Atheist Angst - A philosophical monologue on the psychological response to the realization of the lack of inherent meaning in life.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=40LHISJRbh0

It looks like she is wearing a white contact, similar to what Marylin Manson wears in some of his stage shows.

0 is trying to belong. Think of it in those terms.

Hey, it's simple. Don't make truthful claims about religion and you won't have to defend those claims.

I used to argue alongside atheists that's mainly when I learned about evolution, the scientific method and such. But at some point I realized we were all just hypocrites. We spent the time to study certain things, but not everything.

At the top of this thread I asked some questions that go to the bottom of the issue: "Want to have a rational discussion? Let's start with epistemology, why do you think empiricism is more important than rationalism? Why do you think that scientific explanations rooted in relativity and empiricism negate rationalist explanations grounded in subjectivity?"

Nobody answered these questions at all. Call me a troll, use whatever literary references you want to insult me and try to tarnish my character, but don't answer my questions. That's a good little hypocrite!

"He who trains his tongue to quote the learned sages, will be known far and wide as a smart ass." - Howard Kandel

Right, because the problem we have is ego. Because people do not like to be demoted, they like to be puffed up where they feel secure and comfortable. The "sages" also want to feel secure and comfortable so they puff people up and keep quiet.

@Jessss

Okay, I will take you up on your offer because this is very important to me. If you understand my meaning and I am not a causative agent as such but a manifestation of the causative order and that my reason is a reflection that order that to varying degrees is distorted and to varying degrees clear. If I am then privy to that understanding and become logos made flesh, what am I to do? The use of relatively few words is insufficient for the sake of clarity and the position I'm in does not grant any face-saving reservations. What needs to be said needs to be said, someone has to say it. Or do they? Perhaps if I could it go I would let the world continue with its insanity, but then would I really be selfless and love the world? I don't want to see it burn, so I'm attempting to put out the fire, because I might be able to do something even if I fail. Wouldn't it be selfish to hide? Because what you are asking me to do is to conform my statements to the comfort of my observers, which means to lose all meaning. I could easily say "Row, Row, Row your boat, gently down the stream, merrily, merrily, merrily, merrily, life is but a dream!" and it wouldn't be effective either. It doesn't seem to matter how many times it is repeated. "Don't judge a book by its cover" how many people judge me based solely on the length of my posts? I set the tone as "anti-evolution" at the beginning when I didn't jump on the "anti-religion" bandwagon. I was caught up in the dualistic insanity of pop culture. From that point on I was just another theist and I was accused of using all the usual tactics, none of which are actually present in my statements. This is common because both atheists and theists misinterpret profound statements like Anselm's Ontological Proof. It doesn't prove the kind of God-concept they have, the fantasy they have, it proves a transcendence beyond relative conceptualization. It doesn't seem to matter how many times it is repeated by one of them. So what am I to do when I know that it's all insanity and simply falling in line won't help?

The transcendent order generally consists of three principles manifested in different cognitive forms. In religion these are represented as trinitarian God-head concepts and in philosophy they are generally more abstract. Science is typically blind to them except as tools taken for granted. What we call "Reason" is a parallel of what we call "Logic" and what we call "Causality". Reason is the subjective faculty for interpreting the causative order (or logic) of reality. "In the beginning there was the Logos, the Logos was with God, and the Logos was God" (John 1:1) Reason is not actually separate from the causative order. The causative order both determines the criterion for the effectiveness of reason and what you reason about. If, by some odd occurrence you manifest reason that perfectly reflects the causative order you are the product of, then you are the perfect embodiment of that causative order and that reason. The Logos made flesh. You are not manifest according to your own reason, because you are a manifestation of the causative order which your reason is a product of and thus you are revealed to you from without. All religious language is understood quite easily by removing yourself as a causative agent from the equation. "Revelation", "Submission", "God's Plan", etc..

How your reason is employed is a matter of determinism (Rom 9), whether or not you are selected has nothing to do with you. The truth of religion or ultimately science works out to be very profound indeed. "Evolution" is rather trivial in this sense because it has nothing to do with religion per se, or with metaphysics. Evolution as a more generalized term relating to the flux and dynamism of relativity is one thing, but that ideological reductionism and materialism is truth because of biology is completely dogmatic. Scientific theories are at various times and by various "religions" accepted as alternative views of the same truth. But the problem with evolution and big bang cosmology is that they are used by ideological materialists to push materialism. The human mind is already prone to error and the transcendent is something that was given to us by a select few, we need to continue the tradition of teaching our children to interpret physical phenomena in light of the transcendent. That is not the current environment and there is a large undertaking to eliminate any knowledge of the transcendent because the people who oppose it are basically ignorant and believe in fantasy. They believe the transcendent is fantasy.

