Saturday, August 5, 2023

Confusing Philosophies For Their Adherents, Real Or Alleged

Atheism is the concept of no deities existing.  Since the existence of an uncaused cause is logically necessary [1]--not scientifically, as if science can even prove that sensory perceptions are accurate, but logically--atheism is false, though this does not mean that Christianity is true.  An atheist, though, might believe in moral realism, when the nonexistence of God and the existence of an amoral deity alike would necessitate that there is no such thing as morality.  People could still sometimes have moral emotions that make it feel as if some things are good or evil, as arbitrary and selective as they will be with their feelings.  This would not at all be the same as morality existing.  People who confuse pragmatism, emotional impulses/comfort, or social cooperation for moral obligation or confirmation of morality's existence are obviously fools inferior to true rationalists.

Even if every atheist only believed that God does not exist and not that morality still exists or in conflicting ideas about what is good (and there is also the fact that a person could still be a genuine atheist and believe in an afterlife or other kinds of spiritual beings), atheism is not the same as atheists.  Just because someone is or professes to be an atheist does not mean their beliefs match the actual philosophy of God's nonexistence.  Whether their beliefs are consistent with atheism or not (and since an uncaused cause exists, some form of theism is true by necessity), in part or in whole, atheists as individuals or a collective are just people.  They are not concepts, and they are absolutely not the necessary truths of reason that make anything and everything true or false to begin with.

Rationalists are most likely to directly, constantly recognize that beliefs, the mind that has those beliefs, and the logical truth or falsity of the beliefs are all utterly distinct.  Beliefs are within minds.  Reason is what metaphysically and epistemologically makes beliefs correct.  They are not the same.  I used atheism as an example, but with any worldview, from political conservatism and liberalism to Islam to moral relativism to anti-realism, non-rationalists are either by necessity consistent with false/assumed beliefs or they are wildly inconsistent with their own worldviews.  They might sincerely or insincerely hold to a given philosophical stance, but the latter person is in some ways even more of an insect because of their additional hypocrisy.

Yes, to be an anti-realist regarding the external world, one has to actually believe that there is no world of matter in existence, but anti-realists not only must take this on idiotic faith, but they might also believe in all sorts of contradictory or irrelevant things in addition to this, like the atheist who believes that anything is or could be good or evil.  For whatever reason, however, there are also people who might genuinely conflate the actual or professed beliefs of a person/group with the real worldview itself.  For example, some people think Judaism is whatever a Jew tells them or that Islam is whatever a Muslim tells them.  As neither belief nor persuasion nor consensus means anything is true except that there is belief, persuasion, or consensus, something like Islam would be whatever the Quran says it is and whatever logically precedes or follows from these ideas.  It is not what Imams or casual Muslims insist it is unless they align with the Quran!  Likewise, it is not what someone who has never read the Quran free from assumptions might have heard, no matter how culturally popular the misconception is.

The same is true of Christianity.  The Bible, which would have to be perfectly consistent with the necessary truths of reason like axioms to be true (which, for fuck's sake, are not scientific laws or mental constructs/perceptions, not even of God), would dictate what constitutes Christianity along what logically precedes or follows from its doctrines.  Thus, whatever ancient Israel or the medieval church or modern evangelicals assert and practice or practiced does not necessarily have anything at all to do with the religious philosophy itself.  Someone who is emotionally hurt or bothered by these things, which are all still never epistemologically more than hearsay since past events cannot be logically proven, is a fool if they do not look past claims about alleged Christian theology to reason and the Bible if they wish to know what Christianity entails.  Of course, an unpleasant truth, even if only a truth about what a worldview entails and not whether that worldview is in turn true, is not rendered false by emotion or ignorance.  Just do not expect anything more than emotionalism and assumptions from non-rationalists despite how pathetic their beliefs and they themselves are!


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