In a recent Slate essay, Ron Rosenbaum argues that agnosticism is preferable to atheism because atheists wrongly believe that they can explain the origins and nature of the universe:
I think it’s time for a new agnosticism, one that takes on the New Atheists. Indeed agnostics see atheism as “a theism”—as much a faith-based creed as the most orthodox of the religious variety.
Faith-based atheism? Yes, alas. Atheists display a credulous and childlike faith, worship a certainty as yet unsupported by evidence—the certainty that they can or will be able to explain how and why the universe came into existence. (And some of them can behave as intolerantly to heretics who deviate from their unproven orthodoxy as the most unbending religious Inquisitor.)
Faced with the fundamental question: “Why is there something rather than nothing?” atheists have faith that science will tell us eventually. Most seem never to consider that it may well be a philosophic, logical impossibility for something to create itself from nothing.
I think Rosenbaum fundamentally misconceives the nature of atheism. Atheism is not a complete theory of the nature of the universe. Rather, as I discussed here, atheism is simply a rejection of the existence of God, by which I mean a being that is omnipotent, omniscient and completely benevolent (the definition [traditionally] accepted by [the vast majority of adherents] of the major monotheistic religions). One can reject the existence of God without believing that we “can or will be able to explain how and why the universe came into existence.”
There are numerous arguments against God’s existence that don’t depend on any particular theory of the origins of the universe. In my view, the “problem of evil” is one of the strongest. For a good and accessible summary of the major arguments for atheism that don’t require explanations for the nature of the universe, see David Ramsay Steele’s recent book Atheism Explained. The “new atheists” whom Rosenbaum attacks also don’t rely on any comprehensive theory of the universe in making their case against the existence of God. Writers like Harris, Hitchens, and Dawkins have their flaws; but believing that they can explain the origins of the universe isn’t one of them.
But how can atheists rule out the possibility that God created the universe if they don’t have an airtight alternative explanation? The answer is that it’s often possible to rule out one potential explanation for X even if we don’t know for certain what actually caused it. For example, I don’t know why I had a headache a couple days ago. But that doesn’t mean I can’t rule out the theory that it was caused by a witch’s curse. There is strong evidence against the existence of witches with magical powers that isn’t tied to any particular explanation for the origins of my headache. Similarly, if we have strong arguments against the existence of God that are not tied to any specific cosmological theory, we have good reason to be atheists even if we can’t explain why the universe exists.
My purpose here is not to provide a comprehensive argument for atheism. That can’t possibly be accomplished in a blog post. Rather, I want to make the much narrower point that such an argument doesn’t require a demonstrably true alternative explanation for the existence of the universe. And most serious atheist writers do not in fact rely on the claim that they have such an explanation.
Rosenbaum is on firmer ground in criticizing some of the rhetorical excesses of the “new atheists.” Richard Dawkins, for example, has foolishly claimed that religious training of children necessarily amounts to “child abuse.” On the other hand, some theists engage in equally ridiculous rhetorical abuse of atheists. Theist intolerance and bigotry against atheists is at least as common as the reverse. For example, some 50% of the American public believe that it is impossible to “be moral and have good values” if you don’t believe in God. In any event, the crude rhetoric and intolerance of some adherents says very little about the ultimate validity of either atheism or theism. And it also doesn’t provide much of an argument for agnosticism.
Brett says:
What a ridiculous strawman characterization of atheists. We believe nothing of the sort – rather, we believe that science has shown the best explanations of the natural world around us, and is the most useful tool for uncovering more knowledge about it (along with the definition you provided, Ilya).
By contrast, it is believers who are jumping to conclusions about the universe’s origins, based on little to no evidence.
Believers are the ones making the claim that a certain agency – usually some form of deity – is the explanation, so the burden of proof is on them to support it with evidence.
Those are harsh words, but Dawkins does have a point. Force-feeding religion to children too young to know better or actually analyze what they’re being forced to learn is taking advantage of them, exploiting their natural credulity and the socialization process to impress a series of arbitrary customs and unsupported (and possibly dangerous) beliefs that will weigh on them for life.
July 15, 2010, 1:15 amReaderY says:
By giving “omnipotent, omniscient, and completely benevolent” ones own definition with naivete and with rigidity, it no doubt becomes possible to prove there doesn’t exist a being with these criteria as one has self-defined them. But claiming that such a straw figure has anything to do with actual religion is another matter.
As Stanley Fish pointed out, theologians have wrestled with paradox on these matters for milennia. Insisting that there’s no key anywhere near the lamp-post is well and good, but this doesn’t prove one never actually lost it. It’s not the only place it could be.
July 15, 2010, 1:23 amAllan Walstad says:
There’s a difference between the competing fairy tales of competing religions on one hand, and belief in God on the other. I don’t have an argument to offer the atheists, because that’s not how it works. I do have a question: what would you accept as proof? (It’s a purely rhetorical question.)
July 15, 2010, 1:24 amIlya Somin says:
By giving “omnipotent, omniscient, and completely benevolent” ones own definition with naivete and with rigidity, it no doubt becomes possible to prove there doesn’t exist a being with these criteria as one has self-defined them. But claiming that such a straw figure has anything to do with actual religion is another matter.
This is the definition that most Jews, Christians, and Muslims have adhered to for many centuries. If it’s a “straw figure,” then so is most of monotheistic religion as we know it.
July 15, 2010, 1:25 amM S says:
The problem with the definition of atheism as you describe it is that the concept of God that you say that atheists reject is not, as you suggest, universally accepted by “the major monotheistic religions”. There are many Christian theologians, for example, who reject the notion of a God who is omnipotent (the process theologians, John Haught, Paul Tillich, Marcus Borg, John Spong, and others.) So by the definition of atheism you gave, either all those Christians are actually atheists and yet somehow don’t actually know it, which is clearly not the case, or else atheists aren’t really atheists after all, which also isn’t the case. Indeed, the problem of evil is indeed a strong argument against the notion of a God who is omnipotent, omniscient, and benevolent, but if you don’t accept that God is omnipotent then the problem of actually evil goes away as an argument against that particular concept of God. That doesn’t mean that there might not be other arguments against the idea of God in general, but the problem of evil doesn’t have to be one of them.
Certainly it is possible for atheists to reject the idea of a non-omnipotent God just as easily as they can reject the idea of an omnipotent God. If the definition of atheism is limited to a rejection of a particular kind of concept of God, then that really only servers as a very narrow definition of atheism, since it limits the concepts of God to which atheism claims to reject. If atheism is to have any meaning as a concept at all, it would necessarily reject ALL concepts of God, not just those that just happen to coincide with that which embodies only one particular set of divine attributes.
July 15, 2010, 1:33 amDavid Schwartz says:
By what standard is “an incomprehensible being, for reasons you cannot understand, caused it by a mechanism beyond your understanding” an explanation? If the best explanation we can have for anything is “God did it”, then we have no explanation for that. There is no such thing as “an explanation in terms of things we cannot understand”.
When we want something explained, we want to know *how*. We want to know why that and not something else? The theistic “explanation”, which simply puts a content-free name to the cause, doesn’t actually explain anything.
July 15, 2010, 1:35 amleo marvin says:
The person you’re arguing against (Rosenbaum) is an agnostic, not a believer.
July 15, 2010, 1:37 amReaderY says:
But why doesn’t Richard Dawkins object to teaching children language? After all, we know that language is merely a human convention made up by people, with no possible claim to objective truth, and moreover, there are many different signs different cultures use for particular things or ideas. Doesn’t teaching children language at a young age lock them into a particular set of cultural baggage with no objective justification, prevent them from deciding for themselves whether they think this whole language thing has any merit in the first place, and if so then choosing for themselves which signs they personally use as signifiers? Isn’t that also child abuse? If teaching ones child something one thinks is true is child abuse simply because others disagree, then isn’t teaching ones child something that one doesn’t even think objectively true a foriori child abuse, and even more so?
After all, the whole point of eliminative materialism is that the belief that human beings are conscious and the perception of consciousness is as much an illusion as the perception of religion or a spiritual world. In this view, people are actually complex automaton whose motivations are mechanical, with consciousness an illusory epiphenomenon. Why feed the one illusion any more than the other? Why not leave it alone and let the child decide for itself whether it is conscious or not when it grows up? Language is one of the principle building blocks of the perception of consciousness. Isn’t giving children traditional tools to develop a relationshp with their perceived but illusory consciousneess every bit as much child abuse as giving them tradition-based tools to develop a relationship with a perceived but possibly illusory God.
In both cases giving the children the tools also leads to be more accepting of the traditional human view on the matter and less willing to believe the traditional view illusory. The effect is the same in both cases. Why not treat them the same? After all, the existence of human consciousness — certainly a sort of consciousness that completely accounts for human behavior for non-insane people, the traditional view and the one the law generally presumes — is every bit as doubtful a proposition as the existence of a “omniscient, omnipotent, completely benevolent” God.
July 15, 2010, 1:37 amLiam says:
As someone raised in an observant household who attended Catholic schools for primary and secondary school, I agree that claim is utterly preposterous. On the flip side, I also tend to believe that rejecting the idea of a higher power concedes all claim to any objective morality. When people like Brett equate religious practice with “arbitrary customs and unsupported (and possibly dangerous) beliefs,” it begs the question of what “customs and beliefs” are not arbitrary and unsupported, at least within the realm of the sorts of cultural and moral issues on which these debates tend to focus.
*Granted, this is only relevant an an abstract academic sense (indisputable proof that all moral codes are arbitrary fictions seems poor excuse for anarchy), but it’s also the type of abstract academic debate that I’ve always found fascinating.
July 15, 2010, 1:38 amDavid Schwartz says:
At one time, all we knew about color was that things looked different colors to people. We had no scientific understanding of color and no way to measure color.
All we knew was that people agreed that the sky looked blue to them and the grass didn’t. If someone claimed the sky looked green to them, there was no way we could measure or test their claim or refute them in an objective way.
However, it would have been error to conclude that this means there is no possible claim to an objective theory of color. We simply didn’t know *WHY* people agreed the sky was blue and the grass wasn’t. But once we figured that out, an objective theory of color followed pretty quickly.
We are in the same state with morality now. We know people agree that, for example, torturing children for pleasure is wrong. And we can take some stabs at why, but we have no good objective theoretical basis for morality. If someone claimed they didn’t see anything wrong with torturing children for pleasure, we couldn’t prove them wrong objectively.
However, the fact of agreement makes it virtually certain that there is objective basis for that agreement, just as there was for color. We just don’t know what it is with morality yet.
But just as it was perfectly rational to use color before we had an objective theory of it, so it is perfectly rational to use morality before we have an objective theory of it. I have no doubt we will have such a theory in the future.
July 15, 2010, 1:50 amIlya Somin says:
The problem with the definition of atheism as you describe it is that the concept of God that you say that atheists reject is not, as you suggest, universally accepted by “the major monotheistic religions”. There are many Christian theologians, for example, who reject the notion of a God who is omnipotent
There are some Christian theologians who hold that view yes. But it’s very much a minority view among adherents of the major monotheistic religions. Moreover, if a being isn’t omnipotent and benevolent, it’s not clear in what relevant sense it counts as a God that we have any obligation to obey and worship. If atheism requires commitment to the idea that there are no beings in the universe that are vastly more powerful and benevolent than humans, then we would have to accept the absurd conclusion that you can’t be an atheist if you think there are enormously powerful and good extraterrestrials somewhere in the universe.
July 15, 2010, 1:50 amneimoller says:
no, it doesn’t. the point is that these arbitrary customs and unsupported beliefs are presented as inviolate and sacred, and as such are different from arbitrary customs and unsupported beliefs that are understood to be just that.
July 15, 2010, 1:52 amBigRedGopher says:
Forgive me if I misinterpreted what you’re saying Professor, but your argument doesn’t seem to be confined to a rejection of a monotheistic God. Hence, the claim that you are attacking a straw man–belief in the commonly understood monotheistic God–so as to reject belief in the possibility of all gods or god-like beings, forces, etc.
July 15, 2010, 1:55 amleo marvin says:
But it’s called “atheism,” not “amonotheism.” Don’t most atheists reject the existence of any supernatural power responsible for the creation of the material universe? I’m not sure they would require the God they reject to have any of those three attributes, much less all three. Let’s assume Lex Luther created the universe, and he’s neither good nor omniscient. And he might not even be omnipotent. Maybe he had no idea how the universe would turn out, and he couldn’t create the same version twice if he tried. Don’t you think a lot (I’d guess most) atheists would say the existence of Lex Luther contradicts their atheist beliefs?
If those extraterrestrials created the universe and/or can overrule the physical laws of nature, then yes, I’d say they qualify.
July 15, 2010, 1:56 amRicardo says:
Most seem never to consider that it may well be a philosophic, logical impossibility for something to create itself from nothing.
That would seem to be equally a problem for believers as well.
I’ve seen the term “practical atheism” used to describe the position taken by people like Dawkins and Hitchens and I think it’s a useful description. Neither of them thinks science currently has a good explanation for the origins of the universe. In the case of Hitchens, I’m not sure he would bet that science ever will have a solid answer. The point is that positing (without proving) the existence of God gets you absolutely nowhere. You have to answer exactly the same questions that an atheist does.
The debate becomes interesting when I see believers say that believing in God is good because it leads one to make objective moral judgments. It’s a rather revealing argument. That because I believe murder, rape, theft and lying are wrong, I need God to provide justification for this belief.
But it would be much more interesting and useful to explore the origins and reasons for those pre-existing beliefs rather than to try to link them to a personal God of some kind. In practice, belief in God seems to provide a very weak foundation for morality.
July 15, 2010, 2:03 amPES says:
I guess I would ask what is meant by objective. Obviously, if it means “decided/imposed by a higher (non-human, but sentient) being,” then rejecting a higher power would necessarily negate any such claim. On the other hand, if objective just means “uninfluenced by emotions or personal prejudices,” then a magic 8 ball is capable of constructing an objective system of morality. If you mean “based on observable phenomena,” then positing such a being would tend to negate any claim to objective morality. If you mean “existing independently of perception or an individual’s conception,” then natural selection might qualify. Just some thoughts.
July 15, 2010, 2:03 amDavid Schwartz says:
I have always understood atheism to be the considered rejection of belief in a deity of any kind. At a minimum, a deity must be necessarily supernatural. (One may be open to the possibility that such a thing may exist, but one must not believe that it does.)
July 15, 2010, 2:04 amasfsfaefe39gvn2w34 says:
Look at the subject scientifically. There really is a lot of scientific evidence for the afterlife including evidence collected and or analyzed by nobel prize winning scientists:
http://sites.google.com/site/chs4o8pt/summary_of_evidence
“Many scientists have conducted their own research into the afterlife and found the phenomena are real. Several Nobel Prize winning scientists have investigated the afterlife and psychic phenomena and believed that paranormal phenomena cannot be explained by mainstream scientific explanations. (see below: Eminent Researchers). These scientists were not fooled by magic tricks. Highly skilled stage magicians have investigated many mediums and have found them to be genuine (see the chapter on Skeptical Fallacies for more information and links). Studies have shown people with more education are more likely to believe in the afterlife, and most medical doctors believe in the afterlife (see the chapter on Skeptical Fallacies for more information and links). These highly educated and intelligent people are right, there is no death. Departed loved ones are not gone, they continue to live in a higher realm.”
Athiesm or materialism is a religion that provides an explanation of the origin of life and the universe. It is the product of wishful thinking that provides solace to those who are dismayed by the suffering in life and are hopeful that a painful and frightening existence will eventually come to an end. It is an angry response by those whose lifestyle choices have been condemned by other organized religions.
Leaders of the skeptical movement have a conflict of interest with the truth – they stand to lose money on book sales and media appearances if the truth was known. The truth also conflicts with the interests of scientific and religious leaders who stand to lose their place as the source of information about the universe if the real truth were to become mainstream. Political leaders are also suppressing this information because knowledge of the truth of paranormal phenomena would give our international competitors encouragement in developing psychic means for spying and sabotage.
More at the link…
July 15, 2010, 2:06 amStrict says:
“I think Rosenbaum fundamentally misconceives the nature of atheism”
I also think he fundamentally misconceives the nature of agnosticism, putting in contrast to or rejection of theism.
Agnosticism and theism can very well go hand in hand. Many religions express things like “you can’t know God, you just have to have faith.
The Quran says “God is above all comprehension.” In the Bahá’í faith God is described as “unknowable,” completely incomprehensible to humans and indescribable. Thomas Huxley said that agnosticism is just a method. A person can at the same time believe in a deity [theism] without claiming direct or even indirect knowledge [gnosis] of that deity.
July 15, 2010, 2:08 amDavid Schwartz says:
That’s a ludicrous claim. Whatever individual finds some way to convince people that they know the “real truth” would gain a place as a source of information. There are virtually no barriers to finding an audience if you have something people want to hear. This information remains obscure because people don’t believe it when they encounter it, not because some conspiracy keeps people from hearing it.
July 15, 2010, 2:09 amLiam says:
David-
As I hoped to make clear, I agree that we should implement moral rubrics and codify the most important aspects of them (don’t kill, don’t steal, etc.) into laws. I don’t disagree with the use of morality; I just don’t see from where claims to a particular code’s objective rightness can come other than a divine being. Like I said, strictly an abstract academic discussion.
Because abortion rights are never described as inviolate, nor do Randyan psychopaths treat property rights as sacred…
Intolerance & indoctrination and teaching of religious values are not nearly as synonymous as you seem to think, nor is the former at all the exclusive property of the latter.
July 15, 2010, 2:09 amDavid Schwartz says:
Right, but that’s an invalid argument form. The argument form is: the only way I can think of to have X is Y, therefore if not Y, not X. All this shows is that you lack imagination.
There are dozens of areas where people incorrectly made exactly this argument. And in the future, when we understood the thing they were opining about, it became obvious that there were other ways to have X than Y. (See Raymond Smullyan’s dialogue ’5000 BC’ for a great example.)
I am saying that a theory of objective morality will come, we just don’t have it yet. Your lack of imagination is not an impediment. The fact that I don’t know the right answer yet doesn’t mean there isn’t one.
Worse, a resort to a divine being would be devastating for objective morality. How could we ever resolve a dispute where one person claims X is moral and one person claims X is immoral? We cannot ask God. We do not have an autographed copy of any holy book.
A scientific theory of objective morality may actually be useful. Yours would leave us with “I think God meant that it was right”.
July 15, 2010, 2:14 amdcp says:
I remember scanning some news item about a school graduation ceremony. The school didn’t have a building large enough to accommodate the graduate’s guests so they customarily used a nearby church, because it was the largest room in town.
Of course some atheist parent flipped out over this, even though it was secular ceremony. And of course she sued and won, resulting in a graduation ceremony in some rundown, cramped quarters where the graduates could only invite two people, space permitting. But what really got me were her batshit comments about being required to go into a church as an atheist. It was like, what are you worried the holy water is going to burn you?
I mean if you genuinely are an atheist, isn’t a church just another building? Isn’t a cross just two pieces of wood? I just don’t get the cultish furvor and spiritual devotion to the “a” in atheist that many (not all) atheists seem to possess, astrophysics aside. I don’t believe in aliens or UFOs, but I could care less if other people do. I’m not going to avoid Roswell, N.M. or complain about Steven Spielberg movies.
July 15, 2010, 2:15 amPES says:
Not to be too much of a twit, here, but suppose that the school planned to have their graduation in a mosque. I think there would be quite a few Christians flipping out. Of course, that is not to say that those Christians would be justified, but it at least becomes more understandable when you look at it in that light. And, just like a lot of Christians think that Islam is a terrible, violent, repressive belief system, a lot of atheists think that Christianity is terrible, oppressive (and historically violent).
July 15, 2010, 2:21 amAnon Y. Mous says:
The simplest definition of God is that he is the creator of the universe. Atheists firmly insist that no such creature exists; that the universe must have come into being without the agency of a creator.
To me, that belief looks just as much like faith as those that insist that there must have been a creator. I don’t know how either set of people has come to be so certain in their beliefs, as I haven’t seen anywhere close to enough evidence to make a judgment either way.
July 15, 2010, 2:22 amneimoller says:
where did you get that i think they are synonymous? just very highly correlated. the existence of intolerance outside of religion hardly diminishes the outsize presence of religion and associated dogmas.
July 15, 2010, 2:33 amleo marvin says:
Do believers believe God created himself? I don’t think so.
July 15, 2010, 2:37 amEngineer says:
The “completely benevolent” part of the definition is obviously not consistent with any religious tradition based on the Bible.
July 15, 2010, 2:47 amStrict says:
“The simplest definition of God is that he is the creator of the universe. Atheists firmly insist that no such creature exists”
I’ve never before seen God referred to as a “creature.” The simplest definition of creature is a thing created. So what created this God creature? ;)
Your description might apply to some atheists, but not all. It might be more inclusive to say that atheists firmly insist that they do not believe such creature exists. I think all atheists would agree with that.
I guess some things escape easily categorization. For example, Bathouism is a re-ligion ["linking back" in the Joseph Campbell sense] that focuses on “worshipping” ancestors. But it doesn’t appear to be deistic or theistic. For another, it’s a bit strange to call something a “creation story” when there’s no separate creator involved. Most creation stories are theogenetic – a God character creates stuff. But some are abiogenetic – man simply arose out of a lake or transformed from a rock into a human. That’s not so much a story of “creation” as it is simply a story of how man came to be.