As a matter of case; Jessss just used the argument from ignorance in a manner by stating that she did not see my point, and that if I had no point to make I should basically shut up.

@Mr. Awesome

I am not making an argument from ignorance (L. argumentum ad ignoratiam). So your whole point is irrelevant. If you pay attention to what I said as if there was some actual meaning behind it besides what assumptions you make you may actually see that I am pointing toward a psychological illusion of separation. Which is a positive claim, not a negative one, though it negates much popular thought and can certainly seem to be an argument from ignorance. The positive claim I am making is that Philosophy, Religion and Science are not entirely distinct or exclusive. The argument from ignorance was used against my position many times if you can see it. Essentially claiming that my position was debased because my language was incomprehensible to unsophisticated minds.

@Jessss

Just because my strategy is ineffective doesn't mean I haven't made any points. I've written material certain seekers would drool over. But if you are looking for me to "prove" something "to" you. Then you are very likely to skim-over and ignore 99% of what I've said or distort my meaning. I'm not a fool or an incompetent and I assure you there is a very profound point I am trying to make. I beseech you to stop thinking you can easily grasp my meaning and start trying to earnestly figure it out. Otherwise, it may very well remain elusive to you and I may very well remain incoherent, to you.

"The homunculus argument accounts for a phenomenon in terms of the very phenomenon that it is supposed to explain (Richard Gregory, 1987). Homunculus arguments are always fallacious. In the psychology and philosophy of mind 'homunculus arguments' are useful for detecting where theories of mind fail or are incomplete." (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Homunculus#Homunculus_argument)

This is what I am showing you in a sense. All theories that attempt to account for our existence by an appeal to concepts formed from the perspective of our existence are inherently flawed.

"Ryle's theory is that intelligent acts cannot be a property of an inner being or mind, if such a thing were to exist"

This is an enormous problem because all empiricism is from the perspective of a homunculus. Within the "mind" that "intelligent acts cannot be a property of", physical reality is itself a representation relative to the idea of an independent self. The whole web of physical appearances centers around the notion of being an embodied observer. You look at the world, and you see something. In philosophy of mind this is erroneous because you don't exist as such, you are part of the world. The separation between you and the world is an illusion which Metzinger attributes to "phenomenal transparency". This is the direction of theorizing of various scientists and philosophers working on neuroscience and the philosophy of neuroscience, what they have called Neurophilosophy, and which are made up of the people I already mentioned.

Our shared perspective of physical reality is true insofar as it relates to an ego, but the ego is false, which means physical reality is false too. It is an illusion. The mind separates the infinite into discrete objects relating to a central self, but the self as such does not exist outside of the mind. By in-finite I mean not-finite, not being defined or bounded as if it were one thing discrete from other things. What appears in discrete form as "Brain" does the job of dissecting the infinite. Science studies the relationship of empirical, definite objects, with the observer (ego) constantly in the control position. Whereas religion seeks, by various concepts to liberate the mind from this illusion, and has been doing it for a very long time. Now, science is running into the same conclusions, which it must inevitably do in all of its pursuits. For neuroscientists it is identifying how 100 billion nerve cells could be generalized to a sense of self. The transcendent reality, which "transcends" the ego-bound dissection, will always remain elusive to those who try to make it another finite concept and ignore what is actually being said about it.

