amkerman wrote:I have never heard an atheist [successfully] account for the existence of these things without [the existence of something I would term] God. [I too, cannot account for the existence of these things without the existence of something I would term God.] Because of this, the latter sentence rather than the former, I do not believe that these things exist without the existence of something I would term God (although if someone successfully argued that these things did exist without the existence of something I would term God, logically, and rationally, then I would have to re-evaluate my position; I be obliged to believe their argument for myself, thus I would be justified in believing the argument).
That you're heard someone say something iis justification for believing someone has said something.
Thank you for clearing that up.
amkerman wrote:If it is not true, it fails. At least in my mind. there is no such thing as 80% successful. 80% successful is called a failure in my book. If it works it works. just follow all logical rules, make sound premises, draw sound conclusions. don't commit fallacy's, don't appeal to authority, think clearly and concisely, and lay the argument out on the table so it is easy to follow along.
So, am I to take it that an account that does not account for everything is not a successful account? One that cannot adequately fend off all objections is not a successful account?
amkerman wrote:Anyone may or may not be able to provide a successful (read true) account of morality. It is of my opinion, currently, that atheism cannot, whereas theism can. That is neither here nor there. If you don't believe it, for yourself, then you are not justified in believeing it. We cannot in good conscious go around lying to ourselves and others saying we believe things we have never even thought about, or that we don't believe.
Excellent. So if your belief is justified, it's because theism can provide a 100% successful account of morality. It can avoid all arbitrariness objections, deflect the Euthyphro, solve issues of supervenience and be properly motivated over all nontheistic rivals. All this whilst failing to throw up any further worrisome objections. I'm deeply skeptical.
amkerman wrote:Atheists may share "a lack of belief" in regard to God, but that doesn't exhaust the features of an atheist's worldviews.
It is the only worldview we are talking about.
Atheism isn't usually a worldview. A lack of belief doesn't constitute a worldview. Now if someone drew up a worldview and called it Atheism, sure. But atheism, understood as a lack of belief, is not a worldview.
amkerman wrote:We can have many different beliefs and lackthereof, none of which are about God; these can also differ from atheist to atheist.
Agreed. non-sequitur.
Some of us are naturalists, others are not; some are nihilists, some are not; some are even platonists
Agreed. non-sequitur.
What's the "non-sequitur" referring to in each of these?
amkerman wrote:So nonbelievers don't need to draw justification from their lack of belief, because they can draw it from their actual beliefs. Do you seriously think that atheists start from their nonbelief and build upwards on it in this way?
Fine, I'll allow this, if anyone can successfully (read truly) posit the existence of morality, truth, love, etc, etc (what is funny is that I don't need to stop with abstract concepts, If someone wants to posit that physical reality actually exists, that's fine) without positing the existence of what I would term God (the objectivity of consciousness) so be it. I have yet to hear a successful argument.
That's fine. But I've seen your arguments too. They're not convincing.
The atheist has options available though. One could posit that moral facts supervene on other natural facts, but are not reducible to them. Or perhaps that they can be reduced to other natural facts. Or that they're nonnatural facts (say, some kind of platonism). Or even, I suppose, that they are supernatural facts, but that the supernatural doesn't have available space for God. The last option is kind of far-fetched, but I reckon it could possibly work, so long as supernatural doesn't just mean God. This doesn't even take into account the many views that aren't so easy to lay on the map.
No one here needs to settle on any of these. That people here have not chosen to defend any of these views doesn't mean you're justified in believing that no atheist can defend such a view. People here are typically skeptics, so it shouldn't come as a surprise that they aren't willing to settle with any of these yet.
amkerman wrote:Well, I build on my beliefs upwards. We start from axioms we cannot prove but accept as true and build our beliefs around them. But yes, I would assume that every single one of an atheists beliefs follows from a non-belief in God. Just as every single belief, if you are say a naturalist, is logically coherent with your naturalistic philosophy. If you have a belief that is inconsistent with "lacking belief in God" how can you look yourself in the face and say you are an atheist. It is just intellectually dishonest. It is logically incoherent.
I think you're missing something important. Sure, there are probably some atheists who start out with a position of non-belief and build from there. However, most atheists (particularly those you'll find on this forum) have come to their non-belief as a result of other beliefs. You're leaving out that non-belief can be the result of maintaining consistency in other beliefs.
amkerman wrote:Atheism, I think, is logically incoherent. Unless of course you accept nihilism and reject the existence of objective reality. I do not think that one can posit that any conscious abstraction objectively exists, or that physical reality exists, without positing the objectivity of consciousness, which I would term "God". Therefore, claiming that either conscious abstractions or physical reality exist objectively, while maintaing an atheist mindset (that consciousness does not objectively exist) is logically incoherent. As such, I cannot accept atheism.
You couldn't support your arguments about reality last time, though. And whoever said that abstractions are conscious? That's just powered off the fact that you make the objective/subjective distinction fuzzy beyond recognition. Others don't do this.
amkerman wrote:amkerman wrote:Or maybe one claims "good" or "right" exists. How? If you believe that, they have become your God, at least as I see it. There certainly is no empirical evidence for their existence, they certainly can not be measured or proven, and they certainly aren't known to exist in a physical sense. These concepts are only known through personal feeling, as experience, as a priori knowledge.
Experience is a priori?
All bachelors are single. a priori. maybe a better term would have been, epistemically speaking, self-evident truth.
