(1:A) If “God” is a term that is logically equivalent to “World” (all of reality, say), then if one were to profess a lack of belief in “God,” then one would be at the same time professing a lack of belief in “World.”
(2:C) Therefore, if one is an atheist, then that person is so too a nihilist.
The (f)ool says in his heart, “There is no (G)od.” They are corrupt, they do abominable deeds, there is none that does (g)ood.
—Psalms 14.1; RSV
1 The (f)ool says in his heart, “There is no (G)od.”
1.1 That is, “No (f)ool believes in God.”
1.11 ∀x(Fx⊃-Gx)
1.2 Clearly, this is an empirical claim: (a) Historically, why did it arise? Who said “There is no God.”? (b) Contemporarily, why does it persist? Do people say “There is no God.” in the manner in which the theist interprets the saying? How does the conflation of God and “good” factor in?
1.3 If a theist never personally met an atheist who claimed “There is no God”, would he be self-constrained (This is laughable; I mean “religiously constrained”—whoops, free will!) to believe ∃x(Fx&-Gx) dogmatically?
2 They are corrupt, they do abominable deeds, there is none that does (g)ood.
2.1 That is, “Fools are not good”, or “No fools are good”.
2.11 ∀x(Fx⊃-Gx)
2.2 How did this claim come about? What is the prerequisite or qualifier for a “good” action? Is it that which conforms to an established moral system? Is the presumption that the given moral system transcends all moral systems, and thus should any action run counter to it, that action is necessarily “bad”? Presumed transcendence must have an empirical consequence or some “leading to” which justifies the conclusions of “transcendence.” Back to Euthyphro!
3 Notwithstanding the external difficulty with such claims, we are left with no internally coherent argument. Yes, we have two statements, but, given that the Christian defines her God as “good,” both statements say exactly the same thing internally, within the Christian sphere of morality.
3.1 This brews a great potential for prejudicing, moral projection, should it be accepted that “reasoning” found in what has been cited is valid. It is not reasoning or rational; we are given two assertions which are the exact same proposition. No internal check as to validity can be made (We must not let the proper rules of reasoning get imprisoned within the domain of a moral system.); if we extract the terms to give them sense outside of the Christian nomenclature, we have meaningless babble.
3.2 Why is that? Well, let us define “fool”—Is it mere name-calling? What is the denotation? Arbitrary social division (There’s us! And then there’s them!)? When can I be certain that I have met a “fool”? By their actions or by my presumption, my prejudice?; let us understand what it means to have a proposition “in one’s heart” (—at birth or acquired?); “There is no God” has a term yet to be defined to the atheist’s satisfaction; the social and linguistic implications of “corruption” and “abominable” require sure meaning within the climate of the author and within the climate of contemporary adherents of such a belief beyond mere presumption; and finally, what is “good”?
3.3 I’m afraid reasoning such as this is all too ubiquitous. But my true question wonders at the infinite procedure which takes as backwards to the first moralizing event in the history of humanity. Who was the first moralizer? The first to see things as “x is Good; therefore, what you claim to be x is in fact not x. It is y. Anything not-x is Evil.” I suppose it’s an elementary question, but nonetheless, it is here.
Chris Hedges’ lecture was a long-winded moral argument for the existence of a certain conception of God (his own, whatever it may be) with tinges of the teleological argument for the existence of a certain conception of God.
Both are valid, but have false or uncertain premises. Therefore, the conclusions can follow validly, but the arguments can never be considered sound. That is, the arguments do not express truth. Rational argument for the existence of God as a moral force, considering the intimate—arguably inseparable—connection between God’s essence and existence (expressed in discernible ways, such as a moral force), is unjustified in principle. Their premises can be disputed, and they are disputed. Indeed, the whole point of both arguments, or any argument for the existence of God, must show the truth of God’s existence or essence without assuming God’s essence (as proof) by some arbitrary attribute of God (power, love, etc). Otherwise, the argument is circular—not necessarily false but merely uninformative, unpersuasive. The nature of the epistemological uncertainty that we bear as to the premises makes both arguments circular, but they are valid only if you accept God-premises as true.
