Recently I've been ask to debate on a christian page in Facebook by some christian friends.Since i'm just a lay person and most of my doubts or questions are answered by reading(and watching)stuffs from here,the four horsemen-Harris,Hitchens,Dawkins and Dennett and many others,i didn't participated yet but they've been calling me to join for a month now.and here's just one(two) question someone asked,some help please.
To the Atheists in this group:
Since reason or rationality and science seems to be the banner under which you guys are marching, I want to ask these two questions-
1. What is the intellectual foundation that makes reason reasonable to rely?
2. In completely atheistic worldview, how do you account for the possibility of scientific enterprise?
Dont come saying reason is reasonable (i know that) or science is possible.. what i want to know is how do you account for that fact which all of us agree from atheistic point of view.
To be fair game... once you are done.. ill state how these things can be accounted from a christian point of view.
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First! (JK, now that I typed it in my response, I hope no one answers before me.)
On to a serious note. Reason as reliable... I dont want to sound like I'm condescending... but it just kinda is in daily life. Reasoning is simply kind of the human conditioned response. Every day we experience thousands of situations and store information about them as memories. Knowledge, or an understanding of underlying factors, helps us to understand how and why things are happening. Reason is that moment where you can tie in a past experience or knowledge of how things work to understand how a situation will turn out. I'd say its pretty damn important. However, reasoning does kind of rely on two main concepts: Experience and Knowledge. It has some obvious flaws. Obviously if you lack either knowledge or experience in a situation, you're at a disadvantage trying to reason. Second, there are a lot of fallacies in deciphering both experience and knowledge. Humans tend to see patterns where there is no clear evidence of correlation, leading to the post hoc ergo propter hoc (after this, therefore because of this) fallacy, or the fallacious fact that we see nature's complexities as design. If you don't beleive we see designs where there are none, I encourage you to toss a pair of sticks. No matter how they land, you will immediately realize they are angled, parallel, or crossing. In fact there is no option where the sticks don't form a recognizable design in the human mind.
This is where Atheism and Christianity tend to split on what is considered knowlegde, and ultimately what is reasonable to believe. Atheists tote science as the backbone of knowledge and indeed reasoning all together. To us it is reasonable. Scientific properties apply to everything. They are the reason that cars run, the earth warms during the day, flowers sprout, rainfalls, and people die. Whats more, much of scientific theory is testable. You can play with a set of magnets, a pair of batteries, and a couple of loops of wire and play with electricity and magnetic fields all day long. Nuclear bombs and places like Chyrnoble are proof of radiation, nuclear physics, and (on a sadder note for animals) radiactive mutations in cells and animals. Bio weapons engineering from the arms race during the Cold War Era even proves that microscale evolution by environmental factors can quickly effect small organisms such as bacteria and viruses in a surprisingly short time span. All all the scientific theories and laws we accept have overwhelming proof, and have repeated it to great detrimental or progressive effects and countless situations inbetween the two extremes. And all these laws and theories are constants, they don't change. Gravity was here yesterday, is here today, and will be here tomorrow. The same with electricity, thermodynamics, magnetism, chemical reactions... etc. And what's more, you need not beleive them, know about them, or care about scientific laws for them to be true. they'll exist regardless.
Now we hit the reason Atheists think Christians are unreasonable. Christians believe in the miracles of christ. All of them, though they are possible in slightly less spectacular but totally reasonable ways that can be explained by science, but to except such explanations detracts from the divinity of christ and god. So Christians push Miracles as defying the natural laws of science. And as a rule of being christian you must believe in the whole personal relationship to god through prayer that can ultimately result in a miracle. But, neither miracles or the power of prayer to produce a miracle that defies scientific laws has ever been documented. Nor has any conclusive evidence ever been put forward to prove any supernatural dietie's who have an interest in human affairs.
And that is the intellectual foundation that makes atheists... feel reasonably reliable on reason. We can observe the laws and theories we base our knowledge on. And we have and entire universe that attests that such processes have been going on for countless years. Which seems reasonable. For reasons.
