Philosophical Atheism | Graham Oppy | The Socratic Sessions | Ep #8

🔍 Overview: This episode dives into Atheism as a philosophical subject with Professor Graham Oppy. Together, we explore what atheism is, how it differs from theism, agnosticism, and innocence, and what this means for how we think and explore philosophy of religion.
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🗣️ Highlights
[Highlight 1]: What are the differences between atheism, theism, agnosticism and innocence?
[Highlight 2]: What is atheism often conflated with?
[Highlight 3]: Do 'fundamental mysteries' such as consciousness or value provide theists ground for claiming God to be true?
🕒 Timestamps
0:00 - Introduction
1:57 - Graham Oppy and Philosophy
3:17 - Religion and Existential Solace
10:31 - Atheism, Theism, Agnosticism and Innocence (Belief, Conviction and Credence)
14:46 - Belief Control
18:26 - Hume, Lennon & Orwell - Religion's Persistence
22:05 - Atheism - Proof and Certainty
24:48 - Atheism as a Religion
27:24 - Conflating Atheism (Materialism, Naturalism, Physicalism, Scepticism and Humanism)
33:16 - Fundamental Mysteries (Example: Consciousness)
37:13 - Fundamental Mysteries (Example: Value)
42:57 - Causal Reality and Foundational Claims
44:58 - God: Bigfoot vs Being Itself
49:51 - Worldviews: Theism vs Atheism (Rational, Moral & Liveable)
1:01:26 - How Things Are vs How We Want Things To Be
1:05:40 - Atheism vs Theism: Human Ability, Worth and Restrictions
1:10:01 - Atheistic/Godless Societies
1:14:18 - Censuses and Atheism
1:17:26 - The Decline of Atheism
1:20:30 - Atheism and Theism: Moral, Rational and Liveable
1:22:51 - Closing Remarks
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#philosophy #atheism #theism #god #belief #religion #atheist

[@SamuelDevis89]

Thank you for the comments and thoughts on this video - please keep them coming! I endeavour to read every one of them, and I'll try to respond where possible :)

[@carl7674]

Dr. Graham Oppy the one who puts fear of no God in William Lane Craig 😅

[@BykeMurns]

Oh man, glad to see you're back! I've watched so many Oppy interviews and the original Oppy conversation on your prior show had me laughing so hard when he called (I think it was) Voltaire "a bit of a p*ssy." 😂 Looking forward to your continued output here. Cheers.

[@SamuelDevis89]

That's gunna be re-released here, episode 11 (so not long till that one drops now!) and thanks, it's good to be back 🎉

[@Shotox122]

thank you for having Prof. Graham Oppy! a very brilliant pholosopher of religion. he influenced me a lot, from the way how i perceived theists to how i approach theism itself! completely life changing, and intellectually exciting.

[@SamuelDevis89]

I've got a special second conversation with him and Joe Schmid dropping later in June as well - thanks for tuning in 🍻

[@Shotox122]

thanks for letting me know!

[@TheWorldTeacher]

​@@Shotox122, brilliant and lacklustre are RELATIVE. 😉 Incidentally, are you VEGAN? 🌱

[@CjqNslXUcM]

I always love listening to Oppy

[@SamuelDevis89]

He’s the goat ✌️

[@Sixtra]

Always a pleasure listening to Oppy 😄👌

[@SamuelDevis89]

Thanks for listening 🎉

[@Sixtra]

@@SamuelDevis89 When Oppy shares, one follows 😄👌 and now I have another podcast to listen to at work/home as well. One can’t get enough of this subject (philosophy). 👍

[@dr.h8r]

Great episode, Oppy is the goat

[@SamuelDevis89]

Cheers!

[@TheWorldTeacher]

I always saw him as a sheep, myself. 😜

[@SamuelDevis89]

😅

[@CMVMic]

The problem with saying atheism is the position that there are no gods is that the word God can be defined in many different ways. Atheism is a label for a propositional attitude or psychological state towards a specific definition of God. You are an atheist in relation to specific definitions of God. If someone defined the Universe as God, would an atheist who believes in the Universe automatically be a theist? Also, it is not the case that we attach credences to propositions if it is not possible for something to be false from one's view, then it is no longer a probability that God does not exist, if the person holds that God does not possibly exist. This type of possibility refers to metaphysical and logical possibility.

[@markrichter2053]

This is so much abstract hair splitting that it like trying to knit with smoke, as my mother used to say.