He argued for religious pluralism which he neither justified nor did he address openly. He merely asserted that all religious views are valid in so far as they are spiritual views which implies that religious tendencies or feelings are exactly the same as spiritual tendencies or feelings. The equating of these feelings, by definition of spiritual feelings, turns all verbal expression of religious feelings into unintelligible language lest it be assisted by whatever propagandist agenda.
He argued against “New Atheism,” a form of atheism turned propaganda by public intellectuals like Sam Harris, Richard Dawkins, and Christopher Hitchens. Hedges argued against Harris and “New Atheism” by challenging a hypothetical argument made by Harris which implicates one into a condoning position on the usage torture, [should] that person be unable to adequately argue against the hypothetical argument [based on his or her religious system]. Hedges implicated all New Atheist and all atheist moral systems into this argument (as condoning torture and in support of nuclear war). He never addressed any atheistic arguments or atheistic cultures living today.
He rejected Immanuel Kant’s Enlightenment values (his racism), but used Kant’s moral arguments in support of his (Hedges’) own personal views.
He accepted that we must cherry pick the Scripture, and that certain passages are repugnant to reason. However, by implication of this, he should advocate no certain conception of God. God as a merely spiritual force cannot have a “will” in the sense that humans have a will. God as a Willing Agent is described in the Bible. The idea that a maximal spiritual force must essentially maintain a Will requires justification. If we can imagine any singular thing as not having a Will which constitutes its essence, then we can imagine a deity as not having a Will which constitutes its essence. Therefore, a Will is not an essential property of any conceivable thing. Thus, a Deity as a Willing Agent is not an absolute necessity. Any argument which asserts otherwise must justify that premise-assumption.
Hedges identifies himself as a Liberal Christian that gets disenfranchised by “New Atheists” and unfairly caricatured. Nonetheless, he identifies as “Christian,” as a believer of God as a Willing Agent. This is an assertion that precludes anyone, should they believe it, from religious plurality. Greek thinkers, Buddhists, etc do not accept such bold assertions as the Infinite as a Willing Agent. Clearly from the basis of these differing systems of thought, plurality does not hold because disparate moral normative outlooks arise. Again, Hedges did not even justify his implicit argument for religious plurality, so clearly this is a merely mode of the Deus sive Nature, that being that all persons will have uniquely modified philosophical systems which do not adequately reflect the world view of any system or other individuals. Infinitely many modes flow from the essence of the absolutely infinite in infinitely many ways.
He further framed our failing world (Western) ethics as a consequence of the failed values of the Enlightenment. As already said, however, he cherry picked Kant. What is more, he oversimplified the scientific results of the Enlightenment and the purely economical factors which allowed for British Empiricism, a mere philosophical school, to prevail and represent much, if not most, of progressive Europe. The values were not dropped or given up: It’s only that the Empiricists did not agree with Continental Rationalism as expressed by Descartes and Leibniz, who indeed argued for religious ideology, faith, human equality. Hedges grossly misrepresented Enlightenment values by his massive generalization that suggests his ignorance of that which he argues against.
He eventually brought in Spinoza to defend his argument that “atheism of yesterday is the religion of today.” Spinoza never considered himself an atheist, but his Jewish community did. So we have a difference in opinion even at the source that to this day is still researched and debated by Jewish scholars. We can only conclude ignorance on Hedges’ part, or that he was using Spinoza’s plight as a tool to spread his personal views. In either case, respect on his views of atheism should not be granted in so far as his argument pertaining to “atheism as a social movement”; that is, it’s a red herring in so far as it’s used to debate with atheism per se.
When Spinoza was mentioned, I had to leave. It’s insulting to see philosophers’ and great thinkers’ names used as rhetorical tools, but it’s even worse when it is someone as wildly misunderstood and enigmatic as Spinoza.
