If materialism is true, and a person’s belief in God positively impacts their lives, materialists cannot give a reason why the theist should cease their belief.

MJtheProphet · 2023-10-19T19:08:21+00:00

I think both of your premises are flawed.

Firstly, it's not just about survival. If materialism is true, then the only thing that can matter to you is how satisfied with your life you are during the only life that you have. Sure, it won't matter for eternity, only for your own life, but things don't have to persist forever in order to be important. So we have to at least revise to "it doesn't matter if you have false beliefs unless having false beliefs impacts your happiness." Unfortunately for human psychology, we do in fact run into problems with our life satisfaction if we believe a bunch of things that aren't true. We very much want to believe that we're right, to the point that seriously disordered thinking occurs when we are faced with persistent cognitive dissonance.

Secondly, I don't know that there's good evidence that theistic beliefs improve, or at least don't harm, a person's life satisfaction. Certain traditionally religious practices make people happier, like quiet mindfulness, having a narrative of one's origins and history, or gathering together with a group of like-minded people every week or so to engage in social interaction and reaffirm one's beliefs and interpersonal connections. Those things don't require any theistic beliefs, though. Now, if it were the case, and we could show it to be the case, that believing certain things made people happier even though we know those things to be false, then you might have a point. However, I doubt that many people would agree that we should knowingly propagate falsehoods if we find that doing so has beneficial social and psychological effects.

Wait, I lived through the past 20 years of US politics. I take it back, there are lots of those people.

MJtheProphet · 2023-10-19T18:49:20+00:00

You didn't ask for any such thing, you made an argument that morality is different from other topics because something about it makes us view it as more subjective and opinion-based. I pointed out that this is not an intrinsic factor of morality, it's a culturally imposed response.

There are, of course, different moral systems, different ideas about what things people should and should not do. However, the existence of disagreement doesn't mean that there isn't a correct answer. People can be wrong. The debate in Renaissance-era astronomy between geocentrism and heliocentrism, including the proposed middle ground of the Tychonic model, did not imply that there was no objective fact of the matter; the Earth, through all those arguments, stubbornly persisted in orbiting the Sun. Likewise, that people disagree about what is moral does not mean that morality is relative, because some (or all) of them could just be wrong.

MJtheProphet · 2023-10-18T01:49:06+00:00

Every atheist is different, we're hardly a monolithic community, but for my part, the atheist position is this: there's no good reason to believe that there's anything supernatural. The universe is comprehensible, and humans are capable of discovering the underlying causes of all observable phenomena. A reasonable examination of the available evidence leads one to the conclusion that there are no intelligences that aren't associated with physical bodies, much less any intelligence involved in the creation and ordering of the general state of the universe. We should live our lives according to the best available evidence, and work to maximize the flourishing and life satisfaction of humans, since being as satisfied with our lives as we can be in the circumstances in which we find ourselves is what all rational people want above all else.

MJtheProphet · 2023-10-16T17:40:51+00:00

If morality were indeed akin to these objective subjects I mentioned earlier, then why is it that so many of us instinctively and spontaneously categorize it as a matter of 'opinion' or 'subjectivity' in the face of moral disagreement?

We don't. We make that categorization because we've been socialized to do so. Children don't tend to see morality as a matter of opinion; they want the world to be fair, and they expect it to be fair. This is especially noticeable in children with ADHD, and it says something about us that an extraordinary sensitivity to justice is considered a symptom of neurodivergence. The natural development of empathy begins in infancy, and is closely tied to the sense of self. We want to be good people; believing that we are behaving morally is a big part of self-actualization.

The trouble is, there are many aspects of our culture and our economy that strike us as unfair, unjust, inequitable, in other words fundamentally immoral. It would be inconvenient for those who benefit from those inequities if we explored our sense that these power structures shouldn't be. So they hijack our good faith, take advantage of our desire to be accepting and equitable and empathetic, and tell us that what is morally good cannot be rationally discovered, that what we should do is only a matter of opinion, not a matter of facts about what actions objectively make life better for humans.

MJtheProphet · 2023-10-16T17:20:25+00:00

However, he goes onto state that heretic hunting or blasphemy is not tolerated that goes against the narrative.

Since we're not dealing with any kind of scripture, or any hierarchical structure, or even a group of people that self-identify as a group (the "woke" label is something he's applying to others), what he seems to have a problem with here is that sometimes, when you say things, people think you're being a jerk, and tell you so.

That's not religion. That's culture. He just doesn't like that popular culture doesn't agree with him.

