Response to "A Concise Refutation of Materialist Atheism"

This is a response to the post "A Concise Refutation of Materialist Atheism"

What is the assumption here? One clearly must have data. What does the collection of data assume? It assumes a material existent. Science cannot work with anything that is not a material existent.

It is not strictly true to say that science cannot work with anything that is not a material existent. Science can and sometimes does work by implication. While the materially existent may not be directly observable, it is necessary to add that it must also have absolutely no impact on anything that is existent in order to be complete outside of the realm of science. Many theories in science are based on the effects of a thing rather than the direct observation of the thing itself. It must, of course, affect something that is existent and observable. A god, if there is one, could not take any action or have any effect on the universe after its initiation to be certain of not being detected.
You are making a huge assumption also that said god or gods are necessarily not materially existent.
You have not made clear what it means to be “not a material existent” thoughts and even concepts are slaves to material origins.

“There is no scientific evidence for the existence of God” are clearly offering an irrational argument.

This argument, even if false, is not irrational. It is a bit like saying that there is no visual (light) evidence for gravity; ignoring that this is not strictly true lets assume that there is no reason why there should be any light evidence for gravity, the statement is not irrational. It is at worst, irrelevant. The statement is either true or false. The either is, or there is not, scientific evidence for God. The conclusion of many people, though not all, is that there is not.

Science assumes material data. To apply its methods and argumentation to a deity question is to have a fundamental misunderstanding of what science is. or a misunderstanding of what a deity is?

Also, the problem of universals shows that there are indeed non-material existents. Most or all of math is a non-material existent. One cannot find math anywhere as a physical object.
While it might be tempting to view math as an existent, it is not accurate. Math does not exist outside of the perception of minds. Even these concept are emergent from the matter in a human brain. I take it that you are presuming that math is existent in the sense that even if there were no people; two planets and two planets would still make four planets.
This is not strictly true. Math is a system by which we humans conceptualise and compartmentalise the physical rules of the universe. If you have two apples and add two more apples you never suddenly have 3,000 apples. This is based on the physical rules of the universe. We give names to distinctions like 1 and 2 but they are just concepts in our minds.

One knows that the number two really exists, but where is it?
Only in minds. Nowhere else. The concept exits, that is all it is. The very idea of "number" is also only a concept, dependant on a mind which is in turn dependant on material.

Two tables before me and two chairs behind me both use the exact same existent “two.”
You cognate them as sharing a common distinction. If you had always been told that what everyone else calls “two” was called “four”, you would see four chairs and four tables. In the absense of a mind what sense does two or four make here or chair or table for that matter. In the absense of a mind there simple is; though the is doesn't know it :)

Thus, one cannot reasonably claim that there is no such thing as a non-material existent.
I think you can. That there are emergent effects which seem like non-physical existents is certainly true. You feel like you mind is separate from your brain. Thoughts seem like disembodied existents in themselves. They aren’t of course, they are as reliant on the operation of matter and physical forces as falling rocks are. The most that can be said is that the universe has a particular state (i.e. the laws of physics). It is tempting to suggest that these "laws" are non-material existents but they themselves don't make sense outside of material existence, they don't operate and are not even coherent without the presumption of the physical.

This opens us up to another realm where there are things that are real, and exist, apart from physical phenomena, such as mathematics and consciousness.
When a person dies, they no longer have consciousness as the required physical activity of which consciousness was an emergent property has ceased. Consciousness itself a physical phenomena.

Thus, the evidence based atheist who says there is no evidence for God, and therefore, he does not exist is using an invalid method for the debate. One cannot use any purely material based approach to the question of a non-material existent, such as God.
Again, you must justify the assertion that God is a non-material existent.

In many cases, this confidence turns into arrogance, which in turn explains some of the recklessness when a materialist glibly applies the method to non-material questions.

I also suspect that when a philosophically astute challenger points out these obvious errors of materialism, the materialist suddenly feels exposed and naked, since his previously unassailable method has been shown useless (for some questions) with arguments he has never thought about before. And, a scientist usually does not take very well to exposure that his previously reliable intellectual approach, (and often by implication his reputation of being “smart”) is shattered so easily. I think a lot of the materialist evasion after being challenged effectively is a turning away on their part to the truth shown in the argument coming from from a fear of looking directly at the issue, because an entire world-view will be shattered for them, in many cases.

This seems a rather arrogant conclusion and clear assumption that your argument as laid out here is completely unassailable. I don’t mean to be confrontational but you are using materialist in a condescending manner here and as a materialist I find it a tad provocative! That aside, it is an interest topic and look forward to your response. I need more convincing on the idea of non-material existants and you must establish that "God" is non-material.

