Is physicalism / materialism a dangerous belief?

[Chris Noble]

Originally Posted by Open Mind

Is physicalism / materialism a dangerous belief?

I get tired of hearing the same arguments from fundamentalist christians.

They argue that without a believe in God you can't be moral.

They blame all of societies ills on evilution.

Darwin is apparently to blame for the National Socialism and the holocaust.

And while I have no doubt that it amy be depressing when some peoples delusions are destroyed by science this is hardly an argument for comforting delusions.

I find the idea that morals are impossible without a God to be extremely childish. If the only reason that you don't steal and hurt others is that you afraid of going to hell then your moral development is still about that of a 3 year old. You become moral if you do the right thing even if you know that you can't be caught and even if there are no negative consequences for doing the wrong thing.

The concept of Karma isn't much above the idea that Santa Claus is keepiong a list of whos been naughty and nice.

[David Bailey]

Chris,

I would agree essentially 100% with your last post! For me, at least, this discussion is not about whether God exists. I have heard Alex voice similar opinions - though perhaps not while interviewing Christians!

David

[Interesting Ian]

Originally Posted by Open Mind

Is physicalism / materialism a dangerous belief?

It is an extremely dangerous belief indeed. The materialists would have it that we are soulless robots living out our purposeless lives in a purposeless Universe with the added promise that soon we will cease to exist forevermore. They would have it that everything we ever perceive is a comprehensive delusion. That everything that we ever see is a lie. That our loves, hopes, fears, aspirations, everything that we have ever thought, felt and experienced is nothing over and above meaningless atoms in motion or meaningless chemical processes.

They deny everything and anything that appears to be truly real, and which truly matters, and substitute their lies, and then they have the effrontery to deride anyone who calls into question their wholly unwarranted crazy interpretation of reality.

Unfortunately many people are unskilled in philosophy and implicitly tend to suppose that science has shown materialism to be correct. In fact there are many reasons and a great deal of evidence demonstrating that the above interpretation of reality is absurd.

[DysonSphere]

Physicalism in my opinion stunts emotional growth. In my experience once you loosen enough attachments you start to become aware of a greater framework, like I discussed in the "Timeless" thread.

[Paul C. Anagnostopoulos]

Originally Posted by Ian

It is an extremely dangerous belief indeed. The materialists would have it that we are soulless robots living out our purposeless lives in a purposeless Universe with the added promise that soon we will cease to exist forevermore.

Then I guess we have the pleasure of inventing our own purpose. Do you find that difficult?

They deny everything and anything that appears to be truly real, and which truly matters, and substitute their lies, and then they have the effrontery to deride anyone who calls into question their wholly unwarranted crazy interpretation of reality.

How do you know they are lies?

The universe has no obligation to support your metaphysical desires.

~~ Paul

[Paul C. Anagnostopoulos]

Originally Posted by Dyson

Physicalism in my opinion stunts emotional growth.

You people are funny. You talk about metaphysics as if you have a choice about which one is correct, if any.

~~ Paul

[Open Mind]

Encouraging a Belief in Determinism Increases Cheating
- Kathleen D. Vohs (University of Minnesota) Jonathan W. Schooler2 (University of British Columbia)
http://www.csom.umn.edu/assets/91974.pdf

Dr Kathleen Vohs '......... We conducted two experiments to test whether a belief in free will or determinism would influence ethical behaviour -- in this case, cheating. In the first experiment, participants -- 30 undergraduate students -- read either a text that encouraged belief in determinism, or a neutral text, before doing tasks where it was possible to cheat. In the second experiment, 122 students were assigned to various conditions: some read a series of statements that promoted either free will, others read deterministic statements, and others again read neutral statements.........

........In both experiments we found that weakening free will beliefs reliably increased cheating. In the first, there was a situation where people could passively allow themselves to benefit from a mistake -- similar to receiving too much change -- and here there was a strong negative relationship between weaker free will beliefs and cheating. This means that the more that participants reported being skeptical of the notion of free will, the more dishonesty they exhibited. . In the second experiment we measured active cheating in a situation where participants could pay themselves for each correct answer on a difficult test......

To preserve anonymity in the second experiment we did not measure the amount of money each individual took, but we do know that the average take-home pay was far greater for participants in the deterministic condition than for those in other conditions -- including two in which participants scored and shredded their own tests. It is worth noting also that participants who read deterministic statements claimed to have solved more problems correctly than those in comparison condition who read the same deterministic statements but whose true scores were known. In other words, anonymity increased the effect of deterministic beliefs. .......

........... We have to understand better why dismissing free will leads to amoral behaviour. Does it induce a certain passivity, a "why bother?" mentality, by undermining our sense that we are moral agents. Or perhaps, as Sartre suggested, does it simply provide the ultimate excuse to behave as one likes? .......'

MercatorNet - Belief in free will is diminishing and cheating is on the increase. A study shows the two are connected.

[Paul C. Anagnostopoulos]

........In both experiments we found that weakening free will beliefs reliably increased cheating.

Now that's darn funny!

Or perhaps, as Sartre suggested, does it simply provide the ultimate excuse to behave as one likes? .......'

My determinism made me do it!

I guess we need free will as an ethical placebo, along with religion.

~~ Paul

[Chris Noble]

Originally Posted by Paul C. Anagnostopoulos

I guess we need free will as an ethical placebo, along with religion.
~~ Paul

You forgot Santa Claus!

How could anybody possible act morally unless they know that Santa Claus is watching their every move and writing down when people are being naughty and nice?

Santa Claus must be real because otherwise everyone would be raping and pillaging all the time!

The decline in moral values that we see is exactly correlated with a decline in the belief in Santa Claus.

The materialistic theory of parentism says that Christmas presents are actually given by the parents rather than Santa Claus. Parentism in my opinion stunts emotional growth.

http://cectic.com/086.html

[Open Mind]

'...... all human actions, whether conscious or not, come from complex interactions between genes, memes and all their products in complicated environments. The self is not the initiator of actions, it does not 'have' consciousness and does not 'do' the deliberating. There is no truth in the idea of an inner self inside my body that controls my body and is conscious. Since this is false, so is the idea of my conscious self having free-will.

Dennet (1984) has described many versions of the idea of free will and argues that some of them are worth wanting. Unlike Dennet I neither think the 'user illusion' is benign , nor do I want any version of free will that ascribes it to a self who does not exist.

Sue Blackmore – The Meme Machine, Page 237

If the above study is correct, Blackmore is totally wrong to state ' I neither think the 'user illusion' is benign', a sense of freewill is not just benign, it increases honesty

(Hmmm ..... if Blackmore is also more prone to cheat due to her beliefs ......why does organized scepticism trust her viewpoint that was often out of step with other parapsychologists viewpoint? Yes she claims she believed in the paranormal back then but she writes she believed particularly in tarot ..... which is also rather .... er.... a tad deterministic? )