From: Brian Holtz [brian@holtz.org] Sent: Sunday, April 07, 2002 9:02 AM To: alt.atheism.moderated Subject: Re: Brian Holtz on Religion- a critique Jim Humphries wrote: > There is a fact of the matter concerning whether > a premise is true or false, even if this is > difficult to establish Obviously, this "difficulty" is precisely what prevents my "convincing" and your "indisputably sound" from being the chimera behind whose non-existence you so often seek to hide: a mechanical, algorithmic way to settle all debates about philosophical and empirical issues. > Note that this does not mean that we > abandon the notion of soundness for your ( subjective) > notion of 'convincing' Your parenthetical assertion is hardly an answer to my question: how is "convincing" any *more* subjective than your notion of "indisputably sound"? > > Perhaps instead you are really just asking the question > > "why is there something rather than nothing?". > > > This is a quite different question. Only in the sense that it ignores the issue of why the series of causes is one particular series rather than any other. Interestingly, one possible answer -- a variant of modal realism -- addresses this issue too, while theism does not. > perhaps you could tell > me how atheism is able to explain why there is > something rather than nothing? Atheism itself -- the denial of theism -- of course cannot explain it. The following variant of modal realism can explain it, and is non-theistic. This is an excerpt from my discussion of the idea with Tony Griffin in the "Science & atheism are cultures" thread: ----------------------------- A possibly meaningful answer is roughly that the universe exists (more precisely, is perceived to exist) because it is possible. However, this raises the question: why is any universe possible? The answer might be roughly that absolute impossibility -- the state of affairs in which nothing is possible -- is itself not possible. Why might absolute impossibility not be possible? The answer might be roughly that if nothing truly were possible, then absolute impossibility would not be possible, implying that at least something must be possible. But if anything is possible, then it seems the universe we perceive should be no less possible than anything else. Whether the universe we perceive existed or not, it as a merely possible universe would be perceived by its merely possible inhabitants no differently than it as an actual universe would be perceived by its actual inhabitants. (By analogy, the thoughts and perceptions of a particular artificial intelligence in a simulated universe would be the same across identical "runs" of the simulation, regardless of whether we bothered to initiate such a "run" once, twice -- or never.) Thus, the universe might merely be the undreamed possible dream of no particular dreamer. I don't yet consider this a satisfactory answer to the question of why is there -- or why does there appear to be -- something rather than nothing, but it is at least as satisfactory as theistic answers derived from ontological considerations of the concept of God. ----------------------------- > I don't acccept that when the word 'faith' is used in an > everyday context it is invariably used to mean " belief > without any evidence" ie blind faith. Despite your quotation marks, that isn't my definition of 'faith'. > To 'posit' something means just to assume it as true See my reply in the "On Perception of Reality" thread. > This is not a response to my rebuttal of your argument. Sure it is. You said that speakers might not know a particular precise definition of 'meaningless'. I then said a) the meaning you identified is not precisely my definition, and b) that speakers can correctly use a term does not imply that they can precisely define it. > Let me present another example, from Swinburne, > which is devastating for your principle: > > "Some of the toys which, to all appearances, > stay in the toy cupboard while people are > asleep and no one is watching, > actually get up and dance in the middle > of the night and then go back to the cupboard > leaving no traces of their activity". > > Now this according to your principle is > a meaningless statement ie it is neither > true nor false)-but it seems > quite meaningful . It's certainly meaningful -- unless you stipulate that "leaving no traces of their activity" means "under no possible circumstances could anyone notice any difference caused by their dancing". It then becomes the same type of statement as "the universe was created five minutes ago", which for obvious reasons should not be considered factually meaningful. > *we could not understand > the statement unless we knew how it > could be shown to be true or false*. We can certainly understand similar statements that are different only by having verification of the dancing being infinitesimally possible rather than impossible. We might even say we understand the original statement as the limit approached by such similar statements as the possibility approaches zero. But that still doesn't imply that the original statement is factually meaningful. -- brian@holtz.org http://humanknowledge.net