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This forum is open discussion between atheists and all theists to defend and debate their views on religion or non-religion. Please respect that this is a Christian-owned forum and refrain from gratuitous blasphemy. VERY wide leeway is given in range of expression and allowable behavior as compared to other areas of the forum, and moderation is not overly involved unless necessary. Please keep this in mind. Atheists who wish to interact with theists in a way that does not seek to undermine theistic faith may participate in the World Religions Department. Non-debate question and answers and mild and less confrontational discussions can take place in General Theistics.


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Richard Dawkins and Peter Singer

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  • #46
    Originally posted by element771 View Post
    So to say that you have an undergraduate degree in philosophy doesn't say very much about being an expert in the field.
    I think some fields are very different to others in this regard. I think in the sciences there is just so many facts to be learned that it's only possible to brush the barest surface in a simplified way in undergrad, and there are so many sub-fields and there's just not time to get onto the 'real stuff' and thus very few undergraduate science courses would have students directly reading recent journal articles, for example, because that would be way too advanced and specific. Whereas in a subject like philosophy the students do regularly in courses directly read the latest work of the world-renowned experts in the field and critique it and discuss it - many courses are nothing but this - so it is not at all as if there exists "real philosophy" that is being done by the experts and students are only being taught a simplified model in undergrad and are not being exposed to the real thing (which is how scientific fields tend to do it).

    One difference I noticed myself with how this plays out in practice is the comprehensibility (or lack of it) in departmental seminars. Anyone off the street or any university student could sit in on a seminar being given by a philosophy academic about their latest research and have a pretty good chance of understanding most of the seminar. Whereas if a professor from physics were to sit in on a chemistry academic's seminar the chances are fairly good they really would struggle to follow the talk, because they lacked the huge amount of specialized knowledge that are involved in scientific fields.

    I have no problem with the purpose of the book. I don't have any major problem with his science.
    Okay.

    I am not entirely sure that I consider him to be a proper scientist. I know that people will have a stroke when I say that but he publishes books instead of peer reviewed manuscripts. Is that a proper scientist?
    He seems to have published plenty of peer-reviewed journal articles throughout his career.

    I have a real problem about how he uses science as a philosophy. What I mean by that is that he thinks that science is inherently atheistic. In one sense, I agree as science is based on a methodological naturalism. On the other hand, to claim that science naturally leads to atheism is a ridiculous claim.
    I would say that in practice it seems like scientists have a tendency towards being becoming atheists. In general I do not like to over-philosophize science and view it as simply the process by which people try out lots and lots of stuff and see what works reliably and what doesn't. As a result I don't know there's anything all that much deeply philosophical to be said about science... I guess you could construct an argument from the success of science to argue that the universe is a universe where a lot of stuff does seem to work reliably... but that strikes me as a rather weak way of getting to the already universally acknowledge conclusion that 'laws of physics' exist.

    Knock yourself out if you want to be an atheist but if you are going to be an atheist, it should be based on sound arguments and not the ones put forth in TGD.
    Well the arguments I would give for my own atheism are:
    1. I don't find any of the various common philosophical arguments for the existence of God compelling.
    2. I think the problem of naturally-occurring pain and suffering (disease, earthquakes etc) makes it highly probable that a very-powerful very-benevolent God does not exist.
    3. I think the major monotheistic religions (Christianity, Islam, Judaism) have serious internal problems with their holy books, e.g. containing lots of errors, teaching lots of bad things (Genocide of the amelekites, pro-slavery, "Happy is the one who takes your babies and smashes them against the rocks!", anti-homosexuality, etc)
    4. I've never come across any claim that a miracle occurred that I found sufficiently evidenced to be convincing. And I think that the modern information age (youtube, mass media, cellphones etc) seems to indicate a distinct lack of well-attested miracles occur worldwide. And while theologians can try to explain this away (God wants to leave room for doubt/faith etc), historically these religious faiths didn't seem to think God was nearly so reticent about miracles (e.g. Moses parting the dead sea in front of Israelites, Jesus healing people in front of their relatives or his disciples, the Catholic church claiming all kinds of miracles from the prayers of saints etc), but as our abilities to record evidence accurately have improved claims of miracles have steadily disappeared.
    5. I think science has had a great deal of success explaining things that were previously attributed to God, and that the repeated successes of non-theistic explanations over theist ones in explaining everything from the nature of the stars to the origin of life on earth show we should probably be highly skeptical of what few if any (the nature of consciousness and the origin of the universe perhaps) things are still commonly explained by reference to God, and that we are probably justified in believing by induction that science will probably eventually have a decent non-theistic explanation of such things.