Aren't believers being reasonable when they say there's a supernatural cause behind something they are ignorant about? They do not simply accept that a statue is bleeding. They fail to do what seems the obvious thing to do cos of reverence, stupidity or whatever but they don't ignore it. They see that if this is happening it has to be special as it makes no sense to their rational brain. So it has to be a miracle. They are now very reasonable people doing a seemingly reasonable thing called making a guess(?). Guessing is good and quite important in a case of bleeding statues. It follows then that they are just very bad scientists. If one of these believers happens to keep asking questions, the right ones, and goes all the way for the answers he or she will end up on the other side. I would like to know if there was ever a single reasonable and honest atheist that turned into a believer. About good scientists being religious I am completely lost.
This reminded me of something by Dennett where he mocks theologians. They are the best examples of the more reasonable believers trying to somehow fit the rubbish of religion inside reality - and usually failing utterly because of their commitment to reality.
"1. What is the intellectual foundation that makes reason reasonable to rely?"
Reason is a structured thought process in which one uses experience and observation to make connections and conclusions. Properly invoked, it involves the conscious consideration that we are by nature subjective beings, with imperfect senses and limited perspectives that could steer us wrong. Reason is best shared among many people to make it self-correcting and bring in perspectives we might not have considered. These attributes help strengthen reliability.
One could more aptly ask, "What is the intellectual foundation that makes faith reasonable to rely?" Faith is the poor substitute you are stuck settling for when you lack knowledge and evidence. There is no intellectual foundation at all, just an appeal to authority, whether it be second-hand revelation of scripture ("some guy said god told him to tell you...") or fallible humans who claim to have special knowledge of a spirit being for whom there is no physical evidence.
"2. In completely atheistic worldview, how do you account for the possibility of scientific enterprise?"
This question is a non-sequitur. The Scientific Method is a process used to test hypotheses based on physical experimentation and observations that can be shared and reviewed. Those steps are the same regardless of one's worldview. Science is merely a tool for attempting to understand the material world. Whether one believes in non-material entities is completely irrelevant, because hard science is purposely limited to physical reality.
well dis is d reply i got after i shared ur replies:
You defined reason and how we engage in reasoning and how scientists do research. That’s fine, im not disputing that. But that was not my question. My question is, what is the intellectual foundation for engaging in reason or engaging the scientific enterprise from an atheistic point of view. Let me elaborate where I’m coming from. Atheist like Alex Rosenberg, Daniel Dennet etc often speak of our ability to reason with doubt. They have good reasons for that. Here are some:
If our reasoning is just a result of matters, govern by pysio-chemical laws, then our thinking is determined. Which means there is no genuine free thinking. But for reasoning to be valid, it should be able to freely engage in “ conscious consideration”.
In atheistic view, human beings are just another animal and human thinking faculty is the result of variation acted upon by Natural selection. The implication is that, human faculty evolved according to the ability to survive in a given environment. Which means our thinking faculty was a survival tool for a given environment. Which means it was evolved to give the right reaction in such a way that the organism would survive in a given environment and not necessarily to think universal truth. This should make the reliability of our thinking faculty doubtful.
While engaging in reasoning that involves several steps, this sequence takes place:
At Time 1 (T1), Nightwing thinks, A=B
At Time 2 (T2), Nigthwing thinks, B=C
Therefore,
At Time 3 (T3), Nightwing thinks, A=C.
What is required for inference of A=C in this sequence of reason is a unified self of ‘Nightwing’ over different time intervals (T1, T2, and T 3) or else it would be ‘Nightwing’ thinking A=B at T1, and ‘John’ thinking B=C at T2, which would make thinking A=C impossible. But a unified self is not compatible with atheistic view (If you doubt that, you can look at the works of atheists like Rosenberg, Stephen Pinker and Dennett).
Given this problems, how to atheist justify our ability to reason (P.S- I am not disputing our ability to reason).
In engaging the enterprise of science, several assumptions are made. Eg: That human reason is reliable, nature follows a natural law or works in a law like pattern, human beings can discover that natural law. Yes anybody can engage in science but that does not mean that any worldview is compatible with the assumptions of science. Take for example, if a worldview says the universe is illusion, that will be incompatible with intellectual foundation of science, because science assume the external world to be real. So what is it in atheistic worldview that would give the intellectual foundation that would lead to believe in existence of natural law and human ability of discover it.
I hate slanted questions. There's mountains of unfinished research currently being conducted on Theory of Mind, and whether or not our reasoning is reliable and our will is free. Christians can search PubMed as easily as any Atheist can, so they can answer their own questions if they're really all that curious.