Homosexuality

There is a prevalent opinion in the dimmer recesses of society of american society. Not only American society, but that particular community certainly seems to be the most vocal. I do not think that the prevalence of a high degree of religious conviction in this same community is coincidence. I was recently reading a piece on a Christian website (sorry but I can't find it again for a link) where they attempt to build a case for homosexuality being a product of nurture rather than nature. The case was something along lines that most of you will have encountered before. Absent father, over protective or possesive mother combined with a "sensitive" young man etc. Interestingly, I would love to hear an explanation of what a "sensetive" young man is and how these people believe that this "sensetivity" came about. They are obviously presuming that all people are born having roughly the same starting nature. Presumably all boys start out insensitive, and somehow become sensitive. Boiling down the sexualisation of some young men to enviornmental and maybe psychological factors.
I have issues with this. As a hetrosexual male I am certain that I could not be socialied into being gay. I have absolutely no doubt about this. Most hetrosexual people have no doubt about their being hetrosexual. The sexual responce is for most people, men especially, very very strong. It is not ambiguous or vague and has nothing to do with how we characterise the opposite sex. For men usually, not liking a particular womans character does not alter her attractiveness. If you meet a real, gold plated, peer reviewed and confirmed bitch, she can still be really hot. In the case of women, their sexual attraction to men can be governed to a fair degree on their opinion of the guy as a person with psyical considerations being much less important. These ideas are generalisations or course.
The site goes on to talk some complete horseshit about how homosexuals who go out partying are really only looking for sex and conquest. Yeah! The majority of young hetrosexual men must then be going out to nightclubs and bars looking mainly for a deep and fulfilling human connection and the sex is only incidental.

This is the really really weak evidence for homosexuality being a result of nurture. I say nature here as I am not certain what particular aspect of nature is responsible, it could be genetic, it could a factor from fetal development a combination of these things, whatever. I think it is pretty obvious from the evidence that your sexuality is something you are born with.

Consider this. There are many physical conditions that people are born with which are related to their sexual assignment. Some people are born with a mixture of the sexual organs. penis and uterus, penis and vagina etc. These conditions are not thought of as being a reaction to psycological pressures. "My father was such a cold asshole, who was sooo absent that in addition to my penis I was also born with a uterus." No one questions this. If you are unlucky enough to be a person for whom the sexual assignment proplem occurs in your brain, well your in trouble. Brains can be male or female. There are actual differences in male and female brains. There would have to be, otherwise the sexes would exibit more or less the same traits. If you have a very predominately female brain and your body is male then you aren't gay. You are woman in a man's body. This is about as extreme as a gender identity condition can be. But it is not an all or nothing proposition. Every brain falls somewhere along a range of possibilities with entirely male and entirely female being on the polar ends. I suspect there are very few men who have entirely male brains and very few women with entirely female brains. It is also not so simple as a degree of male or female. We know from study of the brain that different people manifest different amounts of function in various parts of the brain. An example might be the left brian/ right brain idea where the left brain is believed to be the hemisphere for logic and reasoning and the right brain intuition and emotion. Your ability to speak comes from your left brain etc etc. Some people have very strong brain biases in certain areas. This can mean they have great talent at a particular thing or find a particular thing nearly impossible. Its seems reasonable to me then that peoples brain develop in a wide ranging variety of ways. Why do some people (who just so happen to be almost exclusively religious) think that the parts of the brain responsible for sexality and sexual attraction should be immune from this varience? If you can be born with a penis and a uterus, why can't you be born with a penis and brain that finds men attractive? Even the term homosexuality is broad and encompasses a wide range of more specific sexualities. For example, you will probably have met gay men or gay women who act entirely as you would generally expect for their gender and you have probably met gay men or women who act much more in accordance with what you would expect from the opposite sex. All of this varience and indeed homosexuality itself seems to me to be an utterly unmysterious thing. It is no more immoral to be gay than it is to like action movies, or being the sporty type. I think that religion is probably the only reason why western socitey even considers homosexual to still be a debatable topic. The religious can't recognise it as being inborn in people without their precious, ancient and horrible little faiths taking yet another knock. Sadly, this nasty little predujuce is probably going to be with us a while yet.

Incidentally, I think our emerging understanding of the brain is making it more and more difficult to believe in a "soul" and still maintain the illusion of rationality, but we'll leave that for another time.

Why I think evolution theory is trouble for religion.

