The theists making arguments in this thread seem to consider "What observations of reality indicate that your beliefs are true?" some sort of crazy question that shouldn't bear any weight as to whether their beliefs are true.
Well, we might reasonably think that the relevant question should be "What evidence indicates that your beliefs are true?" - the prickliness you're experiencing is a suspicion that saying "observations of reality" rather than a more generic term like "evidence" might amount to smuggling in an assumption about the validity or non-validity of certain forms of evidence with the effect of arbitrarily ruling out valid arguments.
There are plenty of theistic arguments from the history of philosophy that are interesting and worth thinking about. They cannot really said to be narrowly observational in nature; that's not to say they don't depend on certain observations, but the observation they rely on will be something like "There exists at least one contingent being," and the essential content of the argument is deriving what logically follows from the existence of such a contingent being based on an analysis of contingency, necessity, and causation, embodied in metaphysical principles like the principle of sufficient reason, ultimately aiming to establish that contingent being implies necessary being.
So in a strictly precise sense, the theist would respond to your question with: any observation at all indicates that my beliefs are true, because any observation is an observation of a contingent thing, and (the theist argues) the existence of any contingent thing ultimately entails the existence of a necessary and absolutely ultimate reality that explains the being of the observed contingent thing, and the existence of a necessary and absolutely ultimate reality is what theists are trying to establish.
The exact chain of reasoning that leads to this conclusion is not something I've set out here, both because I'm just trying to explain how the argument works to clarify the basic sort of claim that is being made, and because my philosophy is a bit rusty so I probably couldn't explain it here remotely as well as an academic work on the subject. I recognize that tends to kill discussion because who wants to be told to go get a book on something, but oh well.
Entelecheia
8mo ago
I'm on Windows 11 yeah. Not sure if it's on other versions.
Entelecheia
8mo ago
I got Windows auto HDR to work with it by copying the executable, renaming the copy to farcry5.exe, and setting the steam launch settings to
"C:\Program Files (x86)\Steam\steamapps\common\Starfield\farcry5.exe" %command%
a car is the most pleasant, efficient way to get anywhere more than a few blocks away
A car is the most pleasant, efficient way to get anywhere more than a few blocks away if everything is designed around the assumption of everyone going everywhere with a car, such as surrounding everything with huge parking lots and stroads. Otherwise it can be a lot easier to take a train or metro a couple stops than worry about where to park.
The fact that he played pranks on people to make them think they saw UFOs seems like weak evidence for a long-term commitment to deceiving people about his own experience up to the point of committing perjury, backed up by other members of his squad and when someone else took a video of it after he had landed.
Entelecheia
9mo ago
Yeah, I thought maybe it had something to do with scheduling conflicts so I don’t mean to be too critical of the filmmakers on that. Just ended up being kind of disappointing and felt oddly executed. But I’m really looking forward to Dune and something has to give, I’m sure.
Entelecheia
10mo ago
I don’t think there’s anything wrong with me, I’m pretty easy to get along with. I just don’t like driving or long travel times so I tend to choose to avoid it, and don’t have many opportunities to meet people that don’t require that.
Entelecheia
1yr ago
I really dislike the First Mover argument since it just pushes back the problem of what comes first. If the universe needs a cause, why doesn't God?
But the arguments explain why the universe needs a cause and God doesn't, so this doesn't seem like a fruitful objection. In particular the basic structure of many cosmological arguments is an inference from contingency to necessity, and the existence of something contingent and actual implies an external reason why it is actual as opposed to not (i.e. a cause), whereas the existence of something necessary does not.
Entelecheia
1yr ago
The comment you are replying to was just a sketch of the thread that has served as the key polar opposite to atheism in philosophy. One can believe this without believing in any particular religion, so the question of theism or atheism should not turn on whether any particular religion is true.
Whether particular religions that attempt to build upon this foundation have added enough to make them philosophically interesting in their own right is another matter that I didn't mean to comment on.
It is the study of being as such, as distinct from the special sciences which study being under some aspect, as we might say roughly and imprecisely that modern physical science studies being as corporeal and quantitative (philosophical physics like Aristotle's studies being as corporeal but not quantitative, heh).
So metaphysics is about rising above particular kinds and concepts of being to the most general analysis of being. And there we get to questions like: we know there's at least one sort of being (the corporeal kind), is that it, or is there a kind of being that is incorporeal or supersensible? That question is the main theme of Plato's corpus.
And it studies categories applicable to being in general (not just one kind of being), like causation, or contingency and necessity. So there you will get questions like whether the existence of contingent beings ipso facto implies the existence of a necessary being, and what attributes a necessary being must have in virtue of its necessity. Or whether a chain of causes implies a first element in it and what we can say about such an element based on the properties it must have in order to be the first element in such a chain.
