Re: Christian refuses to drive atheist bus

Gareth McCaughan wrote:
- .. -- Tim .-. wrote:

I still don't know quite what you mean by "have no meaning",
and I am beginning to suspect that you don't either.

Well, I think I know! Such an 'un-observed' Universe (or to be more
accurate, 'World') would not affect anything observed, so its
existence
or non-existence is an irrelevancy.

I think you're defining "meaning" as something like "effect on
observers", in which case "an entirely unobserved universe has
no meaning" is true because it's a tautology. (And therefore,
I'm afraid, not terribly interesting...)

Indeed.


Then I don't see how "an entirely unobserved universe is
meaningless" can possibly lead to *any* conclusions, however
tentative, about whether there's a Universal Consciousness,
or whether awareness in some sense came before matter rather
than after it.

Exactly! It is an irrelevancy. Only conscious awareness lends
ANYTHING meaning.

OK, but we know that in our universe there are in fact conscious
observers, namely ourselves. That's enough, you say, to give
meaning to the universe. So I don't see how the alleged relationship
between observation and meaning can possibly tell us anything about
God, or universal consciousness, or anything of the kind.

Of course it cannot. I am merely making the assertion that awareness is the
only thing that gives existence meaning. It is a route of reasoning which
strengthens my belief in the centrality of awareness. I appreciate that it
proves nothing, objectively, and that you do not see it the same way I do.


No, there is indeed a 'gap' between those statements. But
regarding the second statement, how do you know that God *hasn't*
done things to reduce the evil, etc.? Maybe it would have been
unimaginably worse!

Well, I know that he hasn't done anything to reduce the evil
*from how it is in the world as we see it*!

True. That doesn't mean that his inaction wouldn't have produced a
much worse world.

Sure, but that isn't the question. (The real question is something
like: Is it credible that the universe, as it actually is, is
subject to the operations of a supremely powerful and supremely
good being who cares for our wellbeing?.)

It IS credible, if there are things about our overall wellbeing that we do
not understand, such as maybe in order to be ultimately complete or
fulfilled as 'awarenesses' it is necessary to undergo some trials and
tribulations. The Biblical imagery is the refiner's fire, and removal of
the 'dross', such as in the refining of silver, etc. Now imagine a similar
system for sifting and purifying 'awareness'. Maybe the 'good' and 'bad'
have to be created together, for all we know, and then separated in some
way? How do we know we are not in the process of that?


look at it this way. God, supposedly, is supremely powerful and
supremely good, and cares about us. So, we have some grounds to
expect that if there is such a being then things will be arranged
so as to be good for us. How good should we expect them to be?
Well, that'll be limited by
1 God's knowledge of how things are
2 God's ability to make things good for us
3 how much actual scope there is for making things good for us
4 how much God cares about our wellbeing (relative, perhaps,
to other things he cares about)

Well, traditionally #1 and #2 are supposed to be unlimited;
in any case, if anything recognizable as Christianity is right
it's hard to see how they could be the limiting factors.

We might argue that God chose to limit Himself, for whatever reason.
Maybe to give us a World in which we had real choices?

It seems absolutely obvious to me (perhaps you disagree?) that
our world could be greatly improved, at least as far as our
wellbeing is concerned, without depriving us of real choices.

Yes, we can *imagine* things being better, but like I said, we may be in the
process of that being achieved.

Indeed, many of the ways in which the world seems unsatisfactory
are all about our *lack* of choices. It would seem, e.g., that
our lives would be improved if we were better able to choose to
change our habits, to resist short-term gains when we know they
have bigger long-term costs, to refrain from acting in ways
that go against what we believe to be right. And among the
many reasons why mass starvation in Africa, natural disasters
like the tsunami a few years ago, and genocide like Hitler's,
are horrible is that they deprive their victims of most of
the choices they ought to have about how (or whether) to live
their lives.

Maybe if we were in a right relationship with God, we would work together
much better, and certainly avoid the human-caused disasters, and perhaps
know about the natural ones in advance so as to be able to prepare for them?


So I think the only available options, for anyone who wants to
uphold anything much like Christianity, are to say that #3 and/or
#4 is less than it seems on the face of it; or to say that our
perception of how things are and how things could be is disastrously
wrong.