July 15, 2010, 2:57 amAdam says:
I think that the incompatibility btw agnosticism and religious creeds of the sort you mentioned is that the agnostic (as an empirical matter at least) is more concerned with the knowledge or lack there of for his beliefs. The self-proclaimed agnostic’s concern for the lack of knowledge/verifability is demonstrated by the the self-proclamation. On the other hand, the religious adherent believes through faith is not concerned with announcing the fact that he does not scientifically know of God’s existence.
July 15, 2010, 2:58 amTransplanted Lawyer says:
Faith! Faith! You’re demonstrating faith in something! I brand you “not a true atheist!”
…Which is ridiculous, of course, and which demonstrates how ridiculous Rosenbaum’s argument is. An atheist can have faith in a lot of things. I have faith that my wife is telling me the truth when she says she loves me. I have some reason to believe it is true based on her day-to-day behavior, but ultimately, I have no way to ever prove it or know for sure as a scientific proposition; I just believe what she says.
What an atheist lacks faith in are supernatural causes of objective events. Artificial causes, sure. But not supernatural ones. Apollo is not riding his chariot across the sky when the sun rises in the East. A circular piece of dry, yeast-free, tasteless bread does not transform into reconstituted human flesh. The mother of a rabbi who has been dead for two millenia does not project her facial image onto my tortilla. A giant rabbit does not silently invade my house every year to deposit poorly-concealed, brightly-decorated hard-boiled eggs and baskets of hyperactivity-inducing chocolate candies. I will not survive my own death. These things are not real and there is no good reason to think they are.
DCP, I go to churches all the time. They’re just buildings, like you say. If other people want to worship there, that’s their business; as long as they don’t force me to or force me to pay for their doing it, I say, “It’s a free country.” Remember that just because someone is an atheist, or an agnostic, does not give them any special privileges for being (or not being) anything else. There are cool atheists and there are jackhole atheists just like there are cool Christians and jackhole Christians — and in roughly proportional numbers too, I’ll bet; your story is clearly about an atheist who was also a jackhole.
July 15, 2010, 3:04 amStrict says:
“I don’t know how either set of people has come to be so certain in their beliefs”
I think the characterization of atheists as radical or fervent or even simply “certain” is not fair.
There are many flavors of atheism. Very few are as strong as “I am certain there is no God.” Most atheists, I’d reckon, would instead say something like “I don’t believe there is a God,” or “I don’t believe in God as described in the Bible” or “I’ve never really thought about it enough to even formulate a strong view.” There is a difference between “I don’t believe God exists” and “God does not exist.”
July 15, 2010, 3:05 amCraig says:
Someone much smarter than me – and far more successful in his field that almost certainly anyone in here – has made just this argument: Immanuel Kant.
I’m not espousing his argument, but it is a pretty serious argument, one that isn’t terribly easy to defuse, and one that implies just the claim on offer here.
July 15, 2010, 3:09 amDavid Schwartz says:
Speaking only for myself, I reject all faith in principle and do my best to live without any. I believe my wife loves me to the extent that she has demonstrated so. I do not need faith that she is telling the truth because I have some evidence and have no need to believe it to be true to a greater extent than that evidence justifies.
Theists frequently equate an atheist’s belief that the Sun will rise tomorrow, for example, with their belief in god. But, at least for a rational atheist, they are not comparable. An atheist knows under what circumstances the Sun will appear to rise and has good reasons to believe those circumstances will occur tomorrow. He knows full well what it takes for the Sun not to appear to rise and that it is possible that might occur prior to tomorrow.
That is, an atheist’s belief that the Sun will rise tomorrow is justified knowledge that under certain circumstances, the Sun will appear to rise, those circumstances are now the case, and that very unlikely events are required for them not to be the case tomorrow. More importantly, his belief is that the Sun will likely appear to rise tomorrow *because* of those things. His belief is not “the Sun will rise tomorrow” because of those things. His belief is “the Sun will likely rise tomorrow because of those things”.
And note that the “likely” is part of the belief. There is no need for certainty about things we are not actually certain of.
July 15, 2010, 3:15 amRicardo says:
It’s turtles all the way down.
July 15, 2010, 3:17 amMalvolio says:
I’m pretty sure there’s no God, but trying to prove that using the so-called problem of evil is what Dawkins called “argument from personal incredulity”: “I don’t see why God would let bad things happen to good people, so there must not be a God.”
Presumably, if there were a God (which, I reiterate, there is not), His motivation for doing things or not doing them would likely be pretty subtle.
Really? If God isn’t omnipotent, then what is He that makes Him God and not just some schmuck in a white beard? Is it the deep voice?
I’m pretty atheistic but I’m perfectly willing to accept the possibility that there are, um, entities out there somewhere who are smarter than us. Maybe there are non-biological yet intellect and sentient entities. Maybe they even played a role in the development of human beings, who knows. Doesn’t make them God: they live in this universe, just like us.
A difference but not an interesting difference. I believe two plus two equals four, hey, I could be wrong. I believe there’s no God, and am about as likely to be wrong.
July 15, 2010, 3:25 amRicardo says:
When Christian apologist William Lane Craig debated Christopher Hitchens, he kept on hammering on the following proposition, “There is no good reason to think atheism is true.”
Now, Craig is famous for his rhetorical conjuring tricks and I think this was one of them. By trying to paint atheism as a positive theory about the origins of the universe, intelligent life and morality rather than as the proposition, “There is no good reason to think God exists” he gets a lot more mileage.
So the distinction may not be interesting but it is still important when trying to define atheism in a precise manner.
July 15, 2010, 3:37 amDavid Schwartz says:
The position of rational atheists is the positive claim for rationalism. And there is every reason to think that rational claims are true — they are.
For example, take the argument about the big bang. Rational atheists are not committed to a big bang. However, they do believe that a big bang is the best explanation they know of for the observed red shift and the measured cosmic background radiation.
The ‘beliefs’ of rational atheists are of this form — ‘X is the best explanation for Y that I know of and has observations Z to support it’. The only positions they are actually committed to are those that are logically required and the only positions they are actually committed against are those that are logically impossible.
Rational atheists do have a positive claim though — that belief should be based solely on justification or demonstration and that beliefs should remain attached to their evidentiary basis so they can be rejected if justified by subsequent evidence.
In my opinion and experience, atheists fare better when they make the full case for rationalism than when they poke holes in the arguments of theists or insist their position is the default one. (Not that that’s invalid, it’s just ineffective because you’re attempting to undercut the rational basis for their beliefs when there is no such basis to undercut. You’re swinging an ax where there are no trees.)
July 15, 2010, 3:53 amMihai Martoiu Ticu says:
The scientific mind presupposes that if one does not have a good reason to believe that something exists, it is a good argument against its existence. For instance we don’t have good reasons to believe that unicorns, mermaids and phlogiston exist, therefore it is a good argument to say that they do not exist.
From the argumentative point of view, the burden of proof lies on the one asserting the existence of something, especially if the one that asserts it demands some actions from others. If one believes that there is a certain risk of pink elephants falling from the sky on cars on highways and demands that protecting shields are built above the highways, one is obliged to proof her assertion. Otherwise the one that denies this possibility is not required to accept the pink elephant “argument” and the policy demands made from it.
And it has a survival advantage. We don’t take the possibility of pink elephants falling from the skies into account, thus we assume it does not exist, which helps us conserving our energy, computational and material resources, and time.
As long as there is no good argument for the existence of god, the right argumentative attitude is atheism rather than agnosticism. From ignorance one cannot draw any conclusion.
July 15, 2010, 4:24 amgecko says:
Theist intolerance and bigotry against atheists is at least as common as the reverse. For example, some 50% of the American public believe that it is impossible to “be moral and have good values” if you don’t believe in God.
The public face of atheism consists mostly of direct attacks on rival philosophies with a large helping of ridiculing and calling their opponents stupid. In contrast while most religions do their share of attacking they tend to focus more on their own systems of belief. On the whole its fairly obvious that atheists (at least the high profile ones) rightly or wrongly spend a much greater proportion of their energy directly belittling their rivals/rivals beliefs. So its no mystery why the American public has a dim view of atheists no matter how much they wring their hands about it.
July 15, 2010, 4:29 amTomG says:
The semantical distinction between atheist and agnostic seems to me as blurred as the useage of skeptic vs. cynic – with much wiggle-room for variation in meaning and emphasis. But the problem of evil, of its apparent contradiction with a totally benevolent deity – that’s a most clever red herring. The ancients had a simple solution – polytheism. But we now know, thanks to our rational faculties and scientific methods (including probability/stats) that the idea of many gods – especially fighting eachother with human-limited attributes – is untenable as a (more) serious religion. However, dualism is not! The idea of two equal gods – an all-good and all-evil – that’s a belief even many so-called Christians harbor as a good possibility down deep inside, and is manifested / reinforced through many superstitions held and practised. And I have a suspicion that many supposed agnostics/atheists are really only anti-monotheistic, since it’s not so much whether there’s an extra-empirical reason for existence that would bother them if proved one day – but instead, that there’s a logical inconcistency between an all-loving single God and the factual evidence on our sphere to the contrary. Just my take at the moment. Cheers.
July 15, 2010, 4:40 amgecko says:
Since many believe God existed without beginning these rules may not apply when you’re looking at whether God (defined simply as an omnipotent,omniscient,benevolent being) exists. Occam’s Razor applies to believing pixies run your car rather than gasoline because one involves a more complicated set of events. But there is no such chain of causality for a universe with God vs a universe without God.
Not to mention that a believer would find it acceptable to say that God created logic as we know it.
July 15, 2010, 4:57 amDavid Schwartz says:
There is no significance whatsoever to beliefs held without any justification. It makes no difference whether many believe something or not, it has no affect on what rules apply.
A universe with a god has one more event than a universe without a god, making a universe without a god a less complicated set of events. Adding a god is an unnecessary complexity that explains nothing.
“Where did the universe come from?” “God made it.” “Where did God come from?” And we’re back where we started with just an extra link.
July 15, 2010, 5:21 amTomG says:
But if you believe passages of the Bible, specifically the ones that are revelatory – then you have faith that God has stated His existence as “the one true God” and the rest is easy …
July 15, 2010, 5:52 amMihai Martoiu Ticu says:
And what does the agnosticism add to the equation? Imagine that one of the American presidents says: “I believe that God told me to invade country X.”
Let’s take the atheists and agnostics from America and from X and, for the sake of the argument, consider that all other arguments to invade X are not conclusive. For the atheist Americans there is no good reason why they should endorse the invasion, since it is bases on premises they do not believe. For the atheists in X this is outrageous. There is no reason whatsoever to accept being killed by someone who believes that God told him to do it. But what is the advantage of the agnostic in this situation? Can the American agnostic take a smart decision? Since for agnostics the chances of God’s existence are as great as its non-existance, 50% of the agnostics would endorse the invasion and the other 50% would be against it. But this without any good reason. Their decision is just random. The agnostics in X on the other hand are in great trouble. 50% of them would have to agree to be killed without any good reason whatsoever. That would make them plain stupid.
July 15, 2010, 5:58 amDavid Schwartz says:
A moderately rational agnostic would respond as follows: It is not possible to know god exists. If you knew god told you to do something, you would have to know god exists, which is impossible. Therefore, you do not know gold told you to do something. Acting on mere unjustified beliefs, rather than knowledge, is irrational.
July 15, 2010, 6:11 amTomG says:
Speaking of that point – here’s an interesting latest post:
July 15, 2010, 6:18 amhttp://shrinkwrapped.blogs.com/blog/#tp
reshuffle1 says:
Last chance for those who want to know;
atheism is not about having an explanation for anything, let alone the origin of the universe, nor is it even a rejection of the existence of god.
It is an absence of belief in god(s). Period. Case closed. Obviously, some atheists (strong atheism) will embrace a more resolute direct position of disbelief, but most atheists simply hold no belief in god, rather than “rejecting an existence,” as the professor suggests.
But, please. Carry on. Those of us who have an absence of belief in all gods enjoy listening to explanations of the matter by many folks who hold the nearly exact same intellectual position for all gods EXCEPT FOR their own little special god.
July 15, 2010, 6:19 amRodger Lodger says:
I don’t believe in a supernatural cause of the universe, because that explains nothing. I go with the scientists, who say it all started with a Big Bang. Now that’s rational!
July 15, 2010, 6:30 amNik B. says:
You call “omnipotent,omniscient,benevolent being” a simple definition? I call it vacuous and meaningless. It means nothing and says nothing. More on why, check out “Atheism: The Case Against God” by Smith.
July 15, 2010, 6:32 amdearieme says:
“…atheism is simply a rejection of the existence of God, by which I mean a being that is omnipotent, omniscient and completely benevolent..”: no, much too narrow; I reject the existence of gods i.e. every god I’ve ever heard of, even mighty Thor.
July 15, 2010, 6:48 amPersonFromPorlock says:
I don’t see anything but ‘physics’ in the world… and ‘the world’ includes your body. So, you don’t exist?
‘God’ simply generalises our direct observation of how we work onto how the world works: if we’re going to say we’re made of the same ‘stuff’ as the rest of the world then it follows that that ‘stuff’ is will-driven, just as we are. The default position is theism, not atheism, and the evidence for it is our experience of ourselves.
July 15, 2010, 7:34 amcboldt says:
– How could we ever resolve a dispute where one person claims X is moral and one person claims X is immoral? –
July 15, 2010, 7:42 amUse a bigger hammer. The universe runs on force, more than on reason.
Mihai Martoiu Ticu says:
Our experience about the world does not inform us too much about it. We experience full objects, but they are made mostly from empty space. We have solid and touch experience, but we never touch solid objects, we are just pushed back by nuclear forces. We experience our bodies as our bodies, but 90% of the cells in (or on) a human body are microbes. And our reasons are mostly rationalizations after the fact. And what is democracy?
July 15, 2010, 7:46 amcboldt says:
– “Where did the universe come from?” –
July 15, 2010, 8:00 amThe notion of “where” implies the existence of space, and under the big bang theory (origin of universe is expansion of a singularity), neither space nor time exist before time 0.
No space. So, no “where.” And no time, so no “before.”
I think it is impossible for humans to agree on a morality. They can’t even agree on physical reality, and even physical reality demonstrates uncertainty.
– We experience full objects, but they are made mostly from empty space. –
Most people have no appreciation for the physics of earth-bound objects. If the proton/nucleus is the size of a marble, the electrons are what, pinheads a mile or two away? I think that’s how it scales up.
David Schwartz says:
I grant you, at one time it might have been rational to think of the world as a living thing. But the evidence necessary to rebut that position is now massive and overwhelming, and it’s largely an argument from ignorance anyway. (Though likely this explains how beliefs in gods originated.)
In any event, such a belief is not technically incompatible with atheism since nothing supernatural is required.
July 15, 2010, 8:00 amPine_Tree says:
Well, I can’t speak for centuries of Muslim tradition, but this isn’t even close to what’s found in the traditions of belief systems founded in the Bible. The “completely benevolent” text is what gives the original post away as a cariacature. It’s a popular cariacature, to be sure, but wildly divergent from reality.
Are you being serious, Professor?
July 15, 2010, 8:14 amcboldt says:
– We experience our bodies as our bodies, but 90% of the cells in (or on) a human body are microbes. –
July 15, 2010, 8:16 amDamned parasites. In me, on me, and in Congress, trying to run MY life.
One thing they all have in common, they rely on brute force to have their way. All the rhetoric is deceit, meant to make me feel good about being had.
cboldt says:
– The “completely benevolent” text is what gives the original post away as a cariacature. It’s a popular cariacature, to be sure, but wildly divergent from reality. –
July 15, 2010, 8:19 amI’d say divergent from the theological teaching. God made hell, and he’s going to put souls in there for eternity. Yeah, that’s benevolent! Completely benevolent.
Largo says:
How about:
Cases of (possible) divinity beliefs:
Some of the folk listed above were philosophically sophisticated. Some were utterly naive. And this is orthogonal to the question of who may have been right.
July 15, 2010, 8:24 amneimoller says:
rofl. wins the thread.
July 15, 2010, 8:25 amMihai Martoiu Ticu says:
It’s not impossible to agree on morality.
-Nobody wants to be killed.
-Nobody wants to be robbed, stolen and the like.
-Nobody wants to be lied.
-Nobody wants that you break your contracts with them (or your promises).
-Nobody wants to be oppressed or driven in slavery, denied (physical) freedom.
The most conflicts and the most important fights are fought about such things. So we could agree about a minimal set of moral values. Since the rest of the things seem less important and do not impede living our lives according to our wishes, it seems that we could agree to let everybody live their life according to their values, as long as they accept those minimal and shared moral values.
July 15, 2010, 8:26 amneimoller says:
yup. the opinion of atheists turned dramatically only after hitchens’ book was published. as opposed to the glowing love and positive affirmation of atheists prior to hitchens and dawkins.
it has absolutely nothing to do with christian love for their fellow believers and promises of eternal damnation for all others.
July 15, 2010, 8:27 amPine_Tree says:
Hmmm, I botched the quote-in-a-quote in my 8:14, making it look as though both portions were attributed to Prof. Somin. Sorry. I hope the edit sorta fixed it.
July 15, 2010, 8:30 amPersonFromPorlock says:
Au contraire, the-world-as-mechanism has terrible problems: quantum and relativity give us two entirely separate mechanisms for the same events, unified only by the faith-based hope that eventually someone will figure out how to make the incompatible compatible. Moreover, neither quantum nor relativity leave any room for will, yet will has at least the real-world effect that we talk about it. That speech is either product-without-process, in which case the mechanistic model fails, or a product of efficient will, which also falsifies the mechanistic model.
July 15, 2010, 8:40 amcboldt says:
– It’s not impossible to agree on morality.
July 15, 2010, 8:51 am-Nobody wants to be killed.
-Nobody wants to be robbed, stolen and the like.
-Nobody wants to be lied.
-Nobody wants that you break your contracts with them (or your promises).
-Nobody wants to be oppressed or driven in slavery, denied (physical) freedom. –
Well, I disagree with all of those absolute contentions. I’m not saying it’s impossible for two (or more) people to agree, my point is there will never be universal agreement.
Some people in physical torment, say disease, want to be killed. It’s a COMMON request, “put me out of my misery.”
There are many people who don’t want to be robbed, who find no moral error in robbing. Same for lying (see Congress), broken contracts, and oppression. See the Bible for slavery.
Frank says:
Prof. Somin,
I think the central problem facing atheists is the Black Swan problem and I think it counsels turning to agnosticism.
In short form, the Black Swan problem is seeing only white swans, seeing no others, concluding that all swans must be white. The shakiness of this logical ground was revealed when people in fact saw black swans. All it took was more information–but the previously certain conclusion presumed, erroneously, that enough information was had in the first place.
Much as in your witch-headache analogy, atheism premises its belief that God does not exist on the overwhelming lack of evidence that God exists. That is to say, everywhere one looks there is very little, if any, real or scientific evidence of God. This, however, should not be taken for proof that God does not exist, because this information does not allow this particular inference. You should only conclude that you *don’t know* whether or not God exists.
July 15, 2010, 8:52 amMihai Martoiu Ticu says:
Would those people in physical torment rather die or would they rather have a life without physical torment? Do they try to make their moral rule an obligatory general rule, I mean do they try to force you to want to die yourself?
How many people who rob plead before a judge that their moral value is that robbing should be universally allowed or be mandatory?
How many of the congressmen plead to introduce lying as universal mandatory or accepted value? If you ask them than they will say that telling the truth is their moral value. Therefore you can force them to respect this value.
July 15, 2010, 9:03 amcboldt says:
– it seems that we could agree to let everybody live their life according to their values, as long as they accept those minimal and shared moral values –
July 15, 2010, 9:03 amNot to say I reject the Golden Rule, it’s sound basis for fair dealing. But it fails to account for human reality, and human reason is able to rationalize many actions that don’t fit the Golden Rule.
I think Obama’s health care plan is immoral, for what its worth. But he wins because he has superior physical force, not because he has superior reasoning powers.
cboldt says:
- -How many of the congressmen plead to introduce lying as universal mandatory or accepted value? If you ask them than they will say that telling the truth is their moral value. –
July 15, 2010, 9:08 amA good liar never admits to lying, and a skilled liar has subtle means to deceive. Of course they’ll claim to be good, honest, “looking out for you,” etc.
– Therefore you can force them to respect this value. –
With what? Mind control? If you can force Congress to be honest, then force BP to be honest too, and while you’re at it, my lying girlfriend.
Mihai Martoiu Ticu says:
The discussion started from the assertion that people cannot agree about moral rules. It seems to me that as long as the good liar tells you that lying should be prohibited you two agree about the moral values. Discussion closed.
You can enforce the rule by sanctions. For instance you could blow up a couple of lying congressmen.
July 15, 2010, 9:15 amcboldt says:
– Would those people in physical torment rather die or would they rather have a life without physical torment? Do they try to make their moral rule an obligatory general rule, I mean do they try to force you to want to die yourself? –
July 15, 2010, 9:16 amWell, there’s the morality of suicide, and the morality of homicide. Those are two distinct questions, I think.