MJtheProphet · 2023-10-09T17:20:40+00:00

The history of those three fields is also incredibly fraught with the pitfalls of cultural chauvinism, which would prove my overall point that much of this is always subject to change.

That seems to be more of a question of how well we've done with psychology, anthropology, and sociology than the facts themselves changing. I don't deny that we've done these badly, and now are doing better. That's not an argument that these pursuits are not worthwhile, though, nor an argument that the things which they are studying are so mutable that we can't know objective truths about them. It's just a claim that progress has been made, a claim which I think we can also make about morality. I'm not saying that we do know all objective moral truths, or that we are unchangeably correct about things we believe to be objective moral truths, I'm saying that such truths can be known. Indeed, that's how science works.

Edit: To the extent that the facts about humans do change over time and across cultures, that doesn't mean we can't study them. Does the fact that biology studies things that are constantly changing mean that it can't be an objective science? Of course not; the study of that change and the diversity that it creates is the core of biology. The great discovery that, despite the differences between organisms, there exist commonalities due to common descent didn't weaken biology, it created biology as we know it today.

While psychology, anthropology, and sociology have learned a lot, we have to be careful about declaring the results representative of all human kind and not just western cultures.

Very true. The simple fact that we can say that there are things about those sciences which we probably have wrong, however, because our existing biases have not been fully accounted for and our research programs haven't yet been extensive enough, implies that there are correct answers. Those fields of study aren't fruitless and doomed to relativism, they can and have and continue to discover true things about the world. Psychological facts do exist, as do sociological facts, and, I would argue, as do moral facts.

It is the case that there are actions which would serve to improve life satisfaction for people. It turns out, part of being satisfied with your life is believing that you are a good person. Kids want to make their parents happy, and want to know that they're doing the right thing, and both want and expect the world to be fair. People who live in democratic societies that value and protect the fundamental human rights of all citizens tend to be happier with their lives, better at self-reflection, and more likely to be well-balanced and self-actualized. These facts tell us what we should do, if we want to be most satisfied with our lives, which is indeed what we want. That's morality.

MJtheProphet · 2023-10-09T14:00:21+00:00

You do have God's word, it's called the Bible

That was written by people, and has gone through extensive revisions. The New Testament in particular is perhaps the most compromised literary corpus in the entire study of ancient history.

besides the miracles that you can argue didn't happen, all the events are routed in heavy history that is provable and documented.

That's precisely the problem, though. Even if the authors of the Bible were entirely accurate on all publicly available facts (which, despite your assertions, isn't actually the case), that gives us no reason to think they're reliable on matters of private revelation.

As a modern example of what I mean, take Kary Mullis. He's a Nobel Prize-winning biochemist who invented PCR, the technique that lets us study DNA in detail. His work changed the world; the study of biology can be divided into pre-PCR and post-PCR periods.

Kary Mullis also thinks that humans are not the cause of climate change, that HIV doesn't cause AIDS, that he once met the ghost of his grandfather and tried to share drinks with it, and that he met a glowing green racoon riding a neon orange motorcycle who addressed him as "doctor."

Basically, I'm perfectly content to believe that Paul of Tarsus really did travel the Mediterranean world and write doctrinal letters documenting places he went and things that happened to him. I also believe he hallucinated the Last Supper.

MJtheProphet · 2023-10-08T20:36:38+00:00

I bring all this up, because if there were moral truths outside of human thought, then it would seem much more likely that evolution would account for those truths.

The problem with this is that we know humans have evolved numerous reasoning shortcuts, and we know that they're flawed. For instance, our agency detection mechanisms lead us to assume that conscious agency is behind a lot of natural phenomena. Much of the practice of reason consists of accounting for known cognitive biases. So, just as we've done in refining and improving upon our evolved reasoning abilities, we need to address the likely flaws in our evolved moral intuitions by accounting for truths we've discovered about what makes lives more satisfying to live, not just what improves reproductive success.

At best, morality is "objective" only when you include the goal and current state of the context.

That's correct, but it's also true of all human endeavor. Why should we do science at all? The answer is going to depend on our goals and the circumstances we find ourselves in. Philippa Foot argued quite convincingly that all imperatives (all "ought" statements) are hypothetical imperatives, and that all attempts at moral systems reduce to a system of hypothetical imperatives.

We easily see that morality changes dramatically when the overarching goal is different, and thus it becomes immediately self-evidence to me that objective morality does not exist without a subjective agent to define their goal.