[@ethanmartin2781]

just want to point out that this doesn’t seem to be any less a problem for understanding theism as well. as a contrasting example to the universe, if god were to be defined as the christian god then muslims would be atheists, which sounds equally absurd. In practice, a definition just needs to capture as many of the examples as possible, and exclude as many of the non-examples as possible within the context we care about. In the western tradition, something like “an omni-benevolent omni-potent omniscient supernatural being” for the most part captures the gods of the abrahamic religions, and prima facie seems to exclude things like the universe, so something like this is usually good enough as a working definition. The definition doesn’t necessarily have to be super precise, especially as a lot of atheists are physicalists or naturalists, and therefore would reject the existence of anything supernatural anyway.

[@SamuelDevis89]

Thanks for these thoughts!

[@SamuelDevis89]

@@markrichter2053 love the analogy - gunna use that in the future!

[@CMVMic]

@@ethanmartin2781 it doesnt sound absurd because you would still be an atheist in relation to that concept of god.

[@danielpaulson8838]

I wish it were easier to demonstrate the monomyth template and a clever numbering pattern used in the Bible to remain on that repeating template in the most cryptic of ways. Through not only numbers, but through words that repeat as many times as the numbers. There is a grid in there, but it is mentally deep. I call it the three/seven grid, which are also the two most repeated numbers in the Bible. Day seven in the first creation story, 'seventh day' is repeated three times. It starts there but constantly grows. Those are analogs used to represent something at the end of the second creation story. Adam and Eve, naked, unashamed in the Garden. The creation template is really each person life on a template and this metaphorical point is when we are not yet becoming attached to the world we will judge and become products of. It was our pure mental state. That is what is nested deep. A path to enlightenment is the truth. The religion will guide a population who will never look for the truth. They create analog farms. Sodom, Righteous is repeated seven times then connected with repeating numbers. These are it. We cross reference them with people who live 800 or 900 years and we begin to see pointers in plain view. I can show the Bible is a structured guide on a repeating template to anyone who can comprehend concepts in reading. Like trying to understand what a Fable means. But these are all mentally interactive.

[@SamuelDevis89]

🫠

[@markrichter2053]

Arguments for and against the existence of God, as with a lot of philosophy, are relatively futile. Believers have faith, which is impervious to reason. Scientists have reality, which is s pretty good antidote to superstition and historians have the strongest reason though, not to believe in any religious god, simply because they know that scriptures and the theological ideas and god-stories that evolved alongside them, are human artifacts. Therefore the gods in these stories are human artefacts too. There’s one more category though that I’m aware of. And this is because I belong here. It’s that group of people who were brought up to believe in God and no longer do. In my case it was moral outrage at the way the church was treating outsiders, specifically gay folks to whom I felt a loyalty. This was the spur that made me leave the group in protest. It was only then that I realised that my faith had been deconstructing for decades. For a year or two I maintained a kind of mystical sense of the tangible sense of the presence of a good being, while realising I no longer subscribed to any of the faith tenets, which in my case had been Christian. Now I think I’m a kind of atheist agnostic. I feel a lot happier. Guilt and shame are falling away and I feel much more at peace with myself and my place in the bigger picture. I’m completely reconciled with the idea of annihilation. And the shortness of life makes it all the more precious to me. We have one wild and precious life and we should live it freely, wisely, generously, with lightness of touch and deep respect for the planet and all life upon it. I would like to say that my atheism most definitely is physicalism. I no longer think that there is a spirit world at all. I’m also both a naturalist and a humanist. Interestingly enough I became these last two things while still nominally a Christian and it really was these things that helped me deconstruct my faith so that now I’m also an atheist. So these things are not the same and shouldn’t be conflated, but there’s a strong logical link between them for me.

[@SamuelDevis89]

From what I can tell, you're comment, 'Arguments for and against the existence of God, as with a lot of philosophy, are relatively futile...' seems to be about the futility of shifting people's opinions via argument rather than the arguments themselves being good or bad arguments? Let me know if I am wrong here and thanks for the comment!

[@markrichter2053]

