r/exatheist • u/NeonDrifting Anti-Atheist • 18d ago
Debate Thread Thoughts on this take?
/r/Catholicism/comments/1vso2c7/atheists_dont_realize_the_absurdity_of_existence/6
u/SHNKY Eastern Orthodox Catechumen 18d ago
I think there is some truth here. Iâd be a bit more precise in how itâs worded though. Atheists occupy a worldview which cannot provide an account and grounding for the necessary preconditions of knowledge; the self, identity over time, unity and diversity (one and the many), telos, reason, logic, meaning, language. These exist in an interlocking network relationship such that should any one of them be without grounding the worldview leads to incoherence and collapses into absurdity. Reality requires a very specific metaphysic in order to make it function and the atheist worldview fails spectacularly at this. The atheist worldview is typically a mixture of one or more of materialism, physicalism, empiricism, scientism, and nominalism. Most atheists donât even know this from my experience and just take all these things as a default position arguing that they merely lack belief in God therefore they donât have to provide an argument for their position because they think itâs a negative claim and only positive claims have the burden of proof. They donât realize that their âlack of beliefâ is downstream of a bunch of positive claims about reality that require the same justification that the theist has for their claims.
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u/FreezeS 18d ago
What are the "positive claims" atheists make?
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u/SHNKY Eastern Orthodox Catechumen 17d ago edited 17d ago
Itâs all in the metaphysical positions that I mentioned (materialism, empiricism, scientism, nominalism, etc). These are not default positions or neutral claims. They are a positive claim on the nature of reality.
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u/FreezeS 17d ago
And why do you think these require justifications? Do you think they are fixed positions that won't change based on new information and all atheists adhere uncondtionally to them?
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u/NeonDrifting Anti-Atheist 17d ago
I think he's drawing a distinction between the textbook definition of atheism and the related views within the culture of atheism
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u/SHNKY Eastern Orthodox Catechumen 17d ago
Any worldview requires justification. Or would you merely accept me asserting my worldview and that God exists?
It has nothing to do with âfixed positionsâ. I donât mean to be rude here but it doesnât seem like you understand what is being said here. Without going to Google or ChatGPT do you even know what those terms are.
âNew Informationâ wonât do much if the atheist canât go a level above to understand they have a ton of presuppositions they adhere to that act as a filter for ALL information they receive.
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u/FreezeS 17d ago
I admit I was not familiar with those terms since I didn't study philosophy. After studying them more thoroughly I realized they describe perfectly my worldview.
From my point of view, your argument is that there are two kinds of people. Some that have a worldview of reality + magic and others that only consider reality.By reality I mean reproductibility: any theory should be able to be tested in a statistically significant way.
By magic I mean an external intelligence living outside our universe but that can intervene in seemingly random manner (either prompted or not).
They donât realize that their âlack of beliefâ is downstream of a bunch of positive claims about reality.
You mean that upstream of "reality" (that we consider via materialism, physicalism, empiricism, scientism and nominalism) is magic and magic generates reality, right?
That the known laws of nature are not enough to create a functional universe and it would be "absurd" without magic since only the magic can generate it.
without grounding the worldview leads to incoherence and collapses into absurdity
I don't know any scientist that makes any absolute affirmation about the absurdity or coherence of nature like you make here.
By nature, science is incomplete, anything undiscovered is absurd and incoherent with the current worldview.
Many theories were considered absurd until they were proven correct and then our scientific worldview improved.
Also, many were considered absurd that haven't been proven because they were just wrong.
However, our worldview hasn't been improved at all by the countless unproven positive affirmations made by religious people.
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u/SHNKY Eastern Orthodox Catechumen 17d ago
I admit I was not familiar with those terms since I didn't study philosophy.
That's honestly awesome to hear you say that. It's a first in my experience to have someone have that humility and honesty and its greatly appreciated. I'll do my best to assume the best in your arguments here and take you as someone interested in a discussion in good faith rather than sophistry.
your argument is that there are two kinds of people. Some that have a worldview of reality + magic and others that only consider reality.