    I've probably left something out, but that will do as a sample. Those are reasons why I personally am an atheist, quite aside from anything that is or isn't in TGD. I guess you can give some comment about whether you think those are sound reasons or not if you want.
    Last edited by Starlight; 01-11-2017, 05:50 PM.
    "I hate him passionately", he's "a demonic force" - Tucker Carlson, in private, on Donald Trump
    "Every line of serious work that I have written since 1936 has been written, directly or indirectly, against totalitarianism and for democratic socialism" - George Orwell
    "[Capitalism] as it exists today is, in my opinion, the real source of evils. I am convinced there is only one way to eliminate these grave evils, namely through the establishment of a socialist economy" - Albert Einstein

    Comment


    • #47
      Originally posted by Starlight View Post
      in a subject like philosophy the students do regularly in courses directly read the latest work of the world-renowned experts in the field and critique it and discuss it - many courses are nothing but this - so it is not at all as if there exists "real philosophy" that is being done by the experts and students are only being taught a simplified model in undergrad and are not being exposed to the real thing (which is how scientific fields tend to do it).
      Actually -with a thought to the original topic of this thread- Peter Singer actually gives an amusing example of this in one of the talks I linked to.

      He wrote a paper in the 70s in which he basically argued: Assuming we accept a utilitarian ethic (as he does, and as many readers would, and as I do) and believe that we want to maximize world well-being, then people in the affluent West ought to be donating a truly massive percentage of their income to help save the lives of the people in the 3rd world, and in fact ought only to stop donating when giving an extra dollar hurts them so much that it does more damage to them and/or their capacity to earn further income for donation than it does good in saving a dying African person's life. A utilitarian ethic might therefore demand that we donate 90%+ of our income to charity.

      Singer notes in his talk that many philosophy lecturers started giving his paper out to students as an example of a conclusion that is so obviously absurd that there must be flaws in the reasoning and asking them to write an essay critiquing it and describing the flaws in it. But now, ~40 years later an increasing number of people are actually coming to hold the view that there are no flaws in the argument and that the conclusion is sound (I personally think it largely is). That's an interesting example of undergraduate students engaging directly with an academic paper.
      "I hate him passionately", he's "a demonic force" - Tucker Carlson, in private, on Donald Trump
      "Every line of serious work that I have written since 1936 has been written, directly or indirectly, against totalitarianism and for democratic socialism" - George Orwell
      "[Capitalism] as it exists today is, in my opinion, the real source of evils. I am convinced there is only one way to eliminate these grave evils, namely through the establishment of a socialist economy" - Albert Einstein

      Comment


      • #48
        I like how Starlight completely ignored the challenge after half-heartedly accepting it, and then changed the topic to things he finds compelling about atheism as if no one would notice. Guess he didn't find The God Delusion so mind blowing after all.

        Comment


        • #49
          Originally posted by element771 View Post
          I don't know about this one.

          I am a Christian.

          I am also a physicalist (no souls)

          I am also an annihilationist (no hell).

          I am an orthodox preterist (no rapture).

          I am politically liberal.

          I think humans evolved from lower life forms.

          The earth is 4.6 billion year old with the universe being 13-15 billion years old.

          I am pretty much the antithesis of the stereotypical evangelical Christian yet I have never been challenged once.
          There is a very wide spectrum of Christian views on this forum from all over the world, and even among the moderation staff. People have told Starlight that several times now, but he's got selective memory. Theologyweb does adhere to a relatively universally accepted concept of "orthodox Christianity" in those subfora where orthodox Christians wish to discuss topics without the interference of people who hold unorthodox views. So, for example, when discussing the topic of the trinity among like-minded believers in orthodox Christian only subforums, no one wants to have to have conversation bogged down by nontrinitarians. There's nothing really unusual about that. You see it on a number of Christian forums. Starlight is just sore cause he thought his strange views on Christianity were representative of Christianity at large. There's something wrong with someone who claims to have done as much research as he has on the subject, and gotten it so terribly wrong. It's no wonder he stopped calling himself Christian if by "Christian" he meant this bizarro version of Christianity he keeps railing against. But then, I don't know what to believe from him anymore. I'm beginning to think he's making a lot of it up, or at the very least, prone to severe exaggeration.

          Comment


          • #50
            Originally posted by firstfloor View Post
            Atheism makes no claim therefore requires no justification. It is a position about being unconvinced of someone else's claim.
            I believe that atheism does indeed make a claim concluding that Philosophical Naturalism is the justified result based on Methodological Naturalism, which makes no claim one way or another.

