Atheist blogger converts

[Keep The Reason]

Now of that I have very little doubt. Bigots hold to their beliefs very stubbornly making all kinds of absurd demands in order to justify themselves.

Yes, I am a bigot. I am trying to understand someone's views. I'm such a bad person.

Heeeey, ya broke yer cherry.

cherry.png (101.55 KiB) Viewed 245 times

Now welcome to A Christian and an Atheist!

[gary_s]

Now of that I have very little doubt. Bigots hold to their beliefs very stubbornly making all kinds of absurd demands in order to justify themselves.

There you go again, Mitch. At least this wasn't directed at me this time. But honestly, I don't understand why you persist with this kind of behavior when it's been made abundantly clear that it gets you nowhere with people. You will push and push and insult PB until you eventually have to put him on ignore because he isn't going to change his mind just because you call him a bigot. Then there's no conversation. And what did that accomplish?

I suggest PB along with everyone else put Mitch on ignore first and hope he gets bored with no one to insult eventually leaves.

[PlunderBunny]

To be fair, I did introduce the word bigot first, when I responded to this:

To put it in a way that most atheists can understand (that is frankly in a way that allows them to indulge their desire to have contempt for those who believe in something they do not), the theistic roots of our culture has embedded theistic premises in many of our most cherished ideas and philsophical explorations and thus we can often find them leading us towards and convincing us to belief in God without our being aware of it.

With this:

I don't share the blatant bigotry you apparently have towards atheists, but otherwise I agree completely with this.

[gary_s]

Touche

[mitchellmckain]

Let's dumb her beliefs down to a ridiculous level.

No thank you. It is your dumbing down of her beliefs that I have been objecting to in the first place.

Save your argument for someone who is actually saying such things.

Okay. . . Evolution can account for the 'herd morality' that some people promote. It can account for us wanting to survive as a species. If these have no influence on morality then I am COMPLETELY off-base.

Evolution can account for instincts. But no I don't believe that it can acount for desires and I don't even believe that any such desire is that widespread among human beings or animals. The most that we can say is that the survival of the species selects for adaptations (including instincts) that are advantageous to the survival of the species.

Would it make you happy if I instead say "evolution gave us our bodies, including our brains"?

The brain is a part of the body and is indeed a product of biological evolution.

Really? I feel like our reasons are more similar than not.

Regardless, evolution is not one of my reasons.

[PlunderBunny]

*Disclaimer* I am extremely tired and have had some alcohol. *Disclaimer*

Really great response, Mitchell. My favorite part was when you didn't actually address any of my points.

And you wonder why people become frustrated with you.

No thank you. It is your dumbing down of her beliefs that I have been objecting to in the first place.

Save your argument for someone who is actually saying such things.

The point wasn't to dumb down her beliefs. My argument there had nothing to do with her beliefs. I was setting up an analogy. If you had read and comprehended what I wrote, you would understand that.

Evolution can account for instincts. But no I don't believe that it can acount for desires and I don't even believe that any such desire is that widespread among human beings or animals. The most that we can say is that the survival of the species selects for adaptations (including instincts) that are advantageous to the survival of the species.

Doesn't really agree or disagree with my point.

The brain is a part of the body and is indeed a product of biological evolution.

I believe the mind is the product of the brain. But I guess that was too hard for you too infer when I stated 'evolution can account for our bodies and our minds'.

Regardless, evolution is not one of my reasons.

Nor is it one of mine.

What amazes me is your ability to infer and assume where it doesn't apply, then take things too literally when you should be inferring and assuming.

[mitchellmckain]

The point wasn't to dumb down her beliefs. My argument there had nothing to do with her beliefs. I was setting up an analogy. If you had read and comprehended what I wrote, you would understand that.

I did read what yoou wrote and only found it extremely offensive. Shall I demonstrate?

A dog goes to his food bowl and doesn't find any food there and thus thinks that reason dictates that his owner does not exist. Shall this be an good analogy for atheists deciding that God does not exist. It is insulting isn't it?