However, I propose the following. Our reasoning as humans is an adaptive trait, as it allows us to determine the salient aspects of our environment and react beneficially to them, thus aiding our survival as individuals and a species. The only way that this is possible through our *accurate* assessment of our environment and our *accurate* assignments of agency to the various forces working around us. If we were wrong all the time, we'd die all the time. So, while the human race thinking that something is right at any given time does not necessarily make it universally true, it makes it true enough to deal with, and our reasoning is also adaptive in the way that when a piece of our knowledge fails to fit in with the puzzle of the world around us, we change it to something that looks right more often. In this way, we become more accurate over time. Science is not necessarily truth in and of itself, however the scientific method is our primary tool to use for finding the truth.
Believing in something static, therefore, is not in human nature. Things that we have explained and feel we know will look odd as our intellectual scope as a race broadens. Science has no problem with this, it is to be accepted and celebrated. Religion seems to be dragging it's heels on that, since it's rapidly becoming an obsolete truth. Rather than embrace the possibilities, they are trying to use ignorance to regain their foothold. Where education grow, religion falls away, and when religious groups seek power, the nearly always do so through limiting conflicting knowledge.
That was a bit of a word salad but let me say this. THERE IS NO ATHEIST WORLDVIEW. Atheism is simply a position on a claim. That's all it is.
Now "In engaging the enterprise of science, several assumptions are made. "- You can or he can cease there. The tool of science and critical thinking works on confirmable things that can be tested to yield predictable results.
WTF is a unified self? How does this relate to that torturously big logical leap this person made?
A couple of thoughts on just one of those many fancy-dancing sentences:
S/he says, "in the athiest view, human beings are just another animal.....result of variation acted upon by natural selection."
I'll echo what Ellie said, how does this person know that every athiest thinks of humans as another animal? So far as I know, there is no official Atheist Way of Thought. Could be wrong but I sure don't remember signing any dogma documents agreeing on what atheism is.
That he chose to use the word 'just' another animal speaks to possible egotism. Does s/he think s/he is better than a chinchilla because s/he is human?
Natural selection is not an 'atheist thought', it is a scientific theory based on evidence, that is shared by many atheists and many theists.
thanks guys 4 d feedbacks.i agree with you guys we Atheist don't have any official way of thought or one Atheist world view.But what we all want is a world that uses intelligence, reason, rationality,thoughtfulness, ingenuity, sincerity, science, and kindness to build the future,not a world built on faith, delusion,pretending, religion, fear, pseudoscience, superstition, or a certainty achieved by keeping people in a stupor that makes them pawns of unseen forces because they’re terrified.
CAN'T BELIEVE DIS GUY NOW HE RESPONDED WITH THIS:
Its a curios fact that some of the present atheists go around saying, atheism is not a worldview!!!!. And its no wonder it often comes from the likes of Dawkins, Shermer, Harris, Stenger, late. Hitchen etc etc. (Those that are called undergraduate atheist not because they dont have degrees, but because their reasoning is so bad that, it was fellow Atheists who are knowledgeable that call such atheist as "undergraduate atheist".) Any knowledgeable atheist (and those that are philosophically well trained) knows that atheism has other philosophical implications as any philosophy does. Denying that is simply stupid. It is because of that, that even Nietzsche listed the implications of an idea that deny the existence of God. So also is the same with the present atheists who are philosophical strong. Perhaps the best advice is, if you want to understand philosophically informed atheism, avoid "Atheism for dummies" and go for books written by atheist who are also professional philosophers. But if you are only looking for being a loud mouth atheist.. God's delusion by Dakwins is just good enough.
P.S- Unless i get a good answer, i don't think i'll respond here. Any intelligent reader will see that some of the atheists here have no answer to such questions. Hiding under a smoke screen "atheism is not a worldview" is not an answer nor an evidence because that statement will not be taken by any knowledgeable atheist.
Has this person provided a succinct definition of the word 'worldview'? It may differ significantly from how name of us seen to be defining it.
Always be wary of people who refuse to define their terms, nothing good can come of it.
