The Weaponized Nonsense Of "Immaterial Entities" and "Law Givers".

This discussion flows from this social media post (link).  

The meme/quote reads "Just as Christianity must destroy reason before it can introduce faith, so it must destroy happiness before it can introduce salvation". Just in case that link breaks in the future, I posted this image to a Facebook group called "Jehovah’s Witnesses Exposed".

In that group is a mix of mostly atheists Ex-JWs and Christian evangelical anti-JWs.

 In reply, "Mark" really does not address ANYTHING specific to the OP.

Instead, he goes on an anti-atheist rant;
which amounted to "Oh yea? Well at least I know where logic and love come from!". 

That's when I spewed a very cold and delicious Caffeine Free Pepsi from both nostrils. 

Good times. 
:) 

He posted "There is no reason without logic, logic is immaterial, universal and invariant, the atheist say there are no immaterial entities therefore they cannot account for the reason they use.".   My reply is being written here, as a blog. I will post this blog to that dicussion. I will post further updates and the end of this blog. ---- Hi Mark.

Thanks for posting a discussion about this.
I prefer discourse over hit-and-run posting. It gives us better opportunities to sort through the issues.

Taking these in order:

1. "There is no reason without logic,"
--
I've seen many people go through a process they call "reason"-ing without logic.
This is, in fact, an essential part of the cultural practice for all the Abrahamic ideological clubhouses.
Reasoning without logic is their "divine" secret to "victory" (over the evils of logic).

I've seen many humans and non-human-animals "reason" by instinct and by emotional intuition.

The meaning of "reason" is to contemplate "a reason" for feeling, doing, or refraining from an action.
But "a reason" doesn't need to be a logical reason.

Granted, "logical reasoning" is a thing. And it's often the *best way (*as a function of positive utility) to approach a matter.
But there's nothing about any reasoning process which necessitates (nor reveals) a pre-human "law giver".
-------------------

2. "logic is immaterial,"
--
No.
It is always an entirely material happening.
-------------------------

3. "universal and invariant,"
--
You forgot to mention redundant.
----------------------------

4. "the atheist"
--
The only thing all atheists have in common with each other but with nobody else is this:
There isn't anything (with any seriousness) that (in a literal sense) they label as a "god".
That's all.
Anything else you want to say about 'all atheists' (aka "The atheist") is automatically going to be wrong.
----------------------------------
5. "(all atheists) say there are no immaterial entities"
--
No.
They do not all say that.
Some non-God-ists think there are some "immaterial entities".
They just don't call those gods.
It's usually just ghosts or similar.
I say there are not any "immaterial entities".
I say that with carefully, logically reasoned confidence.
However, plenty of atheists haven't figured that much out yet.
--------------------------------------
6. "without a belief in "immaterial entities", atheists cannot account for the reason they use."
--
That's called "Presuppositionalism".

It's circular reasoning with an arbitrary starting point.
It's like someone saying "Without first assuming that Poseidon exists, you can't logically account for (nor justify confidence in) your ability to logically reason on matters pertaining to marine life".

It's gaslighting, taken to the furthest extreme.

Why would I say that?

Because:
 Instead of using specific situations to gradually chisel away at a victim's confidence in their own ability to perceive, recall and reason, ...
[in order to make the victim's mind malleable enough to be more fully exploitable by the entitled abuser]  
You're going directly for that throat.
How? 
With the idea of "without [insert magical entity here],
you can't justify confidence in any of your cognitive functions at all".

"God" (also called "The Prime Mover", "The Law Giver" "The Creator", and The Immaterial Entity"] is the alter-ego and mask of the speaker (whichever apologist is speaking) who seeks to hijack the minds of everyone they can.

Sometimes that's being done directly.
When this is happening, the speaker speaks from the pedestal of "To hear my words means to hear the words of your GOD".

But sometimes it's being done (or, at least, attempted) by merely by spreading apologetic nonsense.

How does that helps a speaker hijack minds?

It's useful as a means to sustain a cultural environment that enables the speaker's preferred religious cult's tireless efforts to hijack minds 
(link).

In this case, the cult-apologist is smuggling in a "God" under the alias "immaterial entity". 
 
He makes that intent known by contrasting his position against atheism and then ascribing properties specific to popular conceptions of "God" (as a way of saying "the origin of all things"). 
--

In reality, cognitive sciences have come a long way in their ability to account for our ability to logically reason.

They don't know the whole picture yet. But the nonsensical idea of "immaterial entities" isn't part of the scientific process.

Invoking the mantra of "immaterial entities" as a necessary foundation for our critical thinking skills (or as necessary to anything at all) is a form of the "God of the Gaps" fallacy.
"We don't know. Therefor God".
"I can't understand or imagine X-thing without a God. Therefor God".

You're just replacing the nebulous word "God"; with a more specifically nonsensical way of saying the same thing. "Immaterial entity(ies)who function as designers and "Law Givers" for literally everything.

