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Evidence from reality. What do you think causes friction, for example?
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If we were to claim that the only thing in the universe that exists is X, and then we discovered something that was not X, would that not falsify the claim?
Yet when we claim the only things in the world that exists are material things, and then we discovere something that is not a material thing, we don't say that materialism has been falsified. Instead, we change the definition of materialim to include the newly found discovery.
What exactly have we discovered that is immaterial, and how do you know this?
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At some point in time, electromagnetic radiation may not have been included in the concept of material things. I don't know. But assuming arguendo that you are correct, upon discovery of electrmagnetic radiation it would have been proper to say materialism has been discredited.
It seems strange that by finding concrete evidence of new ways materials interact that we've debunked materialism. Kind of like discrediting the idea of children by having one.
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So let me ask you: When you claim that only material things exists, what do you mean by "material things"? And if science discovers something that falls outside of that definition, are you willing to concede that your theory has been falsified, or are you going to change the definition of materialism to incorporate the new discovery?
Sure, but my definition of material isn't "only things we've directly observed before some arbitrary date". Newly discovered things aren't automatically immaterial. Neither are things we don't fully understand.
It's like saying that people are wrong in believing car companies sell cars because a new model year of car came out. We never saw that car before, therefore people who accept car-ism are redefining cars instead of being reasonable and falsifying their belief that car dealers sell cars, since this new form of car is obviously not a car.
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Put more simply, is the claim "the only things that exist are material things" falsifible? If so, doesn't the existence of dark matter falsify it?
Only if you're willing to prove that dark matter is immaterial. You'd be doing cosmologists quite a favor if you could do that.
Evidence from reality. What do you think causes friction, for example?
What exactly have we discovered that is immaterial, and how do you know this?
It seems strange that by finding concrete evidence of new ways materials interact that we've debunked materialism. Kind of like discrediting the idea of children by having one.
Sure, but my definition of material isn't "only things we've directly observed before some arbitrary date". Newly discovered things aren't automatically immaterial. Neither are things we don't fully understand.
It's like saying that people are wrong in believing car companies sell cars because a new model year of car came out. We never saw that car before, therefore people who accept car-ism are redefining cars instead of being reasonable and falsifying their belief that car dealers sell cars, since this new form of car is obviously not a car.
Only if you're willing to prove that dark matter is immaterial. You'd be doing cosmologists quite a favor if you could do that.
It is not like descrediting the idea of children by having one. It IS like descrediting the idea that "I have the only children in the world" when one day I discover that their are children that aren't mine.
Rather than discrediting that theory, you are arguing we should simply change the definition of "my children" to include any children I might find.
Materialism holds that only matter exists, but check this out, (from wiki)
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According to the dominant cosmological model, the Lambda-CDM model, less than 5% of the universes energy density is made up of the "matter" described by the Standard Model of Particle Physics, and the majority of the universe is composed of Dark Matter and Dark Energy - with no agreement amongst scientists about what these are made of.[21]This obviously refutes the traditional materialism that held that the only things that exist are things composed of the kind of matter with which we are broadly familiar ("traditional matter") - which was anyway under great strain as noted above from relativity and quantum field theory.
We should rightfully claim that materialism has at least probably been disproven by the discovery of dark matter.
But instead, we have extended the definition of matter to include anything whose existence can be detected.
Also, check these out, again from wiki:
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While it is believed by many physical scientists that the concept of matter has merely changed, rather than being eliminated, some have taken a more extreme position. For instance Werner Heisenberg once said “The ontology of materialism rested upon the illusion that the kind of existence, the direct ‘actuality’ of the world around us, can be extrapolated into the atomic range. This extrapolation, however, is impossible . .. atoms are not things.”. Likewise, some philosophers[which?] feel that these dichotomies necessitate a switch from materialism to physicalism.
This is my position. it is more intellectually honest to switch from materialism to physicalism.