This theist again wrote dis(Its a long one but here it goes).:
Why scientific enterprise makes sense- A Christian response
Views on human origin have implications on human nature and the nature of human cognitive faculty. Completely naturalistic Darwinian view of human origin is no different. From a Darwinian perspective, human beings are just another animal and human thinking faculty is the result of variation (mutations) acted upon by Natural selection. The implication is that, human faculty evolved according to the ability to survive in a given environment. Which means our thinking faculty was a survival tool for a given environment. Which means it was evolved to give the right reaction in such a way that the organism would survive in a given environment and not necessarily to think universal truth. This should make the reliability of our thinking faculty doubtful. A point explicitly made even by atheist Alex Rosenberg in his book, Atheist guide to reality. This idea is not unique to Rosenberg, even atheist Michael Shermer said “Humans are pattern-seeking story-telling animals, and we are quite adept at telling stories about patterns, whether they exist or not.” This view of Shermer is not far off from Darwinian view of human faculty. With such reasons to doubt the reliability of human cognitive faculty, the question, Does the enterprise of science, which heavily depends on human cognitive faculty, makes sense? Many may justify engaging in the enterprise of science by pointing at the success of science. That only take us to another question, why is scientific enterprise successful? Given the role played by science in our present world, this question is worth asking. To this question, different worldviews may answer differently (or may fail to answer).
This is an attempt to answer the question “why the scientific enterprise makes sense?” from a Christian worldview. Though a comprehensive definition of science seems elusive to the philosophers of science, science in a general way is the search for truth about the universe. According to Christianity, universe is the result of a personal creator, God. That God as a rational law giver is embedded in Christian teachings. Christianity also teaches that Human beings are the result of God’s creation, who made them in His image. There are many facets about the nature of being made in the Image of God; two important facets (in the context of this article) are stressed here for the purpose of this argument.
First, being made in the Image of God means human beings, like God, are persons. Thus, human reasoning activity is viewed as the result of a unified personhood rather than mere collective activities of different neurons. This explains the reliability of human reason much better than those worldviews that reduce human reasoning to mere activities of neurons (as done by Daniel Dennet) or considers unified self as a fiction (as believed by Steven Pinker). Here is why it is so; while engaging in reasoning that involves several steps, this sequence takes place:
At Time 1 (T1), Naro thinks, A=B
At Time 2 (T2), Naro thinks, B=C
Therefore,
At Time 3 (T3), Naro thinks, A=C.
What is required for inference of A=C in this sequence of reasoning is a unified self of ‘Naro’ over different time intervals (T1, T2, and T 3) or else it would be like ‘Naro’ thinking A=B at T1, and ‘Temjen’ thinking B=C at T2, which would make thinking A=C impossible. Thus, the idea of human beings being a unified self as taught in Christian worldview gives a good explanation for the kind of reasoning constantly use in the enterprise of science.
Secondly, being made in the Image of God means humans have an intellect like that of God (i.e. The intelligence of human being is different from God not in terms of types but in terms of degree). The implication is, Humans can think like God. This idea is particularly important as a philosophical foundation for human beings to engage in scientific enterprise. One important assumption to be made for undertaking the scientific enterprise is, the universe out there can be studied and understood by human being. That statement is not or cannot be proved by science but rather it is assumed by science. Such assumption raises the question, what theoretical justification can be given for that assumption to be legitimate? After all, why should what goes on in my mind should match with what goes on in the universe? Christian worldview has its answer to that question. As mentioned above, Christianity teaches that God created the universe according to His rational mind and humans who being able to think like God can therefore discover the workings of the universe as it was made according to the thinking of that God. This view may seem obvious to a person living in 21st century but studying the cultures before scientific revolution makes it clear that the belief in the ability of human mind to discover the laws or the workings of the universe wasn’t so obvious. It is indeed no historical coincidence that such courage to trust the ability of human mind to discover the working of the universe was developed in Christian Europe, the birth place of modern science as we know it (Science as we know it originated only once and it was in Christian Europe). For this reason sociologist and philosopher of science Steve Fuller (who is an atheist) argued that the Science was developed with “the belief that the natural order is the product of a single intelligence from which our own intelligence descends.” Thus from a Christian worldview, scientific enterprise is, in the words of a pioneer of science Johannes Kepler, “thinking God’s thought after Him”, for which Christian theology give ample justification.
