Negative atheism? (Introduction)

by dhw, Thursday, December 11, 2014, 20:41 (3424 days ago) @ David Turell

DAVID: ...not being able to reach a conclusion, to me is a negative result.
dhw: In that case you will have to call atheism a positive result.-DAVID: Not accepting belief is a positive conclusion that chance causes everything we see in our reality. It is a non-starter answer if one accepts cause and effect, and therefore flawed negative reasoning.-So a positive result which is different from yours is a negative result. Atheism may suggest that chance started things off, but even for an atheist, science depends on the study of causes and effects - which you as a doctor will hardly deny. In any case, chance is not a non-starter if one accepts cause and effect. We have no idea to what extent the universe and our lives are governed by chance. Was Chicxulub planned? Or the mosquito bite that gave me malaria which turned into blackwater fever which resulted in my going to hospital which is where I met my future wife which led to our creating a family etc. etc.? Chance itself is a cause. In any case, if you accept cause and effect, you can hardly insist that our consciousness must have a cause whereas your God's has none. (I think this is what BBella means by your tendency to think in boxes!)
 
dhw: Only the agnostic approaches the question with an open mind, and since when was open-mindedness a negative?
DAVID: What you are saying is "I don't need no answer", a non-result. I'm sure you can comfortably live without an answer, still a negative situation.-You keep switching from negative approaches to negative results to negative situations. “I don't need an answer” could lead to apathy, which might be called a negative situation. Living comfortably without an answer is a fair summary of my own situation, but if I were apathetic, you and I would never have met. One can continue to look for answers without lying awake at night worrying about their non-arrival. Open-mindedness - a term you scrupulously avoid using - is in my view a positive and not a negative attribute. Living with open-mindedness is therefore a positive and not a negative situation, leading to a positive approach, even if the results remain neutral.
 
dhw: I agree that there has to be a first cause, but the evidence does not say it must be “supernatural”. It merely says that so far we don't understand what constitutes nature.
DAVID: I don't know what that means. We are trying to explore 'nature' with science and we know a great deal about it, especially that living nature is far more complex than realized, just a few years ago when DNA was discovered. -That is precisely what I mean. We are slowly expanding our knowledge of nature, but there are still vast areas of it that we know nothing about. I take “supernatural” to mean phenomena for which we have no explanation. Supposing consciousness were to be a form of energy that manipulates our brain cells instead of emerging out of them? We would have to change our concept of what is “natural”, and the ramifications could cover many phenomena which at present people would call “supernatural”. 
 
DAVID: So much so that chance development as a theory should be discarded. Just glance through all the material I am presenting about cellular molecular activities. Just like each molecule is thoughtfully following a job description. This is the 'sentience' you keep bringing up.-I have been following these posts with interest. They do indeed describe the chemical processes that lead to and accompany sentience. And as always, you assume that this sentience is enough to justify your claim that cells are automatons. But cells use their sentience, just as we do. They take decisions. There is a control centre. For you, the control centre is a set of instructions God inserted 3.7 billion years ago. I have suggested an alternative. But we have been over all that a hundred times.
 
dhw: Deep down I do not believe positive proof is possible for either.
DAVID: I agree. But why not make a choice? -Why make a choice (a) if you don't have to, and (b) if the alternatives seem equally unlikely?-dhw: You insist on sticking to immaterial causes, and won't admit to looking at anything else. The agnostic keeps a positive open mind.
DAVID: But will accept a choice of solution only when positive absolute proof is presented. And that is, a priori, impossible. Seems like an empty position to me.-Absolute proof is indeed impossible in most areas of our lives, but that needn't stop us from taking decisions on a balance of probability. I do it all the time. But in this particular case, I see no reason to choose or justification for choosing. “Negative approach” has now changed to “empty position”. Why do you feel this need to make a judgement? You believe, atheists disbelieve, and agnostics neither believe nor disbelieve. Can't we leave it at that?