For the suicide one, the tormented person does not have a choice, “be whole.” The issue is one of self-control, free will, and time/means of death. Do you think there will be universal agreement on the morality of suicide? There is no such thing as imposing (free will) suicide on others. Each of us chooses.
A person, like Jim Jones, who claims his victims are committing suicide, is really committing homicide. The morality of this is tougher, but at the end it’s a choice between war or be killed. Again, you pick for yourself. The warrior survives, the pacifist dies.
cboldt says:
– The discussion started from the assertion that people cannot agree about moral rules. It seems to me that as long as the good liar tells you that lying should be prohibited you two agree about the moral values. Discussion closed. –
July 15, 2010, 9:20 amYeah, except you restated my premise. Reread the discussion.
“Ends justify the means,” Sometimes a lie is the moral thing to do, etc. And so, the issue persists, when is it moral to lie, and when not?
Bob K says:
You’re missing the idea of divinity here (as Largo points out). If God exists, he exists separate from the universe, not in and of the universe.
July 15, 2010, 9:21 amklp85 says:
@ Strict
From a formal perspective, what would be the difference between the views in bold and agnosticism?
@ Ilya
A few people have said something along these lines, but lots of belief systems outside of the so-called Abrahamic faiths believe in beings that do not possess all these characteristics but are known as gods. If Enuma Elish or Hesiod’s Theogony were true, why wouldn’t Marduk or Zeus and their respective pantheons be worthy of worship?
July 15, 2010, 9:21 amcboldt says:
– You can enforce the rule by sanctions. For instance you could blow up a couple of lying congressmen. –
July 15, 2010, 9:24 amLOL. Well, I prefer to ridicule their actions. Sanctions is a toothless joke, and my general nature is pacifist. My morality says it is wrong to hurt lying congressmen.
Bob K says:
OK, I’ll grant that is one definition of atheism. But how is that different from agnosticism, exactly?
July 15, 2010, 9:27 amAultimer says:
Except Universalism, formerly the largest Protestant denomination in the US, until fire and brimstone evangelism squished it.
July 15, 2010, 9:31 amMartinned says:
An atheist doesn’t believe in god, an agnostic doesn’t know if god exists. It’s roughly the same answer, but to a different question.
July 15, 2010, 9:33 amBob K says:
This focus of atheists on the big bang puzzles me. There is nothing about the big bang that refutes the existence of God. It may refute literal biblical explanations of the formation of the universe, but those are really children’s stories anyway. If anything, the big bang opens up larger questions of existence.
July 15, 2010, 9:35 amRicardo says:
Mr. Taleb would want you to think that. But we have to define agnosticism first. Does agnosticism stand for the proposition that divine revelation may be authentic? If so, whose revelation? Is it possible that Islam is true? How about Mormonism?
If it doesn’t take a stand on divine revelation but merely on the existence of some supreme entity, then I don’t see where atheism ends and agnosticism begins. After all, we know nothing of this supreme entity, whether it can be called intelligent or not, whether it actively intervenes in the material world, whether it is good or evil, whether there are one or several of it, etc.
This kind of agnosticism really doesn’t tell me anything useful about living in the material world here and now. It could be true that aliens from outer space landed in Ancient Egypt and taught the inhabitants about agriculture and how to build pyramids ala Stargate. Very unlikely but I can’t justify giving it a 0 probability.
So it’s not that I would definitely reject either the “Stargate hypothesis” or the “God hypothesis.” But both strike me as a waste of time and neither can be decisively refuted.
July 15, 2010, 9:41 amDJR says:
I am interested to see Ilya’s reaction to Leo Marvin. I think most people would agree that atheism isn’t simply rejection of Judaism, Christianity, and Islam. It is the rejection of any supernatural explanation for the universe. If I believe that those religions are untrue and have no theory about the origin of the universe or whether other religions (or minority beliefs of the major religions) are true, I am an agnostic, not an atheist.
I’m also interested in Ilya’s description of God as a being that “we have [an] obligation to obey and worship.” Certainly that’s what many religions would say about their God, but not all. What if I believe in a God for whom humans are just one of billions of intelligent species in the universe, who doesn’t care about whether people worship it or not, and who has no particular instructions for people to obey?
July 15, 2010, 9:46 amjviking says:
I’ve seen this misquoted so many times it’s unbelievable. Richard Dawkins does not claim teaching children religion is child abuse, he claims LABELING children is child abuse. It’s completely different to teach a child about Christianity than to call them “a christian child”. He also always points out that we would never say “that child is a republican child” or “that child is a communist child” since we do not expect them to have developed those opinions yet. The issue with labeling children based on the religious beliefs of their parents is that children do not understand religion and it gives the impression that they lack choice.
July 15, 2010, 9:48 amRicardo says:
I don’t see anyone atheist or otherwise focusing on it. David Schwartz provided it as an example of a belief that is subject to empirical verification. I don’t think it has significance beyond that for the purpose of the debate over God.
Interestingly, Big Bang theory actually comes from Catholic priest, physicist and astronomer Georges Lemaître.
July 15, 2010, 9:51 amMike P Wagner says:
Actually, I think your comment is not strictly true about Judaism. I have had both a conservative rabbi and an Orthodox rabbi tell me that problem of evil implies that you all three of those qualities cannot be correct – you can pick any two.
In my reading, the Christian notion of the nature of G-d does is very string influenced by the Neo-Platonists, and very different from the notion of G-d in the Torah. Or more precisely – the Christian notion of G-d is only one possible reading of a multi-vocal text.
Just to be clear, agnosticism is not incompatible with Judaism. Schmuley Boteach famously remarked, “Some of the most observant Jews I know are agnostics!”
To my mind, those who claim absolute knowledge of the existence of G-d – “believers”, and those who claim absolute knowledge of the non-existence of G-d – “atheists” – are both incorrectly asserting a certainty that just isn’t there. The most reasonable position is agnosticism, which I would define as the acceptance of uncertainty of those claims.
Mike
July 15, 2010, 9:59 amMartinned says:
The traditional example here is Russell’s teapot.
Also, I suspect that the earlier commenter didn’t so much intend to refer to Nassim Taleb’s Black Swan, as to the problem of induction generally.
July 15, 2010, 9:59 amRoger the Shrubber says:
Proof of what? The existence of any deity? The existence of a Christian, rather than a Hindu, deity? The fact that Jesus was the son of God and was resurrected from the dead? The fact that God doesn’t want us to eat pork?
These are not rhetorical questions. The answer to your question, for me at least, depends on what someone is trying to prove.
July 15, 2010, 10:05 amMartinned says:
Yes, that is the traditional statement of the problem, going back to Hume and, I think, St. Thomas Aquinas. If you want to have more fun with this stuff, try to figure out how it is possible for someone to be free if the omniscient god already knows with certainty what they are going to do.
July 15, 2010, 10:08 amRoger the Shrubber says:
Can you start to see the problem here?
What would you think about the rationality of a new religious movement that worshipped, and ordered their lives after the purported teachings of, an invisible purple unicorn?
Would you limit your commentary about the unicorn worshippers only to a statement that “you don’t know” that the unicorn exists? Or would you go further, and note that they were basically bonkers?
Pretty sure Bertrand Russell beat me to this one.
July 15, 2010, 10:12 amD.O. says:
An atheist like me thinks that divinity, supernatural etc. is a mental and social construct. Does it mean god exists? It does, but in a sense very much different from what theists might think. The God/gods/divinity/supernatural is just a construct of human mind and interpersonal relations. Useful for some purposes, useless for others, harmful for yet others. It is useless or harmful for understanding the world a.k.a. objective reality, as for other purposes, we can argue.
July 15, 2010, 10:13 amcboldt says:
– try to figure out how it is possible for someone to be free if the omniscient god already knows with certainty what they are going to do. –
July 15, 2010, 10:16 amOther than attempting to figure out how an entity obtains omniscience (knows the future), I don’t think this is a hard puzzle, or even a puzzle at all. “Knowing” is not the same as “causing.” That I could know the lottery numbers for next week does not mean I caused those numbers to appear.
cboldt says:
– What would you think about the rationality of a new religious movement that worshipped, and ordered their lives after the purported teachings of, an invisible purple unicorn? –
July 15, 2010, 10:17 amThe cult of Scientology comes to mind, for some reason.
PersonFromPorlock says:
As an aside, many commenters here seem to confuse deism with religion, and then criticize a belief in the existence of God by criticizing different religions’ assertions about God. For the record, while I believe God’s existence is logically extrapolated from our own, I also believe that religions are confidence games played with varying degrees of sincerity. That people choose to believe self-serving priestly nonsense about God is irrelevant to whether God exists.
July 15, 2010, 10:21 amRicardo says:
As Hitchens puts it, in Christianity we have free will because God tells us we do. His ironic response is to point out he believes in free will because he has no other choice.
July 15, 2010, 10:23 amcboldt says:
– An atheist like me thinks that divinity, supernatural etc. is a mental and social construct. … Useful for some purposes, useless for others, harmful for yet others. It is useless or harmful for understanding the world a.k.a. objective reality, as for other purposes, we can argue. –
July 15, 2010, 10:25 amI’d modify that every so slightly, and you probably have this notion folded in anyway. To the extent that “the effect of divinity” manifests itself in people’s words and action, those observations are part of objective reality.
I’m a devout Christian, myself, so disagree that “it’s just a mental and social construct,” but agree completely with your take or application of “divinity” to this world. Humans have free will, that’s what gives us the human condition, the good, the bad, and all the in between. If God were provable, there would be need for faith, and religion itself collapses.
Bob K says:
Well – I see a problem that you replaced an apple with an orange in your quote modification. God is typically thought of as being outside of our universe, causing its existence. An invisible purple unicorn, not so much.
July 15, 2010, 10:29 amBob K says:
Right, I was generalizing too much from a few conversations I’ve personally had.
July 15, 2010, 10:31 amSuperSkeptic says:
Is this the best defense of natural law out there today?
July 15, 2010, 10:31 amdearieme says:
Who does the agnostic suppose this chap “god” to be in his belief, or absence of belief, whereby he “doesn’t know if god exists”?
July 15, 2010, 10:32 amPickled Tink says:
That makes Rosenbaum a believer. Rosenbaum’s criticism is that atheists conclude without evidence that God (EDIT) doesn’t exist. This makes little sense coming from him, since agnostics conclude without evidence at least one statement (that atheists are wrong about the fact that God does not exist).
Agnosticism vs. atheism debates often devolve to both sides declaring victory because the other has not met their burden of persuasion. (The Top Hat declares a Monopoly victory because, although the game just started, the other pieces have not yet bankrupted the Top Hat.)
July 15, 2010, 10:35 amRoger the Shrubber says:
This is a common error about atheism. It leads to the idea that atheists really have just as much “faith” as believers, with the atheists’ faith being simply an irrational belief in nothingness. Not so.
I consider myself an atheist, but I don’t “claim absolute knowledge of the non-existence” of God. I can’t absolutely rule out the possibility of a God. But by the same token, I also can’t absolutely rule out the possibility of a Tooth Fairy.
Based on the available evidence, I think God and the Tooth Fairy are about equally likely to exist. As in “not very damn likely.”
Richard Dawkins, among other people widely referred to as atheists, considers himself to be an agnostic in this limited sense, i.e, a “Tooth Fairy Agnostic.” In fact I think he uses that phrase.
As Dawkins notes, this is not the way that the word “agnostic” is usually used. It isn’t universally true, but most people who claim to be agnostics using the commonly accepted meaning of that word seem to tend toward the “tossup” position — the view that God is pretty much equally likely to exist or not exist, and we just can’t tell.
As an atheist I don’t think it’s a tossup at all. I think God is terribly, terribly unlikely to exist, and that ordering your life around His Supposed Teachings is a fairly silly (and in some ways, quite dangerous) exercise. I believe this is the predominant view among atheists.
There are some atheists who do take the strong position that you identify, i.e., the position that we can prove God doesn’t exist. Victor Stenger is among them. It’s actually a relatively unusual position among atheists, from what I can tell.
July 15, 2010, 10:44 amBob from Ohio says:
Its not “impossible” but it is difficult.
If you believe in nothing, then you will believe anything.
July 15, 2010, 10:46 amLester Livio says:
The theistic posture is one of dogmatic certainty in the existence of God, while the atheistic posture is dogmatic uncertainty, nay, rejection of the existence of God. Both dogmatic postures are based on radical faith. The former has radical but irrational faith in God, while the latter has radical but irrational faith in the non-God; that is to say, human rationality.
July 15, 2010, 10:51 amKamal says:
While it’s not child abuse to teach children religion, it certainly is bad parenting. It encourages dishonesty.
July 15, 2010, 10:52 amklp85 says:
But it seems that the agnostic’s criticism isn’t that atheists are wrong about the fact that God does not exist, but about knowing for a fact that God does not exist. (This, of course, raises the question whether by “atheist” we mean here both positive and negative atheism and what the boundaries are between negative atheism and agnosticism.) Most self-identified “agnostics” don’t strike me as religious types who have merely conceded that they can’t definitively prove their own religion, but as nonbelievers who don’t want to go all in and affirm that they positively believe that there are no gods.
To make a non-supernatural analogy, consider the question of whether other planets have life. An “agnostic” would say “I don’t know”; others would make positive declarations of “yes” or “no.” It’s silly to toss these “agnostics” in with the believers just because they haven’t affirmed a disbelief in extraterrestrial life. Similarly, “I don’t know” about the existence of deities shouldn’t be classed as belief.
July 15, 2010, 10:53 amRoger the Shrubber says:
That’s just a silly word game you’re playing. God either exists or he doesn’t; declaring him to be “outside of our universe” (whatever that is supposed to mean) doesn’t change anything.
It’s like saying “God exists and you can’t claim otherwise because he exists in a way that isn’t like any other things existing.” It’s nonsense.
But what the heck, I can play. Replace “invisible purple unicorn” with “invisible purple unicorn thought to be outside our universe.” Same result.
July 15, 2010, 10:53 amKamal says:
While it’s true that when you realize there are no gods, all is permitted, it does not follow that you believe in nothing. It just means the validity of what you believe in is not dictated by other people; it’s dictated by yourself.
July 15, 2010, 10:54 amRoger the Shrubber says:
I don’t disagree. The point is that, but for the rather recent invention of Scientology, and the whiffs of fraud that surround its creation, it’s not objectively more irrational than believing that a Jewish carpenter was born of a virgin and walked on water. We’re just more used to the latter.
July 15, 2010, 10:57 amKamal says:
“Most seem never to consider that it may well be a philosophic, logical impossibility for something to create itself from nothing”
That applies to the gods as well as the universe.
July 15, 2010, 10:59 amBob K says:
So you cannot conceive of something which exists outside of the physical dimensions of the known universe (i.e. that construct formed from the Big Bang) ? Regardless, I agree that either God exists (and created the universe as we know it), or he doesn’t. I don’t know one way or the other. If he is an invisible purple unicorn, so be it.
July 15, 2010, 11:00 amBrett says:
It does, but I’d argue that there’s a difference. Language is ultimately a means of communication, and most people don’t pretend that it is anything other than just the tongue they happened to be raised with. Religion, on the other hand, usually introduces a broad set of premises and concepts about how everything is “supposed to be”, and that often includes harmful and/or hateful conditioning (I’m thinking of how fundamentalist Christianity conditions prejudice against homosexuality).
No. One verifiably serves to enhance their personal survival in the existing social milieu, whereas the other often includes maladaptational practices and beliefs that have outlived the social context that spawned them.
July 15, 2010, 11:06 amL says:
This needs saying more. People (including commenters here) talk about atheism and agnosticism as if they were two mutually exclusive positions (the third being theism). Atheism and theism are positions on the question of whether one believes a god exists. Agnosticism and non-agnosticism are positions on whether one can know a god exists. Some atheists are agnostic, and others are not. Some theists are agnostic, and others are not. Four groups. The way some define the words, everyone falls into one of the four groups.
Do atheists focus on the big bang? I know I don’t. Maybe some of us do – maybe most of us do, but I don’t see it. Mostly I see theists using it as a stick to beat atheists with. “You don’t believe in God, but you have a religion too – you worship the big bang!” and that kind of thing.
The other thing is this idea, mentioned by Somin, about arguments for atheism. I’ve never seen a particularly convincing one myself. I’m not an atheist because of any argument for atheism specifically. I’m an atheist because, as David Schwartz ably pointed out above, I accept the claim
Given that, and given the absolute lack of any justification or demonstration of the existence of god, I don’t need a (positive) argument for atheism.
July 15, 2010, 11:09 amMatt says:
That’s a strawman argument about atheists; perhaps some, but certainly not all atheists claim to have “absolute knowledge of the non-existence of G-d”. Such a claim is not required to be an atheist. My view and I think that of some other commenters above is probabilistic in nature; both the lack of empirical evidence supporting theism and the fact that different cultures have developed many different religions suggests gods are made up by people. I think that is the best explanation, but I could be wrong.
July 15, 2010, 11:16 amStick this in your pipe and smoke it. says:
. . .
You are talking about God religiously, but have your ever considered God in a purely philosophical sense? An essential quality of God is that it is an uncreated being, completely uncontingent, an unmoved mover, an uncaused cause. Indeed, this is part of God’s very nature, for if God were contingent upon something or relied upon something else for existence, it would not be God. It is best to set aside all the religious aspects (benevolent, omnipotent, etc.) that the various religions put upon God and to simply focus on this essential aspect of the nature of God.
Once God is considered philosophically, the ultimate problem with Atheism becomes clear. That is, if you reject the existence of an unmoved mover, you are left with an infinite regression, which would make the complete existence of anything impossible. Hence, under atheism, nothing would ever come into full existence, because its existence would have to come about through an infinite number of processes (causes), which, by definition, can never be completed. Hence, under atheism, full and finite existence would never be possible, because everything would always be simply in the process of coming into existence.
All the other aspects of God are believed in by faith alone (Trinitarian, benevolence, etc.) That is, the problem of evil is a heavy blow to the Christian notion of God, but is completely ineffective against a purely philosophical notion of God, because philosophically God is simply an uncaused cause and nothing more. hence I think it is much wiser to say you believe in a philosophical notion of God.
“I want to make the much narrower point that such an argument doesn’t require a demonstrably true alternative explanation for the existence of the universe.”
I agree, but don’t you think that creation of the ENTIRE UNIVERSE is a pretty large thing to simply overlook because of other weaker arguments!? I mean isn’t this the question that EVERYONE ponders at least once in their life- who am I and how did I get here?! Also, isn’t existence of the world kind of a priori to everything else? It is the elephant in the room. You are literally surrounded by creatures all day long- to not bother to ask about how they got here seems to be a lack on intellectual curiosity par excellence.
By rejecting God, atheists are rejecting Christian, Muslim, Judaic, [insert monotheistic religion here] notions of God, but they are also rejecting the most rational way to explain existence. I think that is the reason so many people leave atheism; it offers nothing to answer our most haunting questions, and leaves our intuitive intellectual curiosity thirsting.
Whatever, nobody was converted by a syllogism. But answer me this Ilya, how can something come from nothing?
July 15, 2010, 11:17 amcboldt says:
– [Scientology is] not objectively more irrational than believing that a Jewish carpenter was born of a virgin and walked on water. –
July 15, 2010, 11:18 amThe way I understand and use the word “faith,” faith is irrational. It is not based on reason, it is a leap.
I have no interest to debate the different criteria people use to justify making the leap, beyond pointing out that Scientology and Christianity have radically differing bases, dogma, morality, etc.
Thomas K says:
Believers in God will readily acknowledge that the problem of innocent (unjust) suffering (evil) is an enormous challenge to us who believe the Judeo-Christian God.
However, the Theist only has to account for the existence of unjust suffering; the Atheist has to account for the existence of everything else.
July 15, 2010, 11:18 amPickled Tink says:
Without knowing much about Enuma Elish, doesn’t Zeus give the game away? Every worshiper of Zeus concluded that he and his pantheon was not worthy of worship Zeus couldn’t even preach to the converted, maybe because he did “not possess all these characteristics[.]” Omniscient, omnipotent, and benevolent gods are the most popular, and have been for centuries.
Why are some religions more successful than others? Probably because they posit deities that, at least intuitively, are more worthy of worship.
I took that to be the Professor’s point.
July 15, 2010, 11:19 amMartinned says:
That’s not the problem. The problem is that if God infallibly knows what I am going to do next week, there really is only one option for me. How is it possible for me to do something different than what God already knows I will do? By way of the mythical and strictly hypothetical omniscience of God, causality doesn’t even enter into it. At every turn, I only have one possible move.
July 15, 2010, 11:20 amDJR says:
Interesting. Didn’t Jesus walk on water, raise the dead, and return from the grave precisely to prove that he was God? Thomas had no need for faith, for example. Since it is based on events that were purportedly proved the existence of God at the time, why didn’t Christianity collapse? Is it okay if God only reveals himself to a select few (like Joseph Smith or Mohammed) and the rest of us are just supposed to believe whatever the prophet says God said?
What would be inherently wrong with a God who spoke to everyone, all the time, and proved his power regularly? Indeed, isn’t Jesus meant to come back at some point and rule the world for 1,000 years–presumably nobody will need faith at that point.
