Do Atheists Exist?

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This post is to move a discussion from Sandbox(4) at Entropy’s request.

Over on the Sandbox(4) thread, fifthmonarchyman made two statements that I disagree with:

“I’ve argued repeatedly that humans are hardwired to believe in God.”

“Everyone knows that God exists….”

As my handle indicates, I prefer to lurk.  The novelty of being told that I don’t exist overcame my good sense, so I joined the conversation.

For the record, I am what is called a weak atheist or negative atheist.  The Wikipedia page describes my position reasonably well:

“Negative atheism, also called weak atheism and soft atheism, is any type of atheism where a person does not believe in the existence of any deities but does not explicitly assert that there are none. Positive atheism, also called strong atheism and hard atheism, is the form of atheism that additionally asserts that no deities exist.”

I do exist, so fifthmonarchyman’s claims are disproved.  For some reason he doesn’t agree, hence this thread.

Added In Edit by Alan Fox 16.48 CET 11th January, 2018

This thread is designated as an extension of Noyau. This means only basic rules apply. The “good faith” rule, the “accusations of dishonesty” rule do not apply in this thread.

1,409 thoughts on “Do Atheists Exist?”

  1. OMagain: What needs to be added to the simulation at the atomic level to add that something extra?

    I don’t think anything can be added I think that when it comes to things like human behavior and evolution “programing” is simply impossible.

    If you could simulate my behavior comprehensively the result would not be a simulation it would be precisely me

    peace

  2. Then you didn’t read it. Thanks for the semi-conversation.

    You’re a grumpy dude, Entropy. But if you want to refute Plantinga’s argument, you need to refute the actual argument, not a straw version of it.

  3. OMagain: It’s conceivable that someday we can model a collection of atoms that represents a human mind and by that point the input fidelity will be realistic. You are fooled, completely.

    I don’t think it is conceivable simply because human consciousness is not computable even in principle.

    peace

  4. keiths: You’re a grumpy dude, Entropy.But if you want to refute Plantinga’s argument, you need to refute the actual argument, not a straw version of it.

    I did. That you didn’t see it means that you didn’t pay enough attention beyond “he’s misusing the concept of truth.”

    I had long explanations of problems arising, and about how to actually go about what to expect from the evolution of cognitive faculties. My explanations don’t depend on accepting that the concept of truth is misused by Plantinga. My explanations rest on understanding that the evolution of cognitive faculties is not about true/false dichotomies, but about, what you [you keiths] put there on the table: accuracies/inaccuracies. So, whether you want to point to the misconception of truth, or not, my points stand.

    You give that sophist a lot of leeway, and you cannot have the courtesy of reading my comments for comprehension because you felt insulted that I said that you fell for the true/false misuse, and that you carried it along in your discourse.

  5. OMagain: but in principle it’s just a matter of scale if we are talking about the atomic level.

    Do you really think it’s possible to copy something as complex as a human being down to the atomic level. Doesn’t the quantum uncertainty principle rule out that sort of precision?

    peace

  6. so sorry for your loss keiths. I recently lost my father and I’m now taking care of his dog who is also just about to leave us any day. best wishes

  8. Neil Rickert: My skepticism has to do with whether it is innate and universal.

    Ok

    Would you consider the capacity for language to be innate and universal for humans?

    I’m just trying to understand the extent of your skepticism

  9. fifthmonarchyman: Would you consider the capacity for language to be innate and universal for humans?

    It depends on what you mean by “capacity”. I guess it also depends on what you mean by “language”.

    Yes, we clearly have a strong drive to acquire a language, which I take to be innate. However, I’m skeptical of Chomsky’s “Universal Grammar”.

  10. Neil Rickert: Yes, we clearly have a strong drive to acquire a language, which I take to be innate.

    Do you think we have a strong innate drive to infer that other minds exist besides our own?

    peace

  11. Entropy: Au contraire. I’m trying very hard to use my bullshit detector early on, rather than allowing that ass-hole to take control over the quality of my thinking.

    Entropy is cleary tied too emotionally to his needed belief system to think rationally. Its a pattern we see in many atheists who need so badly for their ideas to be true, that they just close up their brains, cover their eyes, and shout blah, blah, blah…

    Rumraket is another great example of this. They want to believe, so they only see what they want to. Its why the atheists are much more emotional here than the theists, that has always been very obvious here, and on other debate forums. One has to wonder why, why are the atheists the ones who can’t seem to control their emotions, even when you are in a safe space, and you have moderators going out of their way to protect you.