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The professor of Philosophy at the University of Notre Dame Alvin Plantinga criticises it, and the Emiritus Regius Professor of Divinity Keith Ward suggests that materialism is rare amongst contemporary UK philosophers: "Looking around my philosopher colleagues in Britain, virtually all of whom I know at least from their published work, I would say that very few of them are materialists."[24]
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Some modern day physicists and science writers such as Paul Davies and John Gribbin have openly expressed how scientific finds in physics such as quantum mechanics and chaos theory have disproven materialism.
Rather than discrediting that theory, you are arguing we should simply change the definition of "my children" to include any children I might find.
So by your argument, it you had another child, it would render the idea of "children" meaningless? You'd be required to come up with a different word to explain it, and your understanding of what children are should fundamentally change. And yet people (including you, I assume) have children all the time, and we have no problem incorporating this fact into our understanding of the word. Why all the hang up about new forms or behavior of the matter, then?
Your mistake is assuming that groups of things are defined simply by listing them. They're not, at least not in most cases. They can also be defined by describing the properties they share. For instance, children are humans below a certain age. That conveys important information about them (they're alive, not adults, etc) without requiring us to make up a new word to describe them every time a new child is born.
The alternative, and the one you're calling for, is like forcing us to make up a new word for children every time a child is born.
"Children are Bob and Sue"
"Tommy was just born"
"Oh dang, that defeats the idea of children. We can't just add Tommy to the list. We'll have to make up a new name to describe living non-adult humans. Any ideas?".
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We should rightfully claim that materialism has at least probably been disproven by the discovery of dark matter.
From your quote :
"with no agreement amongst scientists about what these are made of"
Get back to us when you've proven it's immaterial. I'm hesitant to make sweeping conclusions about the fundamental assumptions of science based on something we don't even know for sure yet.
So by your argument, it you had another child, it would render the idea of "children" meaningless? You'd be required to come up with a different word to explain it, and your understanding of what children are should fundamentally change. And yet people (including you, I assume) have children all the time, and we have no problem incorporating this fact into our understanding of the word. Why all the hang up about new forms or behavior of the matter, then?
Your mistake is assuming that groups of things are defined simply by listing them. They're not, at least not in most cases. They can also be defined by describing the properties they share. For instance, children are humans below a certain age. That conveys important information about them (they're alive, not adults, etc) without requiring us to make up a new word to describe them every time a new child is born.
The alternative, and the one you're calling for, is like forcing us to make up a new word for children every time a child is born.
"Children are Bob and Sue"
"Tommy was just born"
"Oh dang, that defeats the idea of children. We can't just add Tommy to the list. We'll have to make up a new name to describe living non-adult humans. Any ideas?".
No, it does not discredit the idea of "children", it only discredits the idea that "I have every child in the world."
Materialism is supposed to be a limiting term. It supposed to describe a set of things that we know does exist, as opposed to the set of things we know doesn't exist.
Now here's the part I'm really going to need you to pay attention to: It's not only that we have discovered a few things that are immaterial. It's that have discovered a whole range of things that we know are immaterial, and we are aware that there are things out there that we don't know what they are - except we know that they are immaterial.
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Originally Posted by KCfromNC
From your quote :
"with no agreement amongst scientists about what these are made of"
Get back to us when you've proven it's immaterial. I'm hesitant to make sweeping conclusions about the fundamental assumptions of science based on something we don't even know for sure yet.
It's obviously important to read the sentence immediately after the one you quoted.
"This obviously refutes the traditional materialism that held that the only things that exist are things composed of the kind of matter with which we are broadly familiar ("traditional matter")"
Materialism is supposed to be a limiting concept. It makes a distinction between what does exist, and what does not exist.
Now we know there is traditional matter, + some particles+ some stuff we know nothing about except it has gravity.
So in what way is that limiting? If we expressly include stuff that we don't know what it is, then the concept isn't limiting at all.
"Dark Matter" is just a place holder word for a set of things we know nothing about, except that it mostly isn't traditional matter.
In other words, you stated:
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Your mistake is assuming that groups of things are defined simply by listing them. They're not, at least not in most cases. They can also be defined by describing the properties they share
Very well, describe the properties that are shared by the group of items implied to exclusively exist by the term "materialism".
