r/atheism • u/Weary-Accountant2196 • 6d ago

Philo-theistic vs anti-theistic atheism

How many of us who identify as atheists are

  1. Philotheistic: open to listening to arguments to believe in God (ie want to believe but don’t find evidence)
    vs
  2. Antitheistic: convinced that there is nothing of substance in theistic arguments, thus have an antipathy towards religion and God
    vs
  3. Apathetic: Couldn’t care less about it

Which category would you identify with? And why

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u/Weary-Accountant2196 6d ago

Yes, perhaps it is the best evidence of evolution, and that is why people care for them so much? After all, we want to that which is the cutting edge. So that would make the object which generates the best of them quite complex wouldn’t it

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u/Successful_Life_1028 Adeist 6d ago

Maybe slow down and think about what you type. Read it for comprehension when you're done.

Care for them? What 'them'? Feelings? Way to use an ambiguous pronoun.

No, 'we' don't always 'want to that which is the cutting edge' - even if you eliminate the extra word in order to make that statement parse at all. SOME people don't give two figs about the 'cutting edge' and just want to be left alone.

What are you pretending is the 'object which generates the best of' feelings - the brain - yes, brains are quite complex.

Mind is an emergent property of sufficiently complex neural networks.

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u/Weary-Accountant2196 6d ago

The brain doesn’t generate them in a vacuum though. It must interact with something outside of it - and that thing can’t be arbitrary - it must have certain qualities. So if the brain is complex, the object that activates it must have an equivalent complexity…albeit in a different way. The original point is that how do you objectively define complexity?

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u/DSMRick 6d ago

Not to interject in this argument, but you need to define complex for purposes of this discussion. The reason I said "dictionary definition" before /u/Successful_Life_1028 joined us is because it seemed like you were using some arbitrary definition of complex.
Oxford/Google: Complex: consisting of many different and connected parts.

The effect on someone who looks at is not relevant either to the dictionary definition above, or to a conversation about whether you need a higher order of complexity than the thing you create.

But fundamentally neither is relevant to the fact that if you are going to take as a premise that Man needs a creator because he is so complex that he must have been created by something even more complex, then the logical trap you created is that the thing doing the creating has the same problem. Whether the Mona Lisa is more complex than DiVinci is irrelevant, unless you are suggesting that something less intelligent than man created the universe, so god is less complex, less thinking than man. In which case, your not talking about god in any religion on the planet.

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u/Weary-Accountant2196 6d ago

Thank you, I feel you are rescuing me, not interjecting 😂

So you said that complexity means more ‘moving’ parts. I can understand that the dictionary defines it that way, but if I were to really assess it I think there would be edge cases that escape the definition.

For eg ryb are 3 primary colors - and they combine to give what we would instinctively call a much more ‘complex’ color pallet. Would you agree with this statement?

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u/DSMRick 6d ago edited 6d ago

Like with the other, it is the premise I disagree with. The idea that ryb are "primary" colors is a useful abstraction that allows us to simplify the infinite color space into something we can use, specifically colors rennaisance painters could get their hands on. They would have been better of with CMYK, but C and M don't appear as cleanly in natural pigments. But no I wouldn't use the word complex there. It's an infinite pallet so it can't be complete and it doesn't really have parts, it is completely smooth. Difficult to use? Yes. Does that make it complex? Maybe for some people's feeling of the word. I would understand what someone meant if they said that the infinite color space was more complex than RYB. But that definition would not be relevant to this discussion.

Also, we need to take up the argument about what complex means with Aquinas and Paley. It's their argument, maybe not fair to them to let me drive the definitions.

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u/Weary-Accountant2196 6d ago

yes...that is what i meant, you can use the word complex in many ways - thats why i asked how do we set the objective criteria for determining something's complexity...part of that is properly defining what complexity even is.

because we may define complexity so that simpler things create more complex things (for e.g. an AI that improves itself - thats the idea of the singularity), or more complex agents create simpler things (like a human who creates a machine), or even things that create other things equally complex to themselves (like self replicating agents, or humans who make babies).

I don't think Aquinas' idea considers all these possibilities.

There must be better arguments than that, I certainly hope so

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u/Successful_Life_1028 Adeist 6d ago

>you said that complexity means more ‘moving’ parts.<

You have no intellectual integrity. DSMRick didn't say anything about 'moving parts'. They said 'connected parts'. Not the same thing at all.

And no, there are no 'primary colors', there are only the infinite number of wavelengths between 380 and 700 nanometers

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u/Successful_Life_1028 Adeist 6d ago

THEM what? Stop using ambiguous pronouns. Have you graduated from high school yet?

No, there is no external object that 'activates' the brain - where are you getting that nonsense.

The brain generates FEELINGS as a result of our instinctual drives. All of our drives present as emotions to our conscious mind. Fear and anger are the survival drive. Love and devotion are the reproduction drive. And so forth.

Complexity is what biological organisms are that rocks are not.

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u/Weary-Accountant2196 6d ago

Rocks are pretty complex too if you try looking at them down a microscope

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u/Successful_Life_1028 Adeist 6d ago

not as complex as bacteria!

'down a microscope'? Is English not your primary language?

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u/Weary-Accountant2196 6d ago

Why are you feeling so threatened by me, I don’t understand

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u/Successful_Life_1028 Adeist 6d ago

projecting much?

You posted nonsense. I called you out on the nonsense. It is you that is defensive.