  12. fifthmonarchyman: Do you think we have a strong innate drive to infer that other minds exist besides our own?

    I don’t know. Looking at reports of feral children might give some indication.

    My best guess would be that it has more to do with social organization than with innateness.

  13. Neil Rickert: My best guess would be that it has more to do with social organization than with innateness.

    I suspect that our propensity for social organization might be more innate than we realize. 😉

    peace

  14. Neil Rickert: I don’t know.Looking at reports of feral children might give some indication.

    My best guess would be that it has more to do with socialorganization than with innateness.

    I suspect that reports of feral children almost all involve cases where the child had problems to begin with first, and then were abandoned.

    I used to like reading about a lot of these cases.

  16. phoodoo: I suspect that reports of feral children almost all involve cases where the child had problems to begin with first, and then were abandoned.

    That’s quite possible. I haven’t spent enough time reading about cases to have an opinion on that.

  17. fifth:

    Do you think we have a strong innate drive to infer that other minds exist besides our own?

    Yes, and I think it’s a major factor behind the delusions of religious belief.

    And unlike Neil, I don’t think we have to look to feral children to see this. People do it from a very early age:

    Agency Attribution in Infancy: Evidence for a Negativity Bias

    Abstract
    Adults tend to attribute agency and intention to the causes of negative outcomes, even if those causes are obviously mechanical. Is this over-attribution of negative agency the result of years of practice with attributing agency to actual conspecifics, or is it a foundational aspect of our agency-detection system, present in the first year of life? Here we present two experiments with 6-month-old infants, in which they attribute agency to a mechanical claw that causes a bad outcome, but not to a claw that causes a good outcome. Control experiments suggest that the attribution stems directly from the negativity of the outcome, rather than from physical cues present in the stimuli. Together, these results provide evidence for striking developmental continuity in the attribution of agency to the causes of negative outcomes.

  18. dazz:

    so sorry for your loss keiths. I recently lost my father and I’m now taking care of his dog who is also just about to leave us any day. best wishes

    Thank you, dazz. My condolences on the loss of your father. I’m sure he’d be glad to know that you’re taking good care of his pup, in his or her time of need.

  19. Entropy,

    You give that sophist a lot of leeway, and you cannot have the courtesy of reading my comments for comprehension because you felt insulted that I said that you fell for the true/false misuse, and that you carried it along in your discourse.

    You’re projecting. I wouldn’t last a day at TSZ if I were that thin-skinned.

    I’ve read your comments, and there’s a simple reason why I say you haven’t refuted Plantinga: It’s because you haven’t refuted Plantinga.

    You’ll never be able to refute his argument if you don’t understand it, yet you clearly don’t want to understand it:

    keiths:

    Plantinga’s argument isn’t that difficult to understand. Why not try harder?

    Entropy:

    Because it’s absurd. Trying harder won’t make it any less absurd. People fall into the trap the moment they translate the absurdities and thus buy into the loaded premises.

    Plantinga’s argument fails, but it isn’t absurd and it does deserve to be taken seriously. You aren’t doing yourself any favors by prematurely dismissing it without understanding it first.

    Entropy:

    Pointing to the absurdity from the very beginning is a counterargument. The whole edifice falls once the loaded language and sophistry are left in the open.

    Again, no. As I said earlier:

    Don’t get hung up on the terminology. It’s the ideas that matter, and a fair reading of Plantinga reveals those ideas. He isn’t hiding them or trying to play word games.

  20. keiths:

    I think of “accurate” in this case as meaning “correctly representing the spatial relationships of the salient features of her environment.”

    KN:

    That much I completely agree with, though I’d want to insert a caveat or modifier along the lines of “as adequately as necessary for the animal to achieve its goal and satisfy its needs.” But with that caveat, there is the very interesting little wrinkle: cognitive evolution will not endow an animal’s mind with greater representational adequacy than is necessary for achieving the goals specific to animals of that kind. It just has to be good enough, and no more than good enough.

    Not quite. Evolution will favor a trait as long as the benefits outweigh the costs. There’s no magic stopping point at “good enough”. The real stopping point is at “too expensive to be worth it”, and that can change as environmental conditions change.

    keiths:

    If the cat believes the mouse is behind the door, and the mouse is in fact behind the door, then the cat’s belief is true.

