Meaning and Existence

[_Coggins7]

Sorry Coggins, but God doesn't get to have "meaning" in this argument until you can demonstrate that he should, and does. You cannot just assert that he has meaning. You're waving your magic wand around, but it isn't working. You are asserting here that God has meaning because... God has meaning. Just because. That's why.

Nope. Back to Tarski's phrase, what is it about an entity procreating spirit babies forever that is inherently more "meaningful" than anything we do here? Because it lasts forever? So is simple duration the meaningful factor here? What is it, Coggins? Or can't you articulate why God, or Celestial existence has meaning, apart from just asserting that it does?

Whether God has meaning may or may not be an interesting philosophical question, but its a rather strained effort at straw grasping given Beckwith's primary concern. What you appear to be saying is that God, even if he exists, may have no meaning. The implication here would be that God, if he exists, is just another epiphenomena of the universe just as we are. If that is the case, of course, then the Atheist wins the argument, as God is now nothing more than a super being or some kind who makes it up as he goes along, just as we do.

I know of few concepts of God that would hold such a view of him, regardless of the religious system in question. The concept of God of which I and Beckwith speak has, of course, no relevance to those concerns. Again, without teleology, regardless of what the source or origin of this teleology is, the universe is a purely self organized, mechanistic, randomly generated structure that just happens to have existed. All phenomena, conditions, and structures within this universe therefore, are also strictly accidental, chance products of this universe. There can be no meaning in this universe since we know there is no teleology.

You are left with one alternative, and you may, for the purposes of the argument, call it God or whatever.

[_Sethbag]

To say that Beckwith's argument rests on a faulty premise that "unless there is some external intentionality for existence, that existence has no meaning" just begs the question of whether or not there is such an external intentionality. It does nothing to alter Beckwith's major point, that if there is, and unless there is, it must be the case that life has no meaning. The point really is not whether there is or is not an external intentionality. The point is that if there isn't, then your only option is relativism and nihilism, mediated by one's own internal fictions of meaning.

I think the key here, and the point you seem to be missing, despite Runtu's and my attempts to point it out to you, is that there is no foundation for the statement "unless there is", (speaking of external intentionality), apart from bald assertion. You parrot Beckwith in asserting this, but it has never actually been demonstrated logically by you or Beckwith.

Here it is again: why does God have meaning? Because he was created by a God with meaning? Where did that God get meaning? How deep do the turtles go here, Coggins? In the end you can only claim that God has meaning because you say so, and because you believe it, and because your imaginary friend told you to tell us that you are right and we're wrong.

Yes, there is a logical trap here, but it's you with your foot stuck in it, not us, and not Dawkins.

You are all trying to salvage personal meaneing in a random, accidental, meaningless universe by clinging to your subjective fantasy constructs that tell you it does have meaning. Nobody is trying to deny you your fantasies. All we're saying is that external to, or outside the parameters of your own mental universe, those beliefs break down because the nature of the universe itself does not support those beliefs.

And outside of you and your relationship with your imaginary friend, there's no substance to your beliefs that you have meaning either. It literally is all in your head, Coggins. The atheists actually regard the meaning they create and decide for themselves to be substantive, at least to them and others they influence, which is all that really matters. By denying this meaning you are only setting yourself up for despair when you eventually realize that your imaginary friend and his cosmic, eternal, magic "meaning" aren't real.

[_Chap]

Coggins:

The very concept of God implies teleology, and teleology explicitly implies meaning (teleology is purpose, and purpose (what something is for), must imply meaning (actualizing that purpose).

As Sethbag points out, you are trying to win the argument by your definition. A fatal obstacle to that tactic working is that you have yet to show:

1. that there is a god at all.
2. If such a god exists, that he fits your definition.

Until you do that, it is all magic wand waving on your part, as Sethbag says.

Coggins, the universe is indeed huge, mysterious and very non-human indeed. Actually I find that makes it really interesting, rather than scary, and I enjoy learning more about it nearly every day. However, the only bits of it that show any signs of caring about us human beings are, well, other human beings (and even then by no means all of the time).

Even allowing your assumption that there is some kind of cosmic authority around, there seems no evidence that he cares about us at all. Do you know of any evidence of a cosmic carer that does not depend on us accepting your religious propositions in advance? (That condition is important if you wish to convince rather than simply proclaim at us).

You are I assume (in the face of all appearances) a human being too. But rather than join the little human huddle round the family fire, you shout 'meaningless fantasy! delusion!' at the only friends you will ever have, and go racing off into the empty darkness shouting 'Daddy, Daddy - come and save me from meaninglessness'. There is no answer for you out there, Coggins, except inside your head where Coggins talks ... to Coggins.