I extend the courtesy of looking at the actual reasons atheists give for deciding that God does not exist rather than making insulting analogies, don't you think that courtesy requires this?

Evolution can account for instincts. But no I don't believe that it can account for desires and I don't even believe that any such desire is that widespread among human beings or animals. The most that we can say is that the survival of the species selects for adaptations (including instincts) that are advantageous to the survival of the species.

Doesn't really agree or disagree with my point.

It disagrees with your idea that morality is just an example of the instincts behind herd behavior. It disagrees with your assertion that evolution can account for a desire for species survial. It disagrees with your argument that by accounting for such a desire that I see no evidence for, it provides some kind of logical foundation for morality. I am basically saying that these have nothing to do with morality and that you are indeed competely off base. BUT I don't see how objective evidence could confirm this either way, so I guess these are opinions on both of our parts.

The brain is a part of the body and is indeed a product of biological evolution.

I believe the mind is the product of the brain. But I guess that was too hard for you too infer when I stated 'evolution can account for our bodies and our minds'.

Do you want me to comment on your insults? You do see them right or am I twisting your words to see this as an insult? You think the insults are appropriate? If I responded with similar intimations that your are incapable of understanding what I say will you then go on on about how I am impossible and how my personality is intolerable the way that so many other people are doing? Do you see right here how these things gets started? Because my usual response is to play the same game and show you that I TOO can insult your intellegence. Perhaps I can even do it better and that is why people lose it. But do you REALLY think that it is right to expect having an exclusive right to doing such things? That it is ok for you to do this but not ok for me to do the same thing right back?

I do not believe the mind is a product of the brain. In fact I think there is exceptional evidence to the contrary. What is life? And what role does information have? These are the questions that I address and think are crucial. And I think the answers set the mind and body apart. No I don't believe in a metaphysical dualism between the mind and body. With regards to the mind body problem in philosophy, I am a physicalist. That is I believe that the mind is no less of a physical entity than the body. But I don't let my rejection of metaphysical dualism blind me to the reasons why people believe in such things and accept the unjustified conclusion that this means that the mind is nothing but a function of the brain.

So. What are my answers to those questions?

Life is a process of self-organization, and it is this process rather than the medium in which it takes place that makes something a living organism. To such an organizational process, information plays a crucial role, and by tracking how information is transmitted we can see the outlines of the process and the limits of the identity of the organism. So for biological organisms, where is the information found and how is it transmitted? This is well known right? It is found encoded in a molecule called DNA and it is in this form that the information is transmitted to the next generation.

How about the mind then? Can that be described as a process of self-organization? Yes, it certainly can. What about the information for that organizational process? Is that found in DNA and is it by DNA that it is transmitted to the next generation? No it is not. Where is it found then? It is easiest to identify in all the mediums of human communication and it by such mediums that information is transmitted to the next generation. Thanks to Dawkins we even have a name for it in analogy with genes, the units of biological information. We call it memes.

Thus the mind is NOT a function of the brain. The mind does not do what it does because the brain is what it is, any more than a computer does what it does simply because of the hardware. There is something else there, provided in the case of the computer and which grows and develops in the case of the mind. The mind is not a biological orgamism because its information is not found or transmitted using DNA. We should rightly call it a memetic organism instead. Certainly by analogy we can say that the information of human communication develops in a process similar to evolution to some extent. One difference being that, what we learned by one individual in his lifetime can not only be transmitted to the next generation but to everyone else in his own life time. But the word we usually use for this is learning rather than evolution.

So lets go back to your query, "Would it make you happy if I instead say "evolution gave us our bodies, including our brains"?

The answer is no. There is two seperate processes of development. If you looking for a way to say it that I would be happy with, it would be something like this.

We can account for morality by the evolutionary like process of human learning.

Does that answer your question?



Comments on my personality and abilities, in which I see no understanding on your part, I will simply ignore.