Although, ironically. the "Biblical" theists all (yep; all of them) believed in material gods.

 Even the primary patriarchal deity of the 1st century CE Hebrews and Christians
was physical. 
[See 

Francesca Stavrakopoulou

's book

God: An Anatomy

 for a brilliant tour of this topic]

Meanwhile, ...

The capacity, desire, and happening of logical reasoning ... emerge automatically and entirely from all the physics involved in our biological, societal, and personal cognitive evolutions.
Meanwhile, you're unable to propose a coherent rational alternative.

If you mean it literally, then "Immaterial entities" is a nonsensical expression
[Whereas, if you meant it metaphorically then it just wouldn't be relevant or useful as a challenge to the quoted meme].

Something which literally exists must consist and subsist of:
some form of energy(ies).

Why must it?
Because that's what it means to say something literally exists.

Whereas, if we say something does not consist of any form of energies, or if we say something does not exist in time or space, these are ways of saying something doesn't literally exist.

The only way around that is to: 1. suppose that an absolute "nothingness" can "exist" (which is a self-canceling proposition)
and then 2. assume that absolute-nothingness functions as a type of substance,
and 3. that such nothingness can take all the necessary shapes and activities necessary to form a super-nothingness-entity 4. where all that nothing adds up to an ultimate "something" that thinks and does things.

Or we can just ... not be ironically illogical in the name of logic.

Any literally existing energies would be "physical" by definition.
Those energies could be different than our energies. They could have different properties. They could behave differently.
But it's still "physics".
Any entities consisting of energies would, by definition, be "physical".
Also, no. This is not a dictionary fallacy.

 When I use words, those words have meaning.

When you use words, you rely on words that don't have meaning. 
That means you don't have grounding for your grounding.

 Somebody in your past
 played a very cleverly and deliberately stupid game with your mind.

They inserted nonsense into your cognitive processes.

They labeled that nonsense "the foundation for logic itself".  

They played you.

They played you hard.

That gunk is gumming up the works; preventing you from being able to reason your way out of it. 

Worse yet, they used it as a way to weaponize you for an ill-conceived, high-stakes culture war;
as you spread that gunk like a contagion into other vulnerable people's minds.
-----------

Updates:

In reply to Mark, 
Jerry replied:

"Pardon my ignorance.
I don't get the point.
"Immaterial entities".
Does that mean spirits?
What is "the reason they use."?

To be fair, I also don't understand the point of the original post."
----

In reply to Jerry, Mark added:

"The atheist only believes in the material world, the only things that exist are those that can be sensed ie, touched, smell, seen and heard, immaterial things such as the laws of logic, maths, love cannot exist according to his world view a fact philosophers have tried to tackle for eons."
---
My further reply (to Mark again):

1. "The atheist".
--
Again, Mark is pretending that atheists are like Star Treks' Borg; all functioning as part of a Hive Mind where their thoughts are all harmonized and controlled. 

No such creature exists.
 
------------------
2. "atheist only believes in the material world,"
---
This is simply false.
Ironically, I wish it were true. But it's not.

I've know many atheist (non-theists) who believe in some sort of supernatural nonsense. 
------------------
3. "(all atheists believe) the only things that exist are those that can be sensed ie, touched, smell, seen and heard,"
--
I actually don't know of any non-theists who think that. 
I don't think that. 
A great many happenings in our entirely physical universe are not delivering any sensory data to our five (or more) senses. 
-------------------------
4. "immaterial things such as the laws of logic, maths, love cannot exist according to his world view"
---
 Those things are entirely physical. 

The "laws of logic" is just people noticing:

1. Things happen.

2. How we think about those things can either aid or hinder us;
in our desire to (to some extent) predict and control future happenings. 

 Certain ways of thinking
produce consistently useful utility.
 
People have cooperatively mapped out how things work, with the shared goal of maximizing utility. 

Those flow charts are generated first in our minds.
But our minds are entirely physical.

They noticed that the guidelines (being decided upon) which provide the best utility were the ones where:
 * everyone plays by the same rules,
 and where
* no rule ever truly contradicts itself nor any other. 

If "anything goes", then we can never reach consensus. And that leaves us going nowhere. 

With all of this in mind, 
people keep making physical observations about our physical reality. 

If, for example, a ball fell from a height of 10 feet, but we only film that ball falling for the first 5 of those feet, ...
 everyone later seeing that movie clip will agree that the ball kept falling for the remainder of that 10 feet distance unless some other physical event intervened to stop that from happening.

Why? Because that's the consistent observation we've all made.

So we cooperatively agree on this, as an axiom.

With that, we build a larger "worldview" that we can all hopefully agree on.
Why?
So that we can have rational and productive discussions about how to attain shared goals.

But our minds could still be misleading us about the happenings we observe.

We could be misinterpreting available sensory data.
 
There could be errors in our calculations. 

We could be missing some important data.

But that's tough. Because all we can work with ... is whatever our minds and hands generate as a picture of what's happening. 