The entire lecture was stacked with straw men arguments, but I believe his aim, either known or unknown (consciously unable; he doesn’t know what atheism actually is) by him, was never to attack atheism itself. However, his implied moral and teleological arguments suggest that he does not agree with atheism in so far as atheistic persons, by lacking observance of a deity either overtly or unknowingly, do not derive moral understanding from a deity or any deity.
Original Question:
If the atheist purports that a practical and naturalistic morality without a god is possible just as a practical morality with a god is possible, what is the disadvantage of having a society live by either standards? The truth of the existence of the god aside, and if we can confine ourselves to a pragmatic observation of the question: What practical value does defending a personal conception of god provide if both moral systems produce the same results?
Someone before me asked a possibly philosophical question which pertains to the effects of language in the midst of the battle between religion and the caricatured ideology of popular Enlightenment philosophers as harmful to humanity. How is language used as a propagandist tool? How is religious language and scientific nomenclature used to coerce beliefs on either side of the debate?
Of Atheism:
1 An atheist can only reject a deity or deities presented (as a definition of the deity) to her knowledge. This is what we call “strong atheism”, “explicit atheism”, or “philosophical atheism.”
2 By definition of “belief,” no person can believe, or have faith, in a deity which has not been presented to their knowledge. Their direction of faith would have no target (deity). This is what we call “weak atheism”, “implicit atheism”, or “default atheism.” Can an uncivilized, remote island dweller have faith in the Christian God? This Islamic conception of the deity? The many manifestations of Brahma? Clearly this is not possible, for understanding of Scripture, Holy Writs, and of history and teaching are requirements to sufficiently execute worship proper. However, some wish to argue their deity as a “general spiritual force” or an everywhere present “spiritual energy.” This will be discussed later.
2.1 Atheism is the default stance of all persons existing in a world in which at least one theistic doctrine is held by at least one person. When all doctrines are ceased in so far as being held by persons capable of disseminating them, atheism thus becomes a meaningless stance. It is a stance only with respect to definitions of the deity. If no images of the deity are present, the atheist has nothing to reject or critique. In a possible world such as this, weak atheism then permeates throughout all persons.
3 We cannot define a deity as a “general spiritual force” because this predicate is a necessary condition for the status of any possible conception of a deity as deity (or a divine entity). “General spiritual force” is not a signifier of any specific deity, but of all potential or actual conceptions of the deity. It is tautologous and possibly nihilistic—this will be discussed later.
4 It is ethnocentric to assume that any single definition of the deity controls the spiritual feeling we all share as a species of sentient beings, but ethnocentricity occurs only if one grants that definitions of the deity cannot be severed from the culture in which it was contrived. A deity of a specific culture is as unique and as intellectually significant as the method of agriculture of that culture or the propensity of its constituents to grow to a certain average height. That is, the deity must have discernible qualities which define it and make it a target of faith. I could worship my human faculty to run a plow and garden, but all persons share this faculty with me as physical and sentient beings. No one will argue that our faculties as human beings come from our religious affiliations. The force by which we all thrive (as thinking, acting, desiring beings) as a species cannot be appropriated by any religious group. If it is argued, we are back at ethnocentrism and racism. This sort of mentality produced Nazism.
5 If the deity is exactly a “general spiritual force,” then by this definition (often haplessly used to save the deity as a moral force), all tradition and culture centered on the worship of the deity becomes meaningless and irrelevant. No arbitrary contrivance of human wit, history or culture can be appended to the notion of the deity; in truth, the deity being a “general spiritual force” destroys all human intellectual and creative connection to the deity. In truth, again, this argument destroys all purpose and meaning in human endeavors (a form of nihilism).