Thus, a Christian has his/her philosophical justifications for why scientific enterprise makes sense, which is rooted in Christian theology. This leads to the question, is the Christian narrative of Human being as image bearer of God just a useful narrative for science or is it really true? The answer seems to lie in the actual practice of science and mathematics. The history clearly shows the applicability of mathematics in physical sciences. The success of mathematics lies not only in helping in explaining some physical phenomena but using mathematics to predict discoveries in physical sciences, without any experimental evidence. Here is what happens, simply by using mathematical calculation with no experimentation, prediction are often made that will be discovered experimentally in future. This trend is not a matter of one single occurrence but did happen multiple times. This has profound philosophical implications. Why would the logical calculation by human beings as done in mathematics lead to insights about the universe? If human are just “pattern seekers”, how come the realities of the physical world constantly conform to the thinking of human being? Or as Albert Einstein asked, “How can it be that mathematics, being after all a product of human thought which is independent of experience, is so admirably appropriate to the objects of reality?” Perhaps human mind isn’t just a product of variation acted upon by natural selection to survive, perhaps we are not just “pattern seekers”, rather it is reasonable to say that we are capable of “thinking God’s thought after Him” and the very fact that we can discover about the universe using our reason shows that the universe is rational, pointing to the direction that it might have been a result of rational mind.
And dis was my reply to him:
I'm not a philosopher, and some of what you wrote is a bit densely argued for me. But it seems to me that it presupposes a bit too much and makes some unreasonable assumptions.
For one thing, even if you assume that human faculty evolved according to the ability to survive in a given environment, there is no reason why it can't then go onto 'think universal truths'. Part of the success of humanity (if indeed you deem it a success!) is its ability to go above and beyond the needful and to explore new boundaries.
Also, to say that science 'is the search for truth about the universe' is a deliberate way of framing it so that the answer could conceivably be 'God'. If you were to define science a bit more accurately as 'a systematic enterprise that builds and organises knowledge in the form of testable explanations and predictions about the universe' (Wikipedia), or even as 'a body of knowledge ... that can be rationally explained and reliably applied' (also Wikipedia), then 'God' is clearly NOT the answer.
Also, I do not accept that God is 'a rational law giver' as claimed, given all the evidence to the contrary in the Bible, Koran, etc, etc. Neither do I accept that we are beings 'made in the image of God', so the whole section about us having 'an intellect like that of God' becomes moot and unsupportable.
What else? To say that 'Science as we know it originated only once and it was in Christian Europe' is also an extremely Christian chauvinist viewpoint and manifestly incorrect. Most of European Christian science was based on previous work in classical (pagan) Greece and the Muslim Middle East. This is not to mention ancient China, Babylon and Egypt, who were developing scientific methods long before Christianity was even invented, and, more recently, Soviet Russia, where scientific progress continued apace in a purely atheistic milieu.
As for why abstract mathematical theory is sometimes able to precede scientific evidence (which I don't deny at all, although the examples are not as common as suggested, and nothing like as common as science derived purely from the scientific method), there are many possible reasons for this, not the least of which is sheer coincidence. And if the universe appears to follow laws consistent with abstract mathematics, isn't that an argument AGAINST the involvement of a God?
I could go, on, but I think perhaps a more interesting question is why a Christian should feel the need to 'justify' the existence of science in some way, or to get science 'on your side' in this way. Can you not be content with just tootling along in the same unscientific way you have done for centuries. I thought part of the point of religion is that it does not feel the need to justify itself, and that it is willing to overlook all else in the interests of belief on faith alone. Why then the need to make scientific enterprise 'make sense' in Christian terms at all?
DAFUQ! Does dis ever end.
Him again:
Evolution and human thinking faculty.
Let me not go on explaining here, because the central thesis of that post was how Christianity account for possibility of scientific enterprise & this will be too lengthy. Alvin Plantinga (Christian) and Thomas Nagel (atheist) have made such arguments, you can refer that. But let me give this line by Charles Darwin himself, which I think highlight the problem very well. ““With me the horrid doubt always arises,” whether the convictions of man’s mind, which has been developed from the mind of the lower animals, are of any value or at all trustworthy. Would any one trust in the convictions of a monkey’s mind, if there are any convictions in such a mind?””