Would it clarify matters to say that, since Boxcar has as part of the definition of atheism an adherence to materialism, and since he can no longer believe that everything is explainable in terms of the material, then he can no longer consider himself atheist?
I can because I do not regard materialism as necessary for atheism. Atheism is simply not believing in any god or gods. As regards the supernatural, immaterial, parapsychological or divine I do not see any convincing evidence for them whereas for the material explanation of what we do know something about, that seems to stand up pretty well. Therefore I give it a fair bit of credence and will give its theories and hypotheses some cautious approval rather than the hypotheses of religion, mysticism, or what we might call 'fringe science' (not to call it it cult -think) which at best seems to be speculative.
Thus far, there is nothing that conflicts with an atheist belief stance except this idea that a rather stringent and, I may say, illogical, adherence to materialist dogma which is hardly to blame on atheism as a whole, whereas some atheists might have got a bit mixed up.
Ads to dark matter, quantum, or the question 'is the cosmos a hologram?', none of that really discredits materialism as such. We have known for a long time that matter wasn't as solid as we once thought. That isn't what matters. What matters is: do we have any sound evidence to suppose that a thinking, forward - planning, intelligently designing invisible cosmic mind is behind it all or not? If not, there is no good reason to believe in anything we might call 'god'.
I am aware of the strong philosophical or even logical 'First cause' arguments and they have some merit. But the fact is that we do not know very much and we have to be agnostic about whether a mind did it or there was some natural process. To dismiss any such possibility is frankly as dogmatic and closed - minded as a refusal to admit even a possibility of a cosmic mind being involved. The trotting out of scientific dicta in support of First cause is a bit cynical from those who dismiss proven science when it doesn't assist their argument
Where we end up is agnosticism which is where we started out. We do not have a rigorous rejection of any possible god or a rigorous dogma of materialism. Any such would, I have to say, be illogical and no atheist should make any such claims or they would play into the hands of those theists who hold up atheism as illogical.
Atheism is not only logical but a logically necessary belief - position arising from agnosticism, which is actually the knowledge position we all share whether we admit it or not.
The arguments for belief in a god (let alone a religion) are not logically or evidentially sound. Therefore theism is not logical. There may be reasons personal, cultural or pragmatic as to why people embrace theism but none that are logically or evidentially sound.
Boxcar, mate, I have to say that, while I don't have a serious problem with you calling yourself agnostic rather than atheist, I must say that your reasoning seems to be a bit faulty or perhaps based on a faulty take that you had on what atheism was.
The decision is yours but I don't think I can put it plainer than this that atheism does not need to stringently espouse dogmatic materialism or god - denial. It needs only to be unconvinced of the credible (believable) probability of something we might call 'god'.
We might still disagree on what that could be. I say it has to be a forward planning intelligence. Discuss?
Last edited by TRANSPONDER; 10-21-2011 at 08:27 AM..
Reason: 'time' not 'tome'
Just to clarify before I proceed: I am agnostic in terms of Deism, but not theism.
It's only the question of "what started everything to begin with" that I see an opportunity for a God to exist. It's not that I hope or want a god to exist.
For the purposes of this discussion there are three possibilities of how everything began:
1. A god caused everything to come into existence.
2. A not-god caused everything to come into existence.
3. Things always existed.
As a matter of semantics, if I believed theory 1 was most likely true, I would call myself a deist. If I believed theories 2 or 3 were most likely true, I would call myself an atheist. If I didn't believe any of those were most likely true, I would call myself agnostic.
I don't believe any of those theories is most likely true, therefore I call myself agnostic. I understand others use the term differently, but I feel like the common connotation for that position is best reflected in the term agnosticism.
I will now skip to your discussion of intelligence as the central focus of the distinction between the deist idea and the non-god idea of how the universe started.
That is a good starting point, unless you consider the basis of intelligence as naturally grounded in the materialist functioning of the parts of the brain. Unfortunately, I do. We can reduce our "intelligence" to the result of the purely physical properties and functions in our brain, with each of it's component parts acting according to the rules of nature. Thus what we call "intelligence", if broken down into it's component parts is nothing more than normal cause and effect of the physical process.