            It is the claim that objective falsifiable knowledge is the only basis for belief. This Dawkins view in a nutshell.

            Peter Singer
            Last edited by shunyadragon; 01-11-2017, 07:14 PM.
            Glendower: I can call spirits from the vasty deep.
            Hotspur: Why, so can I, or so can any man;
            But will they come when you do call for them? Shakespeare’s Henry IV, Part 1, Act III:

            go with the flow the river knows . . .

            Frank

            I do not know, therefore everything is in pencil.

            Comment


            • #51
              Originally posted by element771 View Post
              I don't know about this one.

              I am a Christian.

              I am also a physicalist (no souls)

              I am also an annihilationist (no hell).

              I am an orthodox preterist (no rapture).

              I am politically liberal.

              I think humans evolved from lower life forms.

              The earth is 4.6 billion year old with the universe being 13-15 billion years old.

              I am pretty much the antithesis of the stereotypical evangelical Christian yet I have never been challenged once.
              Annihilationism does not teach that there is no hell, as Jesus affirmed the existence of hell. Properly taught, it does not deny the eternality of punishment either. It is a different interpretation of the duration of the conscious experience of the punishment.
              "I am not angered that the Moral Majority boys campaign against abortion. I am angry when the same men who say, "Save OUR children" bellow "Build more and bigger bombers." That's right! Blast the children in other nations into eternity, or limbless misery as they lay crippled from "OUR" bombers! This does not jell." - Leonard Ravenhill

              Comment


              • #52
                Originally posted by Adrift View Post
                And he got taken in by The God Delusion.
                A book that has even made atheist philosophers cringe because of its poor arguments often based on straw man misrepresentations or treating fringe beliefs as being the norm.

                I'm always still in trouble again

                "You're by far the worst poster on TWeb" and "TWeb's biggest liar" --starlight (the guy who says Stalin was a right-winger)
                "Overall I would rate the withdrawal from Afghanistan as by far the best thing Biden's done" --Starlight
                "Of course, human life begins at fertilization that’s not the argument." --Tassman

                Comment


                • #53
                  Originally posted by Starlight View Post
                  It amuses me how often you nutters tell each other this and the absurd grounds you use for doing so.

                  Me: "You know that in some parts of the world most Christians are fine with abortion right? And that not everyone shares the US evangelical obsession with it?"
                  Various nutters on this forum: "He has no idea what orthodox Christian beliefs are!!!!!!!!!!!!"
                  Correct me if I'm wrong but didn't you once claim that it was only Christians in the U.S. who had a problem with abortion whereas Christians from other parts of the world largely accepted it.

                  I'm always still in trouble again

                  "You're by far the worst poster on TWeb" and "TWeb's biggest liar" --starlight (the guy who says Stalin was a right-winger)
                  "Overall I would rate the withdrawal from Afghanistan as by far the best thing Biden's done" --Starlight
                  "Of course, human life begins at fertilization that’s not the argument." --Tassman

                  Comment


                  • #54
                    Originally posted by firstfloor View Post
                    Atheism makes no claim therefore requires no justification. It is a position about being unconvinced of someone else's claim.
                    That sounds more like some type of agnostic than an atheist. An atheist says that there is no God which sure sounds a lot like a claim to me.

                    I'm always still in trouble again

                    "You're by far the worst poster on TWeb" and "TWeb's biggest liar" --starlight (the guy who says Stalin was a right-winger)
                    "Overall I would rate the withdrawal from Afghanistan as by far the best thing Biden's done" --Starlight
                    "Of course, human life begins at fertilization that’s not the argument." --Tassman

                    Comment


                    • #55
                      Originally posted by Adrift View Post
                      There is a very wide spectrum of Christian views on this forum from all over the world, and even among the moderation staff. People have told Starlight that several times now, but he's got selective memory. Theologyweb does adhere to a relatively universally accepted concept of "orthodox Christianity" in those subfora where orthodox Christians wish to discuss topics without the interference of people who hold unorthodox views. So, for example, when discussing the topic of the trinity among like-minded believers in orthodox Christian only subforums, no one wants to have to have conversation bogged down by nontrinitarians. There's nothing really unusual about that. You see it on a number of Christian forums. Starlight is just sore cause he thought his strange views on Christianity were representative of Christianity at large. There's something wrong with someone who claims to have done as much research as he has on the subject, and gotten it so terribly wrong. It's no wonder he stopped calling himself Christian if by "Christian" he meant this bizarro version of Christianity he keeps railing against. But then, I don't know what to believe from him anymore. I'm beginning to think he's making a lot of it up, or at the very least, prone to severe exaggeration.
                      And it isn't about abortion but virtually every assertion he makes about Christianity. It is like he was part of some far out cult and thinks it was mainstream Christianity.