The fact that Pope John Paul II of the Catholic Church says evolution is not incompatible with Christianity should mean something even to atheists. Perhaps what you thought Christianity is about is not true at all. If the frikkin' Pope is saying it I don't know what more you need. Instead you attack infantile concepts of "fundies" and claim that is the whole deal. Do you not see how your own attitude and attachment to reductionism colors your perception of other people and their belief systems? While they are discussing transcendent order and infinitude you are busy trying to reduce them to finitude because it's the only manner in which you can think. You are not awake to any alternatives, you are in a state commonly designated "worldly" or "asleep" in spiritual traditions. That this order is transcendent is only really visible to one who first knows it. It is very hard to explain because all explanations are confined to relativity. However, if an explanation has as its base transcendentalism its relative architecture will be based on the transcendent instead of the false self and may provide a useful pointer to the transcendent. The exact nature of the relative concepts is somewhat irrelevant, in-fact the simpler the better because they can be shared with anyone. Of particular use are parables because they relate directly to the human condition. That, I suspect is the rationale behind the use of parables in religion, and fables in raising children. Religion tends to treat people like simple-minded children, and introduces them to the transcendent by use of various riddles. Science has the empirical world as it's riddle. The conclusions are ultimately exactly the same though. So stop fighting, and start paying attention to what your teachers are teaching you.

"A self is a repertoire of behavior appropriate to a given set of contingencies."
- B. F. Skinner

"In the mind there is no absolute or free will; but the mind is determined to wish this or that by a cause, which has also been determined by another cause, and this last by another cause, and so on to infinity."
- Baruch Spinoza

There are in the human mind a group of faculties and in the brain groups of convolutions, and the facts assembled by science so far allow to state, as I said before, that the great regions of the mind correspond to the great regions of the brain.
- Paul Broca

My hand moves because certain forces----electric, magnetic, or whatever 'nerve-force' may prove to be----are impressed on it by my brain. This nerve-force, stored in the brain, would probably be traceable, if Science were complete, to chemical forces supplied to the brain by the blood, and ultimately derived from the food I eat and the air I breathe.
- Lewis Caroll (Anglican deacon)

In the study of brain functions we rely upon a biased, poorly understood, and frequently unpredictable organ in order to study the properties of another such organ; we have to use a brain to study a brain.
- William C. Corning

It is essential to understand our brains in some detail if we are to assess correctly our place in this vast and complicated universe we see all around us.
- Francis Crick

There is no scientific study more vital to man than the study of his own brain. Our entire view of the universe depends on it.
- Francis Crick

@SnatchaFatCable

I wouldn't have ruined it if anyone was able to address my points. Then there would have actually been a meaningful debate. But the only thing neatoramanauts are apparently capable of is vulgar banter, ad hominems and righteous indignation.

@Jessss

It certainly seems necessary at times. But primarily I do it because I was lead to believe that if I related myself to others I would have greater success because it would give something for their egos to identify with. As a matter of fact, they just use it for ammo. But that is the main reason I began relating my own experiences. In this case in particular I was attempting to show how much of my presumed arrogance or genuine superiority was in the eye of the beholder. It would be awfully hard to demonstrate that without evidence, especially among such empirically minded people. I'll quote myself to try to direct you back to my meaning which you evidently missed:

"You have a cognitive structure which by all appearances seems real. If you perceive a distinct dichotomy between religion and science then you will have the tendency to conform your perception of others into that dualistic conceptualization. If that is the case, I guess it might seem like I am arguing for "creationism in science class" but if you were a theists, you'd think I was arguing the exact opposite. The range of comments on my youtube..."

@saladbarbarian

It should be the other way around; to argue philosophy with science is to understand neither. Science is predicated on philosophy. In-fact, you can take a course called "Philosophy of Science" (http://www.philscience.uwo.ca/) or subscribe to a journal dedicated to that end (http://journal.philsci.org/).

Okay, I'm going to try to point you guys to more material on this so you can see I'm not just talking nonsense and you can see how deep this problem goes.

First up is Kant's Critique of Pure Reason (ebook): http://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/4280

Secondly, David Hume's An Inquiry Concerning Human Understanding (ebook): http://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/9662

Science and Metaphysics part III: Scientific Epistemology?
http://www.journal.au.edu/abac_journal/2003/may03/article02.pdf
"The major factor that limits application of science in epistemology is identified as the blindness of science to the mind side of humans. The argument is developed through three issues: Knowledge v. Belief; Rationalism v. Empiricism and Skepticism v. Certainty, which form the three major arguments of epistemology."

None of you have said anything that indicates in the slightest any comprehension of what I've said. You may call it "claptrap" and "straw men" but you cannot actually demonstrate how that is so. Your ignorance is admitted further by conceding you do not actually read my comments.

Would you prefer I posted the entire wikipedia article? http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Epistemology

It's a whole hell of a lot longer, but says the same things roughly.