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mmoa_writes at 12:36am on 18/04/2010 under arguments, atheism, debate, discussions, philosophy, religion, theism, transcendent
mmoa_writes at 12:36am on 18/04/2010 under arguments, atheism, debate, discussions, philosophy, religion, theism, transcendent Yes, you can tell where I've been web-trawling of late... *sighs*
EDIT: First evah article from a friend of one of the ferretbrain crew. Also pretty decent to boot. It's basically all about Islamophobia in Europe with mercifully scant statistics.
I keep on reading - from very intelligent people for whom I have a lot of respect - that one of the problems with atheism is that it does not provide an objective moral framework, unlike theism which - in it's various guises - has the theory of a transcendent deity which acts as a constant of normalisation almost (and yes, I have finally got round to doing some Vector Spaces revision, what of it?).
Now I don't think this is strictly true. There may well be certain atheistic philosophies which cannot lay claim to some transcendental basis, but those (and I'm thinking for some reason of Existentialism, though I'm probably wrong) tend to admit that and use the 'conundrum' as one of the underlying precepts of the philosophy which will in turn inform the reasoning and the conclusions reached wrt to morality, meaning and so on within the particular philosophical framework.
However, even if it is true that atheism as a world-view fails in that regard, I don't see how that argument can be used to score points for theism. It's all very well having God as your orthogonal basis (I'll admit I'm just showing off now...) but then it seems to me that in claiming God as such, we return full circle to the necessity of proving the existence of said basis. Otherwise the argument just becomes a statement of a paradox ie that of the apparent logical necessity of having some sort of transcendent basis in an existence where there does not seem to be any.
This doesn't mean, of course, that one can't use the lack of some existential constant or basis as an attack on any philosophy or world-view. It does mean that you should be careful about using it as proof of the superiority of ones own beliefs as in reality, it really is something of a double edged sword.
Another take on a related subject by a far superior thinker than I!
EDIT: First evah article from a friend of one of the ferretbrain crew. Also pretty decent to boot. It's basically all about Islamophobia in Europe with mercifully scant statistics.
I keep on reading - from very intelligent people for whom I have a lot of respect - that one of the problems with atheism is that it does not provide an objective moral framework, unlike theism which - in it's various guises - has the theory of a transcendent deity which acts as a constant of normalisation almost (and yes, I have finally got round to doing some Vector Spaces revision, what of it?).
Now I don't think this is strictly true. There may well be certain atheistic philosophies which cannot lay claim to some transcendental basis, but those (and I'm thinking for some reason of Existentialism, though I'm probably wrong) tend to admit that and use the 'conundrum' as one of the underlying precepts of the philosophy which will in turn inform the reasoning and the conclusions reached wrt to morality, meaning and so on within the particular philosophical framework.
However, even if it is true that atheism as a world-view fails in that regard, I don't see how that argument can be used to score points for theism. It's all very well having God as your orthogonal basis (I'll admit I'm just showing off now...) but then it seems to me that in claiming God as such, we return full circle to the necessity of proving the existence of said basis. Otherwise the argument just becomes a statement of a paradox ie that of the apparent logical necessity of having some sort of transcendent basis in an existence where there does not seem to be any.
This doesn't mean, of course, that one can't use the lack of some existential constant or basis as an attack on any philosophy or world-view. It does mean that you should be careful about using it as proof of the superiority of ones own beliefs as in reality, it really is something of a double edged sword.
Another take on a related subject by a far superior thinker than I!
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