If we need a prior "law giver" merely for us to be ABLE to notice (and then justify earned confidence) how things work, 
then a "law giver" would need someone to exist before them to "give" them those laws too. 

And then that "law giver" before them would ALSO need someone who came before themselves to give them those laws, etc etc.
back into infinity. 

Meanwhile,
No toddler needs to engage in religious Presuppositionalism (appealing to a Law Giver as a necessary precursor to justify any personal confidence in their own cognitive faculties)
to justify confidence that if they put cat litter in their mouth again ... it will probably taste just as awful as it did the last time.

Religious fundamentalists aren't solving a problem.
They are creating a problem. And then failing to solve the problem they created.

If any "entity" can originate understandings and then LIST those observations (no matter if we call those "laws" or not), 
then:
 Humans could BE that entity for themselves.
And, in deed, we are. Because history has recorded the progression of humans doing exactly that.

In any event, ...

 Nobody knows what a universe WITH or WITHOUT a willful "law giver" "must" look like.
 
Our universe could be either of these. 

 If we exist per the design of some such entity(ies),
 then those entities either lack power, lack wisdom, or lack conscience. 

If we exist WITHOUT some such entity(ies),
then there is no standard for any "law giver" to fail. (link)
This too would be unfortunate. But at least then there's no need to accommodate the impressively ironic logical and ethical failures of popular  "personal God" narratives. 

Just so long as you don't go further than deism, or doctrineless "agnostic theism", ...
 I don't care what you believe.
Because then it won't be consequential to everyone stuck sharing a world with you. 

Meanwhile,
would any Super-Entities care?
Only if they have personal needs which depend on our assumptions and our praise.

In any case, ...

One stone existing 
doesn't necessitate the existence of a willful stone-creator.

One person observing one stone ... doesn't require the observer to INVENT the language of math 
as a way to fathom one stone existing.

A second stone coming into view of the person ... still doesn't require us to invent math as a language to allow our consciousness to fathom that
 there are now more stones.

Objects existing
is an early perceptual ability for toddlers.

They don't even need to have words for it.

"Object permanence" is also a toddler skill. 
So are spatial relationships and a rudimentary understanding of cause and effect. 

Neither do beavers need to appeal to some Super-Beaver "in whose image they were created" in order to justify reasons, behaviors, and expectations for building dams.

Neither does any Christian tell a cashier "I need to know if you believe in any Law-giving, immaterial entities. 
Because if you don't, then you have no way to justify confidence in your ASSUMPTION that I'm not owed $1000 in change for the $5 I just gave you for this $4 item." 

Why don't Christians ever try to pull that stunt a store?
Because if anyone thought they were being serious, they'd get arrested for trying to scam the cashier with head games. 

And that's what your stupid religion is. 

It's a scam that you can afford to be more obvious (less careful) about online;
 where there's near-zero accountability.

Even the money you're after doesn't get mentioned until the target shows up at a church where scamming people is completely legal.  
--
-- 

Humans were not "given" the laws of physics.

Physical phenomenon happen. 

Those happenings have natural properties.

Those natural properties generate and "determine" behaviors for all involved phenomenon. 

Humans emerged from such phenomenon. 

Humans made observations about about it. 

"Laws" are merely a description of what we observe. 

It's humans (and other sentient biological entities) observing it.

It's humans describing it. 

It's human feelings which determine why we care. 

Human feelings are generated by entirely physical processes.

Specific chemical combinations are necessary catalysts for the the various types of "love". (link) 

God-faith does not empower humans to experience such states more consistently, more deeply nor more "purely" than any other narrative or mechanism. 

People like you can't STFU about how you spend all day at the God-Beach, where there aren't any atheists.
But I can't help but notice you folks never have a God-tan. 

No pre-human entities do our thinking for us,
nor do our feeling for us.

Nor has any such entity stepped up to take credit (not even in the form of planting evidence where we can find it) for making those things possible. 

If some sufficiently sentient, pre-human entities were ever the first sufficiently sentient entities, then they had to figure it all out for themselves too.  

 In that case, I sure hope (for their sake) that THEY didn't waste time looking around for  some needy "Law givers".
-Law givers waiting and watching from behind the clouds to see who needs a "divine" lightning-bolt eternally shoved of their ass for failing to realize Hide And Seek "law givers" "must surely exist". 

I refuse to think of my life as a twisted game. 

If some twisted Game-Player "gave us life", 
that's their problem.

It would mean that religious "believers" are ENALBERS for very troubled super-people
who would be better served by healthier minds enforcing healthier boundaries.

It's like in the story were Moses had to counsel his "God" into the wiser course of action where the Israelites would NOT be wiped out as penance for God's temporary/fleeting disproportionate anger. 

Even the voice of our inner-bullies need our greater self to be stronger and wiser than them. 
---
Lastly, 
in reply to Jerry, 
this blog is already pretty long. 

I'll make a separate effort to clarify the meaning (and provide support) for the OP.