July 15, 2010, 11:22 amMihai Martoiu Ticu says:
You mean that if I refuse to believe in unicorns, mermaids and phlogiston I am dogmatic?
July 15, 2010, 11:25 amKamal says:
And didn’t Prometheus steal fire from Zeus and give it to mortals? Oh wait, wrong mythology.
July 15, 2010, 11:25 amMartinned says:
July 15, 2010, 11:25 amLongCat says:
I’m in no way a theist, but I think the problem of evil is moronic. The premise that a hypothetical god is benevolent doesn’t logically require that the god take all necessary steps to eliminate evil. The entire argument is based on the notion that the speaker knows what the perfectly moral outcome would be and that any deviation therefrom is proof of immorality. This is the type of certainty you tend to hear from evangelicals, not atheists.
Even then, trying to disprove a god because you don’t think it’s acting in accordance with its nature is like trying to disprove Greek mythology by saying that 2009′s Hurricane Fred was out of character for Poseidon.
July 15, 2010, 11:27 amCJColucci says:
assume Lex Luther created the universe, and he’s neither good nor omniscient. And he might not even be omnipotent. Maybe he had no idea how the universe would turn out, and he couldn’t create the same version twice if he tried. Don’t you think a lot (I’d guess most) atheists would say the existence of Lex Luther contradicts their atheist beliefs?
Hard to say. Most atheists don’t believe in the more limited gods of some religions either, so the omniscient, omnipotent, benevolent triad is not, in their view, definitional of what a god is that they don’t believe in. Your Lex Luther might just be another surprising fact about the natural world, rather like proof of the existence of Superman, who is as powerful as many lesser deities were said to be. My guess is that a considerable number of people would have to assert that Lex Luther is some sort of God, rather than just a strange and powerful being who might demand and get tribute from us, before an atheist would consider his existence a philosophical problem.
July 15, 2010, 11:27 amyankee says:
Leaving aside whether that accurately describes the major monotheistic religions, it seems like an absurdly narrow definition. I’ve never heard of a religion other than Judaism, Christianity, or Islam has such a deity, but that doesn’t make the rest of the world’s religions atheistic. You’re not much of an atheist if you believe in Shiva or Ishvara or Eshu, but billions of people believe in those and other such entities.
For purposes of defining what atheists don’t believe in, I’d say a “god” is any divine being.
July 15, 2010, 11:29 amPickled Tink says:
You have it exactly backwards.
July 15, 2010, 11:31 amMartinned says:
And what makes the God of Abraham and Jesus so worthy of worship? At least Apollo and the other Greek gods occasionally lent a hand deciding urgent problems of a practical nature.
July 15, 2010, 11:36 amPickled Tink says:
This thread is now over 100 comments long, with possibly that many different definitions of “atheist” and “agnostic” and “theist” propounded by interested people (because they self identify) largely talking past each other because no one can agree on things like “positive or negative atheism[.]”
What I think you and I agree on is: To the extent that a theory rejects dogmatic, unsupportable conclusions, it is preferable to a theory that accepts dogmatic, unsupportable conclusions. If “atheism” is “God does not exist and this is proven” then perhaps that has more in common with a theistic believe (“God exists and this is proven”) than with an “agnostic” or “negative/positive atheist” (these terms are unfamiliar to me) that concludes “I am not sure about the existence of God.”
The difficulty arises when presented with these two competing philosophies:
“I do not know whether God exists, but I suspect, based on all the evidence, that God does not exist.”
“I do not know whether God exists, but I suspect, based on all the evidence, that God exists.”
It is probably here that I think “atheists” have the more compelling argument (stated in the first sentence) only because the default position makes more sense. It’s hard to imagine that anyone would know who Descartes was if he began from the proposition “I will not doubt anything” rather than from “I will doubt everything.”
July 15, 2010, 11:41 amPickled Tink says:
To me? Nothing, I don’t worship Apollo or the God of Abraham or Jesus. But I do know that nobody worships Apollo, and many people worship Jesus. Many people exist who think Jesus was more worthy of worship than Apollo. No person exists who thinks Apollo is more worthy of worship than Jesus.
July 15, 2010, 11:44 amGaunilo says:
If we relax the definition of God to God = First Principle, then most of us can agree that God exists.
To go beyond that in defining God either by resort to physics or scripture places both ideas somewhere in the realm of religion. Are there religious athiests? Kierkegaard said that “There is no god, but Mary was his mother.”
I read somewhere that the prime question of religion is “Does anyone have the old man in the box?”
July 15, 2010, 11:45 amyankee says:
Absolutely nothing! The murderous, genocidal god of Abraham is extremely malevolent and not at all worthy of worship.
July 15, 2010, 11:46 amcboldt says:
– invisible purple –
July 15, 2010, 11:46 amOne bright day, in the middle of the night, two dead men got up to fight
Back to back they faced each other, drew their swords and shot each other
The deaf policeman heard the noise, and came to save the two dead boys
– The problem is that if God infallibly knows what I am going to
do next week, there really is only one option for me. –
The way I resolve the puzzle is by attributing time-travel to omniscience. Theoretically, you can know history. I think you agree with that, at least to some extent. The fact that you know what time your neighbor came home does not mean your neighbor lacks free will.
– What would be inherently wrong with a God who spoke to everyone, all the time, and proved his power regularly? –
Your remarks reinforce my point. “Religion,” at least as the term is commonly used, requires irrational belief, faith. If God is proved, then there is not religion, it’s an objective reality being, and you and it interact however the interaction goes.
Mihai Martoiu Ticu says:
I didn’t say my solution was the perfect one from the first try. But you could enact other sanctions hoping that would prevent them from lying. For instance, once caught lying, they might be barred from voting for X times in Congress. Or pay a fine. Or force them to ride a bicycle to their work. Wear a clown hat and Pinocchio nose. Use toilet without toilet paper. Whatever works.
July 15, 2010, 11:47 amMartinned says:
That’s the opinion poll approach to an answer. Please, feel free to try again.
July 15, 2010, 11:51 amPickled Tink says:
I don’t know why you’re on me about this, but the Professor was making a point about atheism as an alternative to the major (i.e. most popular) monotheistic religions which happened to believe that God was omniscient, benevolent, and omnipotent. The point was made that if a God were not omniscient, benevolent, or omnipotent, then that God probably would not be worthy of worship. I was using the popularity of religions that worship omnipotent, benevolent, and omniscient deities against the unpopularity of former religions that worshiped non-[omnipotent, benevolent, and omniscient] deities as some evidence that such deities were not worthy of worship, at least according to the collective intuition of worshipers as measured by history.
“Worthy of worship” is a different kind of proposition than “Flatness of Earth.” Regarding the latter, I would never be interested in to the popularity of the proposition, because the Earth’s flatness is not dependent on the popularity of belief in the Earth’s flatness. But because the primary tool I have, as a human being, in determining somethings “Worthiness” is my intuition, the measure of all human beings using similar tools that I have and determining that Zeus is unworthy is somewhat compelling evidence that maybe omniscient, omnipotent, and benevolent Gods are more “Worthy of worship” (according to human beings) than philandering Zeus.
July 15, 2010, 11:59 amyankee says:
“Proven” is a tricky word. I’d say “based on logic and the available evidence, that there are no gods is by far the most reasonable conclusion. Although it is not impossible that a god or gods might exist, it is not reasonable to take the possibility seriously.”
This is the same conclusion I reach about conspiracy theories. Is it impossible that the U.S. government flew planes into the World Trade Center to create a pretext for invading Iraq? No, but that doesn’t mean I have to say “I don’t know” whether or not it’s true; the possibility isn’t worth taking seriously.
July 15, 2010, 12:00 pmMihai Martoiu Ticu says:
It seems to me that if we look at those basic moral rules they seem to have the following characteristics:
1. They try to extend our lives and guarantee the satisfaction of some fundamental biological/psychological needs.
2. They seem to be thought from a neutral point of view. It is like a thought experiment that asks you to imagine which contract you would sign with the other participants, before you were born, if you didn’t know in which person, with which properties, you will be born. What rules of behavior would you find acceptable and how the world should be designed?
3. They seem to try to find a solution to the prisoner’s dilemma. They try to get us cooperate even if cheating would bring us a greater advantage.
If you know this, you know when to accept exceptions to the rules. For instance when the blue-eyed blond knocks at your door and asks whether you have hidden Anne Frank on your attic, you ask yourself which moral rule should win this time. Is it the moral rule to tell the truth or is it your duty to Anne? It seems to me that by lying you will extend her life and your choice would correspond with rule number one: moral rules are made to extend lives. It’s that simple.
July 15, 2010, 12:01 pmcboldt says:
– But you could enact other sanctions hoping that would prevent them from lying. For instance, once caught lying, they might be barred from voting for X times in Congress. Or pay a fine. Or force them to ride a bicycle to their work. Wear a clown hat and Pinocchio nose. Use toilet without toilet paper. Whatever works –
July 15, 2010, 12:02 pmSome of those might be implemented, for example “you can’t vote” is a decision forced by his peers. For others, the Congressman is able to say “make me,” and we’re right back to finding out which one of us has the combination of will and greater physical strength.
The most common sanction is to vote for their opponent, or don’t vote at all.
Ricardo says:
I wouldn’t phrase it as worthy of worship. Some religions do tend to impress people more than others and also lend themselves more to evangelism and propagation. If you tell people that God will grant you eternal life and everlasting reward if you do as he says but then will suffer eternal torment if you reject Him, that’s a powerful motivator.
Caste-based Hinduism has very little to say about the vast majority of us who are not born into one of the castes. It simply has no appeal for those not already members of those ethno-religious groups. Similar things might be said for other traditional religions that seem to hardly acknowledge the existence of a larger world that has little to do with certain provincial concerns and activities. Christianity and Islam at least purport to be universal religions which probably explains their successes along with each claiming a fiery and painful end for those who refuse to believe.
July 15, 2010, 12:02 pmcboldt says:
– moral rules are made to extend lives. It’s that simple. –
July 15, 2010, 12:08 pmI think that’s a fair test, although it’s not comprehensive for life’s conflicts. Even though you and I think it’s fair, I don’t think we’ll get anything approaching universal agreement. Off the top of my head, by our test, suicide and (most) abortion are immoral.
yankee says:
Also worth noting that both religions were spread through conquest. The worldwide popularity of Christianity has a lot to do with the fact that Christians conquered most of the world; the areas where Islam is most popular are the ones Muslims conquered.
July 15, 2010, 12:10 pmfred from des moines says:
One doesn’t have to believe in God or Dog to *know* that it’s ultimately rational to have unshakeable faith in the highest probability of there existing [P]phenomena of which we have no current proof or even awareness, given our wonderfully curious but rather limited (before exponentially improving bio-tech interfacing makes us more cybergodlike) brains.
The history of evolving human consciousness demands we wrap our minds around this almost certain verity.
July 15, 2010, 12:13 pmklp85 says:
Looks like a number of people beat me to it.
Even setting aside the causes of the decline of polytheism and non-Abrahamic/Neo-Platonic monotheism, this doesn’t really answer the question. Sure, maybe the Jewish/Christian/Islamic conception of God (at least insofar as they overlap) is more satisfying, from the perspective of choosing between alternatives as a matter of faith. But if Zeus descended from Mt. Olympus tomorrow surrounded by the other Olympians and said that for the last 2000 years or so he has patiently withheld his wrath, but now mandates that all peoples worship him (and the rest of the major players in the Greek pantheon), why wouldn’t he be an authentic god or worthy of worship?
Where? You mean in the West and/or Islamic societies and societies influenced by the West and/or Islam? Do you think that Latin America is largely (at least nominally) Catholic because millions of Native (Central and South) Americans were convinced by the Spanish and Portuguese of the philosophical merits of Abrahamic/Neo-Platonic monotheism? Even in societies that posit some “highest” inaccessible deity, there are still plenty of gods to go around (e.g., much of “Hinduism” and many of the various traditional practices of various groups). Heck, even in many of the aforementioned societies where Christianity has made some headway, saints and the old deities are linked up (e.g., Santeria). And then there are the various branches of Buddhism, which either posit no god (the Theravada) or co-opt the gods of the society in which a particular sect of Buddhism is found (various branches of the Mahayana). So it’s far from clear how popular this particular concept of deity actually is in practice.
July 15, 2010, 12:17 pmShelbyC says:
Well, not really. As others have indicated, somebody who believes in a God that is omnipotent, omnisceint, and mostly benevolent is not an atheist.
However, a broader conception of god, as a being or presence whose nature we are incapable of understanding who is the ultimate authority in the universe, is much harder to rule out.
July 15, 2010, 12:18 pmVD says:
“There are numerous arguments against God’s existence that don’t depend on any particular theory of the origins of the universe. In my view, the “problem of evil” is one of the strongest.”
If that’s your strongest argument, you had better give up on atheism now. The so-called problem of evil is one of the most ignorant arguments that can possibly be made against the Christian God’s existence, let alone various other conceptions of the Divine. The existence of evil is absolutely central to the Christian faith, so it requires a remarkable amount of theological cluelessness to claim that the existence of observable evil can possibly serve as any sort of evidence against the Christian God. Moreover, anyone with an even cursory familiarity with the Bible, or for that matter, CS Lewis’s Space Trilogy, knows that “the god of this world” is not the Creator God. And finally, Sunday School theology notwithstanding, there is no serious Biblical claim for Divine omniscience; the various claims to God’s knowledge tend to involve a complete knowledge of human nature.
But no doubt “the problem of evil” is a serious objection to a God in whom no one of any religion actually believes, let alone worships.
July 15, 2010, 12:20 pmCurtis says:
The belief of atheists has nothing to do with the origin of the the universe. Rather, it is the belief that reason is a priori “better” than unreason (or instinct, emotion, etc.). This is a morality judgment, and any proof requires an appeal to the thing being proved – much like religious folk appeal to their deity as proof of itself.
(I am not taking the ironically absurd approach of arguing against reason – just pointing out that atheists do work from a belief. I have no public comment on the appropriateness of that belief.)
July 15, 2010, 12:24 pmNate says:
Two points:
July 15, 2010, 12:27 pm1) Some of the atheists should really tone down their rhetoric. You’re never going to convince anyone of anything by comparing God to the Tooth Fairy, for example. We know that the Tooth Fairy doesn’t exist because we have a pretty good idea about the (fictional) origins of the concept. It’s not at all comparable.
2) Regarding the issue of whether omniscience preempts free will… Let me make a comparison. Science suggests that the workings of the brain are driven by chemical and electrical reactions to stimuli. This seems to imply that given sufficiently detailed knowledge of an admittedly unfathomable number of potential stimuli-outcome pairs, a person’s reaction in a given situation would be predictable. But even if that were true, would you really lack free will in any meaningful sense?
Bob K says:
And once you reach the limits of reason, it’s turtles all the way down.
July 15, 2010, 12:27 pmyankee says:
And according to Wikipedia Brahman is “the eternal, unchanging, infinite, immanent, and transcendent reality which is the Divine Ground of all matter, energy, time, space, being, and everything beyond in this Universe,” which is sort of similar to “omnipotent, omniscient, and omnibenevolent” but is hardly the same thing.
July 15, 2010, 12:27 pmyankee says:
VD: also, at best the problem of evil is an argument against a particular conception of god. If you weaken any of the three, it doesn’t work.
July 15, 2010, 12:33 pmStrict says:
“Caste-based Hinduism has very little to say about the vast majority of us who are not born into one of the castes. It simply has no appeal for those not already members of those ethno-religious groups.”
This is pretty true.
Although it should be noted that the caste systems transcend religion – in India there are in some places caste divisions among Christians, Muslims, Buddhists, and Sikhs [e.g. separate graveyards for low-caste Christians], despite the fact that all these religions expressly disavow the caste system [and indeed, their express rejection of the caste system is one of the biggest draws for new converts, who usually come from the lowest of castes.]
It should also be noted that the lowest of castes, dalits/untouchables/outcastes, are often considered outside of the Hindu system entirely. They are not merely considered bottom tier Hindus, but actually not Hindus at all.
Finally, it should be noted that caste, especially the lower castes, is primarily occupational, not ethnic. And even within the lowest caste, there are occupational subdivisions:
Dhobi wallahs [washermen] are above the chamar wallahs [leather workers], who are above the bhangi wallahs or chura [street sweepers / latrine cleaners / gravediggers] and the musahars [rat catchers, who sometimes are only allowed to eat rat meat].
July 15, 2010, 12:36 pmLester Livio says:
That is correct. Unbelief is as dogmatic as belief. They are two sides of the same coin. The problem with unbelief is that it has faith in human rationality to the point of irrationality.
July 15, 2010, 12:37 pmPickled Tink says:
No, he most certainly would be “worthy of worship.” The problem is when the god you worship goes dormant for a few hundred, thousand years. A super powerful but not omnipotent, benevolent, or omniscient god would only need to show up once every few generations and smite some people to convince everyone that he/she/it were “worthy of worship.” But if you’re not going to enforce your divine commands from on high, for the reason that you don’t exist, then to sway the population you will probably have to have some characteristics that, if believed, will make you an attractive deity, particularly in a world where religions compete with each other for followers. If the Divine Spaghetti Monster descended on to earth every 30 years to exact his non-benevolent, somewhat powerful but not all powerful wrath, lots of people would find him “Worthy of worship.” But if Divine Spaghetti Monster doesn’t show up, ever, then he’s not going to be popular unless someone posits that he is a really, really nice guy, he created us, he’s super powerful and smart and knows everything.
If I show up to work and do my job every day, no one needs to “believe” that I’m worthy of praise as a good worker because it is demonstrated. But if I’m a lazy bum who doesn’t show up, then I will be fired unless the rest of the office believes, or has faith, that I’m worthy of praise as a good worker.
I meant globally. I was under the (perhaps mistaken?) belief that the most popular religions in the world posited omniscient, omnipotent, and beneficent deities. My understanding is that over 50% of the planet believes in either Christianity or Islam, and both those religions posit at least something like an omniscient, omnipotent, and beneficent deity.
I think Latin America is largely Catholic because of the historical fact that it was conquered by Catholics. But the Romans conquered people, too, and [EDIT] (Jupiter) didn’t stick as much as Catholicism did.
July 15, 2010, 12:41 pmLester Livio says:
To many people–including Nobel Prize Winner, Elie Wiesel–the problem of evil is a stumbling block to religious faith because God supposedly abandoned his people at Auschwitz, Dachau,Treblinka, etc.
July 15, 2010, 12:44 pmyankee says:
Also, if more refutation were required, Ilya’s definition makes Fred Phelps an atheist, since Phelps’s god is not remotely omnibenevolent. Phelps’s god hates virtually everyone other than Phelps.
July 15, 2010, 12:45 pm1040 says:
mega fail. you should learn about hinduism before making claims about it. also, the success of christianity and islam have very little to do with their “universality” (whatever that means), and a lot to do because they were spread throughout the world using military and political means.
July 15, 2010, 12:52 pmMatt says:
With regard to the “new atheists” I recommend The Irrational Atheist, which methodically dismantles their best arguments and proves their claims false. The book can be downloaded for free as well, so cost need not be a barrier to reading it.
July 15, 2010, 1:03 pmStrict says:
“Unbelief is as dogmatic as belief.”
No. Whether or not someone’s lack of belief is “as dogmatic” as another’s belief depends entirely on the individual attitudes of the two persons involved.
Believers and nonbelievers alike can have bad attitudes.
For example, an atheist might think his nonbelief makes him superior to believers:
1. I am more rational than believers because I form beliefs based on reason and experience, not on faith and superstition. I am smarter than them because I arrived at my own position rather than accept a position force fed to me by authority figures.
2. I am stronger emotionally and psychologically than believers because I do not need to rely on the crutch of religion.
3. I am freer than believers because I’m not bound to perform liturgies and rituals.
A believer might also have superiority issues.
“I don’t believe there is a God” is a statement of personal belief. There’s no judgment about the beliefs of others. That’s it. “There is no God” is a statement of fact. What follows from this is that the speaker must think people who do believe in God are wrong. That is arrogant and dogmatic. There is nothing inherently dogmatic about saying “I don’t believe there is a God.”
Similarly, a statement of “I believe there is a God” is just a statement of personal belief. A statement like “there is a God” is more a statement of fact, and it likewise follows that the speaker thinks that people who do not believe are wrong. That is also arrogant and dogmatic.
July 15, 2010, 1:06 pmChrisTS says:
There may be good reason to believe that we do not know all that can be known, or even to believe that there are things unknowable to humans. That does not provide any basis for believing in the existence of some particular thing.
July 15, 2010, 1:11 pmStrict says:
1040: “also, the success of christianity and islam have very little to do with their “universality” (whatever that means), and a lot to do because they were spread throughout the world using military and political means.”
But they didn’t spread magically. They spread because they are willing [VERY WILLING] to take on converts. “Universality” means that they welcome ALL COMERS, or more pessimistically, that they want to TAKE and incorporate all people they encounter.
Conversion is the cornerstone of Christianity and Islam.
Judaism remains small because it doesn’t care about conversions. Conversion is not the cornerstone of Judaism.
Hinduism only cares about conversions to the extent of re-conversions [that is, converting back to Hinduism people who were formerly Hindus but who left to become Christian or Muslim]. Otherwise, you pretty much have to be born a Hindu. You can’t just join the club at will, like you can with Christianity and Islam.
