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Can the Atheist truly know anything?
After reading the arrogant posts by “whatrocksis” and “poop john” I have to respond. I had a clue about whatrockis’s arrogance when he started a thread with a phrase something like “does anybody on here read?” Now maybe that statement is not as pompous as I thought it was, but then when whatrockis is states something to the effect that he can’t believe anybody who has studied history at all can believe in God, I knew I was right. Whatrocksis wrote “I must express my bewilderment that someone who has studied history at all, …………., can call themselves religious as pertaining to a Christian god at all.” I guess it is just the Christian God, that whatrocksis believes, would be impossible for any serious student of history to believe in. Do you have any clue how ridiculous your statement is WRI? Of all the Christian Theists there are in the world you don’t think any of them are serious students of history. Oh maybe they just aren’t as smart as you are, or they just haven’t studied history as seriously as you have. I am sorry if my anger is coming through, but to just paint all Christian Theists as being devoid of any true historical knowledge, just cannot be allowed to pass. The only thing this statement demonstrates is WRI’s own ignorance. WRI points to all his knowledge in so many areas of study. Maybe WRI would like to site all of his great credentials on this site. I am not talking about the knowledge he claims to have but actual credentials like degrees. If WRI does this I am pretty sure that I can site a number of individuals with credentials which are more impressive (especially in the area of history) who are or were Christian Theists. Now I admit that Panther was wrong to conclude that WRI’s lack of belief comes from some traumatic event. I have no idea how WRI came to the anti-theistic or at least anti Christian views that he has and I don’t presume to know what causes him to believe the way he does. On the other hand WRI is completely wrong to claim that anyone who has knowledge of history could never believe in the Christian God. This is just simply contrary to the facts. I believe poop john was pretty big on facts.
Now that brings me to poop john who compares belief in God to belief in Harry Potter. Well poop’s arrogance rivals that of WRI. Hey don’t argue ideas just accuse your adversary of being as stupid as somebody who believes in Harry Potter. I am sure that would go over well in a debate contest. What poop is unwilling to realize is that many of the greatest scientific thinkers of history were theists and many were Christian theists. I know of an astronomy/physics teacher from the university who actually did a presentation on this very issue, on how so many of the thinkers who have shaped the world of science were actually theistic. According to poop these great thinkers who have shaped the world of science were just as naïve as someone who believes in Harry Potter.
Well I just had to address the arrogance of WRI and Poop but now I will address the title of my post “Can the Atheist truly know anything?” by simply quoting from an excellent book. Before I start into the quote I want you to understand that when the author refers to the naturalist or naturalism he is referring to the person who believes that all there is, is nature (i.e. matter and energy), there is no God or gods no spirits no super natural of any kind. So naturalism is inherently atheistic. The book I will be quoting from is “The Universe Next Door (A Basic World View Catalog)” by James W. Sire. On page 82 Sire writes “The metaphysical presupposition that the cosmos is a closed system has implications not only for metaphysics but also for epistemology. The argument in brief is this: If any given person is the result of impersonal forces-whether working haphazardly or by inexorable law-that person has no way of know whether what he or she seems to know is an illusion or truth. Let us see how that is so.
Naturalism holds that perception and knowledge are either identical with or a byproduct of the brain; they arise from the functioning of matter. Without matter’s functioning there would be no thought. But matter functions by a nature of its own. There is no reason that matter has any interest in leading a conscious being to a true perception or to logical (that is, correct) conclusions based on accurate observation and true presuppositions. The only beings in the universe who care about such matters are humans. But people are bound to their bodies. Their consciousness arises from a complex interrelation of highly “ordered” matter. But why should whatever that matter is conscious of be in any way related to what actually is the case? Is there a test for distinguishing illusion from reality? Naturalists point to the methods of scientific inquiry, pragmatic tests and so forth. But all these utilize the brain they are testing. Each test could well be a futile exercise in spinning out the consistency of an illusion.
For naturalism nothing exists outside the system itself. There is no God-deceiving or nondeceiving, perfect or imperfect, personal or impersonal. There is only the cosmos, and humans are the only conscious beings. But they are late comers. They ‘arose,’ but how far? Can they trust their minds, their reason?
Charles Darwin himself once said, ‘the horrid doubt always arises whether the convictions of man’s mind, which has developed from the mind of lower animals, are of any value or at all trustworthy. Would anyone trust the conviction of a monkey’s mind, if there are any convictions in such a mind.’ In other words, if my brain is no more than that of a superior monkey, I cannot even be sure that my own theory of my origin is to be trusted.
Here is a curious case: If Darwin’s naturalism is true, there is no way of even establishing its credibility, let alone proving it. Confidence in logic is rule out. Darwin’s own theory of human origins must therefore be accepted by an act of faith. One must hold that a brain, a device that came to be through natural selection and chance-sponsored mutations, can actually know a proposition or set of propositions to be true.