That is sad.

[_Sethbag]

I love that bit about joining the human huddle around the family fire! That is so profound. We live, as you say, in a ginormous universe where the only sign of anything of anyone that cares about us puny humans comes from other human beings.

Doesn't it really boggle anyone's mind that in this vast universe we kill each other over our differences in beliefs, when we should be treating each other like the vital human family that we are, knowing that this is all w?e've got?

I don't have an eternity procreating spirit babies with a harem of Celestial wives. I have my family here on earth. I've got my fellow Americans. I've even got my Islamic radicals who want me dead, which is really sad, because all they've got is themselves and us, too, and they don't even know that.

To me, the atheistic worldview of Dawkins is way more profound in a way, because it forces us to look to ourselves, and make this life as good for ourselves and each other as we can, because we're all in this together, and because this is all we get. If we don't make this mean something, to us, then nobody will. Literally. It really puts things into a whole new perspective.

[_Coggins7]

[

quote]Again, the argument rests on the idea that there is no meaning unless there is external intent behind the physical universe.

Correct. This conclusion is required by the laws of language and the perceptual parameters within whcih we conceptualize our understanding of the world.

Repeating that such a position is obvious and logical does not make it so.

As a matter of logical coherence, as Beckwith, myself, and Light have shown, it must be the case, unless you can provide a compelling reason to doubt the logical inconsistency, which no one here has yet even attempted to do.

If life is an ongoing perpetuation of accumulated experience and value, it is by nature meaningful, whether someone or something created it intentionally.

[/quote]

Again, you beg the question at hand but provide no argument substantiating your proposition. How can life, in a random, accidental universe, by meaningful? Adding stuffing to the Turkey by describing existence in terms of "an ongoing perpetuation of accumulated experience and value" changes absolutely and utterly nothing since this description of existence, in a random, accidental world devoid of teleology, is a purely subjective construct of your own mind used to impose meaning on an external universe in which, in point of fact, according to your own core philosophy, if it is a materialist one, there is no inherent meaning at all.

Nope. Back to Tarski's phrase, what is it about an entity procreating spirit babies forever that is inherently more "meaningful" than anything we do here? Because it lasts forever? So is simple duration the meaningful factor here? What is it, Coggins? Or can't you articulate why God, or Celestial existence has meaning, apart from just asserting that it does?

I would suspect he can't, but I'm looking forward to his response.

[/quote]

Assuming that this question isn't just a frivolous provocation (and around here, that's a big 'if'), the core reason, which I think should be obvious to anyone with any degree of imagination or philosophical creativity, is that what we do here, if the universe is as materialists believe it to be, is meaningless, having no purpose beyond that determined by the laws of natural selection and physics. That anything lasts forever is actually the key, as I pointed out in another post at length. Anything bounded by time to the degree that time is the transcendent, pivitol factor upon which meaning is derived, loses all meaning as "meaning" moves beyond time. In other words, as each individual and what he does moves through time, he ascribes meaning to his existence. However, when he ceases moving through time (death), time creates an ultimate and absolute boundary to meaning.

That which goes on infinitely takes meaning with it. This is why death has no "sting" in the Gospel.

[_Coggins7]

Here it is again: why does God have meaning? Because he was created by a God with meaning? Where did that God get meaning? How deep do the turtles go here, Coggins? In the end you can only claim that God has meaning because you say so, and because you believe it, and because your imaginary friend told you to tell us that you are right and we're wrong.

To avoid grabbing the horns of the dilemma, you appear to be asking the old philosophical question, "why is there anything at all?", for which I have no answer, and the relevance of which to Beckwith appears to me to be, at best, tangential.

Yes, there is a logical trap here, but it's you with your foot stuck in it, not us, and not Dawkins.

You are all trying to salvage personal meaneing in a random, accidental, meaningless universe by clinging to your subjective fantasy constructs that tell you it does have meaning. Nobody is trying to deny you your fantasies. All we're saying is that external to, or outside the parameters of your own mental universe, those beliefs break down because the nature of the universe itself does not support those beliefs.

And outside of you and your relationship with your imaginary friend, there's no substance to your beliefs that you have meaning either. It literally is all in your head, Coggins.