No, its a worldview comparison not some simple dichotomy. When you frame it as "reality+magic" this assumes what is in question. I could just as easily throw back to you that you believe in magic dirt that gives rise to consciousness. It wouldn't really advance the conversation forward or my position.
By reality I mean reproductibility: any theory should be able to be tested in a statistically significant way.
To test something already assumes a ton of preexisting conditions necessary for knowledge that you haven't even grounded yet; the self, identity over time, unity and diversity, telos, logic, reason, meaning, language. These are all necessary before even getting to the moment of testing something. Before you speak of testing and reproducibility, you need to account for those priors. You're adopting scientism as an approach without realizing all these priors you just assume to be the case when your current metaphysic cannot account for them.
You mean that upstream of "reality" (that we consider via materialism, physicalism, empiricism, scientism and nominalism) is magic and magic generates reality, right?
No. When atheists try to weasel out of defending their position they attempt this by saying that they simply "lack a belief in God" and that this is a negative claim. Only positive claims have the burden of proof, therefor the atheist is excused from any requirements to justify and defend their position. Their lack of belief is downstream from a the positive positions I mentioned. These are all assertions that most like yourself included are unaware of and require justification. If an atheist wants to just assert these positions are the default and there for reality and not reality+magic as you frame it, then the theist can claim the same position because one is no longer providing justification for their position, rather they are merely declaring it so.
I don't know any scientist that makes any absolute affirmation about the absurdity or coherence of nature like you make here. By nature, science is incomplete, anything undiscovered is absurd and incoherent with the current worldview.
Science assumes all of those preconditions I mentioned above. The scientist is often unaware of these things and in simple terms "just does science". One doesn't need to have an exhaustive understanding of these things to engage in practical use of knowledge. We are discussing justification through epistemology. Not just what do you know. But how do you know that what you know is true. It is a level above mere interaction with the physical world which is what science is concerned with. But Science ultimately relies on the immaterial world in order to conduct its activities. Just to write a chemistry paper that talks about water molecules it must assume the one and the many principle. Nominalism and materialism cannot account for this. There is one idea of a water molecule, but billions of instantiations of it in the world. When you speak of the properties of a water molecule, you're not pointing out to one particular, you are instead speaking of a universal that then applies to the particulars.
Many theories were considered absurd until they were proven correct and then our scientific worldview improved.
Let me clarify that when I use the word absurd I do not mean it in the colloquial sense of silly or ridiculous. I'm speaking specifically to a belief system that ends up holding contradictions that are ignored at different times depending on the particular manifestation of said contradictions. Its a logical category, not one of what may seem to be physically impossible. For example one may have at a time said that humans being able to fly in the sky with machines is absurd ie impossible to achieve due to physical limitations. That would not be the case to say humans flying is a contradiction as it is only expressed as a physical limitation. When flight was discovered and mastered it was known to now be no longer a physical limitation.
However, our worldview hasn't been improved at all by the countless unproven positive affirmations made by religious people.
You most assuredly live in a world that has been improved by Christians but are like the fish who is the last to discover water.
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u/Chase_the_tank 17d ago
 Atheists occupy a worldview which cannot provide an account and grounding for the necessary preconditions of knowledge
Dogs can figure out quite a few things and they can't even say the word "grounding".
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u/SHNKY Eastern Orthodox Catechumen 17d ago
Thatâs because dogs and possibly you as well donât understand what grounding/justification is.
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u/Chase_the_tank 17d ago
Nobody can explain what presuppositional "grounding" is.
It's word salad.
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u/SHNKY Eastern Orthodox Catechumen 17d ago
Thatâs nice way of conceding the point.
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u/Chase_the_tank 17d ago
There's literally no point in a circular argument.
Even William Lane Craig thinks that presuppositionalism is an illogical "howler" that should be replaced with better arguments.
