@lack you’re accustomed to the monotheistic concept of God - it is blasphemous to call the human soul and personality a god, much less the sentience of a cat or a crocodile. Moses defeated the gods of Egypt, there is one god left standing - and if he doesn’t exist, then there is no god. But that’s not how it works. If you dethrone God, but you allow for maybe the possibility that maybe your dear old grandma is somewhere else and you’ll see her again someday… you are inventing polytheism.

@lack To be good at atheism, you have to not only making a convincing case that there is no God who wished for the Big Bang to occur, but you also have to make a good non-supernatural explanation of all sentient life, including the smallest ant. Otherwise that ant is a god.

@b_chocolatey Why does an atheist need to do any of that? Why is the default position "It's God unless you can prove it is not"?

I approach it differently. I take all these questions and start with "I don't know what the cause is until I learn more". Maybe I'll learn that the cause is a God. Maybe I'll learn the cause is physical. Maybe something else. Maybe I will never know. But the fact that I don't know doesn't mean you are right to claim that gods are the answers, does it?

@lack “it’s god unless you can prove it’s not” because, well, how would you define god - except as an intelligence, a personality, that exists before and independent of the natural world? Before there was a God, there were gods. I live in my body, I move it around like a vehicle, grandma used to live in her body, grandma’s vehicle broke down, she no longer sits in her vehicle. This is the default way of seeing the world.

@lack it seems that I have more in common with a squirrel or a lizard than I do with the Charles Babbage mechanical adding machine. The squirrel has Life in it, which it received from its lineage and ancestors, just like I have life from my ancestors. And Life has existed in an un-interrupted chain, since, well, the dawn of time! Before that, even! Who knows! Maybe this elder sage knows, he seems to have something witty to say, every time he sniffs that flower

@lack It’s easy to imagine oneself as an invisible, airy force-field looking out of one’s eyes and moving one’s legs. It is very difficult to imagine one’s self as the sum total of electrified eye-cells and brain-cells and leg-cells. Otherwise I would be no different than an alarm clock, or an internal combustion engine - and I am a person. I have feelings.

@b_chocolatey

I think I see what you mean.

But if something is hard to imagine, does that make it false? If it leads to a conclusion we don't like, does that make it false?

Are these good reasons for concluding that the "self" is not or cannot be a physical thing?

@lack @b_chocolatey
> Why does an atheist need to do any of that?
Everyone needs to justify their positions.

@book @b_chocolatey

I totally agree, and I'm happy to do so!

But in the thread above, @b_chocolatey is requiring any atheist to give justifications for positions they may not hold.

I think the definition of "atheist" being implied above isn't what I mean when I use the word, and I think it's being set up as an irrational position by definition, which feels a bit like a straw-man attack.

@lack @b_chocolatey
> and I think it's being set up as an irrational position by definition, which feels a bit like a straw-man attack.
Given how ubiquitously atheists do this I consider it God's divine justice for it to happen to you.

@book @b_chocolatey

I'm happy to have a conversation with you about this if you're willing to leave your preconceptions, stereotypes, and caricatures at the door.

@lack @b_chocolatey They aren't preconceptions, they are postconceptions.

@book @b_chocolatey

I don't think we've spoken before, have we?

@lack @b_chocolatey I've spoken to more atheists than I can count and they are all the same. People aren't just going to put aside their understanding of the world because you call it a preconception. You have to put in the work of setting it aside for them. You have to show that you are different, no one is going to give you the benefit of the doubt when you declare yourself to be in the cohort of the most unbearable people that have ever graced the Earth.

@book @b_chocolatey Okay!

Well the best I can do here is to offer a friendly and honest conversation in the future if you would like one.

@lack @b_chocolatey Friendly conversation and honest conversation tend to be mutually exclusive. When you're ready to abandon the former for the latter let me know.

@lack another viable worldview pantheism - the belief that there is a God - an animating, intelligent ghost in the machine - and the physical universe and spacetime is God. The God inhabits and moves the physical universe, just no different that how grandma “lives in” grandma’s arms and legs and brain. Grandma’s soul and personality is just a tiny, tiny piece of God’s intelligence, God’s creativity, God’s love.

@b_chocolatey I agree that this is a possibility, sure! But how do we know if it is actually true?

@lack well, are you an atheist or an agnostic?

@b_chocolatey A good question!