    KN:

    That does make sense, of course. I’m not saying you’re mistaken. The itch that I can’t stop scratching here is this: philosophers, scourge of common sense that they are, are prone to say that beliefs are propositional attitudes. But if an animals mental representations are not propositional (and we seem to agree that they are not), then how can they be beliefs?

    A belief is just something we take to be true. It doesn’t have to be a proposition. (I think Fodor’s “language of thought” idea was silly.)

    The cat takes it to be true that there’s a mouse on the other side of the door, and acts accordingly, all without ever transforming that belief into a proposition.

  21. KN,

    The idea of naturalizing intentionality seems to rely on the idea that we can explain content in terms of covariance. That’s roughly the project of people like Fred Dretske and Ruth Millikan. But it’s not clear if those projects are ultimately successful. The dilemma that they face is that these projects tend to either project too much content into covariance, so that we never get from covariance to content — or they just start off with covariance and never arrive at genuine semantic content. (Millikan has the first problem, Dretske has the second.)

    By “genuine semantic content” you seem to mean “original intentionality”. We’ve had this discussion before; I don’t believe that original intentionality exists. It’s all derived, “as-if” intentionality as far as I’m concerned.

    Is the cat’s “representation” of the mouse just a covariance — as the mouse moves about in space and time, the underlying neurophysiological states in the cat’s brain reliably covary with the mouse’s location? So that the relation between the mouse and the cat is just a much more complicated version of the relation between the season and the tree rings?

    If that were right, then the cat doesn’t represent the mouse any more than the rings represent the seasons — that is, we can interpret these patterns as representations, but the cat doesn’t represent the mouse to herself.

    No, because while the tree doesn’t act on the information contained in its rings, the cat does act on the information contained in her representation — by pawing under the door, for instance.

  22. Kantian Naturalist: There are quite a few problems with the EAAN, but the most central one (to my mind) is that Plantinga assumes that naturalism is committed to thinking of semantic content as epiphenomenal or causally inefficacious. And that’s a serious error, because there’s no reason why naturalists need to believe that semantic content cannot be causally efficacious.

    Plantinga might be right that if semantic content were not causally efficacious, then it could not be a target of selection. But he mistakenly assumes that naturalists cannot treat semantic content as causally efficacious. And only with that assumption does the rest of the EAAN go through.

    How did you get the impression that EAAN depends on any specific theory of truth? It doesn’t.

    But otherwise (i.e. not directly or too specifically relating to EAAN), the impression that dualists and other anti-materialists have from hearing so-called naturalists is indeed that naturalists tend to hold to very slim, minimal, fairly impotent and sterile theories of truth. This has been confirmed here over and over again, e.g. lately Glen’s attempts to work with “right/wrong” while shunning “truth”.

  23. Neil Rickert: I can agree that there is significant innateness there.

    putting aside innateness for a while.

    Do you agree that it can be useful to infer that a mind is behind things that are non-programmable but predictable?

    Perhaps because it facilitates our predicting behavior even though we don’t fully “understand” it’s source.

    peace

  24. Erik: the impression that dualists and other anti-materialists have from hearing so-called naturalists is indeed that naturalists tend to hold to very slim, minimal, fairly impotent and sterile theories of truth.

    I think that this observation is interesting and I have the same impression

    I wonder if there are any quantifiable side effects of this tendency.

    Would a naturalist have a different understanding of what it means to tell the truth under oath for instance than the rest of us?

    peace

  25. Erik: This has been confirmed here over and over again, e.g. lately Glen’s attempts to work with “right/wrong” while shunning “truth”.

    So you think cats believe in truth?

    Or are you just too dull to know what I was writing about?

    Why am I not surprised that you’re so out of context?

    Glen Davidson

  26. …naturalists tend to hold to very slim, minimal, fairly impotent and sterile theories of truth.

    Erik,

    I do hope you’ll bless us with a description of your fat, maximal, potent and fertile theory of truth.

  27. keiths: I’ve read your comments, and there’s a simple reason why I say you haven’t refuted Plantinga: It’s because you haven’t refuted Plantinga.

