/lit/ - Literature

>>20414442
Transcendental categories must be presupposed in order to make sense of the world and make any knowledge claims at all, and thus it was clear that empiricism had no grounds as an ultimate worldview. The German philosopher Immanuel Kant understood that raw sense data was insufficient. Kant developed a system of idealism from the transcendental categories similar to Aristotle. Even Aristotle, a pagan in the time before Christ, understood the absurdity of some of the claims that many atheists today make. Some students of philosophy attempted to debate Aristotle by saying that the laws of logic such as the law of non-contradiction, as a metaphysical concept, cannot be known to truly exist because it is not material. Aristotle rebuked the stupidity of this argument, pointing out that they were using logic to try to disprove logic, thus refuting themselves. You cannot attempt to disprove something when you assume it in your premise. You defeat your own argument by doing so. Some atheists in the present day attempt to get around this problem by saying that logic is an electro-chemical reaction in the brain. This is a very weak argument. If this were true, then it could not be reasonably inferred to make accurate descriptions of reality at all. There is no reason to presume that matter can make accurate observations of matter. The scientific method, which many atheists think can serve as their ultimate foundational worldview, presupposes the metaphysical concepts already mentioned above. The 20th century American philosopher Willard van Ormand Quine, who was an atheist himself, admitted that science is totally unjustifiable as an atheist. He still believed in science, but, by his own admission, science and the possibility of any knowledge at all was impossible to prove or justify. It was a faith claim. He refuted the logical positivist school who believed that science could be philosophically justified within the atheist paradigm. Ultimately, Quine said, it all comes down to "what works" and even he acknowledged that this falls into circular reasoning and begging the question. As an atheist, there was no way out of it. The Enlightenment project came to an epistemological dead end.

Here Jay makes good critiques of both Sam Harris's atheism and Jordan Peterson's wishy washy, new agey, psychological pseudo-spiritualism.
https://youtu.be/PjQh8ij4R4o