It’s an untrue assumption that “absolute truth” is equivalent to a religious person’s God. This is self-evident by virtue of their being so many religious sects within denominations and religious groups. The question assumes that the atheist does not believe in objective moral standards or absolutes which can be true, false, or uncertain. You can be an atheist and believe in absolutes: Atheism is the rejection and-or lack of a belief in a deity or deities. This is why atheists can be accused of having dogmatic beliefs. Further, it is wrong to assume that belief in a deity is a necessary requirement to have moral views and that the deity itself is in fact the substratum for morality. This is obvious by virtue of the epistemological dilemma of knowing the deity’s true nature. You can only assume the deity is moral in the way that you are moral or that religious groups are moral. Simply because a book says the deity is moral, it doesn’t follow that the deity must be moral.
When atheists say “whatever makes me feel good,” this is the same argument that the religious makes. It’s a common sense one—it is such because all atheists and theists are agnostics. Indeed, it is necessary for a theist to be an agnostic for them to have religious belief. Belief and Knowledge are disparate domains. When we call a religious person a dogmatist, we do not mean: You have dogmatic and absolute views on what you Know. We mean: You have dogmatic and absolute views on what you Believe.
Religious people believe they know their deity’s nature, but they do not know it. That being the case, they only believe their moral views are true, and this can be contested. Therefore, there is no reason to use the religious worldview as the default by which all questions of morality should be asked. There is no reason to assume their worldview true. Most people do this anyway, in their inquiries, because the popularity of religion and social coercion inclines them to do this.
Propositions which cannot be subject to reason are categorically inappropriate; they should be dismissed. They’re sneaky, deceitful—and most people hardly even notice it! Since the question of God’s existence can neither be proved nor disproved by virtue of what it means to be nonexistent (as the atheist will claim) in the first place or as “beyond this world” (as the theist will claim), the question is horribly meaningless—it falls under that inappropriate category.
The question Does God exist? and its various forms Do you believe in God? Is God necessary for morality? How about free will? etc all bear hidden, implicit assumptions that the subject of the question is even intelligible in the first place. It is not.
You may as well ask, “Do you believe in this fancy neologism I’ve just invented?”
However!— by definition of what atheism is—categorically dismissing the question as too unintelligible to be responded to does qualify one as an atheist. You are not an atheist because you’ve bested the theist with the evidential problem of evil or omnipotence paradoxes. You simply reject his or her notion of whatever they say they believe in on the grounds that it is simply makes no sense. Seriously, your question bears content which I cannot say I sufficiently comprehend to provide a reply. Do not fall prey to requesting an epistemic investigation of belief or philosophical inquiry into the ontological status of this “god” figure—ask them to provide a goddamn definition!
Now they may wish to justify their beliefs with this or that, but nowhere does “God” enter the picture. All justification for a belief is a rationalization which is, by definition, not faith. Under a religious context, anything but faith is not faith.
Noam Chomsky replied tersely and effectively to the question of his belief in God: Questioner: “Do you believe in God?” Chomsky: “I don’t understand the question.”
Essentially, you’re paying tribute to our beloved Socrates by standing firm and declaring that the inquirer defines his or her terms. Don’t get caught in the trap of demanding that they prove it. If you do, you’ve taken their premise “God exists” as provisional. And if they’re savvy enough, as unconscious charlatans usually can be, they can take the argument anywhere they please or just waste your time. Of course, they’d be doing both.
It is true that atheism must presuppose a theism in order to object it—to even be conceived as an intelligible term at that! If there were no theism, there would be no atheism. Atheism does not exist without a corresponding theism.
I’m not sure how it follows that an infant not having a concrete, philosophical position would automatically qualify as a “theist.” In what sense exactly? Are the theists to domineer now, too, in the domain of general spirituality? Are we to suppose theism and spirituality are equivalent? Why do we bother with these terms in the first place if they can so easily blur into each other as if they held no distinctions in the first place? I suppose it is the consequence of this notion of religious plurality and “anything goes” mentality. Woe to this postmodern world. It aches with the feeling of a disturbing descent into a messy communication breakdown.