                      I'm always still in trouble again

                      "You're by far the worst poster on TWeb" and "TWeb's biggest liar" --starlight (the guy who says Stalin was a right-winger)
                      "Overall I would rate the withdrawal from Afghanistan as by far the best thing Biden's done" --Starlight
                      "Of course, human life begins at fertilization that’s not the argument." --Tassman

                      Comment


                      • #56
                        Originally posted by Starlight View Post
                        He seems to have published plenty of peer-reviewed journal articles throughout his career.
                        I am on my iPad so I will respond to everything else tomorrow as I can't type as efficiently. However I wanted to address this to see if you could prove me wrong.

                        Last time I checked, I could only find 2 publications in the literature and it seemed that these were during his graduate work. If you can find more, let me know as I don't like to have my facts wrong.

                        Comment


                        • #57
                          Originally posted by Starlight View Post
                          I will need to reread the book and take some notes about the arguments as its been several months since I read the book and I didn't take notes the first time through. While I am sure you feel you could 'rip it to pieces' I am extremely skeptical of your ability to do so in a way that I would find convincing. I have a degree in philosophy and experience in apologetics and have spent 15 years reading online arguments about religion, so and am very very very well aware of the standard pitfalls surrounding the various arguments for and against religion and what people do and don't argue, and I felt the book was very well-argued when I read it, and thus doubt you could make any argument against it that would be new to me and that I would find convincing. I am sure you could rip it to pieces in your imagination though.
                          r/iamverysmart

                          Comment


                          • #58
                            Originally posted by Starlight View Post
                            Although such behavior is somewhat understandable given that this forum does try pretty hard to be a "safe space" for people with a very particular viewpoint on Christianity - any new Christian posters with the 'wrong' views are quickly banned from the Christian-only sections of the site and have their faith designation forcibly changed to not say "Christian"
                            So what? The rules have always been clear that to be able to tag yourself as a Christian and post in the Christian only sections you need to assent to an orthodox form of faith. If someone doesn't read the rules properly that's their problem.

                            And it's not a "very particular" viewpoint at all. The orthodox framework allows a wide variety of differing opinions on various points of belief.

                            Comment


                            • #59
                              Originally posted by Adrift View Post
                              I like how Starlight completely ignored the challenge after half-heartedly accepting it, and then changed the topic to things he finds compelling about atheism as if no one would notice. Guess he didn't find The God Delusion so mind blowing after all.
                              As usual you've got it completely backward. Initially I wasn't interested because it would require me rereading TGD and taking notes, but I am now actually rereading the book and taking notes and so am discussing it with element somewhat as I go with a view to at least somewhat taking him up on his challenge.

                              I think we can do without your completely backward posts in this thread and bizarro claims about me where you repeatedly make very basic mis-statements. Please refrain from posting further in this thread.

                              Originally posted by rogue06 View Post
                              Correct me if I'm wrong but didn't you once claim that it was only Christians in the U.S. who had a problem with abortion whereas Christians from other parts of the world largely accepted it.
                              As far as the Western world goes, at any rate, the main advocates of the pro-life position have been the RCC and the US evangelicals. Mainstream protestant denominations in the rest of the Western world have not tended to be such strong opponents of abortion.

                              Here is how an encyclopedia about my country describes the religious views on the abortion debates of the 70s here:
                              The Catholic Church was consistent in its strong opposition to abortion, but the stance of other churches shifted over time. In the 1970s the Anglican, Baptist, Methodist and Presbyterian churches all took a relatively liberal stance on abortion.

                              Though there remain some vocal anti-abortion advocates within the mainstream protestant denominations here, on the whole the churches have generally retained their relatively liberal overall stances to the extent that they have any official or overall stance. New Zealand appears pretty typical of other countries in the Western world in this regard, apart from America where mainstream protestant groups are often fairly strongly anti-abortion.