So how could we distinguish between "intelligence" and "non-intelligence?" How do we know if the universe itself is intelligent or non-intelligent? How would we know if the Big bang itself was intelligent or non-intelligent? And most importantly, should we describe what ever caused the big bang as intelligent or reduce it to the physical properties that make it up.
I'm not trying to engage in sophistry here. I am only pointing out that if an intelligent forward planning being existed, there is a good chance we would not describe it as such. Instead we would look at it's component parts and see the natural process of cause and effect that is indistinguishable from non-intelligence.
A good example: there are plants that turn toward the sun as the day goes by. Do we describe these plants as intelligent, and it's DNA forward planning? No, but only because we don't want to. Viewed from a different angle, we could describe these plants as intelligent.
[I think another issue is that "intelligence" is the ability to acquire knowledge. (1)A deist god, if omnipotent, would not have the ability to acquire knowledge because it already would know everything. (2) A diest god, if he were not omnipotent, would not have been required to have the ability to learn in order to create the universe. (3) A diest god could have died during the Big Bang, thus he would not now have intelligence, but perhaps did at one time.]
This is one of the reasons science is perhaps not the best tool to determine whether or not a God exists. Two people could look at the same set of facts and come to different conclusions about whether something is natural or supernatural, intelligent or non-intelligent, a god or a non-god. It's not just purely a matter of semantics either, it's the philosophical lens by which they interpret the world.
I would prefer that the word "material" had a set definition, so that if someone said "all that exists is the material world" it would be a falsifiable statement. Then, if it were true we could at least exclude some things from existence. But when the word "material" has become synonymous with the word "detectable", it loses it's useful meaning, in most uses.
Having said all of that, if you can come up with a meaningful description of "intelligent and forward planning" that is distingiouishable from the normal process of the cause and effects in the natural world, I am open to discuss this further.
Would thinking it all out before the automatic processes that we call 'natural' were in place and taking steps to make it happen be a meaningful description?
Would thinking it all out before the automatic processes that we call 'natural' were in place and taking steps to make it happen be a meaningful description?
This is only problematic because "thinking it all out" is not well defined, particularly in whatever caused the Big Bang.
Why do we say a plant is not thinking when it uses physical processes to determine where the sun is and turn toward it?
Yet we say a human does think? With enough information, one could hypothetically break down each step that caused a a persons brain to react the way it did. From the physical imput that caused the electro-chemical reaction in the synapses, to the ultimate physical effect. None of it was magicaly, all of it was a purely physical processes, with naturalistic reactions to cause and effects. Hypothetically, with enough information one could predict with precision the exact reaction the brain would have to any specific input.
We may either describe the sum of those processes as intelligent or not, depending on our whim. In either case, an external physical cause created a hypothetically predictable internal physical reaction.
Such is the case with whatever caused the Big Bang. How would we know if if we should characterize the sum of the physical actions and reactions as "thought" or "planning"? It's indistingioushable from the normal processes found in nature, except by how we characterize it.
This is why I tend to prefer materialist explanations. The explanations behind the plant growing appear to be adequately explained by natural processes and there is no valid reason to suggest that anything we'd call a mind (with forward planing behind it) is necessary - not that there couldn't be, but there is no good reason that I can see to suppose there is.
I consider the same applies to animal life and to human affairs and indeed, when we consider some of the nastier results of the competition for survival and the senseless back and forth of human conflict, it does look to me like there is no mind in overall charge.
While some mileage is in first cause and conditions for life, there are also good counter arguments and I suggest that it does look like we've been the results of some cataclysmic events which gave us our chance and 'something from nothing' theory looks at least as valid as 'goddunnit' as regards cosmic origins.
With that in mind plus reliability rather than solidity being the basis of materialism, what I argue is that there is no sound reason to regard a planning mind as probable enough to believe in. If one does not believe in it, while not saying that it couldn't be possible, that is all that is required for agnostic non - belief in a cosmic planning mind.