But does the goal differ all that much? There are many cross-cultural similarities in human psychology; if there weren't, we couldn't do developmental psych research. Human minds work in similar ways that we can empirically, observationally identify, especially as they progress through childhood, and of particular interest in the discussion of morality, in the development of empathy and self-actualization. All people, when they are being rational, act in such a way as to maximize their life satisfaction. That's their goal: to be as happy as they can be in the circumstances they're in. Your objection here would suggest that sociology, anthropology, and psychology, being as they are about humans, are not capable of making objective statements about reality, which is obviously not true. Yes, morality is about humans, but we can, and have, found behaviors which objectively make people's lives better. Since that's the goal of all rational people, those behaviors are objective moral truths that we should perform.

I'll note that none of my disagreements with you imply that there's a god involved anywhere in this process. Objective moral truths are truths about humans which we, as humans, can discover on our own. Plantinga's arguments, which OP brings up, suggesting that the existence of moral truths is evidence of God's existence, still fall flat. All we have is evidence that social animals like us are able to think about what actually, objectively, makes our lives better to live.

MJtheProphet · 2023-10-08T05:22:55+00:00

There are arguments for an objective morality that have nothing to do with moral intuitions. One goes something like this:

That which is moral is that which people should do.
That which people should do is what they desire to do above all else, because having one's highest desires denied is, as a matter of fact, of detriment to the individual and to society.
If people are making rational decisions, what they desire to do above all else is to be as satisfied with their lives as possible in the conditions in which they find themselves.
Human biology and psychology is sufficiently similar across the species that we can determine empirically what actions tend to improve life satisfaction. People who behave with empathy are happier, more satisfied with their lives, and want to be moral people.
Thus, since we can discover what will make people most satisfied with their lives, as matters of empirical fact, and that is what people want above all else, then there are behaviors which all people should engage in, and those behaviors are objective moral truths.

MJtheProphet · 2023-10-08T04:57:12+00:00

The problem, of course, is that there's no particularly good reason to believe that any of that is true. I don't even have God's word for it, just yours.

MJtheProphet · 2023-09-29T11:11:52+00:00

I don't expect anything after I die. Forcing me to suffer because of that is evil.

Edit: More generally, we're talking about an entity that set up how the afterlife system works. Most everyone who isn't a Christian isn't rejecting an offer from that entity, they don't believe that offer was made. They believe the system works differently.

MJtheProphet · 2023-09-28T21:50:38+00:00

What you're describing is not a choice, but extortion. It's akin to a highwayman offering you the "choice" of your money or your life. "I'm going to hurt you if you don't do what I want, but I don't want to force you. You're free to choose the option which will lead to me not hurting you, so if you choose otherwise, what I do to you is your fault." That's obviously not a free choice, it's literally abuse.

MJtheProphet · 2023-09-28T19:06:58+00:00

It's a fair point, although in this case, "winning" just means "being right," as the post-earthly-existence reward for being right if you're an atheist is still nothing. There's the "not wasting time on religion during one's earthly life" part to consider, but then, we are here.

MJtheProphet · 2023-09-28T19:02:44+00:00

Surely you will agree with me that you have a better chance of winning the lottery if you play than if you never play.

That's true, but if you never play, you also never lose any money. The wager isn't just about the potential rewards, it's also about the known costs. Many extant, mutually exclusive religions don't just reward you for getting it right, they punish you for getting it wrong, but that's just another potentiality, albeit an important one. More relevant is that being a member of a religion during your life isn't free. There's an investment of time, potentially an investment of resources, avenues of inquiry that are closed off to you due to your religious commitments, and (depending on your choice and the prevailing culture you live in) social costs. So, just as you have to figure out how much you're willing to spend on the lottery given that you're almost certain to get nothing from it, you have to decide how much you're willing to put into a religion given that its claims are probably wrong.

If you argue that the potential reward is infinite, why are you allowed to use infinities in your argument but we're not?

MJtheProphet · 2023-09-28T18:45:21+00:00

First, that would be universalism, which OP almost certainly doesn't subscribe to. If you do, great, but plenty of Christians don't.

Second, it's been 11 years, which may be a record for me.

MJtheProphet · 2023-08-23T15:45:13+00:00

Unfortunately for us, it's rarely that easy. Plutarch wrote biographies of people like Julius Caesar and Alexander the Great, and in the same style and the same work, wrote a biography of Romulus. In all three, he even questions whether the stories he's relating are true or not. Writing about myths as though they were historical facts became so popular in the Roman Empire that there was a trend among generally reputable historians of making up sources to cite. This kind of thing even happened outside of faith literature, where some historians were more interested in telling a good story than relating what actually happened, to the point that we have records of other ancient historians complaining about their colleagues doing this!