P.S. I am trying to do things gary's way of talking about what is courteous and all that crap. I find that really tedious. But ok, I give it a try. ...yawn... The problem is that all that stuff is social relative convention without an ounce of objective justification. Logic doesn't really support it, and so I find it really like waking out into no man's land. And if you embark on some big argument about such junk I will just drop it and go back to responding in kind as I usually do, because the topic really bores me.

[gary_s]

P.S. I am trying to do things gary's way of talking about what is courteous and all that crap. I find that really tedious. But ok, I give it a try. ...yawn... The problem is that all that stuff is social relative convention without an ounce of objective justification. Logic doesn't really support it, and so I find it really like waking out into no man's land. And if you embark on some big argument about such junk I will just drop it and go back to responding in kind as I usually do.

SEE! This is exactly what I was saying. This guy doesn't give a flying crap about social conventions or being civil. He doesn't value it in any way. Vote him off the island. Or at the very least, everyone should send the board administrator an email asking him to warn Mitch to stop acting like such an ass. I understand other people have been banned for such behavior. Why not Mitch?

[StillSearching]

Perhaps I am getting beside the point of what she wrote. I saw her state the argument of morality. Perhaps she has other reasons, but I didn't see them - honestly I didn't look too closely. I'm not sure if she became a theist purely from the argument of morality or not, but certainly some people have.

Honestly, I am not trying to create a straw man argument here, and I don't think that I have. Maybe what I am talking about does not apply specifically to this person, but that does not make my overall point - that the argument of morality is plain wrong - any less true.

I think you are maybe misreading what she wrote, or perhaps misconstruing the point of her blog post, or perhaps inferring that she is saying "I'm right."

There is no reason to believe that morality can not exist without God.

I think we're all in agreement with your statement here. It is not logical to say and believe that morality (what is "good" and what is "bad") cannot exist without God. Logically, it can. However, neither is it illogical to say or conclude that morality is objective, and if so, is the result of (comes from) a higher consciousness that has an understanding of, and an interest in, what is "good" for humans as a whole species, and beyond that what is "good" for the universe et al (I'm using this term to indicate not only what we know about the universe but also all that lies beyond our knowledge - existence in its total). In other words, it is a choice we make to believe (or not) that it is of significance to the universe et al that humans survive and flourish. If it is "good" that we survive and flourish, then one can logically (though not necessarily) conclude that a higher consciousness/intelligence/power has determined that it is so. In other words, some "one" decided (or if not decided, then at least is aware) that our survival and flourishing are good. Can you believe that it's all subjective? Sure. But if you do so, you make our existence meaningless/inconsequential to the universe et al by definition. Still meaningful to us, yes, and so not without any meaning at all. Rather, of no meaning to all.

Now, from objective morality to Roman Catholicism is a whole 'nother ball of wax. To me that's a matter not of what we believe so much as the metaphoric stationery and writing instrument of religion that we use to express it. I have issues with her aligning herself with the Catholic Church that are aside from its logical consistency, namely their policies which have lead to cultures of abuse and cover-up and their stance toward contraception, and many other things. I gather from her blog post that she has some of these same issues and hopefully she will make her voice heard in the RCC and help affect some change.

So, I think the root issue at hand in her blog post is not that she took up Catholicism, but rather that she got off the fence and decided that morality is objective (or else meaningless in the grand context). She's decided that there is a standard of "good" and "bad" that lies beyond our limited perspective and standards. The "sauce" that she puts on top of that is that not only is it separate from us, it is a "Person" and on top of that sauce she puts a sprinkling of Catholic seasoning.

Is she stating the argument from morality. Yeah, I suppose so but she is doing so as a matter of belief, not a matter of fact. While you may find her reasoning and conclusions erroneous, they are not illogical (faulty).

[cleve]

...Vote him off the island Or at the very least, everyone should send the board administrator an email asking him to warn Mitch to stop acting like such an ass. I understand other people have been banned for such behavior. Why not Mitch?

In similar fashion to stones striking and grinding one another, this could be an opportune - although possibly a bit painful - learning experience for both you and Mitch. Hope you two don't miss out on this opportunity for learning how to be more tolerant of one another's views.
Both of you are special people, and I would miss either of you if you stopped participating in this discussion board.

