An important point is that this claim does not require that desire fulfillment have any “intrinsic” value: see A Harmony of Desires.
Whether you want to call this a theory of “moral realism” or “anti-realism” depends on your attitude toward the meaning of those terms: see Pluralistic Moral Reductionism and Joyce (2011).
“Desire” in desirism was always a metaphor for “whatever a completed neuroscience tells us about the thing that is sort of like the thing we currently call ‘desire’,” and my studies in the neuroscience of human motivation and agent theory in AI have encouraged my view that something close enough to “desire” exists to support a notion of “value,” while in another sensehuman motivation in particular works quite differently than the folk theory of desire claims. Overall, I’ve shifted away from finding it useful to talk about human “desires” when I’m not talking casually.
But the larger reason I’ve stopped talking about morality in the language of desirism is that I’m tempted to not use moral terms at all. Moral language is thoroughly confused and corrupted and strongly motivated, and I’m more tempted than ever to abandon the entire language and start with a new one.
Will I continue to use desirist language on a regular basis? Probably not, because (1) moral language itself is not that appealing to me anymore in serious discussion...
http://commonsenseatheism.com/?p=16373
the slow death of religion and superstition . He's right on the money with this comment.
ReplyDeleteA couple centuries from now (if the human race hasn't rendered itself extinct by then), historians will look back at screen captures of blogs like this one and be amazed that belief in iron age mythology continued to flicker in the 21st century.
There is a recurring theme on this site of an "atheist worldview". I believe that term is synonymous with "reality as we perceive it". There may well be a reality beyond our comprehension but, as Wittgenstein famously observed: Whereof one cannot speak, thereof one must be silent.
TAM, so apparently *then* they'll have shown all the arguments for God's existence to be fallacious or contain false premises. Since according to you no one has done that now, then there's still arguments for God's existence that haven't been shown to be fallacious or contain any (obviously, indisputably) false premise. I thank you for the concession and wonder why you think they'd be 'amazed.' There's at least prima facie good reason to believe in God, at least reason that hasn't been defeated. It can't be that they'll be amazed that we still believe in our 'scientific age' because *NOTHING* about 'science' gives us reason to believe that those *philosophical* arguments are flawed. No, given our knowledge of logic, argument theory, the world, and what it takes to show the theistic arguments are bad arguments, they'll be amazed at your benighted comment here.
ReplyDeletethey'll have shown all the arguments for God's existence to be fallacious or contain false premises
ReplyDeleteNot sure whather you are referring to the god of philosophers (i.e. Anselm's god) or the Yahweh of the Bible. I concede that the former will always be with us. The latter, I contend, is already dead or, if not dead, sufficiently hidden to be irrelevant.
*NOTHING* about 'science' gives us reason to believe that those *philosophical* arguments are flawed. Nothing other than the fact that evolution by natural selection serves as a defeater for Christianity. You guys can keep coming up with denials to explain away the overwhelming scientific consensus that all life on this planet evolved by way of indifferent, naturalistic forces. You can fête academics like Michael Behe who stake entire careers of arguments from ignorance. Once biological replicators are created in a laboratory setting from inorganic elements, that will be the death knell for fundamentalist Christianity. Mark my words, it will happen. Pehaps not in my life time and perhaps not in my children's lifetime. But it will happen ... and then creationists can say "now we know how God did it!".
[Happy and safe holidays to all those who write on, or read, this blog.]
Wow. These atheists always start out telling us how moral they are and how evil God is and how people don't need God to be moral. And look at how it ends. Nice job finding this Triablogue./
ReplyDeleteThe Atheist Missionary said:
ReplyDelete"Not sure whather you are referring to the god of philosophers (i.e. Anselm's god) or the Yahweh of the Bible. I concede that the former will always be with us. The latter, I contend, is already dead or, if not dead, sufficiently hidden to be irrelevant."
1. Of course, atheist and secularist types (as well as others) have been pronouncing this sort of thing throughout the ages. God is dead, God is irrelevant, and so forth.
2. But if the God of the Bible is the one, true, and living God, then it won't happen. And Paul pointed out there exists plenty of reasonable arguments and evidences for God and the Bible as well as plenty of reasonable arguments and evidences against other positions including atheism. In fact, some of these arguments against atheism are brought up by atheists or agnostics themselves (e.g. J.L. Mackie, Will Provine, Michael Ruse, Robin Le Poidevin).
3. By the way, Anselm's God is the God of the Bible too.
"Nothing other than the fact that evolution by natural selection serves as a defeater for Christianity. You guys can keep coming up with denials to explain away the overwhelming scientific consensus that all life on this planet evolved by way of indifferent, naturalistic forces. You can fête academics like Michael Behe who stake entire careers of arguments from ignorance. Once biological replicators are created in a laboratory setting from inorganic elements, that will be the death knell for fundamentalist Christianity. Mark my words, it will happen. Pehaps not in my life time and perhaps not in my children's lifetime. But it will happen ... and then creationists can say 'now we know how God did it!'."
1. There are theistic evolutionists who are Christians (e.g. Francis Collins).
2. Just because you disagree with Behe's argument in Darwin's Black Box doesn't mean it's an argument from ignorance.
3. Your aspersions against Behe notwithstanding, even if we ignore Behe, there are plenty of reasonable arguments against the neo-Darwinian synthesis. Many of them by those who subscribe to evolution.
4. If you're referring to the work of scientists like Craig Venter, what you say about the creation of "biological replicators" in the lab as a "death knell" for Christianity is hardly warranted.
5. You're placing an inordinate amount of weight in scientific progress, weight which science itself isn't necessarily capable of supporting. A more modest posture toward what science can do would be more fitting. Even Richard Feynman who was a Nobel Prize winning theoretical and particle physicist as well as someone who made contributions to other scientific fields such as biology said: "I was born not knowing, and have only had a little time to change that here and there."