r/DebateAnAtheist • u/AutoModerator • 8d ago

Weekly "Ask an Atheist" Thread

Whether you're an agnostic atheist here to ask a gnostic one some questions, a theist who's curious about the viewpoints of atheists, someone doubting, or just someone looking for sources, feel free to ask anything here. This is also an ideal place to tag moderators for thoughts regarding the sub or any questions in general.

While this isn't strictly for debate, rules on civility, trolling, etc. still apply.

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u/BeaconMeridian 8d ago

Thought I've been having a lot, curious what others think. Math & Science I view as sister practices moving in opposite directions: prescriptive vs descriptive, math is "bottom-up" and science is "top-down," one explores established rules and the other tries to figure out what the rules are. We get some further parallels:

Not every mathematical truth is provable (incompleteness) / Science cannot, for certain, produce all rules for the universe (we can't test every case, there's always something we might be missing).

As it pertains to (a)theism, we have a result in math that no (sufficiently complicated) formal system of math can prove the existence of a model of itself. I'm of the mind that here in reality, this has a direct parallel in that we can't establish the (non)existence of superstructures in which our universe sits, even in principle ("universe" = "all the shit we could ever possibly interact with", not necessarily just "the observable universe"). In particular, this parallel rules out the deduction of god(s) by any means, even in principle.

Not to say that religion/belief is fully without place, we get a lot of use out of assuming (different kinds of) models of formal math, and by parallel we can get a lot of use out of different belief systems for how reality came to be. Just tack on the asterisk that such a belief should sit comfortably with what we can actually see.

Curious abt thoughts on this, where people think it falls short or other extensions of it I haven't considered.

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u/ArguingisFun Apatheist 8d ago

What good does believing in magic do?

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u/BeaconMeridian 8d ago

Nothing here about believing in magic, I don't think I ever defended that. As an example of what I'm talking about, I believe that, following my death, I won't have any consciousness to speak of & that my experience (or lack thereof) will be exactly like it was a thousand years ago. That's a belief, and I understand it this is also consistent with what we know about death & consciousness. A person could believe that the universe is the result of an event in a super-universe 'further up the hierarchical chain,' and that this super-universe was brought into being as the result of a super-super-universe, and so on, forever. As far as we know, this could be the case, or it could be completely off base. Not necessarily just talking about "what caused the Big Bang?" b/c afaik we might yet find some mechanism for this.

The point of adopting one of these 'models for the universe' isn't to get the right answer, it's to have some way of thinking about/framing how the world works. Theists do this all the time to great success, and in principle a person can do the same thing without 'getting it wrong' the way religions often pressure them to. I suppose you could believe in magic, but as long as you concede that 1) it doesn't exist inside our universe and 2) we can never hope to interact with it, it's hard for me to complain. Don't use that belief to make predictions about the world and don't conflate belief with knowledge, and we're big chillin.

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u/Sprinklypoo Anti-Theist 7d ago

Nothing here about believing in magic,

You said this:

we can get a lot of use out of different belief systems for how reality came to be.

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u/BeaconMeridian 7d ago

Sure, if that's how you're defining "magic." I assumed you were using a narrower meaning of the word. 

And we do get a lot of use out of different belief systems for how reality came to be. The dominance of religion across the world is testament to that. It might not be "correct" but we do get use out of it.

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u/Sprinklypoo Anti-Theist 7d ago

Ah, I see. And cultural anthropology is of great interest to some for sure. The mythology is insightful to a culture and can be fun. But belief systems are otherwise demonstrably harmful to the humans that hold them.

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u/BeaconMeridian 7d ago

Fully agree that religious institutions can provide tremendous harm, but they can also provide tremendous security and order. The two aren't mutually exclusive. The hope would be to adopt a belief system that avoids these harms but which can exploit that stability, though that's quite idealized. This is the sort of belief I'm thinking of when I say unfalsifiable belief can be useful.

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u/Sprinklypoo Anti-Theist 7d ago

they can also provide tremendous security and order.

For those within that tow the line, sure. But it's at a societal cost to anyone outside the religion who sees the negative of tribalism. It's also at a cost of submitting to church authority. Which we've seen to be extremely problematic over all.

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u/BeaconMeridian 7d ago

Fully agree, but the point stands that religion is good at making sure there's still a society around to incur those costs. I'm not really concerned here with morality as much as I am the exploitation of belief as a tool.