[gary_s]

...Vote him off the island Or at the very least, everyone should send the board administrator an email asking him to warn Mitch to stop acting like such an ass. I understand other people have been banned for such behavior. Why not Mitch?

In similar fashion to stones striking and grinding one another, this could be an opportune - although possibly a bit painful - learning experience for both you and Mitch. Hope you two don't miss out on this opportunity for learning how to be more tolerant of one another's views.
Both of you are special people, and I would miss either of you if you stopped participating in this discussion board.

Cleve, it isn't about being tolerant of other's views, at least for me it isn't. I was debating a scientific topic and made no personal insults or attacks. Mitch is the one who started the personal attacks by misinterpreting things and by openly insulting me when I didn't agree with his personal assessment of me. He's made it clear that he is not interested in learning any lessons and does not value social niceties. He says they are a waste of time. So don't expect any growth from him.

[StillSearching]

Whether you are a theist or not, if you believe in evolution then the moral argument is simply false.

Can you please expand on this a bit, because I don't see how that statement is logical. I believe in evolution. I don't think the moral argument necessarily and/or completely proves God. But I also don't see how this statement is logical:

Evolution is true, therefore morality is subjective, therefore God does not exist.

Not saying that's what you're saying, but that's what I'm reading into it. Care to elaborate?

[PlunderBunny]

I did read what yoou wrote and only found it extremely offensive. Shall I demonstrate?

A dog goes to his food bowl and doesn't find any food there and thus thinks that reason dictates that his owner does not exist. Shall this be an good analogy for atheists deciding that God does not exist. It is insulting isn't it?

I extend the courtesy of looking at the actual reasons atheists give for deciding that God does not exist rather than making insulting analogies, don't you think that courtesy requires this?

You are still missing the point of what I said.

It disagrees with your idea that morality is just an example of the instincts behind herd behavior. It disagrees with your assertion that evolution can account for a desire for species survial. It disagrees with your argument that by accounting for such a desire that I see no evidence for, it provides some kind of logical foundation for morality. I am basically saying that these have nothing to do with morality and that you are indeed competely off base. BUT I don't see how objective evidence could confirm this either way, so I guess these are opinions on both of our parts.

I said many times that I don't think morality is just the 'instincts behind herd behavior'. I was trying to demonstrate how SOME aspects of morality can be directly correlated with evolutionary principles.

Do you want me to comment on your insults? You do see them right or am I twisting your words to see this as an insult? You think the insults are appropriate? If I responded with similar intimations that your are incapable of understanding what I say will you then go on on about how I am impossible and how my personality is intolerable the way that so many other people are doing? Do you see right here how these things gets started? Because my usual response is to play the same game and show you that I TOO can insult your intellegence. Perhaps I can even do it better and that is why people lose it. But do you REALLY think that it is right to expect having an exclusive right to doing such things? That it is ok for you to do this but not ok for me to do the same thing right back?

Yes, because this is certainly the first insult of intelligence that has been thrown around in this thread. . .

To be fair, you seem to infer SO MANY THINGS from what I write that I never meant - in fact you do so right here. Yet when it comes to me saying 'minds' instead of 'brains' you had to pick it apart.

That being said, I apologize for the insult of your intelligence.

I do not believe the mind is a product of the brain. In fact I think there is exceptional evidence to the contrary. What is life? And what role does information have? These are the questions that I address and think are crucial. And I think the answers set the mind and body apart. No I don't believe in a metaphysical dualism between the mind and body. With regards to the mind body problem in philosophy, I am a physicalist. That is I believe that the mind is no less of a physical entity than the body. But I don't let my rejection of metaphysical dualism blind me to the reasons why people believe in such things and accept the unjustified conclusion that this means that the mind is nothing but a function of the brain.

I guess we just disagree here.

So lets go back to your query, "Would it make you happy if I instead say "evolution gave us our bodies, including our brains"?

The answer is no. There is two seperate processes of development. If you looking for a way to say it that I would be happy with, it would be something like this.