Definition of Science:
I myself said the definition of science is problematic in my post. And frankly even if I am an atheist I would have just written the same thing about science with a disclaimer that no definition of science is adequate. Just as I did in that post. Take the definition you gave for example..” organises knowledge in the form of testable explanations and predictions about the universe” Well, this does not cover some branches of science, because many scientific theories are not based on prediction or testing rather it is based on the explanatory power (As well explained by oxford University professor Late.Peter Lipton in his book “Inference to the best explanation”). Or for that matter,” ... that can be rationally explained and reliably applied' Well even the law of logic qualify for that, but no one will say law of logic is science, rather science assume the truthfulness of the laws of logic. So any definition of science either end up being too exclusive thereby removing some branches of science or being too inclusive. So while framing that definition I was thinking how should I say such that no branch of science is leave out and nothing about God. But again, I'll be the first one to admit that definition is not adequate.
" I do not accept that this & that about Christianity"
Here is the thing, You don’t need to. Even I don’t find atheist worldview to be reasonable, but still I asked how science is explain from atheistic framework. Beacuse the thrust of the question I asked & argument i made is, given the worldview of Christianity or Atheism (i.e assuming atheism to be true or Christianity to be true), which worldview system best give the explanatory foundation for the enterprise of science? So saying you don’t agree with this & that of Christian worldview hardly have any affect on this arguments. Infact even an atheist could have made the same argument (Steve fuller comes to mind).
There was knowledge even in other civilizations.
I don’t know why this is an interesting fact? That’s obvious. Knowledge of technology, mathematics & engineering flourished in other civilizations. But modern science as we know today, i.e. self correcting knowledge system (Imperfect definition again!!) was developed only in Europe. That’s nothing to do with Chauvinism but sober historical fact. For this if you want me to cite books supporting my thesis, I can. And those books are written by best historians of science published by best universities around the world.
Science was also done by atheists in Russia.
Once scientific enterprise started anybody with any religion can do it. But why is that fact important anyway? Side note: I still did not write anything on intellectual pillars to starts science (May one day), but those assumptions are not as obvious as we may love to think.
“not the least of which is sheer coincidence.”
Some atheists say so. Just happy accident. On that no comment. Let readers judge which worldview explanation is better.
“And if the universe appears to follow laws consistent with abstract mathematics, isn't that an argument AGAINST the involvement of a God?”
Only if one ignore the intellectual history behind the concept of “Law of nature”. I have some reservation about the concept of “Law of nature”. Let me quote one of the best theoretical physicist (Paul Davies) of our time who is also very knowledgeable about history of science and who is an agnostic:
--“The orthodox view of the nature of the laws of physics contains a long list of tacitly assumed properties. The laws are regarded, for example, as immutable, eternal, infinitely precise mathematical relationships that transcend the physical universe, and were imprinted on it at the moment of its birth from “outside,” like a maker’s mark, and have remained unchanging ever since… In addition, it is assumed that the physical world is affected by the laws, but the laws are completely impervious to what happens in the universe… It is not hard to discover where this picture of physical laws comes from: it is inherited directly from monotheism, which asserts that a rational being designed the universe according to a set of perfect laws. And the asymmetry between immutable laws and contingent states mirrors the asymmetry between God and nature: the universe depends utterly on God for its existence, whereas God’s existence does not depend on the universe…
Clearly, then, the orthodox concept of laws of physics derives directly from theology. It is remarkable that this view has remained largely unchallenged after 300 years of secular science. Indeed, the “theological model” of the laws of physics is so ingrained in scientific thinking that it is taken for granted. The hidden assumptions behind the concept of physical laws, and their theological provenance, are simply ignored by almost all except historians of science and theologians.”--
So when people say, either its God or Law of nature, they are comically clueless!! What they actually say is, either its God or “Decree of God”!! But let me repeat again, I have my reservation about the concept of “Law of nature”.
Can you not be content with just tootling along in the same unscientific way you have done for centuries.
Why not write a post expanding that statement, because I rather wish to deal specific issue. Because the idea that Christianity & Science was in conflict is a myth created during 19th & early 20th century.
Why then the need to make scientific enterprise 'make sense' in Christian terms at all?
Not only Christians, but even atheist have to account for the fact that humans can do science. I’m yet to see one.