    As I said, you obviously haven’t read my comments. You don’t go beyond a few sentences, judge based on those, and carry on. I wrote a lot more than “I already refuted the ass-hole,” and “he’s misusing the concept of truth.” Yet, none of that reached you. The only possible explanation is that you didn’t read it.

    I refuted the sophist in two ways at least, but I’m not going to repeat myself. You seem unable to go too far into a comment. Why bother?

  28. keiths: I do hope you’ll bless us with a description of your fat, maximal, potent and fertile theory of truth.

    This is where creationists show that their claims and criticisms are sterile, if they even try.

  29. Entropy,

    I refuted the sophist in two ways at least, but I’m not going to repeat myself.

    I didn’t see a refutation, and I’m not going to take your word for it.

    If you think you’ve refuted Plantinga, and you want the rest of us to believe it, you’ll need to say where and how.

  30. keiths: A belief is just something we take to be true. It doesn’t have to be a proposition. (I think Fodor’s “language of thought” idea was silly.)

    The cat takes it to be true that there’s a mouse on the other side of the door, and acts accordingly, all without ever transforming that belief into a proposition.

    But what does the cat believe? If the cat believes, “there is a mouse on the other side of the door,” then the cat’s belief contains the proposition that there’s a mouse on the other side of the door. The belief is true if there is a mouse on the other side of the door, and false if there isn’t.

    Or such would be the case if a cat’s beliefs were just like a human’s beliefs, i.e. propositional attitudes (attitudes taken towards propositions).

    But if that ascribes too much cognitive complexity to the cat, then we need something else for the cat’s beliefs to be, and I’d like to know what that is.

  31. GlenDavidson: So you think cats believe in truth?

    They don’t believe in anything like right or wrong either. They have no beliefs in the first place. Your ad hoc construct of truth-right-wrong-belief is categorically messed up from the very ground.

  32. keiths:
    I didn’t see a refutation, and I’m not going to take your word for it.

    You wouldn’t have to if you had bothered to read buying the first few sentences. The comments are still there.

    keiths:
    If you think you’ve refuted Plantinga, and you want the rest of us to believe it, you’ll need to say where and how.

    You saw those comments. It’s you who preferred not to read them. How could I know if you’ll read them this time if you failed to read them several times already?

  33. Entropy,

    I read your comments, but I didn’t see a refutation.

    Again:

    If you think you’ve refuted Plantinga, and you want the rest of us to believe it, you’ll need to say where and how.

  34. keiths:
    I read your comments, but I didn’t see a refutation.

    No you didn’t read them (there’s more, but that should suffice if you really care).

    P.S. Or maybe you haven’t gone too far into what Plantinga claims? Have you heard the idiot presenting that absurdity about some guy running away from a tiger because he believes that’s the best way to pet it? That shit fails at so many levels that’s just painful. That idiot has a PhD in philosophy!? How is that even possible?! Philosophy must be in deep trouble.

  36. Erik: They don’t believe in anything like right or wrong either.

    That’s why I used quote marks and a lot of conditionals, you disingenuous bozo. Why don’t you ever get anything right? First you’re whining about my weak view of “truth” which was solely about cats, and now you’re pretending that I was saying that cats believe in right and wrong.

    Your ad hoc construct of truth-right-wrong-belief is categorically messed up from the very ground.

    Your nauseating misrepresentation is wrong–I’ll go with that.

    Glen Davidson

  39. keiths,
    You already know Plantinga’s EAAN and the fact that it does not depend on any particular theory of truth. That should be good enough. I will describe my own theory in a more appropriate thread.

  40. Erik:

    You already know Plantinga’s EAAN and the fact that it does not depend on any particular theory of truth. That should be good enough. I will describe my own theory in a more appropriate thread.

    Having doubts about the “potency” of your theory, Erik?

    The EAAN is already off-topic in this thread, so there’s nothing inappropriate about stating your presumably “potent” theory of truth.

  41. Entropy,

    No you didn’t read them (there’s more, but that should suffice if you really care).

    I read that comment, and I could see that you were arguing against Plantinga, but I didn’t see a refutation in it. What are you referring to, specifically? Why not just copy and paste the part that you think constitutes a refutation?

    P.S. Or maybe you haven’t gone too far into what Plantinga claims? Have you heard the idiot presenting that absurdity about some guy running away from a tiger because he believes that’s the best way to pet it?