July 15, 2010, 1:12 pmGaryP says:
Regardless of the truth of the existence of God, the atheistic nature of our society’s elite members is a serious danger to society and produces real suffering among for people who have neither the intellect nor resources to function without a system of morality based on faith. The results of the survey mentioned in the post are accurate. Without a belief in God, morality in a society is impossible.
July 15, 2010, 1:15 pmTwo constraints once controlled the actions of the majority of Americans. 1) A common belief in a God that watched our behavior and punished us, in this life or the next, for bad behavior. 2) A fear of ostracism by our community and family for bad (or, if you like, unconventional) behaviour.
Both of these beliefs produced individual cases of suffering (fear, guilt, and repression). However, the overall effect was to guide (or coerce, if you like) most people to act in a way conducive to a civil, peaceable society.
The hostility of our current elites to both religion and conformity was once confined to the rich (because they were able to buy their way out of trouble) and the destitute (because they had nothing to lose) with a few free spirits thrown in (usually artists who were given special exemptions due to their “talent.”)
This withdrawal of restraint on bad behavior has been transmitted to the general populace via our schools (influenced by elites in academia), our media (an echo chamber for elite sentiments) and supported financially by government (controlled by our elites).
The result is wasted and blighted lives. Illegitimate births now exceed births within a functioning family. Drug abuse is rampant and destroys the lives (and families) of the working class. Divorce ends the majority of marriages.
Half the population has an IQ less than 100. Philosphical reasoning and subtle arguments about morality do not appeal to people who have difficulty reading, and comprehending, a newspaper.
Regardless of the appeal of “freedom from conventional morality” and the desire to eliminate the “opiate of the masses,” the practical effect of atheism and the death of conventionality has been untold suffering among people unable to grasp much beyond the new meme that there is no God to monitor their behaviour and to hell with what your neighbors think.
The triumph of the elites has destroyed family life, made vice acceptable (or even desirable), and created many times the suffering than the belief system and social restraints they replaced.
Look upon you works, you mighty, and despair.
VD says:
“To many people–including Nobel Prize Winner, Elie Wiesel–the problem of evil is a stumbling block to religious faith because God supposedly abandoned his people at Auschwitz, Dachau,Treblinka, etc.”
That may be, but then, Elie Wiesel was never a Christian. And while it’s quite understandable that his faith was destroyed by the horror he experienced, he apparently wasn’t all that familiar with the Torah, despite his Orthodox upbringing, given the clear warning given to the Jewish people regarding what would happen if they abandoned their covenant. See Deuteronomy 29.
All the nations will ask: “Why has the LORD done this to this land? Why this fierce, burning anger?” And the answer will be: “It is because this people abandoned the covenant of the LORD, the God of their fathers, the covenant he made with them when he brought them out of Egypt. They went off and worshiped other gods and bowed down to them, gods they did not know, gods he had not given them. Therefore the LORD’s anger burned against this land, so that he brought on it all the curses written in this book. 28 In furious anger and in great wrath the LORD uprooted them from their land and thrust them into another land, as it is now.”
It seems a little disingenuous for a supposed believer to be surprised that awful things happened when there is a clear and documented warning that awful things would happen if the covenant was abandoned. It seems to me that the more logical conclusion to be drawn from the tremendous suffering of the Jewish people during the Shoah would be that their God, in fact, exists.
July 15, 2010, 1:18 pmcboldt says:
– Half the population has an IQ less than 100. –
July 15, 2010, 1:19 pmThat’s pretty much a throwaway. The same would be true is the average intelligence of humankind was increased a thousandfold.
Strict says:
” the atheistic nature of our society’s elite members ”
Gary, if you’re going to say this, name some names.
Please, I’d like to know who our elite atheist overlords are. You can’t say “society is dominated by atheist elites” unless you name some names.
July 15, 2010, 1:21 pmMike P Wagner says:
That “common error” is precisely the distinction between agnostic and atheist – but I was taught that distinction by Jesuits. Maybe they had nefarious purposes …
So from your point of view, the difference between an atheist stance and an agnostic stance is quantitative – not qualitative. If a assess the probability of the existence of a divine being as less than X (X = 6/10 or so), then they are a atheist, if they assess it as greater than X, they are an agnostic?
That seems a singular definition to me.
But even accepting that definition appears to me make an assertion of certainty that is suspect.
I can assert the there is a 1 in 52 chance of my drawing a Queen of hearts from a deck of cards, or that my chance of winning the lottery is 1 in the number of tickets sold for that lottery. I actually have a lot of knowledge about those events.
Do we know enough about the existence of Diving Beings to assert that there is a 1 in 10 billion or 1 in 1000 billion (pick any number) probability of the existence of a Divine Being?
I don’t have enough faith in our knowledge (probably in our ability to know) to make such claims. Such claims smell an awful lot like an article of faith to me …
My thought is the existence or non-existence of a Divine Being is essentially unknowable – therefore any assertion about the probability of the existence of a Divine Being is also unknowable.
July 15, 2010, 1:21 pmStrict says:
“It seems to me that the more logical conclusion to be drawn from the tremendous suffering of the Jewish people during the Shoah would be that their God, in fact, exists.”
Not at all. That would only make sense if the Jews had indeed abandoned their covenant, and then the Holocaust happened as a result.
This is wrong because (1) the Jews didn’t abandon their covenant. And (2) the Nazis weren’t God’s agents meting out God’s punishment to the Jews for abandoning their covenant.
July 15, 2010, 1:25 pmAdamK says:
Based on your recitation of the fact pattern, as you understand it, I surmise that the specific article that you read left out a lot of facts that are actually found in the judge’s decision, including (1) the evangelical principal, who was good buddies with the head of the church, actively contriving to have the ceremony moved to the church, despite the school board voting to the contrary, and (2) there being larger, closer, significantly less expensive facilities that the students could utilize, but which the principal chose to ignore.
It’s a story that’s spun to make atheists and secularists look bad – how dare they interfere with these kids’ graduation and deny their family the chance to see them walk! – when in truth it was a principal trying to direct some taxpayer money to his church under a flimsy claim that there weren’t any other suitable venues.
July 15, 2010, 1:32 pm1040 says:
that’s not true, not by a long shot. hinduism does not have a formalized process of conversion akin to dunking into a pond, but many sects of hinduism have people “converting” through an initiation process. it is just that historically, hinduism hasn’t solicited or coerced conversions (well, sort of. there have been internecine battles between hinduism, jainism and buddhism in the indian subcontinent).
this is not to say that hinduism is superior to christianity or islam, just that the representations of it on this thread are uninformed.
July 15, 2010, 1:35 pmPickled Tink says:
At some point in this country’s history, we stopped mandating religious teachings to all or most members of society. Since that moment, violent crimes are down.
The stupid half of the country does not need to be taught religion to discourage immoral behavior. That is what the criminal code is for.
July 15, 2010, 1:36 pmMikey says:
This concept interests me. If God exists “separate from the universe,” must God have come into the universe to create everything? Would he remain “supernatural” in that case? It seems to me if there’s a God outside this universe, once he enters it he’s bound by whatever laws of physics and matter exist in it, unless he somehow wields such great and unfathomable power that he can operate without such concerns. (Or perhaps, like our Congress, he simply chooses to exempt himself from the laws he “writes…”)
Is there some sort of explanation that posits God could exert influence in this universe while remaining apart from it?
July 15, 2010, 1:37 pmyankee says:
I think describing Christians and Muslims as “taking on” converts is a very creative euphemism for how Christianity and Islam spread.
July 15, 2010, 1:39 pm1040 says:
it can’t be bho because garyp knows he’s a secret muslim.
July 15, 2010, 1:41 pmDave says:
Pipe, this is an interesting approach, but there are infinities of differences between an abstract conception of “an unmoved mover” and the concept of God attacked by atheists. In fact, calculus shows us all sorts of examples of infinities which converge to some real values with very few premises which come nowhere near this conception of God. Surely, we can label any set of a priori beliefs a “religion”, but let’s not confuse the atheist/agnostic minimalist approach to the theists maximalist one.
Too many theists fallaciously use your philosophical argument as an argument for their conception of God.
July 15, 2010, 1:42 pmStrict says:
“many sects of hinduism have people “converting” through an initiation process.”
Converting from what? “Many sects”? “Initiation process”? Do you mean a Hindu being initiated into some special sect of sadhu or yogi? You claim to be so well informed, yet your statements are VERY scant on details.
July 15, 2010, 1:46 pmyankee says:
I suggest you read up on the history of race in America.
People like to tell stories about the moral degredation of American society, but they always ignore past depravities we’ve thankfully moved beyond.
July 15, 2010, 1:46 pmChrisTS says:
The meme about the need for [belief in]a divinity to ground morality is so tired and tiresome.
Perhaps belief is an effective motivator for many people. But, what is crucial is what they believe the divinity determines to be moral and immoral. If one’s religion teaches that slaughtering certain children is morally permissible, or even required, should the rest of us celebrate this ‘morality’?
There is nothing ‘objective’ about a religously-grounded morality. Religions vary. The interpretations of a single religion’s purported moral standards vary. The ‘objectivity’ is a myth in the minds of the believer.
In fact, why should one be comforted by the claim that a divine being has determined that ‘X’ is immoral and ‘Y’ is morally good, unless one already believes that, in fact, ‘X’ is immoral and ‘Y’ is morally good?
If it is right/good only because a purported god approves of it, there is little claim to objectivity. If the god approves of it because it is right/good, then we do not need the middle man.
July 15, 2010, 1:56 pmyankee says:
Very true! An unmoved mover need not bear any resemblance to a “god” as traditionally conceived. Is it divine? Does it merit worship or reverence? Has it promulgated any revelations or moral laws? Does it intervene in human affairs? Does it care about humans at all? Is contemplating it a path to goodness or enlightenment? Does it offer rewards or punishments in the afterlife? Does it have the power to cause miracles that violate otherwise inviolate natural laws? Not all gods have all these characteristics, but it’s odd to call something with none of them a “god.”
July 15, 2010, 1:57 pmyankee says:
And such religions are hardly unknown; in fact they’re the most popular religions in our society. See, e.g., most of the book of Joshua.
July 15, 2010, 1:59 pmChrisTS says:
Stick this in your pipe and smoke it.:
The problem that led Aristotle to posit one or more unmoved movers was epistemic, not ontological. He thought humans simply could not bear the idea of an infinite regression – not that such a regression is impossible.
July 15, 2010, 2:00 pmChrisTS says:
yankee:
What? You thought I just came up with that example out of nowhere? (nihil ex nihilo)
July 15, 2010, 2:03 pm:-)
ChrisTS says:
yankee:
Thought thinking itself. There’s a divinity I can get behind. And, the requirements of ‘worship’ are pretty minimal.
July 15, 2010, 2:05 pmAnthony says:
No, because that requires assigning a probability to the existence of god, and generally an atheist doesn’t do that, they just assume the nonexistence of god pending evidence to the contrary.
July 15, 2010, 2:07 pmCynical says:
This is an old worn-out canard about atheism.
Take the origin of the universe. We know it’s expanding and getting less dense and colder (Hubble constant, etc.), so when it came into existence it was smaller, denser and hotter. If that point was small enough, the entire universe would have been plasma. After enough expansion and cooling, the plasma would become atomic matter and the plasma’s glow would “disconnect” from the atoms and continue into space, getting colder and redder as the universe expanded. We see that as the cosmic background radiation (CBR). And if the universe is as uniform as it is, something must have happened much earlier than that to equalize all but quantum-level variations. That’s inflation, and we see the frozen quantum-level variations in the CBR to this day.
All of this evidence takes us back to some incomprehensibly minuscule fraction of a second after matter, energy and space itself arose, and we don’t need to invoke anything but physical laws to account for it. We have better evidence for this than we have for many crimes for which we convict people beyond a reasonable doubt. We don’t need anything else afterward, either; general relativity, nucleosynthesis and stellar evolution are linked, quantum mechanics accounts for chemistry, chemistry accounts for abiogenesis (emergent properties), biology begets evolution which is driven by selective pressures, contingency and (yes) chance. Though it makes the theists whine, we have no need of their hypothesis.
“God of the gaps” is pathetic. Some god who ceased his dealings with the universe after ten-to-the-minus-43rd-power seconds doesn’t have the attention span of a gnat; a god whose most complex accomplishment is a few simple physical laws has less brainpower, too. Some god who pays attention to herding tribes on the east end of the Mediterranean and ties them up with rules about combining fibers in clothes yet fails to tell them about real hazards like comet impacts and infectious disease is more Loki than Yahweh. Yet theists like Rosenbaum take offense when we laugh at his childish credulity.
Atheism is a rejection of deities. It’s a subset of skepticism, which is a general rejection of credulity. That fact that so many people cannot conceive of existence without their own brand of credulity is one more reason to be… Cynical.
July 15, 2010, 2:19 pm1040 says:
i am not looking to prove my knowledge to you :-) my intent to point out that your claims are wrong and make sure that incorrect statements about hinduism aren’t left uncontested.
first, sadhus and yogis are not sects. when i say sects, i mean things like the arya samaj or iskcon, which consist of many people who were born as non hindus and are now hindus. converting from what? really? converting from a non hindu religion that’s what. the initiation process often consists of reciting certain mantras, like the gayatri mantra. also, in many hindu non-hindu marriages, the non-hindu is nominally converted to hinduism during the ceremony.
July 15, 2010, 2:24 pmCynical says:
In other words, no answer would satisfy you that atheists have a legitimate position. Atheists have already stated what they’d accept, and you have decided to ignore the issue rather than engage it. This is why theism is intellectually bankrupt.
July 15, 2010, 2:26 pmtom952 says:
I am an atheist. I do not know what created the universe, and I have no reason to expect that it is knowable. However, I am sure that everything in the world consists of matter and energy that is observable and measurable, and I am sure that invisible supernatural beings do not affect events in the world.
Religious fundamentalists, the ones who claim to take it seriously, all purport to have a connection to the creator as a result of their superior knowledge, and all claim to expect to receive good luck as a result. The good luck requires the invisible supernatural being to act in their favor, or to act to the disfavor of those who disagree with them. This is nothing more than a conceit.
And then there is the omnipotent, omniscient part, which is another hypocritical pretense. There are rules of the universe, either set forth by the creator or just because that is the way have to be. But these rules cannot be violated; you cannot create or destroy matter or energy for example. There is no punishment in hell for doing so, nor will your decendents be banished from the church for ten generations if you do. A rule worthy of the creator is a rule that cannot be violated. If the believers really believed that their god was omnipotent, then the very existence of, say, abortions, is proof that their creator willingly allows abortions, and the only logical response for the believers is to go study their scrolls and figure out where they themselves got it wrong.
July 15, 2010, 2:32 pmVD says:
This is wrong because (1) the Jews didn’t abandon their covenant. And (2) the Nazis weren’t God’s agents meting out God’s punishment to the Jews for abandoning their covenant.
Oh, really now? So, according to the Torah, if the Israelites abandoned their covenant, they would be uprooted from their land and experience all sorts of terrible things. Naturally, your conclusion that because the Israelites were subsequently uprooted from their land by the Assyrians, the Babylonians, and then the Romans, they did NOT abandon their covenant? First, I don’t think either of us are in any position to judge whether they did or not, but given the way events played out, one can only conclude that the covenant was not kept. Second, I’m curious to know how you could possibly claim that the Nazis weren’t God’s agents meting out God’s punishment. For example, we are informed by the Bible that the Assyrians were used for that purpose, and if you happen to have read the Chronicles of their kings, they made the Nazis look like UN Peacekeepers.
You simply don’t know. Neither do I. But we can observe a historical pattern of events that was described rather presciently back whenever Deuteronomy was written.
July 15, 2010, 2:34 pmCJColucci says:
Regardless of the truth of the existence of God, the atheistic nature of our society’s elite members is a serious danger to society and produces real suffering among for people who have neither the intellect nor resources to function without a system of morality based on faith.
God is dead, but please don’t tell the help.
July 15, 2010, 2:36 pmyankee says:
Treating it as non-rhetorical, it depends on the god in question. If a set of beings descended from Olympus in power and glory and proceeded to demonstrate the sorts of powers the Greek gods reportedly had, that would go a long way toward convincing me of their reality. It would be harder for a being to prove it was the all-powerful creator and sustainer of the universe; perhaps if it conjured a new planet, complete with sentient beings and civilization, where none had been before?
July 15, 2010, 2:37 pmPickled Tink says:
Well, no, as a matter of logic, you cannot conclude that the covenant was not kept.
The Torah’s argument is if X (Israelis abandoned their covenant) then Y (they would be uprooted form their land and experienced all sorts of terrible things.) YOUR ARGUMENT is Y (they were uprooted from their land and experienced all sorts of terrible things) therefore X (Israelis abandoned their covenant.)
X -> Y does NOT mean Y -> X.
If they were NOT uprooted from their land, we might conclude that they did NOT abandon their covenant. But you cannot prove, under the above argument, that because they were uprooted, they abandoned their covenant.
If X (you are convicted of a capital crime) then Y (you will die). You died. Does that mean you committed a capital crime?
July 15, 2010, 2:46 pmklp85 says:
VD,
Is it impossible that the texts about deportation and exile in the Torah are predictions after the fact?
Pickled Tink,
I think that we agree, my point was that Ilya and some others seemed to be excluding by definition gods who didn’t meet the Big 3 requirements from being worthy of worship, which doesn’t make sense to me.
As far as the failure of the Roman (and Greek) gods to spread, I think that this was in large part because the Romans (and Greeks) weren’t as pressed to convert. It seems that they were more interested in correlating various deities in their own pantheon to those of others’, most notably between the Greeks and Romans to each other (e.g., Jupiter/Zeus, Mercury/Hermes, etc.), but not exclusively (I believe, for example, that in later years Apollo was correlated to the Mesopotamian god Nabu).
UPDATE: Also, to be fair to VD, the Torah promises that Israel would be safe if they kept the covenant, so under that circumstance that they were uprooted seems to provide greater strength that they broke the covenant. But see above about after-the-fact prediction (and the interests of the writers of the text).
July 15, 2010, 2:50 pmStick this in your pipe and smoke it. says:
Fair point- although I think you are taking my statement as a mathematical proposition. It sounds like you are talking about infinite regress in the same sense as Zeno did. Of course, Archimedes hit upon the notion of convergent infinite series long ago, and modern calculus has proved his theory correct. So yes, you are correct.
However, I am talking about a vicious infinite causal regress (this is why I put “casual” in parentheses). That is, the relationship between cause and effect is treated as real but not temporal, so that the first cause is not a first cause in time but a sustaining cause. Is my distinction clear?
I would like to politely suggest you are wrong on this point, for an unmoved mover, at the very least, implies “an Omnipresent, Eternal, Boundless, and Immutable Principle.” To me, this is at least getting close to a traditional notion of God. Of course it does not imply worship, moral promulgations, etc. But if you throw out God completely, as atheists do, you are also throwing out the unmoved mover. Or would you qualify by saying, “I am an atheist, but I believe in an unmoved mover, first cause, etc.”? What do you think?
July 15, 2010, 2:54 pmChris Green says:
“Rather, as I discussed here, atheism is simply a rejection of the existence of God, by which I mean a being that is omnipotent, omniscient and completely benevolent (the definition [traditionally] accepted by [the vast majority of adherents] of the major monotheistic religions).”
Under that definition, a lot of Christians I know would be considered atheists, since they (we) believe that God is all powerful except with respect to other co-eternal beings, who aren’t necessarily all good (like, for example, human beings) and for whom the process of improving and becoming more Christ-like often requires bad things to happen. In other words, it is not a given, even for a theist, that we were created exnilo by God. Rather, we might have always existed in some form or another and God simply organized us and capacitated us to receive more intelligence. In fact, the one of the Hebrew words used at the beginning of Genesis is more accurately translated as ‘organize’ and not ‘create’. Obviously this requires more explanation which I will hold back on for now so that this comment/post isn’t too long and boring.
July 15, 2010, 2:55 pmStrict says:
1040,
My impression is that the Arya Samaj conversions are actually just re-conversions – converting formerly Hindu Indians back to Hinduism.
And you’re right – the Hare Krishnas do accept converts. Conversion is a big part of the Hare Krisna movement. But that is the minority view, and not at all traditional. It’s a group formed in the 1960s targeting European and American hippie teenagers. It’s arguably not even Hinduism. Hare Krishnas are not representative of Hindu society.
You are also right that you can convert through marriage.
But my point remains – unlike Christianity or Islam, you cannot simply join the club at will, and you pretty much have to be born a Hindu. I made a sweeping generalization, and of course it has its exceptions. Interfaith marriage whereby the non-Hindu converts to Hinduism is extremely rare. You can join Islam simply by proclaiming it. You cannot so easily become become a Telegu Brahmin, for example.
July 15, 2010, 2:55 pmPickled Tink says:
Might just be a debate over definitions. I meant that Zeus comes down and throws lightning bolts on people, he would be worthy of worship because a lot of people value surviving more than faithfully only worshiping gods that are “worthy.” But I don’t think bullies deserve worship, just because they’re stronger/smarter than I am. I might “worship” them superficially if sufficient force is placed on me to do so. Might.