                              Here's an empirical comparison: A google search over the Southern Baptist website (site:sbc.net) for 'abortion' yields 584 results including numerous pro-life resolutions by the SBC, while the same search over the NZ baptist website (site:baptist.org.nz) for 'abortion' yields 1 result in an article mentioning the US Southern Baptists' opposition to abortion, and likewise a search of the international Baptist website (site:bwanet.org) yields one result which spits a 404 error. The UK baptist website (site:baptist.org.uk) gives 16 hits for 'abortion', although most appear to be duplicates or unimportant, but there is one highly-relevant document - a 26 page joint report of the UK Methodists, Baptists, and United Reformed churches written in 2008 that examines the moral issues surrounding abortion and many other issues in detail. The key statements in that document appear to be:
                              "It has been argued elsewhere that it is not possible to determine the moment when personhood begins in the developmental continuum of the embryo and fetus... In adults there are occasions when the ending of human life is seen as the
                              lesser of two (or more) evils, and a blanket statement against abortion is difficult to maintain. Certainly, abortion should never be undertaken lightly or without proper consideration.
                              ...
                              For those holding a gradualist view of the development of human life an earlier abortion is likely to be morally more acceptable. Some holding an absolute view might also be able to accept that, as a consequence of the reduced medical problems, where termination is to take place it is morally more acceptable that this happen earlier in pregnancy.
                              ....
                              If cases arise where the continuation of a pregnancy is likely to cause the death of the woman then a very strong argument arises to allow abortion. This does not, of itself, suggest that the life of the woman has greater value, but simply that it is not reasonable to require an individual to risk her own life for another. In such a judgement the risks must be weighed carefully for in any pregnancy there is inherent risk to the woman and the simple existence of risk would not therefore be sufficient to justify an abortion. Similarly this line of thought challenges us to consider what constitutes sufficient risk in terms of the woman's mental health to justify the abortion of a fetus. There will be cases when an unplanned or unexpected pregnancy will cause distress. The difficulty lies in deciding what circumstances constitute a level of distress for the woman where the pastoral imperative is to terminate the pregnancy. These are not easy or clear cut issues. Christians will have different ethical responses, but are challenged to frame them within sensitive pastoral approaches."
                              Like I said, abortion is a Big Issue for US evangelicals, but mainstream protestant denominations across the rest of the western world are largely unconcerned with and/or liberal on the issue.
                              Last edited by Starlight; 01-11-2017, 10:52 PM.
                              "I hate him passionately", he's "a demonic force" - Tucker Carlson, in private, on Donald Trump
                              "Every line of serious work that I have written since 1936 has been written, directly or indirectly, against totalitarianism and for democratic socialism" - George Orwell
                              "[Capitalism] as it exists today is, in my opinion, the real source of evils. I am convinced there is only one way to eliminate these grave evils, namely through the establishment of a socialist economy" - Albert Einstein

                              Comment


                              • #60
                                Originally posted by element771 View Post
                                Last time I checked, I could only find 2 publications in the literature and it seemed that these were during his graduate work. If you can find more, let me know as I don't like to have my facts wrong.
                                Wiki's listing of his academic papers. It lists 33. Not sure if it's complete. There's a CV here that appears current through 2005 at least that has about 90 articles, but it doesn't clearly distinguish academic publications from submissions titled things like "Why I won't debate creationists".

                                If I make the claim that there are no apples in the barrel, you would be justified in asking me for justification of my position. Claiming that there is no God (A-theism) is a claim, even if it is a negative one.

                                I never understood this position other than to simply get out of the need for justification. I believe that any belief should be backed with justification.
                                Generally I just take the pragmatic view of "anyone who ever wants to try to convince someone else of something is obviously going to have to make arguments to convince them."

                                But social forces create and propagate 'default' views. For example, in the first half of the 20th century nearly every single non-Jew in the Western world would have labelled themselves 'Christian' - it was a religious monoculture. Everyone was to some sense Christian by default because everyone else in society was, and so anyone wanting to mount an argument for some other view had a huge uphill battle. But now, in the 21st century, I look round my city and there are places of worship for Buddhists, Sikhs, Muslims, Christians, Mormons, Hindus, etc though the plurality of plenty of people are non-religious and don't attend any of them. In this multicultural society most young people have friends raised in different religious traditions, and the default religious view tends to quickly become 'no religion' because kids often think "well my friend was raised Hindu and I was raised Christian, but I've never seen any evidence that my religion was right and his was wrong, so I don't want to go around claiming Christianity is true because that would imply I'm denying the value of his Hinduism." So people increasingly tend towards saying things like "there's value in all religions and I don't judge and they are all paths to meaning and universal truth" or "seems like this whole religion thing is just a waste of time, and all the religions teach different things and seem pretty man-made."
                                "I hate him passionately", he's "a demonic force" - Tucker Carlson, in private, on Donald Trump
                                "Every line of serious work that I have written since 1936 has been written, directly or indirectly, against totalitarianism and for democratic socialism" - George Orwell
                                "[Capitalism] as it exists today is, in my opinion, the real source of evils. I am convinced there is only one way to eliminate these grave evils, namely through the establishment of a socialist economy" - Albert Einstein

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