    I mentioned it myself:

    At best, Plantinga can only come up with specific scenarios (like his “tiger” scenario) in which false beliefs are adaptive. He needs to do much more in order for his argument to succeed.

  42. keiths: The EAAN is already off-topic in this thread, so there’s nothing inappropriate about stating your presumably “potent” theory of truth.

    Here’s a good juxtaposition of two theories of truth http://www.patheos.com/blogs/secularoutpost/2014/02/26/feser-parsons-index/

    As you will see reading it, much gets discussed, such as brute facts versus causal explanations, physics of things and morals of beings. This is because a full elaboration of any theory of truth worth the name relates to all that. And more.

    So, it’s inappropriate of me to start an exposition of a theory of truth from scratch where there’s not enough space and not enough reason for it. It would require a book, but there are already books filled with it and you know it.

  43. Erik,

    If you had a “potent” theory of truth, you could present it and defend it.

    I called your bluff, and you folded.

  44. keiths: If you had a “potent” theory of truth, you could present it and defend it.

    I linked you to a presentation where you can nicely compare both sides. By reading it and telling your impressions you would demonstrate you are capable of giving such things some thought and ready for a discussion on the topic. Right now your mind is too deeply on some bluff thing. Get over it.

  45. KN,

    But what does the cat believe? If the cat believes, “there is a mouse on the other side of the door,” then the cat’s belief contains the proposition that there’s a mouse on the other side of the door.

    The cat’s belief implies the truth of the proposition “there is a mouse on the other side of the door”, but that proposition is nowhere explicitly represented as such in the cat’s brain.

    In the cat’s mental representation of its surroundings, the thing we would call “a mouse” is represented as being on the other side of the thing we would call “a door”, but the proposition isn’t represented anywhere.

    Likewise, a map of the US implies the truth of the proposition “Phoenix is southwest of Denver”, but you won’t find that proposition anywhere on the map.

    The belief is true if there is a mouse on the other side of the door, and false if there isn’t.

    Or such would be the case if a cat’s beliefs were just like a human’s beliefs, i.e. propositional attitudes (attitudes taken towards propositions).

    I don’t even think that humans encode most of their beliefs in propositional form. When I’m asked whether Phoenix is southwest of Denver, I don’t go rifling through a list of propositions in my head, looking for a match. I visualize a map of the US, observe that Phoenix is southwest of Denver, and answer “yes.”

  46. Erik: You already know Plantinga’s EAAN and the fact that it does not depend on any particular theory of truth.

    Of course it depends on something like a theistic theory of truth. That is to say, it depends on truth being externally imposed on us, rather than truth being emergent from pragmatic considerations and pragmatic decision making.

  47. keiths,

    So you really didn’t see how the scenario changes when we consider accuracy instead of a binary true/false bullshit? Really really really?

    You didn’t notice that starting with a more “primitive” or “basic” thing, like pain, and then starting to link it to cognitive faculties would work towards better cognitive faculties either? Really really really?

    You didn’t see that I also mentioned that beliefs are not inheritable? Really really really?

    If you felt lazy to read the comment in its entirety, or if you didn’t understand any of it, how can you even pretend to defend something as obtuse and filled with imbecility like Plantinga’s EAAN? That shit has to be filtered from loads of distracting and useless quotes and other fillers before you can get to the gists of it. That you get. My two or three paragraphs, not so much?

    Seriously? Do you want me to use puppets?

  48. Neil Rickert: Of course it depends on something like a theistic theory of truth.That is to say, it depends on truth being externally imposed on us, rather than truth being emergent from pragmatic considerations and pragmatic decision making.

    Any theist would of course dispute that “pragmatic considerations” make any sort of truth worth the name, particularly the sort that could establish whether e.g. naturalism is true or false.

    But EAAN does not depend on this, because it does not start with this and does not require it at any stage. EAAN states, given that evolution from lower life forms to higher is all there is, that cognitive capacities of organisms under such conditions don’t have any reason for detection of truth or falsity, only for detection of threat and food.

    So, if you want to talk about truth, show me how it emerges from “pragmatic considerations” in the framework of biological survival, as opposed to being another system totally independent from it.

  49. Neil,

    Of course it [the EAAN] depends on something like a theistic theory of truth.

    No, not at all. The plain ol’ garden variety correspondence theory of truth works just fine.

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