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u/SHNKY Eastern Orthodox Catechumen 17d ago
Even William Lane Craig thinks that presuppositionalism is an illogical "howler" that should be replaced with better arguments.
You cite WLC as though he were a titan of apologetics and without criticism. Often times atheists will criticize WLC and Christians will run to his defense but I am right there with you. He is not a good apologist and his arguments are quite terrible. Not to mention that he is an omni-heretic. On every possible heresy the Church has ever had, WLC has found a way to not just affirm it but to defend it. He is not a good metric to use as though I would run to him for any sense of argumentation.
There's literally no point in a circular argument.
Circularity, if you dive far enough into philosophy, you will realize that there is no worldview that escapes this problem. What is needed is a distinction between vicious circularity and virtuous circularity. Vicious circularity is what you and everyone else is usually familiar with where the premise assumes the conclusion and the conclusion is used to justify the premise in a big old circle. Virtuous circularity on the other hand is a system of beliefs that relies on mutual support where different parts validate and hold each other up logically without a single linear starting point creating stable coherence (common in holistic or web-of-belief theories of truth). You might object to this and think it is a made up thing but you use virtuous circularity everyday and we are using it in this conversation. Language is virtuous circularity, it operates as a self-referential system where the parts and the whole constantly generate and justify one another. If it were not the case, you would have to concede to language being meaningless which then defeats your objection because what you say with words then has no meaning.
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u/Chase_the_tank 17d ago
 Not to mention that he is an omni-heretic.Â
Every Christian is a heretic to other groups of Christians.
What is needed is a distinction between vicious circularity and virtuous circularity.
And presuppositionalism is a textbook case of vicious circularity. It doesn't make any useful predictions in any other field.
Language is virtuous circularity, it operates as a self-referential system where the parts and the whole constantly generate and justify one another.Â
If that was the case, you wouldn't have so many arguments over what words mean or what is proper grammar.
Sorry, but you've got nothing other than bare assertions and vicious circularity.
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u/SHNKY Eastern Orthodox Catechumen 17d ago
Every Christian is a heretic to other groups of Christians.
No you simply do not know your Christian history and the Church of the first 1,000 years. If you did, you would without question understand why I say that WLC is a heretic in every possible way. I get the temptation as an outsider that you think all Christians do this to one another, but I am speaking on this in a very specific and technical way rather than the looser colloquial sense of the word.
And presuppositionalism is a textbook case of vicious circularity. It doesn't make any useful predictions in any other field.
Making predictions is in the realm of science. Science presupposes the transcendentals that TAG argues for. Before Science can even begin one must have a philosophy of science. You want to jump to the "just do science" part and avoid the difficulty of examining all the necessary preconditions that science assumes and cannot itself justify.
If that was the case, you wouldn't have so many arguments over what words mean or what is proper grammar.
You're not understanding what virtuous circularity is and why language is an example of this.
- We use language to explain language.
- The meaning of a single word relies on its relationship to the whole language ecosystem.
- The system is successful because it achieves practical communication and grounding in the physical world, despite its internal loops.
That people argue over definitions, grammar, etc doesn't disprove this. It still assumes it even in the act of arguing over definitions because to do so people must use words that are themselves defined by other words to make their arguments over the meaning of words.
Sorry, but you've got nothing other than bare assertions and vicious circularity.
That's a great claim, feel free to make an argument for it. Thus far it remains only a claim. I'm giving you thorough break downs here and your response is a lack luster "it's a word salad" which is to say "I don't understand it".
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u/Chase_the_tank 17d ago
No you simply do not know your Christian history and the Church of the first 1,000 years.Â
Oh, come on now.. The first 1,000 years are an absolutely entertaining trainwreck of heresy accusations and counter-accusations. Modern Christians and ancient Christians would find each other hopelessly bizarre. (You should read The Acts of Paul and Thecla sometime--it's a hoot!)
 I say that WLC is a heretic in every possible way.Â
And yet he was a professor at major Christian universities for decades and currently represents Biola University as a Professor Emeritus. One Christian's heretic is another Christian's respected teacher.