If the Professor means gods “worthy of worship” must be omniscient/omnipotent/benevolent, part of me is inclined to agree. If “god” is just a bully who is stronger and smarter than all people, that god might be worthy of worship in the sense that he can compel worship, but some other characteristics will need to be added to that god to convince me to worship that god in the absence of force or threat (i.e. merit). And omniscient/omnipotent/benevolent is a pretty good starting point for candidates.
July 15, 2010, 3:00 pm1040 says:
but the point is not to become a telugu brahmin. that is like saying an american cannot become an arab muslim. true, but completely besides the point.
also, arya samaj definitely accepts conversions from non hindus.
as the examples i gave demonstrate, this is patently false.
July 15, 2010, 3:01 pmMike T says:
1) The persecutions of the Jewish people following the execution of Jesus are consistent with both Deuteronomy’s prophecy AND Paul’s teaching in Romans 11 (Paul taught that Israel would remain under God’s wrath until God was done with the gentiles).
2) The behavior of the Nazis is entirely consistent with God hardening the heart of a nation against the Jewish people which, according to their own scriptures, He did unapologetically with both Egypt and Assyria. Furthermore, what Titus did to the Jews is essentially that passage of Deuteronomy verbatim.
July 15, 2010, 3:02 pm1040 says:
[for whatever reason, i could not edit my previous comment. so i am reposting]
but the point is not to become a telugu (it’s telugu, not telegu, btw) brahmin. that is like saying an american cannot become an arab muslim. true, but completely besides the point.
also, arya samaj definitely accepts conversions from non hindus.
as the examples i gave demonstrate, this is untrue. further, you don’t become a christian just by proclaiming it. you go through an initiation process. you become a muslim by pronouncing the pledge of faith in front of 2 adult muslims. so, every faith has a ceremony. it is just that christianity and muslim have full fledged sales and marketing teams. hinduism traditionally did not.
July 15, 2010, 3:05 pmyankee says:
It does? The singularity at the beginning of the big bang could be a first cause or unmoved mover, but it wouldn’t be an “Omnipresent, Eternal, Boundless, and Immutable Principle.” Another first cause could have used all its power to create the universe, vanishing or becoming powerless after.
July 15, 2010, 3:07 pmptt says:
I’m an a-THEist. That makes me an a-mono-THEist and an a-poly-THEist. It means I reject any and all RELIGIONS as explanations of the universe.
The most successful religions tend to exhibit more certainty of their own veracity. This allows them to do things that ethical people would find questionable. A few religions provide day-to-day benefits to believers without this feature, but they are rare.
July 15, 2010, 3:10 pmyankee says:
Yeah, but if Ilya’s point is just that there are no gods worthy of worship, that’s a much weaker claim than that there are no gods at all. Couldn’t there be an omnipotent, omniscient, malovelent god? That’s Fred Phelps’s god, who hates virtually everyone, but there’s no way Phelps is an atheist.
July 15, 2010, 3:14 pm1040 says:
well, even the regular christian god isn’t particularly fond of non-christians who express no interest in the faith. that’s several billion people. phelps’ god just hates a few hundred million more, probably. the difference might get buried in the noise…
July 15, 2010, 3:18 pmStrict says:
1040: ” sadhus and yogis are not sects.”
I’m not sure what you mean. There are sadhu sects, right? Naga baba, aghori baba, udasin baba, etc.?
Or are they not called “sects”?
July 15, 2010, 3:21 pmDavid Schwartz says:
Imagine if the universe simply had a first state, and then the fundamental forces caused things to move. This sort of has an unmoved mover (whatever was in the first state) but requires nothing supernatural and nothing divine. The first state is gone the moment the second state arises.
It entails no infinite regress. And it has no paradoxes. You can’t ask what preceded or caused the first state because by definition there is nothing prior to the first state.
And even if you find this possibility to be logically impossible, your argument is still invalid. It’s an argument where you try to rule out all the possible explanations for something we know very little about. There’s always the possibility that the real explanation is, at least for now, one we would not think of. (Akin to Raymond Smullyan’s example of arguments over what holds the Earth up in 5000 BC.)
July 15, 2010, 3:21 pmPickled Tink says:
Couple ways to respond, perhaps:
1: If an entity is not worthy of worship, it may not be a god? Whatever Fred Phelps believes in is not “god,” it is just a very powerful bully. If I can imagine someone who is smarter and more powerful than I am, would you suggest that I am, necessarily, imagining god or a god? So we’re right back to square one: until we define god, we’re talking past each other. I think, however, that the Professor has a very good starting definition. Something that is omniscient/omnipotent/beneficent is approaching the kind of thing I intuitively think of when the word “god” is thrown around, and my intuition is shared by billions of people. [Note: That does not mean I believe in an omniscient/omnipotent/beneficent god, anymore than I believe in unicorns. But when I think of unicorns, I think of things that look like horses with something on their head. I don't just think of horses.]
2: Fred Phelps disagrees with you that his god, who hates everyone and everything, is malevolent.
3: Fred Phelps is wrong about everything, and framing any discussion in terms of his beliefs is unproductive.
July 15, 2010, 3:24 pmVlad Konings says:
This strikes me as a straw-God argument. If you define God such that there are no constraints on Him whatsoever, then the problem of evil is indeed a serious one. If you believe God is constrained by some fundamental logic, such that (for example) He cannot contradict Himself, then other constraints follow, and the problem of evil becomes much less severe.
Of course, it may be that most believers naively believed in an utterly unconstrained God. That’s not my theology and so not my problem.
July 15, 2010, 3:25 pmyankee says:
Depends on the version of Christianity, most Christians think God loves everyone so much that he gave His only Son to save us. This is in tension with the eternal torment thing, which is why a lot of Christian theologians hold that Hell is really the soul’s misery from separating itself from God. Whereas Phelps’s god, rather than being pained that the humans he loves have rejected Him, just hates everyone.
July 15, 2010, 3:26 pm1040 says:
well what does the g-man think about people who don’t believe in the one true god whose son was given to save us? my understanding is that g’s love is conditional on willingness to be saved, isn’t that true?
July 15, 2010, 3:28 pm1040 says:
they are not sadhu sects, per se, as much as sadhus belonging to those sects. not every aghori/naga/udasin needs to be a baba. this is especially true of the udasin. nagas and aghoris are pretty far off the norm, and have a tantrik faith, so they are not usually integrated with regular society and the only way for them to make a livelihood is to be ascetics/beggars.
July 15, 2010, 3:31 pmGuest14 says:
July 15, 2010, 3:34 pmGuest14 says:
I’m pretty sure that site is a joke. On the page you linked, it makes the claim “Sexually abused girls are 55 times more likely to commit suicide than girls raised Catholic”. True or not, there’s no way that claim could be made in the context of a serious argument about anything.
July 15, 2010, 3:34 pmgecko says:
A universe/omniverse with God may be somewhat more complex than a universe without but if God always existed why would it be more unlikely? Its the events that matter not the number of entities assuming the entities have no cause.
The omni/multi/meta/universe is subject to natural laws and thus it and its parts cannot do things that God can. As for God adding nothing, I think thats debatable.
July 15, 2010, 3:37 pmMikey says:
Seems to me the view of the omniscience/omnipresence/omnibenevolence of God must vary among even Christian denominations. I was raised in a rather fundamentalist denomination and was always taught that God is all three, and if he wasn’t then why would he be God to start with?
July 15, 2010, 3:39 pmFredosaurus Rex Friday XIII says:
Atheism and agnosticism are not exclusive concepts. It is entirely possible to consistently be both an atheist and an agnosnostic.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Negative_and_positive_atheism
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Agnosticism#Types_of_agnosticism
July 15, 2010, 3:39 pmgecko says:
Atheism and agnosticism mean different things to different people so arguing over it without agreeing on the definitions is utterly pointless.
July 15, 2010, 3:42 pmohwilleke says:
“the existence of God, by which I mean a being that is omnipotent, omniscient and completely benevolent (the definition [traditionally] accepted by [the vast majority of adherents] of the major monotheistic religions).”
I would suggest that this is a poor definition (despite its time honored use) because it is not consistent with common place understandings of what “God” means and suggest an alternative definition: “God is an super-physical principle that intervenes with moral purpose in the world.”
Some aspects of the traditional definition of God cited in the original post, like the requirement that there be a “being” does not include forms of religious belief like “karma” or “the force” or “Tao” that don’t necessarily involve a “being” per se, that cause moral good to triumph (at least when it is scarce) for supernatural reasons, but would be rejected by most atheists as well. Indeed, many adherents of Eastern and polytheist religions would be considered strictly speaking to be atheists under the “traditional” definition.
Monotheists are also exceptional among theists, an not even united among themselves, in the view of God as omnipotent and omniscient.
Almost all polytheist belief systems (which were not atheistic in any conventional sense) and even many representations of God in the Hebrew Bible are not consistent with omnipotence. One could sneak around God’s back undetected, in both polytheist myth and most of the Hebrew Bible, at least for a while.
Omnipotence also seems inconsistent with the belief of many forms of Christian belief that God has made a powerful and perhaps even unbreakable covenant to respect human free will (a common trope in inspirational literature).
The benevolence requirement too rules out many conceptions of God that are widely held by non-atheists, but not by atheists, such a Zoroastrian style dualist views of a good God and an evil God fighting in this world for men’s souls, which is probably closer to the most common folk views of theism than either scripture or classical metaphysics. It also rules out the strong theological strain of thought that God’s conception of good and evil is so foreign to human ways of thinking that the human meaning of benevolence is inapplicable to and does not bind God. In other words, there is nothing logically inconsistent about a metaphysics in which God is not benevolent.
In sum, the omniscient, omnipotent and benevolent definition of God is a counter-intuitive defintion closer to Platonism (and Neo-Platonism was a very strong thread in Christian philosophy from the second century onward), than it is to the living folk view of God held by theists in any age.
A definition of God (for purposes of distinguishing between theists v. atheists) that focuses on purposeful intervention in the world with moral purpose is far more important, and has important implications for the issue of creation and theism.
A moral intervention definition doesn’t rule out a deist “Clockmaker God” conception of a Creator God who brings the universe into being without knowing precisely how it would play out and then walks away. This makes the argument regarding beliefs about the origins of the universe a side issue in the question of theism v. atheism.
But, an intervention in the world definition of God does have a lot of real world applications that allow us to distinguish the atheist from the theist on the basis of real world behavior in ways that fit our intuition.
To the theist, in an intervention in the world definition, prayer is a meaningful activity. To an atheist it is not.
To the theist, in an intervention in the world definition, there is a reasonable expectation that righteous conduct will bring just rewards and that bad conduct will bring divine retribution. To the atheist, using the same definition, the underlying assumption is that life isn’t fair except to the extent that human beings (or other sentients) act to make it so, a view that elevates the importance of human administered justice.
Definitions that are intuitive and correctly distinguish between two groups as they are commonly accepted in most circumstances are better to choose than counterintuitive definitions that don’t group people as they are grouped by other measures. A good definition, in contrast, largely coincides with intuition and common practice, but can add insight in gray areas. So the “traditional” definition of God, simply isn’t appropriate in this kind of debate.
July 15, 2010, 3:44 pmohwilleke says:
It may be a definition that is used by many metaphysical philosophers of Judaism, Christianity and Islam, but it isn’t a very good description of what believers actually believe, or of what scriptural writing of the respective faiths portray.
It also fails spectacularly in distinguishing non-monotheist people who believe in God and/or are religious, from atheists. In particularly, it suggests that polytheists, animists, Buddhists and adherents of Taoism and Zoroastrianism are atheists, an absurd proposition.
July 15, 2010, 3:49 pmyankee says:
I’m glad we can agree on something! My point is just that any definition of atheism that makes Phelps an atheist is transparently absurd.
Likewise with any definition that makes virtually every religion in history other than Judaism, Christianity, and Islam a form of atheism. Whatever the Azetcs were, they weren’t atheists.
What a “god” is from the perspective of Abrahamic theology isn’t necessarily the same as what a “god” is from the perspective of what atheists reject. For that purpose I think Ilya’s definition is far too narrow: if you believe in Shiva, you’re not an atheist even though Shiva is absolutely not omnipotent, omniscient, and omnibenvolent.
July 15, 2010, 3:52 pmklp85 says:
ohwilleke has basically said what I was trying to say.
July 15, 2010, 3:53 pmyankee says:
I think some Buddhists and Taoists might quality as atheists, since (some forms of) those religions don’t involve any beings that they consider to be “gods” or that outsiders have classified as “gods.” But there’s no way polytheists of any stripe are atheists.
July 15, 2010, 3:57 pmAndyMenard says:
Nobody is such a strong word here.
I’ve known masochists that want to be injured. There are plenty of people who commit suicide, some of them chosing to do it by arranging to have someone kill them. Which means “nobody wants to be murdered” is overly strong.
As for nobody wanting to be lied to… People ask to be lied to all the time. Most people in failing relationships want to have their partner say “I love you”, even when both of them know it’s a lie.
Plenty of people are willing to make deals to sacrifice physical freedom, or to accept oppression for some reward. That’s not quite the same as _wanting_ it, but… I don’t want to work for a living either; I accept the hours I put in at my job as the cost for having money. Most people would think of me as therefore “wanting” a job. And for a more direct example: protesting via civil disorder. The protesters usually want to be arrested (i.e. to lose their freedom).
July 15, 2010, 3:57 pmohwilleke says:
The Lex Luther you describe is very close to the deist conception of God that was widely held by intellectuals at the time that the United States was founded (true atheism didn’t really hit is prime until the Origin of the Species was published), and I think that it is quite reasonable to call someone who believes in the Lex Luther scenario that you describe an atheist.
The Lex Luther or extraterrestrials that you describe could very well be creators without having an ability in the present to overrule the physical laws of nature. Indeed, there are cosmologies in physics that do not break the laws of physics that suggest ways that universes could be created.
July 15, 2010, 3:57 pmPickled Tink says:
I do not know why it is necessary to throw out the Professor’s definition, which applies to a majority of the world, generally distinguishes the major monotheistic religions from atheists, and thus moves the debate forward at least as it pertains to a majority of the human population. If we KNOW that Zoroastrians aren’t atheists, let’s stop arguing about whether or not our definition contains “Zoroastrianism.” Otherwise, all I would have to do to defeat ohwilleke’s very thoughtful definition is to imagine a religious doctrine that posits a super-physical principle intervening with the world but without (moral or other) purpose. It is difficult to comprehend a definition that can organize all atheists from non-atheists or all theists from non-theists.
Somin’s definition has its own problems, but if we all KNOW that no Zoroastrians are atheists and no atheists are Zoroastrians, let’s just call it a day and move on.
July 15, 2010, 4:07 pmSteve says:
I haven’t read any comments, but just to chime in on the original post, it’s been my experience that most Atheists have a pretty clear idea of the nature and characteristics of the God(s) they don’t believe in. This phenomenon becomes more noticeable when conversing with Atheists of a different culture than one’s own: I spent a few years in Italy, and got to know some very Catholic Atheists.
July 15, 2010, 4:13 pmAnthony says:
Well, certain classes of non-random events (for example, scribbling God Was Here with strings of galaxies) would be rather suspicious, but in general my standards for accepting the thesis of the existence of a god-like entity are the same standards as I have for a scientific theory:
July 15, 2010, 4:15 pm1) the theory must have predictive value — i.e. you can say “If I do X, my theory says Y will happen with greater than random probability”.
2) the theory must make interesting predictions — i.e. the predictions should be different from what we’d expect in the absence of that theory.
3) the theory must be falsifiable — i.e. there needs to be a standard for what would prove the nonexistence of god.
yankee says:
I agree about the issue in general, but it’s a problem here. The function of Ilya’s definition is to support his thesis that the argument from evil is the strongest argument for atheism. I don’t think that’s right: it really only refutes the existence of the god of Abraham, and then only as generally conceived since there are Christian theologians who reject God’s omnipotence or omniscience.
If you adopt a broader definition of atheism, the argument from evil is nowhere nearly as powerful as Ilya claims.
July 15, 2010, 4:17 pmStrict says:
“if you believe in Shiva, you’re not an atheist even though Shiva is absolutely not omnipotent, omniscient, and omnibenevolent.”
I agree if you believe in Shiva then you are not an atheist.
But if you believe in Shiva, then you probably believe he is those things [well, I'm not sure about "omnibenevolent," whatever that means, but certainly that Shiva is highly benevolent or has benevolent qualities].
Or are you arguing that Shiva in fact is not those things, regardless of what people believe?
July 15, 2010, 4:25 pmohwilleke says:
Most conversions to Christianity and Islam can be traced back to the days when religion was a question to be resolved by a feudal lord for all of his subjects, and was sustained the same way.
In the last century or so, when the responsibility for choosing a faith has devolved from rulers to the individual, with the demise of mandatory established religions, the vitality of Christianity (and Judaism) has plummeted.
About half of ethnic Jews are not religious Jews. Participation in church activities (e.g. church services, baptism) has plummeted in Western Europe, particularly among non-immigrant populations. The churches of England and France sit empty. Religious weddings are increasingly the exception rather than the norm. Belief in religious doctrines as measured in surveys has fallen greatly. Papal decrees (e.g. on contraception and abortion) are increasingly irrelevant in nominally Catholic countries.
Formally declaring oneself to be not a Christian is typically one of the last steps that people take in nominally Christian countries, often after a generation or two of apathy, but as the Roman Catholic church has noted on many occasions, secularism is on the rise in many countries that are nominally Christian.
In Eastern Europe, atheism was the state mandated belief system for decades, and Christianity is resurfacing now that it is legal, but those societies remain predominantly secular.
In much of the Islamic world, a big factor in the continued vitality of Islam is that mandatory establishment of religion remains the norm. If someone who grew up Muslim declares himself to be a non-Muslim in Afghanistan, he will be wisked off the prison and face execution.
The bottom line is that openness to individual conversion is a much more modest factor in Abrahamic religious hegemony than commonly believed, and that apparent predominance of Christianity in much of the world is hollow, and hence is a poor argument for its intellectual merit.
July 15, 2010, 4:32 pmPickled Tink says:
At the risk of sounding insensitive, we only really need a working definition to refute gibberish that people believe, not the gibberish that people do not believe. Ilya’s theory covers the gibberish that people believe.
If the response is: Well that doesn’t cover ancient Greeks, the response very well should be, yea so? Theirs was such gibberish that they couldn’t even delude themselves.
I can invent a religion that defines “god” in such a way as to avoid the Professor’s definition, would tend to make me a non-atheist if I believed it, but wouldn’t really advance the field. I believe the universe was created by a guy named Bob, who I call god, sitting on his sofa on Pluto the day before I was born. Bob is not omniscient or omnipotent or beneficent. Have I really described a “religion”? Is Bob a “god” as that word is generally understood? If my belief is sincere, I can’t be an atheist. But hopefully we do not need a working definition that incorporates that gibberish.
In other words, and this isn’t very politically correct of me, if the only thing wrong with Ilya’s construct is that it doesn’t address Zoroastrians… who cares?
July 15, 2010, 4:36 pmStrict says:
“The bottom line is that openness to individual conversion is a much more modest factor in Abrahamic religious hegemony than commonly believed, and that apparent predominance of Christianity in much of the world is hollow, and hence is a poor argument for its intellectual merit.”
Christianity’s openness to conversion explains some of its success [popularity in numbers] around the world, but…I don’t think anyone is using it as an argument for Christianity’s intellectual merit, whatever that is.
You can go to remote villages in Nagaland and villages in Nigeria and find Lutheran Evangelical Churches. You can find a Mormon Temple in Uruguay. These religions reach out and convert. I can walk into almost any local church and easily join and become a member. But, with rare exception, you won’t find Hindu missions outside of places that are already mostly Hindu, like India and Bali.
July 15, 2010, 4:47 pm1040 says:
you have hindu “missions” in the u.s. also, do you know how bali became hindu?
July 15, 2010, 4:49 pm1040 says:
you have hindu “missions” in the u.s. for one, there are iskcons in pretty much every major city in the u.s.
also, do you know how bali became hindu? through conquest by hindu kings. the same way constantine made christianity dominant across a large part of europe. or how islam became popular in the middle east.
proselytizing explains the popularity of islam and christianity in south east asia and africa. it is not about openness to conversion, as much as the sales model of the religion which emphasizes that people need to be saved by being brought into the fold/penalized for not being in the fold.
July 15, 2010, 4:53 pmklp85 says:
“[W]e only really need a working definition to refute gibberish that people believe.”
But the point is that people, even if they don’t believe in the ancient Greek gods, still do have conceptions of the divine that aren’t monotheism with an omniscient, omnipotent, omnibenevolent deity (Hinduism, various polytheistic currents in modern Buddhism, various traditional/tribal/indigenous beliefs, various forms of syncretism with Christianity such as Santeria, etc.). Moreover, if the rise Big 3 monotheism has more to do with conquest than intellectual merit, it’s hard to dismiss other conceptions of god(s) on the grounds that their followers “couldn’t even delude themselves.”
July 15, 2010, 4:53 pmleo marvin says:
Tell that to Lieutenant Palamas. And I advise you not dismiss that as science fiction. Reasonable minds differ about the existence of God, but blaspheme against Kirk and you’ll really piss some people off.