Throughout history there have been many scientific discoveries that have cast a long shadow on religious belief. From discovering the water cycle to heliocentricity. Of course, some people do still pray for rain. Undoubtedly these people would sneer at a tribal rain dance but think their own version is a serious and worthwhile undertaking. Some people just refuse to learn!

The one theory in modern science that really seems to make the religious uncomfortable is evolution. Evolution is an almost universally accepted theory amongst people who know anything about it. There are of course some dissenting voices in the scientific community but almost every theory has a few detractors. It is a reasonable statement to make that evolution is a proven theory is so far as any theory can be proven. There are libraries of evidence to support the idea. Infact, there is so much evidence that a lot of religious groups and organisations have been forced to accept it. They usually do so with some made up new idea that God started it off or something to that effect. In the modern world, educated people laugh at creationists. We laugh because they continue to believe something that has been shown to be false. They are sticking to their guns (and/or bibles as the case may be). The more reasonable theists out there are not quite so stubborn as to simply deny evolution. They know it happened so they instead try to go around it and pretend it doesn’t really matter to their faith. They decide that their reading of the bible as metaphor is more sophisticated that those silly creationists. This strikes me as one of the most intellectually dishonest things any large movement has ever done. They are claiming that the countless generations of people who came before them who were almost all creationist were wrong to read the bible literally. Silly creationists. The reasonable and honest conclusion would be that the bible is wrong and has been clearly shown to be. They can’t do that though. To acknowledge such massive errors in the bible would reduce its value to roughly what most atheists take it be already; for all but historical/mythological purposes: worthless. It would become much the same as a statue of Zeus. It may have some value as a cultural artefact but it has nothing to say about our reality. The standard tactic employed is to simply overlook the old testament. That is the part of the bible with all the really nasty bits where God acts like a complete asshole. If we can just overlook that half of the bible we can still hold on to the good stuff. Well, we will still pretend that the old testament stuff is still valuable but that it is written in a metaphorical way and you have to be really clever to understand it properly Lets pretend that instead of some ignorant babble written by a couple of ancient goat herders, it is actually really amazing and important insights into human behaviour! Cool.

So what about the New testament? That is surely immune to evolutionary attack. After all, it was only about 2000 years ago and evolution doesn’t have much to say about a time span that short. Right?…..well no, not quite.
We are apparently made in God’s image. People once thought that meant he looked human but the more modern evolution-friendly interpretation is that we are made in his image spiritually. Ah, right. We have souls you see, they are what make us like god and what elevate us above animals in the grand scheme of things. Uh-oh. Doesn’t evolution posit that we were once animals. Even worse, it suggests that we are still because evolution is a continuous process. We are still evolving. Maybe we are animal-like now in comparison to what we will become? If were animals in the past, did we still have souls back then? Could we commit crimes like murder? When a lion kills another males cubs in order to mate with the female, is he committing infanticide. Will God be angry with them? Was there some point in our evolution when God popped in and decided it was time for us to start having souls? That would have been an uncomfortable generation.
“Hey God, will I see my mommy in heaven when I die?”
“Nope sorry, your mother is an animal”

Evolutionary theory should and to the critical and unclogged mind does remove the notion of a soul and with it washes away most if not all religious belief.
Clinging to a concept long after it has been rendered obsolete is not the act of a rational mind. Neither for that matter is the belief in invisible people. We once believed in all manner fantastical creatures and happenings and powers, but all of these, every last one that has met the scrutiny of scientific investigation has fallen away. Most of the core doctrines of modern religions have also been shown to be false; the religious just refuse to notice. One day, Jesus Christ as the son of God will take his place along with Yahweh amongst the dead Gods who all lament those two powers they could not overcome. Reason and Science.

It is sad but I think almost inevitable that new religions will rise to replace those who that have fallen, making grand claims about the universe and all powerful entities who created and command it until the next wave of scientific progress washes away those fantasies with a torrent of fact and evidence. What form will these gods take? What will their miracles be in a technological society? Would you doubt for a second that the adherents of those religions will look back on the followers and Yahweh and Allah and shake their heads, wondering why people believed they were communicating with God? They might even ask their God about it.

Questions for Moderate Christians.

Moderate Christians generally don’t like being pinned down about the specifics of their faith. My own opinion on the matter is that they just don’t want to shine too bright a light on their beliefs. Moderate Christians have a tendency to be people who just aren’t quite gullible or unreasonable enough to embrace their faith in full. Fundamentalism is really nothing more than believing everything your holy book tells you no matter how false to fact or ridiculous it may be. The moderate desperately wants to believe in their chosen faith but can’t quite bring themselves to believe that telling a single lie and not being sorry will see you literally roasting away in hell for eternity. In order to better convince themselves that it is reasonable to believe outlandish things (Jesus was the son of God etc. etc.) they engage in impressive amounts of “theology”. Theology might be well described as an academic attempt to make bullshit plausible. Speak vaguely enough, propose all kinds of insubstantial modes of communication and knowing and soon enough the existential possibilities are endless.

