Unintended consequences
Atheism is a funny doctrine. They tend to be first rate mathematicians, but what they do is basically denying the law of cause and effect. Using logic that honestly I can't understand, they reach the conclusion that you need no first cause for the world to exist. So there is effect without cause. For the same token they must have thought there is cause without effect.
Atheism causes a very funny chain of philosophical changes. It denies the existence of a higher being. Meaning that human beings are the highest being. If human beings are the highest, we can't really discriminate between them, because there's no criteria above humanity you can use to judge them. So we are all equal. And we are highest. So we are subject of worship (Humans just dig worshipping).
Now if human are worthy of worship, we must care for them. For every single one. Can't let them be poor (gotta Eradicate Poverty), can't let them starve (gotta give food to the Somalis), and we can't let them be sick (Doctors without Borders). Having Human DNA entitles one to godly status, and as such it can't suffer. No if we can't help it. Now, Somalis for example have the damn habit of breeding till there's no food left for anyone, then refuse foreign help. They do it again and again. So we try to help them, we really try, but there's logistics constraints there. So some poor fellas do die.
There is something we can do though, and that is fight disease. Doesn't take much to settle a field hospital in some jungle village, hoard antibiotics there and give them to the villagers. They get a bit pesky with vaccines, but antibiotics they like. So its quite easy to reduce the mortality rate in 90%. Aren't we great?
Well nature has other ideas. A totally drug-resistant strain of tuberculosis has arised in India. We do gooders thought nothing of giving to native doctors in some tropical land where there's more germs than food. Early healthcare introduction in the Third World caused the present unsustainable population levels, but that' s a minor nuisance. But now our DNA worship, our bias to 'save lives', no matter if they're really worth saving, threaten to kill us all. Third World doctors, thanks a lot. Hope you are the first to get killed.
22 comments
reply'Atheism is a funny doctrine. They tend to be first rate mathematicians,' I think you're claiming that atheists tend to be first-rate mathematicians, and that claim is wrong. First-rate mathematicians tend to be Neo-Platonists.
-
reply
"... basically denying the law of cause and effect... first cause... effect without cause..." What makes atheists especially awful is that when someone tells them this, they tend to ask: "What caused God? If everything has a cause, why does God get to be the exception, rather than, say, space/time?" Atheists are rarely convinced by the theist's answer.
-
reply
Spandrell, Atheists tend to be as idiotically tribal as the rest of the human race. I am as thoroughly less thrilled by the Dawkins-ite new Atheists than the rest of y'all (Though Dawkins himself has sublime, brilliant moments). The atheists who came to it naturally...who were told about God by their tribe, and who independently rejected it before they read Dawkins...because it didn't make any sense (to them). Those guys (me included) are almost(???) Autistic, and hardcore on the science dimension, more than the mathy types. Math types and science types think VERY differently about the world...despite their normal conflation in the media. The uber-answer among the atheists is: I do not find that hypothesis useful (predictive), more commonly phrased as: I find that hypothesis unnecessary.
-
reply
From a natural science viewpoint I agree God its not a useful concept. Using God in a scientific argument is effectively cheating. But philosophy is not natural science, and denying God leads to the logical problems I mentioned, among others. What happened with agnosticism? It was the most useful concept ever. We don't know, we can't know, so why even talk about it?
-
reply
The A-Theists pointed out (correctly to my mind), that there are TWO distinct questions in play around God. 1. Can we know of god (Gnosticism vs. A-gnosticism) 2. Do you believe in God (Theism vs. A-theism). Most smart folks in the atheist camp are A-gnostic A-theists...but we carefully separate the questions.
-
reply
The definition of God is very important. For example, Einstein believed in a particular notion of God, somewhat like Spinoza's notion. However, Einstein gets misquoted and misrepresented to bolster the hogwash of fakes such as Dawkins. And that does not begin to address the different definitions of God used by pantheists, panentheists, henotheists, etc. And then, if you got all of that sorted out, you would then have to learn modern epistemology, starting with Quine's "Two Dogmas of Empiricism." http://www.ditext.com/quine/quine.html
-
reply
Gosh...you sound like me talking about education (my real job/passion). Drilling is (effectively) the only way people learn. No...drilling offends me because of how it damages the critical thought process. Pep rallies were the worst thing in high school. Watching the authorities use group-psychology/belongingness tricks to turn the crowd into a mob, and watching it work was massively offensive.