July 15, 2010, 4:57 pmohwilleke says:
Most atheists, and a lot of theists believe that quantum mechanics is an accurate description of the universe. In quantum mechanics, random shit happens routinely in a statistically predictable, but amoral way, all the time. For example, there is a certain likelihood, in quantum mechanics, that somewhere in the middle of empty space, a high energy photon will give suddenly transform itself into positron and an electron, and that they will then smash into each other and turn into a photon again for no particular reason. Indeed, one can’t accurately describe the way light acts in quantum mechanics without considering the possibility.
Secular descriptions of how something could arise out of nothing by cosmologists (i.e. physicists) often see the Big Bang as a particularly extreme example of something randomly popping into reality out of nothing and quantum mechanics suggest is possible even though it is usually not so dramatic.
The laws of quantum mechanics are arguably a super-physical principle. But, because they act in a fundamentally ammoral and random way, they are not rightly described as a God.
While the quantum physics example is the most fundamental, there are lots of physical phenomena whose activity dramatically intervenes in human affairs and was once believed to have no known cause that used to be attributed to divine intervention. Why did the earthquake strike on Tuesday instead of Wednesday? Why did the extraterrestrial object that wiped out the dinosaurs hit Earth instead of Mars?
The story of science has been one of showing either physical cause, or ammoral randomness, in these “out of nowhere” events.
If some new principle that resulted in ammoral, fundamentally random interventions in human affairs were discovered, this too would not be considered a God by either theists or the popular conception of what God means.
For example, proponents of the paranormal often claim that there exists a phenomena called spontaneous human combustion. That, once in a while, apparently almost completely at random, somebody just bursts into flames and leaves only a pile of ashes. Maybe this is due to some obscure otherwise invisible process (perhaps a few bits of anti-matter flying through space crash into matter producing immense energy), perhaps it is simply a super-physical fact.
Whatever the cause, so long as it is strictly ammoral and random to the extent that physical causes cannot be determined, the principle that causes this doesn’t amount to a God any more than lightning strikes and earthquakes and species destroying rocks crashing down out of the sky.
On the other hand, if spontaneous human combustion affected only people who had sexually molested children or only affected those who had rejected God after considering the issue, that phenomena would be convincing evidence that someone or something that qualified as God existed.
July 15, 2010, 4:58 pmohwilleke says:
The reason to care is because what a lot of people who call themselves Christians, or Jews, or Muslims, or just people who believe in God actually believe frequently looks more like Zoroastrianism than it does like the elite conceptions of those religions as set forth by their religious texts and academic philosophers.
Calvinism and Lutheran Christians, for example, adhere very forcefully in their official doctrines to the notion that salvation is a product of predestination and faith alone, not a boon that a person receives for doing good works. But, down in the Pews and outside the Seminary, the view that good works will get you to heaven and sin will send you to hell is predominant. That view is closer to Zoroastrianism, and that theological idea probably made its way into the predominant Christian worldview via the exposure to Zoroastrian ideas that pre-Christian Jews received during the intertestamentary Babylonian exile.
In the same way, despite the fact that there isn’t very strong doctrinal support for a fire and brimstone view of hell in Judaism, this is a pretty widely held view by lots of ordinary people who consider themselves to be Jews.
Indeed, when you go out and ask teenagers about their religious beliefs outside formal religious settings, it is very hard to determine their religious affiliations, because so little religious doctrine is internalized.
A narrow conception of what constitutes “God” based on doctrinal expositions of the concept excludes the living theology of lots of people who are claimed by and affiliated with major monotheistic religions.
July 15, 2010, 5:12 pmPickled Tink says:
I agree. Just because a persons posits that their belief is a religious one doesn’t mean we have to take their word for it. That would seem to be ample response to those alleged “theists” who fall outside of the Professor’s definition. One solution would be to amend the definition to incorporate these self-identifying religious people (though that is not how I would go about it). Another solution would be to do as you’ve done here: deny that whatever they believe in “amount[s] to a God[.]” You’ve done it with atheists, I’m doing it to Zoroastrians.
Whatever “God” means, it doesn’t include my parents, even if I sincerely believe that they created the world. I may present this as a “religious” belief but that doesn’t mean anyone needs take me seriously.
July 15, 2010, 5:13 pmyankee says:
Except there’s lots of other stuff people believe. Even in the Abrahamic traditions there are theologians and religious movements that reject the omnipotent/omniscient/omnibenevelent thing. If he’s trying to make an intellectual case for atheism he needs to do more than refute the stuff most Americans believe.
July 15, 2010, 5:16 pmPickled Tink says:
Which is why there’s no point trying to have a religious discussion with a person who either does not have a developed religious doctrine (whatever that means) or who can’t articulate it. The argument should be between people who a) think they have a developed religious doctrine and can articulate what they think, and b) people who disagree with the conclusions reached by them.
The discussion need only concern the “doctrinal expositions of the concept [of God]” by “major monotheistic religions” because that’s all the discussion can include. I’m not going to discuss the internal combustion engine with a 7 year old Eskimo kid because neither one of us knows what an internal combustion engine is, or how it works, and we’re speaking in different languages.
July 15, 2010, 5:23 pmBarb says:
And this view of Dawkins –and also Brett’s –are dangerous points of view to the freedom of religion –and the freedom to raise children to believe what their parents believe. We who were raised to have evangelical Christian faith believe we were the fortunate ones — to feel secure in the love of a benevolent Creator-God who came to earth in the person of Christ to defeat death and the grave. We know that we are blessed to feel that God is spiritually close –reachable –personal –knowable –and forgiving. Evangelical children also experience intellectual doubts about what they were taught as children–and this was a sad time for me as a teen –but I had one of those religious experiences at 18 that sealed me for life as the Lord’s. Jesus said, “If an earthly father knows how to give good gifts to his children, how much more will the Heavenly Father be willing to give the Holy Spirit to those who ask Him.” Also, “Seek and you will find.” “Ask and it shall be given unto you.” “Knock and the door shall be opened.”
He describes Himself as knocking, too, at our heart’s door: “Behold I stand at the door and knock. If anyone hears my voice and opens the door, I will come into Him and dine/fellowship with Him.”
How can you regard the fabulous design of eyes and sight –and look out your window at the beauties of nature and the universe –and conclude an impersonal evolutional process gave us this great gift of eyesight –and beauty to behold all around us. How do you regard a new-born baby and the feelings he evokes in you –or the complexity of male and female anatomy and its reproductive capability with the pleasure factor built in –and conclude, “There is no love in creation –no loving Creator.”
The Jewish God-Story and its Christian addendum make more sense than any other explanation of origins and any other theory of deity. I believe it is the story we are to believe –even though it doesn’t explain everything. Like why is there evil at all? It seems to be necessary for the contrast with GOOD –and for free will. Though I could do without it –and Jesus suggests that Heaven WILL be free of sin, sickness, temptation and death.
The Bible says it is impossible to please God without faith. “Your faith has made you whole,” Jesus said to a lady who touched Him and received healing for it. “Faith is the Victory” is an old Gospel song.
Believe! Be winners!
July 15, 2010, 5:26 pmPickled Tink says:
Maybe, but if Ilya only wants to present atheism as an intellectually preferable alternative to one of the major monotheistic religions, then that’s a great definition. There might be other, perfectly suitable “atheistic” response to people who believe in a “God” that isn’t omnipotent/omniscient/omni-benevolent. One could deny that those things exist as well, or one could deny that the thing being described is a “God” at all.
July 15, 2010, 5:27 pmohwilleke says:
It is remarkably easy, actually, with only a fairly modest amount of knowledge of evolutionary biology.
July 15, 2010, 5:39 pmAnthony says:
And has been done independently multiple times. Sometimes more than once in the same species; pit vipers have both eyes and an eyelike pit that sees infrared. Not to mention that human eyes are kind of a botch job, we have a giant blind spot due how the optic nerve links up.
July 15, 2010, 5:48 pmCJColucci says:
Nobody would be any kind of atheist at all unless someone, or at least people numerous or important enough to bother about, suggested that there was some kind of being that fits under the general umbrella term of “God.” What, exactly, an atheist believes, and, more importantly, what arguments support those beliefs, depend on what kind of “God” is being asserted. With one exception: it is always possible to say, as to any conception of God being offered, that there is no particularly good evidence for that being’s existence. Positive arguments offered to show the unlikelihood of a God’s existence, though, change depending on the type of God involved. The “problem of evil” is a problem for the 3-O God of Abrahamic monotheism, or even for a really powerful, if not omnipotent, really smart, if not omniscient, and really well-meaning, if not omni-benevolent being. I think it works for alleged deities no more powerful, smart, and well-meaning than Superman. I daresay that if Superman existed, the world would be a very different place insofar as the world’s good/evil balance is concerned. But the problem of evil is not a particularly good positive argument against the Olympian pantheon. In fact, I can think of no good positive argument against the Olympian pantheon: the world is the way it is because it is run by a committee, whose members work at cross-purposes. Seems to fit the facts.
July 15, 2010, 5:48 pmSince an atheist is defined by disbelief in what someone else asserts, the nature of the disbelief, and of the disbeliever, must change depending on what the atheist is being asked to believe or disbelieve. It is often easy to tell, even without clues from last names, whether an atheist was raised Protestant, Catholic, Jewish, or with no religion at all. It may be easy to tell about Muslims, as well, but I don’t know enough Muslims, to say nothing of Muslim-raised atheists.
God says:
People, why do you reduce and deny me by sophomoric logic, when you are both Me and illogical beings ruled by the irrational?
I am (We are) Irreducible and Irrational. You cannot dispel mystery and uncertainty with mere scientific method and cosmology, although it is important you try. Just remember that you also love, buy movie tickets, and believe in cosmetology.
July 15, 2010, 5:58 pmyankee says:
I was raised in a non-Abrahamic religion, which probably influences my sense that as an intellectual matter it’s important to refute the existence of non-Abrahamic gods. They’re just as (im)plausible as YHWH, so why would you consider yourself done after refuting YHWH?
It probably also influences my point of view that gods, souls, and afterlives are distinct issues, while most Americans, atheist and not, see the the existence of YHWH, souls, and afterlives as the same issue.
July 15, 2010, 6:01 pmN. D. Terminable says:
How can we argue the existence or non-existence of something in the set of everything that is, when we don’t know everything that is, only sets of things, and imprecisely, insufficiently at that?
We think we know that {1,2,3, the world as many scientists currently see it circa 2010} includes three integers and a construct of our universe having limited, rationally verifiable principles as currently understood, and which we know will change, markedly, over time, time and time, again.
We exist in the set of our “known” universe, and a) may not be able to discern godness within it or b) can’t get out of it to gain perspective on it’s external character to us, perhaps essential character to something else.
We could be an inspired painting in someone’s parlor.
July 15, 2010, 6:45 pmleo marvin says:
Cosmetology, the sacred science. As David Johansen used to say, “The higher the hair, the closer to God.”
July 15, 2010, 7:06 pmN. D. Terminal says:
How are we to verify God were It to reveal itself to us? Might it only be a super intelligent entity that uses tricked-out physics in ways not yet discovered by humans?
God is and always will be a faith, with its attendant utility, comedy and tragedy. I love the idea of godness imbued throughout everything, but one day may be convinced by that Spaghetti Monster deity (which sounds a little like string theory which, in turn, I envision as a Supreme Goddess playing the harp and experiencing menses…)
July 15, 2010, 7:14 pmMark Field says:
Heh. I once argued on line that the world of the Greeks and the world of the existential philosophers like Sartre and Camus were essentially (pun intended) similar.
July 15, 2010, 7:16 pmzuch says:
Some (but not all) atheists do. You know, like Ayn Rand….
Cheers,
July 15, 2010, 7:25 pmfishbane says:
The “unmoved mover” conception is just a reformulation of “god”. It is a tautology, or logical paradox, depending on how one wants to define it. Lots of things that look like religion if you squint have such things in their cores – I believe, but cannot prove, that it is a consequence of something that looks a bit like Gödel’s theorem.
The problem is that it is completely unneeded to head there. There are theories that our universe is a bubble inside of another one that will one day “pop”. The consequence would be a finite universe with a beginning and end, no ‘unmoved mover’, nothing but physics. There are other theories with beginnings and no ends (or rather, different “ends” depending on how you define it). Still others posit some cyclical nature to the universe, which gives you beginnings and ends, but infinitely many of them.
Really, the problem is fundamentally that the primary question Rosenbaum thinks is so clever (something from nothing) is not meaningful. It is closer to “this sentence is false” than something that can be answered.
July 15, 2010, 7:31 pmyankee says:
I’ve wondered the same thing. Any mid-level cleric could do most of the stuff Jesus does in the NT. Except raising himself from the dead, he’d need to be 15th level to cast death pact. A deity doesn’t even need to be involved since you can be a cleric of a “cause” (the cause being self-promotion, presumably). So it’s a bit of a leap from “back from the dead” to “omnipotent, omniscient Creator and Sustainer of the Universe.”
July 15, 2010, 7:39 pmzuch says:
Prof. Somin:
Depends what you mean by “moral[s]” and “good”. Those dearly held beliefs of the religious adherent are good. The very same dearly held belief of an atheist is not. After all, if it doesn’t involve omniscience, how can it be “good”?
Cheers,
July 15, 2010, 7:59 pmAnthony says:
To a certain degree it wouldn’t matter. If there’s some super-powered entity wandering around raising the dead or whatever, that seems worthy of a fair amount of at least respectful wariness whether or not it’s actually ‘God’.
July 15, 2010, 8:01 pmyankee says:
But should we believe its threats of eternal torment in the afterlife? It makes a difference to me!
July 15, 2010, 8:07 pmzuch says:
Yes, they do. And from there, it’s turtles all the way down….
Cheers,
July 15, 2010, 8:09 pmCJColucci says:
I was raised in a non-Abrahamic religion, which probably influences my sense that as an intellectual matter it’s important to refute the existence of non-Abrahamic gods. They’re just as (im)plausible as YHWH, so why would you consider yourself done after refuting YHWH?
I don’t disagree with any of that, yankee. It’s just that what works as a refutation of(or, to put it less strongly, a positive argument against)non-Abrahamic gods may be much different from the arguments used against the more familiar Abrahamic deity. I think you can probably always say “where’s the evidence” regardless of the specifics of the deities in question. And people naturally tend to concentrate on the god-concepts more familiar to them.
July 15, 2010, 8:17 pmzuch says:
The Invisible Pink Unicorn (PBUHHH!) is pink, not purple. And methinks She’s pissed at this blasphemy of yours and likely to trample you to death.
Cheers,
July 15, 2010, 8:22 pmleo marvin says:
I’m familiar with the “all the way down” part. It’s “Yes, they do” I’d appreciate a link for.
July 15, 2010, 8:26 pmDavid Schwartz says:
No, but it’s the only one that can be reasonably explained in the context of this blog post. A scientific understanding of color is not needed to use color as distinguishing factors — that people agree on what colors things are for practical purposes is sufficient evidence that there must be something objective behind it.
For morality, there are many ideas of what that is with various amounts of evidence behind them. But that is not needed to defend the principle that something objective accounts for this agreement.
July 15, 2010, 8:29 pmMikey says:
This seems at least semi-appropriate:
Why Our Universe Must Have Been Born Inside a Black Hole
July 15, 2010, 8:37 pmzuch says:
One of the favourite ‘arguments’ of the creationists/IDers is that “everything must have a creator”. Applying their ‘logic’ results in the recursion. And then it’s turtles all the way down….
Cheers,
July 15, 2010, 8:43 pmanonymous says:
Ilya Somin,
If you can somehow read down this far… My dad is a former Lutheran pastor, Missouri Synod. When he and I discussed the problem of evil, he said God is not all good/powerful/knowing. He said the scripture doesn’t support this, and that this was NOT what they were taught in seminary. It’s just a mischaracterization used by philosophers but not pastors.
Just so you know.
July 15, 2010, 8:47 pmAnthony says:
Depends; how generally credible does this entity seem to be, what are the costs of compliance, and what are the potential risks* and benefits of compliance?
July 15, 2010, 8:51 pm*For example, he could be a soul-eating demon who can only devour his worshipers. That does seem like a pretty plausible reason for wanting worshipers.
PlugInMonster says:
Evangelical Christians I know tell me how God is a loving God and if bad thing happen to good people, it’s not god’s fault.
July 15, 2010, 9:09 pmleo marvin says:
That’s a logical argument for why they ought to believe it. What I questioned was whether they actually believe it (or assert it).
July 15, 2010, 9:18 pmzuch says:
IC. I was just using a little shorthand (a/k/a “mushy thinking”) to get to the punch-line. Of course, you’re right, I’d be presumptuous to opine on what anyone actually believes. First of all, wouldn’t I be presupposing they even exist? ;-)
Cheers,
July 15, 2010, 9:23 pmPickled Tink says:
Well that settles it. An anonymous internet poster’s dad is who we should have bothered at the get go. So much wasted time, now.
By the way my dad is the strongest man in the whole world.
July 15, 2010, 9:37 pmcboldt says:
– By the way my dad is the strongest man in the whole world. –
July 15, 2010, 9:46 pmNo need to be ashamed, smell isn’t everything.
anonymous says:
Pickled Tink,
Screw you if you don’t care about the facts on the ground. I’m not trying to appeal to authority; I’ve heard many other people say the same thing. The point is that a Christian who doesn’t define God as the philosophers think God should be defined is not going to be persuaded by the “problem of evil” argument as presented. Religious people look to scripture to know God, not idealized philosophical definitions.
July 15, 2010, 9:51 pmmattski says:
The funny stuff is coming any minute now. I can feel it.
July 15, 2010, 10:24 pmDavid Schwartz says:
If so, it’s more appropriate to pity this god than to worship him. Presumably, he sees most of the evil in this world, is at least to some extent responsible for it, and can do nothing about it. That must really suck. Depending on what powers he has and how he exercises them, hate might be appropriate as well.
July 15, 2010, 10:36 pmNorthern Dave says:
Off to bed…this fellow puts it well methinks so I’ll just leave the link:
http://www.truefreethinker.com/articles/flying-spaghetti-monster-invisible-pink-unicorns-et-al-part-1-4
July 15, 2010, 10:47 pmRicardo says:
1040, with all due respect, I added the qualifier “caste-based” in my original comment so I don’t know why you chose to label it a “mega fail.” You are in No True Scotsman territory here. I attended the Hindu wedding of one of my closest friends in Delhi and a big chunk of her extended family failed to attend. Can you guess why? She was a Brahmin and her fiance was a Vaishya. Had she married a Muslim, the scandal would have been multiplied several times over.
I’m not interested in or qualified to engage in the argument of who has the more “authentic” version of Hinduism: my friend’s extended Bihari family or the particular religious groups or movements you have in mind. But caste-based Hinduism is a very real phenomenon and people who practice it will not accept converts from outside the caste system.
July 15, 2010, 10:52 pmhey, man says:
Maybe God is conceived in our image.
No matter, though, if the idea of directional, flowing time is just one way of experiencing what we perceive to be our experience, and if thought is energy. Could be our collective consciousnesseses sparked a higher One to birth all that made us to explain/ ensure our existence. Who created whom doesn’t much matter in time loops.
Blame it on Calvin and Leary.
July 15, 2010, 11:04 pmRicardo says:
Most of my Hindu friends consider iskcon to be somewhat loopy.
Balinese Hinduism is quite different from the Hinduism practiced on the subcontinent and represents a fusion between local animist beliefs and traditions and the beliefs and traditions of Hindu India. I believe the Balinese have a practice of worshiping local and ancestral gods in addition to the more traditional gods of Hinduism. I’m not sure if they recognize caste at all. They also attach religious significance to one of the volcanoes on the island — an idea that I think would be quite alien to most Hindu Indians and very clearly a case where local beliefs have influenced religious practice.
July 15, 2010, 11:11 pm1040 says:
so, i am in no true scotsman territory because your anecdote doesn’t match the broad brush strokes of how hinduism is practiced?
there are christian families that refuse to accept muslim brides, muslim families that refuse to accept hindu grooms, shias that do not want to marry into sunnis and there have been a couple of major battles between catholics and protestants, and it is a source of continuing tension in parts of the world. i have no idea what this has to do with your statement about conversion.
well, so are various local flavors of christianity and islam. again, it has very little to do with your point.
there are also hindu temples and priests in pretty much every major city. and i know many hindus from the old country who go to the iskcon satsangs too.
July 15, 2010, 11:17 pmgoogle van guru says:
The silhouette of God might be suggested by non-locality; the profile of man by submission to causality, position and a past.
July 15, 2010, 11:21 pmSuperSkeptic says:
Forgive me, but I’m not quite sure what you mean by this. Would you mind elaborating?
July 15, 2010, 11:43 pmRicardo says:
No, you are in no true scotsman territory because my comment was about caste-based Hinduism which is a real phenomenon. Are you going to deny that many Hindus still recognize caste as being an important part of identity and reject the idea that outsiders can convert?
Iskcon members have encountered problems in India as their non-Indian members have tried to enter the Jagannath Temple in Puri. The people who control the Jagannath Temple insist that only Indians born into Hinduism be permitted to enter into the temple. I suppose this is just another isolated case.