And as we can see, you have just stuck your foot in the very same trap you claim mine is wedged between, and the same trap Dawkins set and closed upon himself. All your doing here, over and over again, is, in essence saying "its all in your head too, neener, neener, neener. Now, if that's correct, and my theism is all in my head, then you and Dawkins have won the argument, which also (logical trap begins to close again) means that I have simultaneously won a significant part of mine (even if not the part about the existence of God as the alternative), which is that now, with God and teleology being nothing more than fictions within my own mind, we now live in a universe where people live with different fictions of meaning; each fictional, and each providing meaning in a cold, uncaring, random universe devoid of intelligence or purpose.

If I concede that God is imaginary, than at least I have won one major point, that being that if this is so, then your sense of value and meaning is likewise, imaginary, and hence, your very being here defending your position, meaningless.

Why therefore, like Dawkin's and Wise, do you bother to do it?

The atheists actually regard the meaning they create and decide for themselves to be substantive, at least to them and others they influence, which is all that really matters. By denying this meaning you are only setting yourself up for despair when you eventually realize that your imaginary friend and his cosmic, eternal, magic "meaning" aren't real.

[/quote]


Your statements here are, again, self negating and logically incoherent. How can meaning (a meaningless concept in a meaningless universe) be "substantive" (how can substantiveness inhere in that which is meaningless?) and then at the same time "matter"?

You point out yet again that my beliefs are imaginary, which if true, means that the meaning you create and decide for yourself is also, imaginary.

Thank you for substantiating some of the major points I've been trying to make since yesterday afternoon.

[_Coggins7]

As Sethbag points out, you are trying to win the argument by your definition. A fatal obstacle to that tactic working is that you have yet to show:

1. that there is a god at all.
2. If such a god exists, that he fits your definition.

I need not do any such thing. All I need show is that if there is no God, and if he doesn't fit something close to my definition, then you have no means by which to differentiate, in any intrinsic sense, between Nazism and Liberal Democracy, or between fundamentalist Islam and Buddhism.

Coggins, the universe is indeed huge, mysterious and very non-human indeed. Actually I find that makes it really interesting, rather than scary, and I enjoy learning more about it nearly every day. However, the only bits of it that show any signs of caring about us human beings are, well, other human beings (and even then by no means all of the time).

More question begging. In your universe, why does it matter that you enjoy learning about anything, and why does it matter whether or not people care about each other?

Even allowing your assumption that there is some kind of cosmic authority around, there seems no evidence that he cares about us at all. Do you know of any evidence of a cosmic carer that does not depend on us accepting your religious propositions in advance? (That condition is important if you wish to convince rather than simply proclaim at us).

This is so bound up in your own psychological dynamics and attitudes that I won't try to delineate anything here, suffice it to say I see reams of evidence that he cares, and will continue to do so.

You are I assume (in the face of all appearances) a human being too. But rather than join the little human huddle round the family fire, you shout 'meaningless fantasy! delusion!' at the only friends you will ever have, and go racing off into the empty darkness shouting 'Daddy, Daddy - come and save me from meaninglessness'. There is no answer for you out there, Coggins, except inside your head where Coggins talks ... to Coggins.

That is sad.

Please, beg, and beg on. Continue the logical self negation. In your universe chap, there is not and cannot be anything sad about any beliefs I hold, that is a value judgment made by a biological accident in an accidental, randomly generated universe and you have no means or frame of reference through which to differentiate between the legitimacy, in terms of values, of either mine or yours. Indeed, both our frames of reference, the theist and the secular materialist, are meaningless.

[_Coggins7]

Doesn't it really boggle anyone's mind that in this vast universe we kill each other over our differences in beliefs, when we should be treating each other like the vital human family that we are, knowing that this is all w?e've got?

Why does it matter?

I don't have an eternity procreating spirit babies with a harem of Celestial wives. I have my family here on earth. I've got my fellow Americans. I've even got my Islamic radicals who want me dead, which is really sad, because all they've got is themselves and us, too, and they don't even know that.

Why is it sad that Islamic radicals want you dead? Upon what basis, outside of the inherent biological will to avoid pain and survive, can you morally differentiate between the ideology of Islamic radicalism and that of St. Francis of Assissi? They think its sad that you, as an infidel, are alive at all, and upon what epistemological or moral basis, in you and Dawkin's universe, can you say that their ideology is not just as valid for them, as yours is for you?

To me, the atheistic worldview of Dawkins is way more profound in a way, because it forces us to look to ourselves, and make this life as good for ourselves and each other as we can, because we're all in this together, and because this is all we get. If we don't make this mean something, to us, then nobody will. Literally. It really puts things into a whole new perspective.