-
reply
Absolutely true. But most people aren't capable of critical thought anyway. So what do we do with them? Neurotypicals love mobs, you can't change that. Its a hard thing to be intellectually worthless; the mob gives you a sense of power, a sense of worth. We need an education policy for them. We can of course enjoy our opt-out.
-
reply
If human beings are the highest, we can’t really discriminate between them, because there’s no criteria above humanity you can use to judge them. What? You don't need criteria "above" humanity to judge people. For example, few of my friends are really dull people, because I don't find stupid people stimulating, and do not choose to spend time with them. Here I am applying the criteria of "interestingness" to people. Discrimination. God isn't doing that; I am doing it. So we are all equal. And we are highest. So we are subject of worship (Humans just dig worshipping). I'll grant that some atheists think this way; it's part of progressivism aka post-Christianity. But some of us actually are irreligious. We have no need for the spiritual at all.
-
reply
'But some of us actually are irreligious. We have no need for the spiritual at all.' Just because someone believes that God exists doesn't mean that the person feels a need to worship God. There are philosophical routes to argue for the necessity of a Supreme Being. That's useful if one is interested in being philosophically sound, like Godel or Berkeley. However, those philosophical standpoints do not immediately lead to any indication that God should be worshiped.
-
reply
Clearly Mr 宅男 knows what he's talking about here.
-
reply
So what sort of first cause do you favor - Azathoth or Santa Claus?
-
reply
'So what sort of first cause do you favor – Azathoth or Santa Claus?' Note that a Christian might believe that a first cause must also be a personal God, but that does not mean that everyone who believes in a Supreme Being believes in a personal God as first cause. Thus your comment is trying to push a fallacious premise. You might consider getting an education in philosophy at some point. Also, to Hell with SOPA and PIPA and all related censorship.
-
reply
I'm partial to Yatagarasu.
-
reply
All right, I will take those comments as meaning "not Santa Claus". That is, the philosophical advocacy for a first cause on this blog is not the launchpad for a shiny happy ontology which says that all the nasty stuff in reality is just a temporary inconvenience in a fundamentally human-friendly cosmos. So let us try to have a more serious conversation. Obviously Azathoth and Yatagarasu are not serious literal contenders for a description of the first cause. But do either of you - does anyone here - have anything serious or meaningful to say about the nature of the first cause, the reason why there is something rather than nothing, etc?
-
reply
My post was about the fact that the logical conclusion of atheism (affirming there is no God) is human worship, and that sucks in many ways. My position on first causes is up there in the comments: "We don’t know, we can’t know, so why even talk about it?". Mr Zhainan says that a firm math background actually helps you know something about it, which sounds reasonable. But I don't have a math background, nor ever will, so I'm happy proclaiming my ignorance on its nature.
-
reply
'But do either of you – does anyone here – have anything serious or meaningful to say about the nature of the first cause, the reason why there is something rather than nothing, etc?' It is useful to be able to do philosophy in the Western tradition (and when I say "useful," I mean, "useful for actual technological hardware"). To speak in Western terms, one must be able to speak of Being - and if one speaks of Being, one pretty much needs a Supreme Being. That does not need to be a personal God, and Russell's "neutral monism" is a better philosophy than any of the dreck peddled by Dawkins. As for "why there is something rather than nothing," I don't purse an intellectual approach to that problem. I find that by understanding the technologies of mysticism - whether Western or Eastern - the teleology tends to become clearer. And furthermore, I claim that God is not a doctrine that must be believed but rather a Truth that must be experienced.
-
reply
I think you owe us a long post in your blog about neutral monism and experiencing Truth. Bonus points if you link it with the darknets.
-
reply
Well, considering that you're the first person to either recognize or look up the fact that "zhai2nan2" can be written as "宅男" I guess I owe you that blog post. Neutral monism, mystical experience, AND darknets. It can be done.
-
Well I meant that as a non-mathematician, I can't tell first-rate from second-rate. Any examples will be appreciated though.
Kurt Godel and Isaac Newton are good examples of mathematicians who were brought closer to God by their mathematics. Bertrand Russell is a good example of a mathematician who TRIED to disprove God, and ended up trying to compromise with a deistic "neutral monism." A.J.Ayer is an example of a logician who wanted so badly to be an atheist that he tried to deny his near-death vision of a divine being. http://www.laphamsquarterly.org/roundtable/roundtable/an-atheist-meets-the-masters-of-the-universe.php Agnosticism is a start, but when you apply yourself to the foundations of mathematics, you will learn enough so that you can move beyond agnosticism.