That is all that needed to atheism to be logically a mandatory belief position. For anything else, one logically needs proof (that is some kind of persuasive evidence for) a forward planning mind in preference to the naturalist/materialist theory.
For non - belief it is not necessary to prove the natural to the full but give it credit as the better explanation unless some better case for a 'mind' is forthcoming. I argue that, logically, a case for such a mind only seems to work when the mind is taken as a given and disbelief is given the task of disproving it.
That's not logically what atheism has to do. It is the proponents of the consciousness theory who have it make it evidentially, not just theoretically, reasonable.
I say again that I don't have a great problem with your position which may or not be tending towards deism or regarding the possibility of a 'mind' as good enough to not use the term 'atheist'.
It's an academic niggle that it doesn't seem to me to be logically sound or perhaps fair to what atheism actually is or claims.
This is why I tend to prefer materialist explanations. The explanations behind the plant growing appear to be adequately explained by natural processes and there is no valid reason to suggest that anything we'd call a mind (with forward planing behind it) is necessary - not that there couldn't be, but there is no good reason that I can see to suppose there is.
I consider the same applies to animal life and to human affairs and indeed, when we consider some of the nastier results of the competition for survival and the senseless back and forth of human conflict, it does look to me like there is no mind in overall charge.
While some mileage is in first cause and conditions for life, there are also good counter arguments and I suggest that it does look like we've been the results of some cataclysmic events which gave us our chance and 'something from nothing' theory looks at least as valid as 'goddunnit' as regards cosmic origins.
With that in mind plus reliability rather than solidity being the basis of materialism, what I argue is that there is no sound reason to regard a planning mind as probable enough to believe in. If one does not believe in it, while not saying that it couldn't be possible, that is all that is required for agnostic non - belief in a cosmic planning mind.
That is all that needed to atheism to be logically a mandatory belief position. For anything else, one logically needs proof (that is some kind of persuasive evidence for) a forward planning mind in preference to the naturalist/materialist theory.
For non - belief it is not necessary to prove the natural to the full but give it credit as the better explanation unless some better case for a 'mind' is forthcoming. I argue that, logically, a case for such a mind only seems to work when the mind is taken as a given and disbelief is given the task of disproving it.
That's not logically what atheism has to do. It is the proponents of the consciousness theory who have it make it evidentially, not just theoretically, reasonable.
I say again that I don't have a great problem with your position which may or not be tending towards deism or regarding the possibility of a 'mind' as good enough to not use the term 'atheist'.
It's an academic niggle that it doesn't seem to me to be logically sound or perhaps fair to what atheism actually is or claims.
So back to you ol' mate.
There is not enough evidence that the universe was planned to believe it was a result of a plan.
There is also not enough evidence that the universe was unplanned to believe it is not a result of a plan.
To me, the logical position is say that we don't have enough information to know whether the universe was planned or not.
The reason I choose agnosticism to describe that position is that the other two possibilities (theism or atheism) suggest that the person has reason to believe one of the two position is more accurate. The best way, in connotation if not denotation, to describe a discomfort with both propositions to declare one's self agnostic. Otherwise, you communicate a message you don't mean to suggest. In this context, saying you are an atheist is not a statement for a lack of belief, it's a statement that one does believe the universe was created without a plan. It's therefore a positive statement that needs to be proven, whereas agnosticism is the neutral basis, not making a claim.
On a second point, as a practical matter the word "materialist" doesn't really mean much anymore. It's become the functional equivalent of "discovered." If the word "materialist" had a useful meaning, it would certainly have been shown to have been falsified by the discovery of objects not made of matter.
As a matter of logic, I disagree with the notion of the "science of the gaps". The idea that unknown gaps of knowledge will most likely be discovered to have materialistic explanations. The fallacy of this logic is (1) the definition of materialism changes to include whatever new object is discovered, and (2) Science is methodologically naturalistic, and therefore it's discoveries will always reflect metaphysically naturalistic results.
You may be familiar with Khun's theories of the role of paradigms in science? The scientific method is engulfed in a naturalistic paradigm, and the circular nature of their research process and definitions makes it impossible to see anything but natural results.
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