I get what a priori is. I'm saying that experience is usually a posteriori. This looks like an instance where you've kept the terms of a distinction, but done away with the distinction proper.
amkerman wrote:I wouldn't be so steadfast about any of this. It markedly ignores much of the work of contemporary moral philosophers. But even granting, for argument's sake, that the good and the right are known only through "personal feeling", there are plenty of nontheists whose moral philosophies are informed by an intuitionist epistemology. It's actually had a resurgence over the past decade. If anything, intuitionist epistemology may conflict with theism (particularly those views try to ground moral facts in God's will). Your claim that these things become "God" needs fleshing out. God is not just what the atheist believes in beyond his or her scientistic justifications.
I am steadfast. If you want to make the moral philosophy argument, make it and I will respond. You haven't said anything here. Make the argument. I don't give a shit what a moral philosopher said or didn't say. Tell me the argumentt so I can respond to it.
The argument is book-length, so no, I won't be laying it out here. There's also more than one. Be careful throwing around claims of entitlement though, because you've asked us to grant you quite a lot here.
amkerman wrote:The last sentence I can respond to. "God is not just what the atheist believes in beyond his or her scientistic justifications."
Yes, it is. Beyond scientistic justifications lies "woo" (as atheists often calls it). Lies God. Atheists continually argue that they do not believe in God because there is 0 empirical evidence. In my opinion this is fine, and a reasonable justification not to believe in something. However, I can not accept that the atheist then goes on to believe in other things with 0 empirical evidence. It is fucking mind-numbing. I know it happens, with a plethora of abstract concepts, in many atheists. This is yet another reason (actually, I think it is the reason we have been discussing, the reason that I would be depressed as an atheist, because I am logically consistent) why atheism is logically incoherent.
Woo doesn't lie beyond scientistic justifications unless the atheist buys into a strict scientism. Some atheists do, but many of us don't. Some of us may owe our non-belief to a lack of empirical evidence, but so what? Atheists don't have to be strict empiricists of this sort or support their atheism in this way. I don't even think that sort of atheism is that interesting, personally.
Can you not think of a reason why an atheist might
be an atheist without holding to strict empiricism? Consider logical incoherence, as you often put it. An atheist might dismiss God because the constituents of the concept are incoherent when placed together. Or perhaps theism contradicts something else that's obvious in the world, as the problem of evil alleges (let's not forget the problem of divine hiddenness either). If God has these problems, but other nonnatural or supernatural concepts do not, then you have an explanation for why an atheist can believe in one thing and not another. Do you see where I'm coming from now?
amkerman wrote:amkerman wrote:God IS these things. Objective morality= God. Objective Love= God. Objective Truth=God. Objective meaning=God. etc, etc. When I say God is the source of these things, what I am saying is that God is what we aspire to. God is the ideal. We aspire to be good, we aspire to love, we aspire to do right; we are aspiring to God.
So you've made controversial identifications and gone from there. That's great, but the atheist hasn't made these identifications. Unless you can provide sufficient reasons for them to do so, they need not be convinced that these things cannot be got without God. Since the atheist has not made these identifications, their aspirations are not to God-likeness.
They are the exact same thing as theists, they just don't call it God because they don't believe God exists. They are to the same thing. If they believe these ideals exist, if they actually believe they are working towards something, let's hear them justify their existence. I'm sure it can be done without using the actual word God, it just can't be done without claiming that consciousness exists objectively (which is God).
The atheist has not made these identifications, so you can drop that until you have something new. It's getting less and less clear what you think morality is. Is morality just aspiring to a moral ideal? We could look at how we value things to check this, but I don't think you'll find it's borne out by that checking. Without some deeper argument and analysis, there's no reason an atheist should accept your claims are face-value.
There's something strange about this though. If we're identifying these things with God, the motivation would surely be that God is like a person in significant ways, so we aspire to be persons in a way that reflects on God as this ideal person. But is God even personal on your view? You keep saying that God is reality. That doesn't look much like a personal God. If he is personal, then you run into the usual objections applicable to this sort of view. If not, your view looks unmotivated.
amkerman wrote:Does truth even function like that? Do we aspire to truth because God is truth...huh?
Something like that. We aspire to truth because truth is right, right is good, good is God.
Yeah, that's just more confusing.
amkerman wrote:Theism is coherent because we aspire to these things, AND, we believe these things exist. As far as I can tell, atheism, while atheists may or may not aspire to these very same things, ultimately doesnt believe they exist. Depressing, IMO, and pointless to aspire to them.
You're not even doing justice to Ideal Observer Theory -and Michael Martin works so hard!
The atheist can believe these things exist; they're just not going to identify them with God.
Don't know who that is or what the Ideal Observer Theory is.[/quote]
You're kidding. Sure, i can understand that you've never heard of Michael Martin, but the second part? Which nontheistic ethicists are you familiar with? Have you heard of the Cornell Realists? Or functionalists like Jackson? Or virtue ethicists like Hursthouse and Thomson? What about nonnaturalists like Schafer-Landau and Fitzpatrick? Or neo-Kantians like Korsgaard? I'm not doing a name-drop for the fun of it here either. You've said you haven't seen or heard an atheist give an account of morality without God, but have you looked very far? These people attempt to do just that. And they're just a few drops in the pond. Ethicists like Simon Blackburn and Alan Gibbard pretty much build up to moral realism from a starting-point of nihilism.
amkerman wrote:You don't need me to pursue perfect virtue, and you shouldn't be looking to me to find it.
Edit: perfect human virtue is an oxymoron.
Who said anything about humans achieving perfect virtue? Naturally a theist would be well-advised to be careful about granting perfect virtue for humans, but then I don't really need you to grant that.
I think you're missing the tongue-in-cheekness of this last bit comment though.
by 
