Now that I realize that entire experience was the product of pure imagination, it’s equally impossible to imagine going back or reaquiring that delusional thinking.

Discovering Santa….and I would return to the days of belief if I could.

Now that I realize that entire experience was the product of pure imagination, it’s equally impossible to imagine going back or reaquiring that delusional thinking.

Hummm…actually Dawkins makes a good case that niceness (he calls it altruism in the book) can be selected by natural selection as part of an “evolutionary stable strategy”

I’m not sure I’d agree. Cooper’s Evolution of Cooperation makes a great game theoretic argument. It really depends on how much you think behavior is modeled by evolutionary forces.

Actually, I think they might (though I don’t want to put words in anyone’s mouth). The argument that I’ve heard is that human beings have evolved as fundamentally social creatures, and that this sociability is key to our survival. Since being “nice”, as you put it, is crucial to social harmony, one could very well argue that we have evolved in such a way as to make “niceness” a survival trait.

I know Dawkins and other gene-centric neodarwinists might disagree, but it’s an argument that makes sense to me.

Hummm…actually Dawkins makes a good case that niceness (he calls it altruism in the book) can be selected by natural selection as part of an “evolutionary stable strategy” in The Selfish Gene. For reasons having to do with the fact that we all have a better chance of survival if we can depend on one another, and also if we can avoid depending on cheaters.

Anyhow, as you’ve unpacked Shore’s meaning (assuming that you’ve interpreted him correctly) it seems that I probably do disagree with his opening premise after all; or rather, I’d want to qualify it. Rather than saying “atheists don’t experience the divine” (meaning all atheists), I’d say “some atheists don’t experience the divine”. With that qualification I would then agree with the conclusion that some theists (those who have experienced the divine) cannot imagine the perspective of these particular atheists.

Of course, that’s probably too many qualifications and it just becomes a true but rather trivial statement. So I guess we might as well drop it.

(Pfew… I think I need to go back and review my symbolic logic textbooks now. )

Mike C said,

September 19, 2007 at 3:48 pm

You supported Shore’s conclusion while at the same time denying his premise.

Terribly sorry Vincent but I’m afraid you’ve lost me.

Sorry, Mike. I wasn’t clear. I think that’s because we’ve gotten far from the original issue.
Hemant scoffed at the idea that Shore can’t imagine what it’s like to lack a belief in god.
Hemant posited that it’s just like not believing in Zeus.
You disagreed based on the subjective experience of the existence of god (numena?).

Shore’s premise: atheists don’t experience the divine.
Shore’s conclusion: a theist cannot imagine life without the experience of the divine, therefore a theist cannot imagine the atheist perspective.

Your hypothesis as I read it (and you credited Shore with having the same) was that Zeus was just someone else’s name for the divine he experienced, and therefore that what Shore said was that he could not imagine life without that feeling.
But then you said lots of people, theistic and atheistic, go through life without that feeling, and that lots of people, theistic and atheistic, have that feeling.
Shore’s premise was that atheists don’t have that feeling and thus he could not imagine being an atheist.
You agreed with his conclusion that imagining being an atheist required you to imagine life without that feeling, but denied the premise because you said some atheists do have that feeling.