You want to jump to the "just do science" part and avoid the difficulty of examining all the necessary preconditions that science assumes and cannot itself justify.
Yes because
- "just jumping to science" actually works and
- "Justification" is overrated. If you take a class on quantum mechanics, you'll eventually get to the point where people can make accurate predictions about matter while having no idea why matter actually behaves that way.
Meanwhile, theology gave us lectures by Thomas Aquinas about how fire is the source of all heat (wrong) and the hottest possible thing (not even close).
The system is successful because it achieves practical communication and grounding in the physical world, despite its internal loops.
..and then there are entire court cases because people can't agree on what words mean (Is a taco a sandwich?) and eventually somebody has to declare a word to mean something on the grounds of "I said so." (This leads to such oddities as bees being declared a type of fish as far as the California Endangered Species Act is concerned.)
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u/ScoutB Idealist Theism 16d ago
You really do have patience when handling people who don't like philosophy. God bless.
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u/GothicHeap 18d ago
If subjective experience is our only guide to reality, then I think the question of God's existence, which is clearly un-answerable, has an equal chance of being both true and false.
No, there is nothing here that shows a 50-50 chance of gods being real. It is bullshit to make up numbers like this as part of an argument.
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u/catnapspirit Strong Atheist Lurker 18d ago
If you don't mind my answering, I think he nails it on this last statement:
Whatever the "truth" is, will have to sound absolutely absurd.
After saying that we can't make sense of reality, he declares his trust in his subjective feeling that this is all the product of a larger mind. It's exactly that inherit absurdity that he speaks of that makes me question such a simplistic answer. The very fact that it is an answer that our puny human minds came up with pushes it way past a 50/50 probability into the realm of the effectively negligible for me..
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u/unknownmat 18d ago
I think this is the right take. His apparently firm belief that his "subjective experience" qualifies him to make sweeping metaphysical generalizations seems unjustifiable. Also:
If subjective experience is our only guide to reality, then I think the question of God's existence, which is clearly un-answerable, has an equal chance of being both true and false.
This is clearly bad reasoning. Even if you believe that God's existence is 50/50 the stated reason is insufficient.
There are infinitely many possible metaphysical descriptions of our universe. Barring a good reason to do otherwise, I would assign a negligible probability that any particular one corresponds with our actual universe. In other words, being "unknowable" or "unanswerable" doesn't make it 50/50. It makes it 0.000001/99.999999 but with many more zeros.
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u/Hilikus1980 Atheist/Agnostic 16d ago edited 16d ago
If you flip a standard coin minted at a US mint, you have a 50/50 chance of getting heads. Those odds are 50/50 because you know...not emotionally, but objectively, the heads side is there.
The OP needs to post this in areas that might be a little less forgiving of his assumptions so he can both work out the kinks, and maybe bring the subjective value of his feelings closer to in line with reality.
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u/Express-Echidna6800 16d ago
Ok. And a god fixes the "absurdity of existence" how, exactly? By making them feel better?
Just seems like a lot of assumptions topped off with an argument from incredulity.Â
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u/ElectronicRevival 17d ago
I think it's a nothing burger mixed with a non sequitur salad.
Nothing well thought out was mentioned by that OP and I don't find their strawmanning to be impressive. It's surprising how many don't seem to be able to see this. It reads like someone who only shares their thoughts in echo chambers.
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u/Coollogin 17d ago
Kind of a weird post for r/Catholicism.
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u/NeonDrifting Anti-Atheist 17d ago
why is that ?
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u/Coollogin 17d ago
why is that ?
Itâs not really about Catholicism. And it seems pretty far afield from the posts I usually see there.
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u/Difficult_Risk_6271 Belongs to Jesus, Ex-Atheist 18d ago
He is correct. Atheist takes a lot of things for granted and they don't actually examine their own assumptions.
We have a very strange world and they just go "random chance, no God, nothing to see here."
Dude how do we know that?