This may (or may not, like I said I'm still learning) help to explain why the validity of metaphysics as a discipline that grasps being as it is is so critical for classical theistic arguments. If all of these concepts - causation, contingency, necessity etc. - are just a matter of how we think about the stuff that appears to us, we can't use it to draw conclusions that go beyond what appears to us, because it's basically just a schema for organizing all of that (this is why Kantianism threw such a major wrench in philosophy). But if it's grasping being as it is, then we can.
Entelecheia
1yr ago
he still thought that the catholic church should appeal to intellectuals and that this would help bring back the european masses to church (see Fides et ratio and his regensburg lecture). I think he was wrong on two levels: first he completely failed to attract intellectual, second the masses don't actually give a shit about what intellectuals think.
Well, I don't think it was a kind of...business strategic decision optimizing for growth. I'm sure he hoped he would influence people to come back to the pews, but I think he thought and wrote this way because he believed that man is meant to search for the truth and must attempt to articulate to himself real, satisfying answers to his deepest questions. This is probably part of why he struggled with the job, because he was always more inclined toward theology than administration.
I'd also say that the crafting of an intellectual edifice is a lifetime of work that can only be judged from a generational, rather than immediate, perspective. When Socrates died it probably looked like he was a failure (from an external perspective - of course he succeeded in living how he thought was right), but his way of thinking about man and the soul (via its modulation in Plato and Aristotle and combination with Christian ideas) ended up ruling the Western world for a long time.
As a Catholic I hope that the slow decline of the west we are witnessing will lead to curiosity and interest in the questions that Ratzinger considered central to man's life and destiny but that modern society tends to obscure or deny. I hope it will also lead to fruitful engagement with the lifetime of work that he produced in attempting to answer those questions for himself. But even if it doesn't have any outsized downstream impact, it was worth doing anyway.
Entelecheia
1yr ago
I always got the impression that the arguments the New Atheist made were never successfully refuted
I don't think this is true unless you mean on the level of popular discourse. As a theoretical matter, I don't think New Atheist argumentation was ever particularly respected in, say, the world of academic philosophy, which is dominated by atheists, so it's not a question of bias. And the need to respond to New Atheism prompted a re-engagement with classical philosophy among religious thinkers - see people like Edward Feser - that made their position much more theoretically defensible and less vulnerable to New Atheist arguments.
If you mean as a popular matter, then sure, I could see people thinking (incorrectly) that that whole episode sort of settled all these questions, because the sophisticated religious response to their claims turned out to be rather less of a popular phenomenon than the original claims were.
Philosophical classical theism along the lines articulated initially by the high metaphysical philosophers of ancient Greece would be the main alternative. Christianity is a synthesis of the scriptural tradition and this philosophy, but the philosophy itself is not inherently connected with any particular religion. In fact it was developed initially in opposition to the prevailing pagan religious mentality as a more pure and theoretically coherent conception of what we might call an absolute, unconditioned reality than the gods portrayed in the Homeric myths. This tradition developed arguments for the existence of said absolute, unconditioned reality that are much stronger (taken on their own terms) than many people are aware of or give credit for. In particular, refined versions of the cosmological argument - as opposed to popular apologetics versions - are very strong.
I say "taken on their own terms" because they require a fairly robust conception of the metaphysical enterprise to get off the ground - that is, the idea that metaphysical concepts describe real features of the real world. This ability of metaphysics to grasp real features of the world is what enables the inference from effect to cause even in the case of inferring a supersensible and transcendent cause for a sensible and physical effect. In contrast, if one believes that metaphysical concepts have to do with the way we think but not the way things are - so that causation is a question of how we organize and conceptualize phenomena rather than a real mind-independent relation between beings as such - then we cannot use causation to infer the real existence of something beyond what we could possibly experience.
I am still a novice in these matters but I suspect that this kind of meta-philosophical controversy is why theism remains controversial today in philosophy. In other words it's not coincidental, or due to anything like social pressure or force, that the whole philosophical world was theistic until relatively recently. Within a "realist" metaphysical framework of the kind that the ancient Greek philosophers are the chief examples, theism more or less tends to be the natural conclusion, and that framework is what is called into question today.
That's not to say that there aren't still controversies over the validity of theistic arguments even within that framework. The technical issues in the arguments are complicated and difficult. However this shift may explain, from a historical perspective related to the general philosophical atmosphere, the differences in the baseline perception of plausibility of theism and atheism.
If a religion isn't willing to claim that it's good to adhere to it and bad not to adhere to it - if it isn't claiming to supply something that really matters, without which one's life is worse off - then why bother with it?
I mean it seems like this objection is more to the idea of a religion that claims to be exclusively correct and of the utmost importance to human life. If that's true, then of course it will be bad not to accept it. If Christianity really is God reconciling the human and divine and bringing us into his life through his entering into ours, then what a calamity it would be to decline God's invitation.
That's not to say that someone who rejects it is ipso facto a "bad person" the way a murderer, say, is a bad person. Presumably if a person rejects Christianity it's because of not believing that it is true. And we can only really expect people to act according to what they think is true, not necessarily what is actually true. But the fact remains that rejecting Christianity (given that it's true) makes one's life worse.