There are some bitter pills to swallow along the way though. The bible simply cannot be the inerrant word of God. It is way too full of holes for that claim to stand up. The moderate then will suggest all kinds of roles for the bible and how it is sort of from God but obviously influenced by the human authors. Another problem the bible presents is that it states a lot of stuff that the moderate finds distasteful so this requires that large sections of the bible be relegated to metaphor or an expression of a concept in the language of the time, etc. etc. It can be fairly solidly shown that the bible is not a reliable historical document. Most moderates will at the very least admit that it is not 100% reliable and some will go so far as to concede that it really is not all that reliable at all. They will often suggest though that historical accuracy was not the bible's purpose. It was written to convey a message and much of it is not intended to be factual, merely parable and metaphor to get the point across. Ok. Fair enough.

What bugs me about the moderate position is that after such admissions and concessions they will pipe up with a solid concrete statement such as “Jesus is the son of God”. This bouncing between a realistic acceptance of the bibles unreliability to a ridiculous belief that some guy knocking around two thousand years ago was some form of man/god is carried off not only like it is a reasonable move but with the insinuation that it rigorously thought through and intellectually robust. I don’t doubt that many a worthy mind has invested itself in the effort to make faith reasonable but this endeavour is simply not borne of a desire for truth but from a desire to make a comforting fantasy real.

Reality has many qualities that just don’t sit well with humans. It is not fair for example. Those who do wrong quite often get away with it completely. Many of the worst villains in history have never faced any kind of justice for what they did. They were arrogant, cruel, selfish, and vicious and served only their own desires and it worked out great for them. Our desire for things to be fair drives people to believe in all kinds of silliness. Karma, reincarnation (possibly with penalties), posthumous judgement and many more wonderful justice inducing cosmic guarantees.
Life ends. This is also something that doesn’t sit too well with most people. No problem, we’ll just pretend that death isn’t the end of life. Now comes the fun bit. Lets combine some of these ideas. There will be justice (not in this life of course, that would be too visible.), and you get to live forever. The real beauty of this combination is that you can start to control people’s behaviour by threatening them with undesirable posthumous punishment and at the same time reward good behaviour (or at least compliant behaviour) with paradise, no less!, beyond the grave. Throw into the mix the all too prevalent male desire to dominate women, all manner of social prejudice and a general desire for control and supremacy and viola!, you have religion.

Moderates are in general basically good people who want to believe God has got their back and is going to sort everything out. No harm in that right? Maybe, maybe not. I object in general to ignorance, be it mild or gross especially when wilfully indulged. I also think that most attitudes held by humans have a tendency to go through cycles. Moderate now may not be moderate tomorrow. A moderate teacher also does not guarantee moderate students. Moderate faith also lends a notion of reasonableness to more extreme versions. A religious moderate and a religious fundamentalist agree about many of the ridiculous ideas underlying their faith. The will of their common fictional overlord is where they differ.

Here are some questions then for moderate believers.

1. Do you think the bible is the inerrant word of God? If not, why not?

2. If you answered no to question 1, why do you think that it is reasonable to believe that a man wielded magical powers and rose from the dead and was a god and a man at the same time; I am assuming that you do not generally believe in these things. What is it about the Jesus case that is so compelling as to make believing the impossible reasonable?

3. Why does God command and condone evil acts in the bible (genocide, Rape, slavery etc.) if he is good?

4. Why is it not more reasonable to assume that God is evil given his rampage of destruction throughout the O.T?

5. In what way would an evil God have acted differently and can you imagine a way in which God might have acted more morally at any point in the O.T.?

6. Why is Jesus’ character so different from the God of the O.T. if they are (inexplicably) the same person?

8. Is it conceivable to you that Christianity might not actually be true (in the sense that Jesus might just have been an irregular Joe.)?

9. When considering the idea that there is no God, is your reaction one of distaste or disagreement and could you be happy living in a universe where there was no God?

10. Why do you think (assuming you do) that Mohammed was not in direct contact with God (Allah)? There is a holy book and many witnesses who profess he was. If you are willing to believe such things are possible, why do you not believe this?

There are many similar questions that could be asked but by now I’m sure you get the gist of it.