The answer is that it depends on exactly what we're talking about and what exactly we mean by those words.

For some definitions of God I positively believe those do not exist. This might be because they are impossible or self-contradictory.

For other definitions of God, I just do not hold the belief that they exist. This might be for a of reasons... Sometimes they're not well defined. Sometimes the person proposing the idea hasn't shown me a good enough reason to believe it's true.

I'm honestly confused why people claim to believe in gods when they don't have a good reason, or don't have a clear idea of what even it is to make a determination as to if it's real or not.

So I do not believe in any God or gods, and I am pretty sure there aren't any, but I also have enough epistemic humility to admit I could be wrong.

What would you call that?

@lack I would say that you are half-agnostic, or soft atheist, in that case.

@lack As for myself, I would say that I am a post-modernist, in the sense that I have two different definitions of “god” which seem to mostly overlap. If you ever have seen #MattWalsh do his troll routine of “what is a woman?” I would say that my own belief system can boil down to “What is a god?” Trolls #Christians and #atheists equally. #woman #women #adulthumanfemale …

@lack As for myself, I would say that I am a post-modernist, in the sense that I have two different definitions of “god” which seem to mostly overlap. If you ever have seen #MattWalsh do his troll routine of “what is a woman?” I would say that my own belief system can boil down to “What is a god?” Trolls #Christians and #atheists equally. #woman #women #adulthumanfemale …

@lack definition 1: God is Soul. God is Person. God is Life. God is Mind. The origin of the inner experience of sentient organisms. Sensation, memory, intention, emotion, survival instinct… love, bonding, companionship. Everything that separates us from mere mechanical cause-and-effect that controls steam engines and stopwatches.

@lack definition 1: God is Soul. God is Person. God is Life. God is Mind. The origin of the inner experience of sentient organisms. Sensation, memory, intention, emotion, survival instinct… love, bonding, companionship. Everything that separates us from mere mechanical cause-and-effect that controls steam engines and stopwatches.

@lack Perhaps a third definition is in order, which somewhat overlaps with the first two. The symbolic, the sympathetic magic, that points to the first two. The Statue of Liberty is an example of this: a personified, anthromorphized representation of a philosophical abstraction, namely, liberty. The statue is beautiful and well-made, and is intended to refer to an Idea that is beautiful and timeless. This is, after all, why religious icons were first introduced in pre-Abrahamic times. The Statue of Liberty is a goddess in the literal, historical sense.

@b_chocolatey I agree that those things exist, (at least if you are keeping the physicslist-compatible definition of "soul" = "self") but I am not sure what is "godly" about them. I'm also not sure that those separate us from cause and effect. I think all the things you mentioned are part of a very complicated web of causes and effects.

@lack That having been said, it is possible that Consciousness has naturalistic origins that have yet to be discovered, at the quantum level. That, for example, it arises when energy is transformed into information, passes through logic-gates on very very fast timescales - that certain types of computers are naturally sentient. I think the odds are against it; I think that the problem of consciousness will remain a hard problem that is never cracked via scientific inquiry.

@b_chocolatey can you help me understand why? What is it about consciousness that you think makes it unlikely or impossible to be understood from a purely physical or scientific stance?

@lack definition 2: God is what is rightfully deserving of worship - that which is encountered through religious experience. Certain things people naturally discuss- and should discuss, in reverential tones, when they try to describe it accurately. When people speak of the Vastness of the Universe, the Beauty of Music, the Finality of Death, and so forth; these are things that, when I capitalize them, you know why. These are all emanations of God. It has always been understood thus.

@lack #spirituality #pagan #Buddhist #religion #faith #Christianity #atheist #sutra #sutta #witch #wicca #wiccan #pantheist #dharma

@b_chocolatey I wonder how you feel about the fact that different cultures at different times have had different things they hold reverent? Do these "emanations of God" change over time? Or are you more referring to the fact that humans have a "reverence" emotion?

@lack what I’m saying is that the reverence emotion is morally correct, objectively speaking; and that somebody totally lacking it is morally defective. There is of course some level of reasonable disagreement over how to express it and to what end; because “now we see through a glass, darkly”. #1Cor13 #1Corinthians13 #Bible

@lack this second and third definition seems to be what Kipling was referring to in the poetic demand to “take up the white man’s burden.” Look closely at the line, “and weigh your gods, and you.”