The concept of “God” by any theist carries certain complex ethical implications, intellectual feats of understanding, and grandiose tales of jealousy (human nature appended to the bearer of infinite wisdom; as if that were not a shiningly overt contradiction) and chosen peoples trekking deserts with divine stamina and resilience. Can we disassociate all of this from the idea of God that we have come to understand and say that it exists within the mind of a child? What is it exactly that exists in the mind of a child? How can we assume that because people have a spiritual feeling that that feeling is equivalent to the proposition “God is all-powerful, all-knowing, all-good!”?
Atheism can either be strong or weak (explicit or implicit, active or passive, etc). Strong is usually the philosophical stance that includes also the weak stance. The weak stance, if it can be called a stance, is simply by definition the “lack of a belief in God or Gods”. Properly understood, it means “lack of a belief in an idea”.
To assume that God is not an idea which must follow from a proposition first is to presuppose his existence as self-evident or true. But yet, we have to explain what it means to exist as self-evident but without discernible qualities. To say something is self-evident without elucidating the qualities of it that make it so is just an unjustified assertion. “God” could easily be replaced with “Blug!” But until we clarify what we mean and what constitutes “God,” the term is not intelligible. The idea is vacuous.
We must assume that God has qualities and things which distinguish it from other ideas, but it necessarily exists in the category of ideas. If God does not have discernible qualities which can only come forth through propositions, then we cannot say that the idea of God exists in anyone’s mind anymore than the feeling to have a bowel movement comes when one has fully digested their food. Therefore, if a child cannot comprehend or express a proposition of an idea of God, then it follows that “God” is not a concept in their minds. Thus, they lack the belief in the idea of God, and general “spirituality” is but a mere correlate that we wish to join too earnestly with our own ideas of God.
What I aim to suggest here is that categorically all propositions exist on the same level. The assertion: “God exists!” is no more important or higher-as-a-category than the assertion that “Free will exists!” However, people tend to be more emotively connected to the label because they wish to consider it as the entrance into the system itself. It’s quite easy to say “I believe in God” without truly understanding what “God” means. The proposition of God’s existence is no different categorically than that of the proposition that “Thou shalt not kill.” Therefore, the propositions can be picked apart and tackled independently from one another, and it must be done by the “atheist,” for the “atheist” is only challenging one proposition. That is, as a self-proclaimed atheist, from this title, they challenge or deny the argument of the existence of God, and consequently they must separately handle the determinism versus free will issue.
But I suppose if the only argument an atheist receives that proves God exists is the argument from free will, and if she were to reject or deny that argument, then she would not have to tackle the determinism versus free will issue. It could be implied by her rejection that she consents to determinism of some flavor. This is due to the fact that I see determinism and free will as antithetical. Perhaps against a personal God theory, the rejection of such is an implicit consent to determinism.
After that, we see that being an atheist is not a system of belief but only something which exists provisionally and only stands counter to some theism. Thus, a genuine, personal belief system should be created by the person who claims atheism, but their belief system will not be a reflection of the tenets of “atheism” itself. There can be no atheist bible or code of ethics or absolute philosophy of the atheist.
Does determinism require a determiner? To say this we must further question as to the nature of this determiner. And actually, does determinism require a determiner truly? Can it not be that things are all causally determined ad infinitum? I suppose that would qualify as a form of necessitarianism which is a more obscure form of determinism which people do not often comprehend easily.
But it is most certain that free will and determinism are not compatible for the sheer sake of future understanding and acquisition of knowledge. It is absurd to assert, “We are somewhat free and somewhat determined.” Where do we even begin to test this sort of hypothesis? We would have to understand all of nature, or the universe, to verify such a claim. The idea brushes unashamedly with philosophical uncertainty. Whatever you do, don’t hold me to a solid position! We are either determined or everything is absolutely free; the latter usually constitutes a form of chaos which is self-evidently not true. The universe has order necessarily, but more so at differing localities. For brevity, metaphysically, order is of the nature of the Universe; physically, it is distributed unevenly, or quite disorderly. Tame that Universe.