That's nice. Profundity in a meaningless universe. The fact of the matter is, as this entire argument has made clear, that Atheism is a tangled mass of conceptual booby traps and logical inconsistencies that the Atheist must simply explain away and then slog onward. He cannot meet them head on with philosophical honesty or rigor.

Look at Sethbag's metaphysical assumptions, and then look at the above paragraph. Atheism is "profound" (value judgment), life is "good" (value judgment), it puts things in "perspective" (an assumption of knowledge about the universe based in a value system which may or may not be valid). Yet, all here would claim without flinching that the universe within which all of this takes place, is meaningless.

Will philosophical wonders never cease.

[_Chap]

Coggins:

In your universe chap, there is not and cannot be anything sad about any beliefs I hold, that is a value judgment made by a biological accident in an accidental, randomly generated universe and you have no means or frame of reference through which to differentiate between the legitimacy, in terms of values, of either mine or yours. Indeed, both our frames of reference, the theist and the secular materialist, are meaningless.

Human beings are, and always have been, the things that make value judgments, so far as we have any reliable evidence. I do agree that the universe shows no signs of being affected by our value judgments in the slightest. But then I would not expect it to be affected by our value judgments, since it is not human. So what?

Your demand that something somewhere outside humanity has to underpin or validate our value judgments seems to have no basis other than your own unreasonable wish that the cosmos as a whole should show signs of characteristics that we can only reasonably demand from human beings. I can't see why you feel that such a strange demand is going to get you anywhere.

Chap

Even allowing your assumption that there is some kind of cosmic authority around, there seems no evidence that he cares about us at all. Do you know of any evidence of a cosmic carer that does not depend on us accepting your religious propositions in advance? (That condition is important if you wish to convince rather than simply proclaim at us).

This is so bound up in your own psychological dynamics and attitudes that I won't try to delineate anything here, suffice it to say I see reams of evidence that he cares, and will continue to do so.

That is a cop-out and you know it, as does everybody else who reads this post. Your entire position is constructed on the premise that you have some special access to a superhuman standpoint, that gives meaning to things in a way that is so infinitely above the merely human as to render the merely human meaningless in comparison. You claimed once to have access to a special 'epistemological window' too, I recall, though goodness only knows what that might mean. When challenged to put up - you respond in essence by telling us that you do not think we are worthy of your wonderful wisdom. Could it be because you have in fact nothing to offer?

[_Coggins7]

Human beings are, and always have been, the things that make value judgments, so far as we have any reliable evidence. I do agree that the universe shows no signs of being affected by our value judgments in the slightest. But then I would not expect it to be affected by our value judgments, since it is not human. So what?

You're not even trying to follow the argument or grapple with the philosophical problems here.

Your demand that something somewhere outside humanity has to underpin or validate our value judgments seems to have no basis other than your own unreasonable wish that the cosmos as a whole should show signs of characteristics that we can only reasonably demand from human beings. I can't see why you feel that such a strange demand is going to get you anywhere.

Its high past time you cough up some compelling reasons, beyond your bare assertions, that there is legitimate reason to think the universe has no teleology and that there is no God. You and Runtu and seth have gotten away now through the entire thing with avoiding substantiating any of your own positions while interrogating me regarding mine. Its now time to stand and deleiver.


Quote:
Chap


This is so bound up in your own psychological dynamics and attitudes that I won't try to delineate anything here, suffice it to say I see reams of evidence that he cares, and will continue to do so.

That is a cop-out and you know it, as does everybody else who reads this post. Your entire position is constructed on the premise that you have some special access to a superhuman standpoint, that gives meaning to things in a way that is so infinitely above the merely human as to render the merely human meaningless in comparison. You claimed once to have access to a special 'epistemological window' too, I recall, though goodness only knows what that might mean. When challenged to put up - you respond in essence by telling us that you do not think we are worthy of your wonderful wisdom. Could it be because you have in fact nothing to offer?

This is special pleading. I know what you think. Now I'd like to see you support it with rational, coherant argument.

And, I've never so much as implied that you are not worthy of my "wisdom". I won't tell you how I know what I know to be true because, if you know anything at all about LDS theology, then you know very well how I know, and you know what I'm going to tell you, and I'm well aware of all the sophistries and rationalizations that can be brought to bear against it. You can pontificate and pontificate forever regarding your assumptions and notions about epistemology and about what the universe is really like and how my theistic beliefs are all in my head, but this will all remain special pleading and baseless assertion until you demonstrate rationally why I should take any of it seriously in an intellectual sense.