We can account for morality by the evolutionary like process of human learning.

Does that answer your question?

But that is saying a completely different thing. . .

My thing wasn't talking about morality at all.

Also, I already asked you about saying something like that before, and you dismissed it. I stated: "If you like, I can instead state 'morality can be fully explained through a combination of biology and sociology'".

[StillSearching]

If you like, I can instead state 'morality can be fully explained through a combination of biology and sociology.'

Here's where I start to wonder. It seems to me that through a combination of biology and sociology, we can explain our development of our own system of morality, and we can explain our desire to develop, improve, and enforce that system. However, the goal of developing that system (I mean the cycle of evaluating and modifying said system) is to draw more closely to the ideal - the best way for humans to behave. So the questions I have are these: Do we agree or not that the ideal is ultimately objective and separate? Who or what determines the ideal for which we are striving?

I think this is what Mitch is driving at. Yes, we can account for the development of human morality (a sense of what is "right" and "wrong" or "good" and "bad" and a desire to encourage "rightness" and discourage "wrongness.") by applying the principles of natural selection and evolution. What works (in other words, what allows humans to thrive) survives. What doesn't, doesn't. But that doesn't speak to the origin or nature of the bigger picture: objective morality, or what is "good" on a macro scale.

[PlunderBunny]

Can you please expand on this a bit, because I don't see how that statement is logical. I believe in evolution. I don't think the moral argument necessarily and/or completely proves God. But I also don't see how this statement is logical:

Evolution is true, therefore morality is subjective, therefore God does not exist.

Not saying that's what you're saying, but that's what I'm reading into it. Care to elaborate?

Firstly, I'm sorry for my vague ways of speaking, I am not well-versed in most things. I'll try to clear up what I meant there.

My point - when I said that - was that biological and sociological functions can account for morality so it is therefore unnecessary to believe in a God - in regards to explaining morality. Therefore, since God is not logically necessary for a system of morality to exist it is therefore not purely logical to go from non-belief to belief citing the moral argument as a reason, since God is not needed in explaining morality from a logical standpoint.

Not to mention that I personally see evolution or a subjective morality as irrelevant to acceptance of the moral argument. I am wary of anything that tries to imply Gods existence by explaining things that we can't, because I believe any view based on such a structure will eventually be proven to be wrong.

Also not to mention the fact that the moral argument is so incredibly vague on actually implying any sort of divine deity whatsoever.

But I never made a point about the existence of God, only the validity of using the moral argument as a reason for becoming a believer.

This is the gist of what I was trying to say before. I'm not sure if it still applies to this blogger or not, but this is what I meant. I hope it helps to clear some things up.

Here's where I start to wonder. It seems to me that through a combination of biology and sociology, we can explain our development of our own system of morality, and we can explain our desire to develop, improve, and enforce that system. However, the goal of developing that system (I mean the cycle of evaluating and modifying said system) is to draw more closely to the ideal - the best way for humans to behave. So the questions I have are these: Do we agree or not that the ideal is ultimately objective and separate? Who or what determines the ideal for which we are striving?

I agree completely that the ideal is objective and separate. But I don't think the belief in an objective ideal - from God or otherwise - is logically necessary to a system of morality.

As to who or what creates this 'ideal' I have no idea. Perhaps it is God pushing us to constantly be better. Perhaps evolution is constantly pushing us towards a more secure future. Or maybe a combination of both. Honestly, I can't really say.

I think this is what Mitch is driving at. Yes, we can account for the development of human morality (a sense of what is "right" and "wrong" or "good" and "bad" and a desire to encourage "rightness" and discourage "wrongness.") by applying the principles of natural selection and evolution. What works (in other words, what allows humans to thrive) survives. What doesn't, doesn't. But that doesn't speak to the origin or nature of the bigger picture: objective morality, or what is "good" on a macro scale.

I agree that it doesn't, but anything that speaks to an objective morality on a macro scale is not a logically necessary belief to explain morality, which is why I was confused that an atheist suddenly felt the need for some sort of objective morality.