C.S. Lewis puts the case this way: ‘If all that exists is Nature, the great mindless interlocking event, if our own deepest convictions are merely by-products of an irrational process, then clearly there is not the slightest ground for supposing that our sense of fitness and our consequent faith in uniformity tell us anything about a reality external to ourselves. Our convictions are simply a fact about us-like the color of our hair. If Naturalism is true we have no reason to trust our conviction that Nature is uniform.’ (From Miracles)
What we need for such certainty is the existence of some ‘rational Spirit’ outside both ourselves and nature from which our own rationality could derive. Theism assumes such a ground; naturalism does not.
We are not only boxed in by the past-our origin in inanimate, unconscious matter-we are also boxed in by our present situation as thinkers. Let us say that I have just completed an argument on the level of ‘All men are mortal; Aristotle Onassis is a man; Aristotle Onasssis is mortal.’ That’s a proven conclusion. Right?
Well, how do we know it’s right? Simple I have obeyed the laws of logic. What laws? How do we know them to be true? They are self-evident. After all, would any thought or communication be possible without them? No. So aren’t they true? Not necessarily.
Any argument we construct implies such laws-the classical ones of identity, noncontradiction and the excluded middle. But that fact does not guarantee the ‘truthfulness’ of these laws in the sense that anything we think or say that obeys them necessarily relates to what is so in the objective, external universe. Moreover, any arguments to check the validity of an argument is itself an argument which might be mistaken. When we begin to think like this, we are not far from an infinite regress; our argument chases its tale down the ever-receding corridors of the mind. Or to change the image, we lose or bearings in a sea of infinity.
But haven’t we gone astray in arguing against the possibility of knowledge? We do seem to be able to test our knowledge in such a way that is generally satisfies us. Some things we think we know can be shown to be false or at least highly unlikely, for example that microbes are spontaneously generated from totally inorganic mud. And all of us know how to boil water scratch our, itches, recognize our friends and distinguish them from others in the crowd.
Virtually no one is a full-fledged epistemological nihilist. Yet naturalism does not allow a person to have any solid reason for confidence in human reason. We thus end in an ironic paradox. Naturalism, born in the Age of Enlightenment, was launched on a firm acceptance of the human ability to know. Now naturalists find they can place no confidence in their knowing.
The whole point of this argument can be summarized briefly: Naturalism places us as human beings in a box. But for us to have any confidence that our knowledge that we are in a box is true, we need to stand outside the box or to have some other being outside the box provide us with information (theologians call this ‘revelation’). But there is nothing outside or no one outside the box to give us revelation, and we cannot ourselves transcend the box. Ergo; epistemological nihilism.
A naturalist who fails to perceive this is like the man in Stephen Crane’s poem;
I saw a man pursuing the horizon;
Round and round they sped.
I was disturbed at this;
I accosted the man.
‘It is futile,’ I said,
‘you can never______’
‘you lied, he cried,
and ran on.’
In the naturalistic frame work, people purse a knowledge which forever recedes before them. We can never know.
One of the worst consequences of taking epistemological nihilism seriously is that it has led to some to question that the very facticity of the universe. To some, nothing is real, not even themselves. People who reach this state are in deep trouble, for they can no longer function as human beings. Or, as we often say, they can’t cope.
We usually do not recognize this situation as metaphysical epistemological nihilism. Rather, we call it schizophrenia hallucination, fantasizing, daydreaming or living in a dream world. And we ‘treat’ the person as a ‘case,’ the problem as a ‘disease.’ I have no particular quarrel with doing this, for I do believe in the reality of an external world, one I hold in common with others in my space-time frame. Those who cannot recognize this are beyond coping. But while we think of such situations primarily in psychological terms and while we commit such people to institutions where someone will keep them alive and others will help them return from their inner trip and get back to waking reality, we should realize that some of these far-out cases may be perfect examples of what happens when a person no longer knows in the commonsense way of knowing. It is the ‘proper’ state, the logical result of epistemological nihilism. If I cannot know, then any perception or dream or image or fantasy becomes equally real or unreal. Life in the ordinary world is based on our ability to make distinctions. Ask the man who has just swallowed colorless liquid which he thought was water but which was actually wood alcohol.
Most of us never see the far-out ‘cases.’ They are quickly committed. But they exist, and I have met some people whose stories are frightening. Most full epistemological nihilists, however, fall in the class described by Robert Farrar Capon, who simply has no time for such nonsense; ‘the skeptic is never for real. There he stands, cocktail in hand, left arm draped languorously on one end of the mantle piece, telling you that he can’t be sure of anything, not even of his own existence. I’ll give you my secret method of demolishing universal skepticism in four words. Whisper to him: ‘Your fly is open.’ If he thinks knowledge is so all-fired impossible, why does he look?’
As we noted above, there is just too much evidence tat knowledge is possible. What we need is a way to explain why we have it. This naturalism does not do. So the one who remains a consistent naturalist must be a nihilist.” Pages 82-86
As someone once put it; if the brain is simply a machine and if the brain secretes thoughts the same way that the pancreases secretes bile, then what reason is there for ever believing that the brain is reaching the correct conclusions. If thoughts are simply electro chemical reactions in the brain, how can we assume that they are ever correct?
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