The traditional view is that we chose to go our own way, instead of
accepting the World as it was offered to us, and thus we have broken
the close relationship with God we otherwise would have had. Thus
we are to blame (as a species) for most of the lack of help we get
from God, because we chose to 'Do It Ourselves' instead.

And you find this a credible explanation for all the evil and
suffering and general crapness in the world?

Like I said, I believe we are in the middle of a refining process,
'awareness' is being sifted, and the 'bad' elements, the 'dross' being
slowly refined out. At the moment we are all a mixture of silver and dross,
and the removal of the dross is perhaps necessarily a painful process? I
don't know of course, that's just how I see it.


But
if God just came in and conveniently 'fixed' everything, that
wouldn't leave us with much of a challenge, would it? I believe
there is some kind of 'test' involved. That we are presented with
things to do and situations to respond to, and our responses reveal
what is in our heart-of-hearts, which is what I believe God is
interested in.

What would you think of a parent who (say) locked his children
in the basement and fed them rotting food so as to "test" them,
and who didn't intervene in any way when he saw them fighting
and injuring one another?

What about kids who rejected parental Authority and ran away to
'live off the land' at the local rubbish tip?

What about them? Do you really think that's a good analogy for
the relations between any of us and God? Did you choose to live
in a world full of sickness and death and murder and lies and
stupidity,

Well, it seems our distant ancestors may have made that choice for us, and
we are now bearing the consequences. It is up to US to try and make things
better, but I believe God can help us acheive that.

a world in which God's presence is so totally
un-apparent that you can seriously say that belief in it
is essentially a matter of what axioms one starts from and
not in any way determined by evidence? Would you condemn a
child who, having been apparently abandoned by his parents,
chooses to go and "live off the land"?

Well, you began this game of analogies, and like all analogies it is not a
perfect one. We are after all dicussing the human *species* of many
individuals, living and dead, over time, rather than one individual child.


What would you think of that parent if it turned out, further,
that he was unimaginably rich (and therefore in no way limited
in his ability to provide his children with a better life) and
that he had an army of genius psychologists at his disposal,
who could tell him anything he wanted to know about his children's
hearts and minds?

What about kids who refused to listen, and for the most part, didn't
want to know, favouring their own choices and their own way, instead?

A parent who treated his children as God (if God there be) treats
us simply because they "refused to listen" would quite rightly be
locked up, and featured as a horrifying story of child abuse in
every newspaper.

Like I said, not a perfect analogy. No analogy is perfect.


What would you think of that parent if he proclaimed loudly
that he was the most generous, just, and loving parent that
any child could hope for?

Not his fault that even that was not good enough for the kids, who
still wanted their own way.

Yes, how *dare* they not accept their parent's supreme goodness
simply because he locked them in the basement and ignored their
cries for help?

I don't believe God does ignore our cries for help. But I DO believe we are
supposed to do a lot for ourselves, rather than just lie back and let God...


You are saying we should make no choices without evidence, and remain
sitting on the fence. I am saying pick one and jump, because it's
more comfortable than the fence.

You would have me choose my beliefs on the basis of *comfort*?

Well, no. I understand that you don't want to choose without proof.
However, my view is that such proof either way is so unlikely ever to come,
I made the choice to pick one and live accordingly.


And then you dare to lecture me about how people who "choose their
own way" deserve the total neglect your god (if he is real) visits
upon the people he supposedly cares for?

For shame.

I was referring to ancient history! How the Genesis story portrays Mankind
choosing to go our own way and do our own thing - a legacy we ALL inherited.


Anyway, while the existence of a sufficiently vaguely described
Universal Consciousness might indeed be entirely immune to
supporting or undermining evidence, I don't think Christianity is.

It depends on whether a person believes everything MUST be taken
literally, or whether they accept some things can be mythical or
metaphorical, and yet still have important and valid meaning.

Well, obviously if you take the view that *nothing* need be
taken as anything other than a metaphor for anything you fancy
taking it as a metaphor for, you are left with a set of "beliefs"
that are totally immune to contrary evidence. But you are also
then left with a set of beliefs that tell you nothing, because
any possible state of affairs is equally compatible with them.