@@SamuelDevis89 Hi Samuel Thanks for reading my rather longish comment! 👍 Yes, I suppose that I do think that most philosophical arguments for and against the existence of God are futile. This is because it’s always going to be impossible to prove one way or the other the existence of an abstract concept. In a very real way God isn’t a thing, he’s an idea. So all arguments both ways are going to be abstract, nebulous and for most of us will feel irrelevant to our lived experience and won’t touch our true motivations for either belief or otherwise. What most of us hold positions on are more to do with the validity of religious concepts and theologies rather than the existence or otherwise of a God. So I then use the very concrete examples of three groups of people who may have chosen very reasonable positions. And I suggest that they have arrived at their position not for philosophical reasons, but for far more pragmatic ones. And for this reason it won’t be philosophical reasoning that moves them from their opinions either. The believer chooses to have faith and has her deep motivations for doing so. Historically this was the only matrix of meaning available to live by. Nowadays, I think it’s not just un-necessary, but profoundly unhelpful for many reasons I could expound on but shan’t. The scientific outlook (which incidentally I have the greatest respect for) is interested in the real world and arguments about the existence of any kind of supernatural being are rather irritating or at least irrelevant. The historian is aware that the scriptures and religions are human artefacts. Sheer respect for the true nature of these things makes it hard to personally embrace theologies that derive from them. One group I’ve missed out, I realise, are sociologists, who historically and on the whole still, embrace an objective academic approach to enquiry and so tend to see faith as a sociological phenomenon rather than a description of reality for themselves. (Obviously there are the woo-woo New Age relativist sociologists who think the only authentic method of enquiry is a kind check-your-brain-at-the-door full immersion into religious cultures and cults alike. But I don’t think they ever really gained credence in the academic community because their approach lacked objectivity and was patronising to the point of cultural appropriation.) So then I followed the logic by bringing it right home to my own experience. And while I am painfully aware that it was outrage at social injustice that motivated me rather explosively out of the faith group, I was also aware that I had been deconstructing for decades. The process of deconstruction for me began forcefully when I began to get educated. I studied the Bible and at the same time I studied sciences at school and beyond. So I realised that the ancient writings of scripture were not an accurate description of the real world. So I’m saying that for me philosophy was irrelevant. When I wanted to believe, abstract arguments didn’t touch my thinking. When I saw that faith in God didn’t tally with the world I was learning about in other ways, through the disciplines of science, history, etc., I began to deconstruct, to the point of nominalism. It was when I realised that the religion was also toxic socially that I discovered I no longer believed in its tenets anyway and got out. So in conclusion, I suspect that I’m not alone in finding the abstract arguments of philosophy not only irrelevant to my thinking process about God, but also so nebulous that I find them difficult to engage with in any real way. I apologise that this may seem rather dismissive of the discipline of philosophy. And I do acknowledge that philosophical ideas underpin most of the concepts we live within. I just think that most people, like myself, don’t think philosophically and that arguments framed in abstract terms just float past us. 😂

[@SamuelDevis89]

@@markrichter2053@markrichter2053 I think this is true: 'I just think that most people, like myself, don’t think philosophically and that arguments framed in abstract terms just float past us.' I appreciate you breaking down why in your comment!

[@danielpaulson8838]

I am right with you. I have material that may interest you. We are emotionally connected at a light level and live in a collective psyche in an energy based universe. What we feel is natural, but not of our five senses. Therefore it gains popularity as a supernatural agency by people who don't get energy and nature. I may have material that suits your interest.

[@TheWorldTeacher]

​@@markrichter2053, in your own words, define “REALITY”. ☝️🤔☝️

[@joseph6793]

did he actually try to cobble together an excuse for not critiquing "worldviews" ?

[@SamuelDevis89]

🫠

[@hiker-uy1bi]

Anyone else find his ethical philosophy incoherent? He seems to conclude that certain values are "necessary truths", but it's not clear why. What does he mean by truth? And which values are necessarily true and which ones aren't? And how does he come to this conclusion in light of the tremendous moral disagreement we see in the world? I'm surprised he adopts realism about ethics because it seems to be the least parsimonious route to take in handling the issue, which goes against his theory selection heuristic.

[@jmike2039]

Oppy is my favorite philosopher but yeah I'm not impressed with his defense of moral realism in particular

[@hiker-uy1bi]

@@jmike2039 Same. He's great on metaphysics. Meh on ethics.

[@SamuelDevis89]

@@hiker-uy1bi Hey thanks for these thoughts! Which bit of the video did you find the least impressive then? Also - who would you suggest I try to get on to speak about ethics?

[@hiker-uy1bi]

@@SamuelDevis89 Lance Bush is probably my favorite online philosopher when it comes to metaethics. He's not an academic like Oppy though. He'd probably come on your show. Don't get me wrong. I really like Oppy. He's probably my favorite philosopher of religion. I'm just generally not impressed with his moral realism. Wish you had pushed back more, but maybe you don't have proper background knowledge.

[@SamuelDevis89]

@@hiker-uy1bi I've got a bunch of conversations coming up exploring metaethics and moral realism with people like Richard Fisher and Eric Wielenberg - I'll check Lance Bush out, thanks for that!

[@adon2424]

You guys are missing the point. There is no proof that god exists in religion. That is why it is called faith.

[@SamuelDevis89]

Though there are plenty of theistic and atheistic arguments for and against god. Certainty vs Credence is something I pick with Oppy and Schmid in an upcoming conversation 👍

[@michaelwright8896]

@@SamuelDevis89 I don't think there are any good arguments for god it's kinda strange to prove existentialist claims without scientific evidence just through logical arguments I don't think you would do that anywhere else.

[@adon2424]

@@SamuelDevis89 Good to hear. I will subscribe just because of that.