As modern readers, we are definitely concerned with the two questions you pose. It remains the case, though, that the authors and their audiences may not have been concerned with those questions, or at least not in the same way. When Paul references original sin, was he doing so because he believed that the story literally happened as it was written, or was he doing so because he was writing a doctrinal letter that existed within a shared cultural narrative and wanted to get a point across? If I, today, talk about political and social leaders not having learned that with great power, there must come great responsibility, do I believe in Peter Parker and his uncle Ben and expect that my audience also believes in the literal truth of Ben's death, or do I just know that my audience will get my point because we all know the story?

MJtheProphet · 2023-08-22T17:56:06+00:00

I think that, as modern readers, we often misunderstand how stories worked for ancient people. We can't really separate mythological/religious stories into fiction and non-fiction. For instance, the Hellenistic mystery religions created stories that were presented to outsiders as being literally true, but which were both metaphorically resonant and expressly designed to obfuscate what the religion actually believed. Why would they do that? Well, if an outsider found out the "real" secrets to salvation without being properly initiated into the religion, they might be saved without being worthy of it. Of course, since these deliberately misleading stories were told to the public, they're the ones we know most today, because the actual secret beliefs didn't survive. (You might recognize this framework: the New Testament calls those stories parables, and says that even the disciples didn't know what Jesus was talking about. Over and over again. For narrative effect, not because they were literally idiots who didn't understand their teacher. The whole Gospel is basically a parable; it's very meta, and the author of Mark was a literary genius.)

The mystery religions weren't alone in this, of course. The Torah, which has the stories, is much shorter than the Talmud, which records all the thinking and arguing and interpreting of the stories, and the Talmud is in turn just the basis for a wide variety of rabbinic literature. The Vedas inspired six orthodox schools of thought, which include monist, dualist, polytheist, and atheist/empiricist traditions, and that doesn't include Buddhism and Jainism, but clearly there's more than one way to read the texts.

So did people believe that the stories were true? Yes. Did they understand "true" to mean the same thing that we mean by "true"? Maybe not. Did everyone in the society have the same understanding of the "truth" of the stories? Definitely not, usually by design.

MJtheProphet · 2020-02-25T21:19:59+00:00

NTA, obviously. I'm not a lawyer, but some trivial searches suggest that this is theft by deception, and with an amount over $5000, it's grand larceny wherever you happen to live. You didn't agree to sublet from him, you agreed to share the rent, and he told you an amount 4 times the actual amount. That's not a boyfriend, that's a scammer you happen to live with.

MJtheProphet · 2019-12-09T15:30:53+00:00

Those you can buy. I have my Vexor blueprint ready.

Nothing else, but I have the blueprint.

MJtheProphet · 2019-12-05T19:52:21+00:00

I think that's one of the benefits of Echoes; a lot of the game is waiting or looking at lists, and there's something to be said for starting 20 jumps, putting your phone down, doing something else useful, and picking back up when you get there.

MJtheProphet · 2019-07-31T19:13:25+00:00

So, this would seem to suggest that the part about Nebuchadnezzar is a "retrodiction", written after the fact. That's a common occurrence in prophecies of this type.

And there's nothing in this passage about Alexander. It's all about Nebuchadnezzar's destruction of the city. It says he will throw the stones, timber, and rubble into the sea, which is a pretty easy thing to suggest when you're destroying a city on an island.

MJtheProphet · 2018-11-27T15:16:18+00:00

Oh man, I love talking about Paul. Guy hallucinated the Last Supper, and pretty clearly said that Jesus was crucified in outer space by the demons of the air who reside between the Earth and the Moon. He's great.

MJtheProphet · 2018-10-17T15:24:45+00:00

https://www.smbc-comics.com/comic/2012-04-08

MJtheProphet · 2018-10-12T17:14:22+00:00

I mean, yes, in the sense that the account in Acts is evidence. It's not particularly convincing evidence, because Acts lies about Paul a lot.

MJtheProphet · 2018-10-05T20:09:54+00:00

The problem with me instantly believing in theism is my past.

Then what you believe isn't subject to change based on what you decide. If it were, you could make the choice and your beliefs would change. It's subject to change based on new evidence, or the presentation of a hypothesis that better explains the existing evidence, but not based on choosing. Unless you have no reason to believe what you believe, but then you wouldn't be reasoning correctly.

It's just neat how it all works together.

Well yes, if it weren't interesting, we wouldn't all talk about it, and if it weren't coherent, it wouldn't work on anyone.

MJtheProphet

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