The essential of what I believe, but obviously cannot prove, is the
centrality of awareness as the source and purpose of all things. I see no
conflict between that and the Christian faith. I see no reason to
DIS-believe any of the Creedal statements, which help to understand the
faith holistically. Many of these things cannot be proved either way.


If your beliefs tell you anything about the world, then they
must be (in principle at least) vulnerable to being undermined
by evidence; because you might find that the world isn't the
way your beliefs tell you it is.

As I said earlier, this sort of thing DID happen to me, which is why in the
end I rejected Bible-literalism, but NOT my belief in God, and the
centrality of awareness. I found the Bible-literalist approach had
problems, and didn't always fit reality, when I met real situations.


That is: specificity is itself grounds for disbelief. Not in
the sense of saying "that can't possibly be true", but in the
sense of saying "that's much more likely untrue than true".
..
I consider the holistic overview of the theology, and can keep that
intact whether or not individual bits are taken as literal or
metaphorical.

How does that differ from saying: "My beliefs are really entirely
detached from the world; they are things that I like to say to
make myself feel better, but they are equally compatible with
any way the world could possibly be."?

I don't consider my beliefs to be 'detached from the world'. Whether my
beliefs make myself 'feel better' or not, they are what I believe to be the
most logical conclusion, when confronted by existence, the world in which we
live, awareness, life and complexity. It occurs to me that if there was
nothing aware, ever, to observe, then existence would (obviously) have no
meaning. Ergo I conclude that awareness is the purpose, and if the purpose,
then also the source of all things. It makes sense *to me*, but is only
based on what I see and experience. Of course, that is because I believe
there has to be a cause and purpose, and then I look for it.


Well, if all you're saying is "here's what I happen to believe;
there's no particular evidence for it, but some people thousands
of years ago had some slightly similar beliefs" then I'm not sure
what there is to say to that :-).

Not a lot, maybe. Except to say that they expressed things using
different language, but the underlying thoughts were quite possibly
very similar.

Perhaps they were. I don't find "some people thousands of years
ago said something that I can interpret as being roughly parallel
to X" to be very good evidence for X, myself :-).

Not evidence for, no. It is just an observation that AFAIK throughout human
history people have postulated both sides of our 'fence', and there have
been believers in either side throughout. None of it is new.


Well, it's a circular thing, of course. Both an assumption AND a
conclusion. Unfortunately, beliefs (that is, beliefs that aren't
from hard evidence) tend to be like that. Assume there is a
purpose, and then conclude there is a purpose. Assume there is no
purpose, and then conclude there is no purpose. Both from the same
observable data. You pays yer money, you takes yer choice...

Or, better still, you decline to take either of them as an axiom,
see whether any good reason to believe either comes along, and
suspend judgement if not.

I don't really know if the fence is 'better still'.

I regard it as better because it doesn't involve holding an
opinion for which I definitely don't have decent justification.

Yes, I understand now that is where you are coming from.


In all
probability you will still be on that fence the day you die, but if
that doesn't bother you, fine. I prefer to opt for one or the
other, the one my 'gut instinct' tells me seems most likely.

When there is no good reason to believe X rather than Y or vice versa,
I would prefer not to believe either X or Y. (Though I might believe
"either X or Y", which is a different matter entirely.)

Yes. Since we can't answer the questions, we get some people (like me) who
believe in X, others who believe in Y, and then those (like you) who choose
not to commit themselves to either, at least until something comes along
that convinces them to accept either X or Y.


In the present instance, though, I am not on the fence. Having
(so far as I can tell) not *started*, as you keep suggesting one
must, from any particular opinion about whether purpose and meaning
and awareness gave rise to our world or arose from it, I find
that the available evidence seems to me to fit better with the
idea that they arose from it. I don't *know* (so if you regard
anything other than certainty as being on the fence, then I
suppose I am on the fence, but why shouldn't I be?), but I do
have an opinion.

Ah. Ok. I consider X more likely, and you consider Y more likely. Neither
of us can prove either. But we live acccording to what we consider most
likely.


Basically, I prefer to decide (without objective evidence), you do
not.

It does seem so.