Entelecheia
1yr ago
I can try, sure. I'm not too familiar with online resources because I've mostly learned about it through my attempt to engage deeply with the history of philosophy, which I strongly recommend to everyone here; if I had a "thesis" of which I hoped to persuade readers, it would be this. There is much more than a lifetime's worth of rich content in the great authors, and much of it is little known today.
I know of one person on reddit who was particularly interested in classical theism and wrote a series of posts on one of Aquinas's cosmological arguments here.
My entry to this way of thinking was by reading some books by Edward Feser, who has a blog here that is generally interesting. While he writes from a particular (i.e. Thomistic and Catholic) perspective, a lot of his concern is to defend general principles of classical Western metaphysics against modern or contemporary philosophical paradigms, so reading him gives a decent overview of the Hellenic philosophical mentality from which all of this springs. Aquinas: A Beginner's Guide and Five Proofs for the Existence of God are great; the first will provide a systematic overview of the building-block concepts like act/potency, form/matter, essence/existence, etc. and culminates in an argument for theism; the latter is, as the title indicates, all about natural theology.
For those whose interest goes beyond the beginner level, I would recommend just digging into the history of philosophical thought on metaphysics and theology. Frederick Copleston's History of Philosophy is a great resource, as is Giovanni Reale, A History of Ancient Philosophy. Both are quite long, but that's what it takes to do the subject matter justice.
Entelecheia
1yr ago
Wait, who recommended the book? How'd I miss this?
Hi, it's me!
The cat that I'm referring to isn't having sex for fun, it's believing that you should be able to have sex for fun without incurring any consequences. That social attitude, which is enabled by contraception, is what (it seems plausible to me) creates the gravitational pull in favor of allowing abortion. Without that attitude, it's just seen as foolish conduct, not something that people are victims of and need to be rescued from.
Entelecheia
10mo ago
driving is a strictly superior means of transit for distances over a mile or so
Strictly superior to what? Walking? Sure, but that's because long-distance walking can be tiring, not because driving itself better than other modes of non-walking transit. To safe and well-kept public transportation of the kind that exists in, say, Switzerland? If your destination is along a rail route then that seems false, because you can sit and do what you want to do instead of having to keep your attention on the road, and you don't need to find a parking space, you just get off the train. If it's not then that's an argument for better rail coverage.
If you're talking about non-urban locations where there isn't enough demand for infrastructure to build sufficient rail coverage, then sure, driving is a fine option for that.
Entelecheia
1yr ago
Even if you believe that abortion is murder, there is a strong argument that it is the lesser evil compared to forcing these types of women to birth and potentially raise these children
I believe unborn children are morally equivalent to everyone else in regard to their right not to be intentionally killed. So if you think I should treat abortion as a lesser evil because the children who are aborted might turn into dysfunctional people (and please correct me if that's a misrepresentation of your argument), then shouldn't I also treat killing dysfunctional people at any stage, whether child or adult, as a lesser evil than banning the murder of them generally, given that I think both have an equally strong right not to be murdered?
Entelecheia
1yr ago
A History of Ancient Philosophy vol. II (Plato and Aristotle) by Giovanni Reale. Been working on it for a while, it's remarkably rich in its understanding of the material, but unfortunately the style/translation make it a bit of a slog.
Entelecheia
8mo ago
BG3 is slowly but surely turning into one of those games I enthusiastically binge in the beginning but lose interest and possibly never finish or only finish with substantial effort. I used to worry I was just losing the capacity to appreciate games for some unclear reason, but earlier this year I belatedly discovered Final Fantasy VII and was kind of fanatically gripped from start to finish. So maybe the problem isn't that I don't like games, but that a lot of games are just missing writing that gives me a reason to care about the scenario or characters, and so I end up not really caring to see what happens.
Wow, I haven't absorbed all of this yet but I first wanted to say thanks for writing it up and taking my problem seriously, it's very comprehensive. I've actually been wondering prior to this discussion about the different-fat-types explanation because it seems to fit with dairy being largely OK and non-beef proteins not. It also fits with the fact that this was a permanent fixture of my life until I tried a radical diet because of the high prevalence of soybean oil and other similar oils in American food. Even then, though, I have noticed other triggers, like adding flour to the beef roasts I make as a thickener, so I think gluten may be a problem too, but I may have to try again to confirm since that was a while ago.
I fear there may be no solution though, even if it's possible to ultimately identify what is causing the problem, which would leave me in the possession of a permanently broken digestive system requiring the long-term consumption of a dubiously healthy diet if I don't want to look terrible all the time, and that scares me a lot...
Entelecheia
1yr ago
Thanks for this comment, it was touching to read. Very sorry for your loss and wishing peace and consolation to you.
Entelecheia
10mo ago
Being driven in an uber isn’t comparable to driving. You don’t have to actually drive, or endure the stress and uncertainty of having to find parking in the middle of London.
Not that one, no, but I mean to pick it up at some point.
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