I entirely fail to see why #3 should necessarily lead to anything
mechanistic and purposeless. Of course, if what happens is that
good evidence comes along for believing that everything is
meaningless (e.g., suppose you find good evidence for the inerrancy
of the Christian scriptures, and then read the book of Ecclesiastes)
then you'll end up with that conclusion, but that's a *good*
thing: if the evidence supports that belief then it's a belief
you should have.

I guess I thought you were on the other side of the fence, rather
than sitting on it. My mistake, sorry!

I think you're confusing (1) whether I have an opinion *now*
with (2) whether I took some position on the question as an
axiom. The answers are yes and no, respectively.

Ok.


If you tell me that your beliefs are the way they are because
you assumed the key ones from the very outset, then I'm happy
to take your word for it. But so far as I can tell, that isn't
how things are for me. I may, of course, be fooling myself, but
I'd like to see some evidence before concluding that I am.

I understand that. Many people want to see evidence. As you
probably know, the Bible says, "You have seen, and believe. Happy
are those who have not seen, and yet believe."

Yes, I know it says that. So much the worse for the Bible, if
indeed it means what it's commonly taken as meaning. (I'm not
sure that it does; another possibility is that it means something
like "There was plenty enough evidence for you, if you'd looked
at it properly, even before you saw me in person".)

Well, some (like myself) see the world around us existing, as a reason to
'believe'. A simplistic view, I know, but it is *there* so it must have
come about somehow, and (I believe) must have a reason. I accept that the
notion it must have a reason is only a *belief*, and cannot be substantiated
by evidence, but nevertheless it remains a belief which I hold.


[about people who start off as theists and end up as atheists:]
OK, fine, but are you saying that those people always really
believed that life and awareness arise only as products of
what happens in the physical universe? Because I think they'd
generally be rather surprised to hear that.

I think they carry on believing in a purpose-ful World, but chuck out
organised religion as an expression of their belief.

That is certainly not what happens to all such people.

Agreed. Some people may change their starting point, and that will
obviously change their conclusions.

(For
instance, I was a Christian for many years; I am not any more;
I do not any longer believe in what you call -- I think
rather misleadingly, but never mind -- a "purpose-ful World".)

But you once did. So your starting point changed. I am saying that quite a
few people reject organised religion, *without* changing their starting
point (over whether there are reasons and purposes or not). Such people may
form their own belief-structure independant of, or only loosely based on,
existing organised belief-systems.


[about people who start off as atheists and end up as theists:]
For many, the more they find the more they are in awe and wonder.
That is enough in itself to convince some to believe in a
'purposeful' Universe.

In other words, you think that these people have managed to
(1) start from the belief that meaning and purpose do not
underlie the world, but (2) end up believing that they do.
Which seems to me to be the exact opposite of your earlier
claim that it all depends on what assumptions you start from.

Not really. I was talking of thought processes and their roots.
People change their minds, and then revise their thoughts from a new
starting point.

You say that as if what happens when someone changes his mind
is that he throws out all that he formerly believed, arbitrarily
adopts a bunch of new axioms, and builds up a new set of beliefs
from there. I don't think that's much like what usually actually
happens.

Maybe not. I am claiming that a lot depends on whether a person at root
level believes in existence having an underlying purpose, or believes that
there probably is no purpose. (Or maybe just decides there is no way of
knowing either way, so decides not to bother about the issue at all. "There
is probably no God, now stop worrying and enjoy your life.")


To my mind, the principal objection to the idea of awareness that
isn't based on any physical structure is simply the lack of
evidence for any non-physical structure that might do the job.

Fair comment. But for all we know the Universe itself could be
such a structure, or even just a tiny part of such a structure.
Who said the structure had to be small or closely packed together?

Er, "the Universe itself" is physical, no? As for some hypothetical
non-physical thing of which the universe is just a tiny part: as I
said, the trouble is the shortage of evidence for any such thing.

What we do know is awareness can exist ("I think therefore I am").
What we do not know is what structure (if any) is necessary to
facilitate awareness. An awareness-structure could exist outside of
our 'World', and we have no reason to assume it could not.

But we also have no knowledge of any actual "awareness-structure"
existing outside our world. That isn't sufficient grounds for claiming
(say) that there definitely isn't any sort of awareness outside our
world; but it is an obstacle to claiming positively that there is
any sort of awareness outside our world.

We can't know either way. As we both know it comes down to belief.

Tim.




.

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