So first my anecdote doesn’t match these “broad brush strokes” you mention and now it is irrelevant? Which is it? As you know, many Hindus oppose inter-caste marriages because it means the children cannot be considered members of either parent’s caste. The children cannot grow up to be full members of the ethno-religious community and could not participate in certain rituals and would not be welcome at certain temples.
So are you going to claim that my friend’s Bihari relatives are an isolated case? If not, again, why do you insist on arguing on this point?
The point — which I have to say I thought was obvious — is that Balinese Hinduism pays little if any attention to caste. It is a local adaptation of some Hindu rituals and beliefs. It again has nothing to do with what I wrote. In fact it supports it. For Hinduism to appeal to converts, it has to get rid of caste-based distinctions which it appears to have done in Bali. Buddhism is an even better example of a Hindu-inspired religion that spread outside of India. Again, Buddhism explicitly rejects caste.
Whether one considers Balinese Hinduism the same religion as what is practiced in India or something that deserves to be considered a separate religion is another question. The line between religion and sect is not always clear cut.
July 16, 2010, 12:20 am1040 says:
the problem with outsiders converting has very little to do with caste, and everything to do with ethnicity and culture. many hindus do not automatically trerat converts as low caste. you are confusing two very different things. and discomfort with ethnicity and culture, or even internecine divisions in religions, spans religions as i pointed out.
this is hardly the reason hinduism doesn’t appeal to converts. and your example of buddhism which has very limited uptake in the west is a good counterexample to your theory.
The fact that these relatives reject based on an internecine conflict in the faith would argue for all the “lower castes” leaving Hinduism due to their inferior status. By your theory, Hinduism must be tremendously unappealing to them. That hasn’t really happened, despite several big movements to that effect. In fact, the majority of Hindus in India are “lower caste”. Caste is a major pox on rural Indian culture (across religions, although the basis is Hindu, and the defenders point to the figleaf of occupation), and still holds some limited sway in urban India, but it has very little to do with why outsiders do not convert.
July 16, 2010, 2:23 amLester Livio says:
You rely, my friend on the most negative definition of the word “dogmatic”: “asserting opinions in a dictatorial manner.” (Webster’s College Dictionary).
I prefer the first definition of the term in the same dictionary. Dogmatic: Something that is “of the nature of a dogma; doctrinal.” In that sense, philosophical principles and even national creeds like “Liberté, Égalité, Fraternité” and E pluribus Unum are dogmas (Hugo).
Thus, inasmuch as it expresses its claims about the non-existence of God as a fundamental, incontestable, rational proposition or belief–even in the most benign and inoffensive manner–atheism is as dogmatic as the Islamic faith Creed (There is no God but Allah and Mohammad is his Prophet).
July 16, 2010, 2:50 amLester Livio says:
You rely, my friend on the most negative definition of the word “dogmatic”: “asserting opinions in a dictatorial manner.” (Webster’s College Dictionary).
I prefer the first definition of the term in the same dictionary. Dogmatic: Something that is “of the nature of a dogma; doctrinal.” In that sense, philosophical principles and even national creeds like “Liberté, Égalité, Fraternité” and E pluribus Unum are dogmas.
Thus, inasmuch as it expresses its claims about the non-existence of God as a fundamental, incontestable, rational proposition or belief–even in the most benign and inoffensive manner–atheism is as dogmatic as the Islamic faith Creed (There is no God but Allah and Mohammad is his Prophet).
July 16, 2010, 2:51 amRicardo says:
You seem to be admitting that some do. Participation in certain rituals and admission to certain temples may require being a member of a certain caste. People outside the caste system will be unable to participate in these rituals or enter certain temples. I’m aware that some modern sects don’t recognize any distinction between converts and those born into a certain Hindu caste. I’m not concerned with those sects.
As of today, the Jagannath Temple in Puri excludes all non-ethnic Indians from entering. Until recently, it also apparently excluded Dalits. I can’t think of any mainstream church or mosque that practices such racial or ethnic exclusion explicitly. I don’t think most Jewish congregations would exclude converts either although they still recognize some differences between converts and Halakha Jews (converts cannot marry Kohens, as I recall). What we see in mainstream Hinduism is something quite apart from “discomfort.”
Considering that Buddhism overtook Hinduism long ago in East Asia, I’m not sure why you think it is a counterexample. Most of Southeast Asia was exposed to Hinduism at one point or another yet today Bali is a Hindu (after a fashion) enclave surrounded by Muslims, Christians and Buddhists. I’m not sure you can blame military conquest and imperialism for this, either. After all, India itself was ruled for centuries by Muslims and Christians and yet remained strongly Hindu in character. There must be something special about Hinduism as practiced by Indians that gives it staying power. It appears to have little staying power when introduced to outsiders with a few exceptions.
Moreover, I did not say abolishing caste-based distinctions was sufficient to appeal to converts — it has many other religions to compete with on that basis. I do feel safe in saying it is a necessary condition, though.
July 16, 2010, 3:09 amWes says:
Forget specific religions and denominations. How could anyone read the Holy Bible and draw the conclusion that God is “completely benevolent?” No Christian well-steeped in scripture believes this.
Was God “completely benevolent” when He destroyed humanity in a flood, with the exceptions of Noah and his family? Was He omnibenevolent when He laid waste Sodom and Gomorrah with fire and brimstone? Was Jesus demonstrating His benevolence when He whipped the money changers from the temple?
July 16, 2010, 3:42 amAdjoran says:
Augustine dealt with the entire question in in great depth in The City of God, written in the early 5th Century AD.
Of course anyone can claim to be a “good and moral person” if they get to define the terms themselves. Should they be congratulated for living up their own personal arbitrary standards when, should they fail to do so, they need but change the standards?
July 16, 2010, 4:52 am1040 says:
you seem to think that this has something to do with caste (although a version of hinduism is still extant in bali!) as opposed to the ebbs and flows of converting missions and coercion by rulers, which has far stronger explanatory power both for the death of buddhism and jainism in india, and the spread of buddhism in east asia. clearly hinduism was able to adapt itself to exclude casteism in bali, and there is no reason to believe that an absurd insistence on caste distinctions is why hinduism did not catch on in east asia.
since you seem to be hanging your thesis on this “fact”, i am compelled to tell you that you are wrong.
you should feel safe in saying whatever you wish. i am just pointing out that you are wrong. the lack of spread of hinduism outside south asia has to do with the fact that there haven’t been repeated conquests by hindu rulers nor have aggressive sales and marketing campaigns been mounted. to the extent that asian religions gain a foothold in the west, it is when they remake themselves in the monotheistic mould, at least to some extent. buddhism in the west puts the tibetan dalai lama front and center, iskcon is an evangelical model applied to hinduism with focus on a single god, krishna, and so on.
July 16, 2010, 4:58 am1040 says:
your argument about an exclusionary faith not attracting converts is bizarre, given how well islam, especially its fundamentalist strains, does for itself despite relegating half the converts – the women – to third class status.
this is the exact “no true scotsman” in play. the average hindu will not reject converts as being low caste. your entire “belief system” seems to be based on misinformation about an incident in puri triggered by troglodyte clueless priests. most non-indian converts will interact with hindus in an urban milieu, where their caste will not be an issue. ethnic and cultural barriers will be, though, in many cases, just like in pretty much every other community.
July 16, 2010, 5:04 amVD says:
“On the page you linked, it makes the claim “Sexually abused girls are 55 times more likely to commit suicide than girls raised Catholic”. True or not, there’s no way that claim could be made in the context of a serious argument about anything.”
It would appear you have not read much of Richard Dawkins’s work. That statement, which is based on several studies published in the American Journal of Psychiatry, is nothing more than a direct rebuttal to Mr. Dawkins’s public assertion that greater long-term psychological damage is inflicted upon children who are raised Catholic than upon those who are sexually abused. While you could quibble over whether a proclivity to suicide is a reasonable metric to assess long-term psychological damage, you cannot reasonably assert that the statement is not germane to serious argument about whether childhood sexual abuse or a Catholic upbringing is more psychologically damaging.
The Irrational Atheist is a response to many arguments put forth by the leading New Atheists. I very much agree that many of those arguments are absurd and irrelevant, in addition to being factually incorrect. However, having been made, the arguments required addressing and were therefore duly addressed.
July 16, 2010, 5:54 amRicardo says:
If you can provide actual evidence for this, I’ll concede the argument. You have not though. Iskcon and associated movements you have mentioned are not “average” in any sense.
Your focus on “urban” Hindus isn’t really appropriate. You do realize most Hindus in India (and probably in the world) live in villages, don’t you? If we are talking about “average” Hindus, think of a farmer or petty trader living in UP or Bihar rather than a tech worker living in Mountain View.
As for the temple in Puri, I stand corrected to the extent that foreigners who produce official government ID proving they are Hindu are admitted. This appears to be a recent change and given that citizens of many countries don’t have access to any such official ID, it is symbolic for most people. Note that the subjects of this article were arrested first. Historically, that temple as well as several other temples of great significance (like Guruvayur) did indeed exclude not only all non-Indians but also Dalits (who are outside the caste system).
Your labeling of this view as “troglodyte” and “clueless” does not mean it is not a widely held view. That’s why I’m afraid it is you who is the No True Scotsman offender unless you can bring some actual evidence to bear. No matter how many instances I may dig up of casteless converts being discriminated against in religious ceremonies or temple admission, you will dismiss these as aberrations caused by illiterate bumpkins who don’t understand real Hinduism.
July 16, 2010, 6:03 amRicardo says:
Note that it was only in 2006 that Dalits were permitted to enter the Jagannath Temple. There had been a 300 year ban in place that had excluded them. And what finally got them inside the temple was not a change in religious attitudes but a ruling by a secular Indian court.
July 16, 2010, 6:20 amLargo says:
I suggest that the pantheon of greek gods was not divine to the greeks, in the sense of being that which is not dependent upon any other thing for its existance. The “gods” were of a more powerful class than humans, but they were contingent.
I suggest that what was divine, to the greeks, was form and substance (or the ideals thereof).
The “gods” Apollo and Dionysus, while not divine, exemplify some aspects of the divine polarity.
July 16, 2010, 6:36 amreshuffle1 says:
BobK-
Sorry for the delay, if you’re still about…
“OK, I’ll grant that is one definition of atheism. But how is that different from agnosticism, exactly?”
The short version to your query is that agnostism is about knowledge or knowing-specifically, not knowledge (a+gnosis); atheism is about belief, specifically absence of belief in gods (a+theism).
The distinction of the two is that the former allows for a belief in god(s)-meaning agnosticism is quite compatible with theism-while admitting that the potential god-belief rests on not knowing if god exists; i.e., there’s just not ample knowledge to establish the claim. Of course, agnosticism would be equally compatible with atheism.
Atheism is directly an absence of belief in gods, and no more, and thus isn’t compatible with theism in any sense, despite the similarity to agnosticism insofar as being based on a lack of knowledge and evidence of gods. (Not)Knowing and (non) belief specifically distinguish the two species of language.
A bot too winded, but best I can do.
July 16, 2010, 7:35 amMartinned says:
As a matter of information theory, the minimum amount of information one can have about a problem, i.e. the point of maximum entropy, is one where all states are equally likely. This implies that the probability of God existing must be 50%. You can only assign a different probability to this state if you have some kind of information.
July 16, 2010, 8:54 amPickled Tink says:
You aren’t appealing to authority but you’ve heard many other people say the same thing?
The omniscient/omnipotent/benevolent god isn’t just the philosopher’s god, and you can’t swoop in here and declare that to be the case because your dad says so without subjecting your dad to criticism. It is the position of all major churches, including your dad’s (and probably your dad’s real position, whatever he says to you about it) that god is omniscient/omnipotent/benevolent, for the obvious reason that the infallibility of god — which is the entire and only basis for “look[ing] to scripture to know God” — depends on it. If god isn’t infallible, then scripture is subject to typographical errors. Or, worse yet, it’s just uninspired, or flat out wrong.
If god isn’t omnipotent/omniscient/benevolent then it isn’t clear what distinguishes him from people like your dad, except matters of degree. You wouldn’t worship Superman, unless he twisted your arm. Similarly, if god isn’t omniscient/omnipotent/benevolent, AND he never bothers to show up to exert force, there’s no reason to worship him but for 1 billion cheerleaders holding up GOD IS GREAT placards.
Thus the “philosophical definitions” — first made by devout Christians — aren’t preferable because the debate should only be defined on their terms. They are preferable because, if you define it outside their terms, there’s nothing left to debate! Your dad believes in Zeus.
July 16, 2010, 9:18 amL says:
1. The “problem” of evil is no problem to me, even in the context of an omni/omni/omni God. The fact that evil exists means that an omniscient omnipotent God does not conform to human expectations of omnibenevolence. That could mean that the existence of evil proves that an omniscient omnipotent God is not omnibenevolent, or it could mean that we don’t understand what it means to be omnibenevolent. It could be that what we perceive as evil works some good on us, or works some greater good that we can’t or don’t understand. I know my two-year-old considers it an extreme injustice when I don’t let her play near the hot stove or the side of the road, but I have a better understanding of her well-being than she does. Maybe we stand in the same relationship to God. Being an atheist, I find this all pretty academic, but if I were a theist, it would get me through the night.
2. Irvine Welsh (of Trainspotting fame) wrote a short story about a man who meets God in a pub. He gets very angry with God about the existence of evil and suffering in the world. He tells God that He could do so much more. God angrily points out the hypocrisy–the man could do so much more in his own life as well: treat his girlfriend better, hold down a job, drink less, treat his parents better, make a better effort on his soccer team. I don’t have the book handy, but I think God basically tells the man that He made man in His own image: lazy. (Then the story gets weird.) No point to be made here; I just think of this story when the nature of God and the problem of evil come up.
July 16, 2010, 9:58 amJaimeInTexas (an invisible man ... to the Keynesians) says:
I stay of the internet a few days and I find I missed such fun topic. I read most of the comments above.
1) If there is no God then the cosmos MUST be eternal, without begining nor end — out of nothing, nothing comes.
2) For atheists the cosmos is their god, science their religion, and scientists their priests — science does not make mistakes and is never wrong, the scientist always arrives at the right conclusions, based on the available data at the time.
3) If there is no god, we are, therefore, the result of naturalisitc processes subject to no laws. Whatever laws exists are just the result of completely random interactions between the basic stuff that composes the cosmos.
4) If there is nothing but randomness and we are the product of such interactions, whatever we are, our being, shape, etc. Are nothing but the result of randomness. Especially our thoughts are the result of randomness and whatever it is that we are doing is the result of randomness and of no particular meaning.
I asked an old friend of mine, an agnostic, what did he require to accept the existence of god, if an angel or god himself had to appear before him. My frined’s answer was that had an angel or god himself appeared before him that he would have to question his sanity. There is no human answer to the skeptic.
In conclusion, law, order, human interactions of any given type, like what we are doing in this web site, are nothing but random noise of no value. Mr. Volokh, you can now shut down the web site and everyone can go home, or go wherever randomness bounces you, or not …
And, a question: If god really does not exist, why is it that randomness is able to concieve of such a transcendant being and randomness is able to communicate it in a rational way to other products of randomness?
I finally got it! Randomness is the god of the atheist and of the agnostic.
July 16, 2010, 11:05 amMartinned says:
That’s roughly Hume’s approach to miracles. We should only believe that miracle X happened if it were a greater miracle if it didn’t happen.
On the contrary. If there is a God, then he must be eternal, since a creator for the creator brings us back to turtles all the way down territory. Without God, however, there is no reason for us not to declare the concept of time meaningless when applied to the question “what happened before the big bang?”.
July 16, 2010, 11:17 amPickled Tink says:
You mean David Blaine doesn’t have magical powers?
July 16, 2010, 11:42 amA. Criminal says:
I really hate those things.
July 16, 2010, 11:42 amyankee says:
Eternal only in one direction though! Nothing prevents a creator-god from ceasing to exist (which is what happened to the singularity).
July 16, 2010, 11:50 amJaimeInTexas says:
I gave links to the whol passage so that you can also read the context.
Genesis 1:1
Isaiah 9:1-6
(My note: in the verse “Everlasting Father” as in “the Father of Everlasting” or “the Father of Eternity”)
Isaiah 43:10-11
Isaiah 44:6,8
Isaiah 45:5,18,21,22
John 1:1-14
The Jehova’s Witnesses invented the proposition that Jesus is a created being, not just a body created but a totally created being.
So, no, it is not “turtles all the way down.”
Christians accept the revealed truth that God is the primary mover, the uncaused first, without begining and without end.
July 16, 2010, 12:04 pmL says:
I see stuff like this sometimes. It is utterly ridiculous and of course false, and a reliable signal that the person saying it is arguing from a position of ignorance. Ditto all the junk about “randomness.”
If you want to take the theist “side,” by all means take the theist “side.” Many intelligent, reasonable, and respectable people have. But if you don’t bother to learn even the basics about the atheist “side,” you end up looking foolish when you completely mischaracterize it.
To take it step-by-step:
Atheists have no god. That’s basically the point. My sense is that theists say this because they think everyone has to have a god, and since the atheists don’t have God as a god, the theist has to figure out what they have instead. It’s hard for this theist to understand that we don’t have anything instead. There may be people who have the cosmos as their god, but those people would be, I don’t know, “Cosmosists” or something, not atheists.
I think the simplest refutation of this is that the core function of a religion is to make normative claims – i.e. tell people what they should and shouldn’t do. This is never the function of science. (Which is not to say that scientists don’t sometimes tell people what we should and shouldn’t do, but that they are not doing science when they do this. Nor are they doing religion – religion doesn’t have a monopoly on normative claims.)
I don’t really know what to make of this. If the claim is that atheists trust scientists more than scientists deserve, I think that is probably true–and true of theists as well. I concede that there are “priestly” elements about scientists, but they are largely superficial. I would say that something like peer review doesn’t resemble anything priestly I can think of.
Probably the most laughable set of claims of all. The history of science is largely the history of scientists being wrong. People who are educated about science (including atheists and theists, scientists and non-scientists) recognize this. Later scientists figure out that earlier scientists were wrong. There is a process for doing so, and that that process is central to the practice of science. Science could be described as the continuing effort to reach a more perfect description of the universe, and an integral part of that process is correcting the mistaken ideas of previous generations. In this respect, the contrast with religion cannot be more clear.
July 16, 2010, 12:14 pmJaimeInTexas says:
Correction:
The Jehova’s Witnesses rehashed the proposition that Jesus is a created being, not just a body created but a totally created being.
JW are a modern proponent of the Arian heresy.
July 16, 2010, 12:15 pmJaimeInTexas says:
I was an atheists once. I became a Christian in 1985, at the age of 25yrs.
So, you think that randomness is bunk? What is the alternative, a cosmos that came out of nothing with an organized set of rules?
On what basis do atheists make normative claims?
July 16, 2010, 12:33 pm1040 says:
since your only data point for this was incorrect, and you were making an erroneous claim, the burden of proof for this is on you, not on me.
talking about dalits in india is besides the point, unless you can show that converts are treated as dalits. this is not the case. temples might reject dalits and non hindus, but there has been no evidence that they reject converts because converts are low caste. the puri case was because priests thought the non indians werent hindu, not because it was deemed that non indian hindus were low caste, and once the priests’ cluelessness was corrected, these people did get to enter the temple.
July 16, 2010, 12:41 pmAnthony says:
You base this assertion on what? As far as we can tell from QM, things come from nothing all the time.
Anyone who knows much about science, which includes a greater percentage of atheists than theists, knows that science makes mistakes all the time. Atheists tend to think that science is the best method for explaining and predicting the behavior of the natural world, but plenty of theists think that too.
Why do laws require a god?
Rule-delimited randomness can produce quite interesting and complex results. Look up genetic algorithms some day.
A reasonable first response. The next step is to come up with tests that might help distinguish between the theories ‘I am seeing angels’ and ‘I am crazy’.
Value comes from humans, not from gods.
July 16, 2010, 12:46 pm1040 says:
to be clear, you have produced ZERO data points on this front. You have produced no evidence that converts are denied entry to temples because they have no caste. In fact, your one purported data point of Puri actually defeats your argument – once the priests were told that these converts were Hindu, they actually entered the temple. The denial was not because the converts were casteless, but because the priests did not initially believe that these people were Hindu.
July 16, 2010, 12:46 pmJaimeInTexas says:
“Rule-delimited randomness can produce quite interesting and complex results. Look up genetic algorithms some day.”
But where did the rules come from and why?
July 16, 2010, 12:50 pmL says:
I don’t know about “came out of nothing,” but a set of rules, yes.
Depends on the claim, depends on the atheist. Surely you don’t think all normative claims made by theists come from scripture? Even the ones that do come from scripture have a separate secular basis – or is the Biblical injunction against murder the only reason you abstain from murdering?
If you were able to reach the age of 25 as an atheist, and your conversion to Christianity was not from inside a prison cell, I’m certain you have some idea of how atheists can make and follow normative claims, even if you are having a hard time articulating it.
July 16, 2010, 12:52 pmMorat20 says:
There is a reason the whole “Define atheism, define agnostisicm” thing keeps coming up. Atheists and theists tend to talk past each other, because both sides have world views that are very different than the others — which leads to rampant misunderstandings.
I find the whole “agnosticsm is about whether you can KNOW a God does/does not exist” is a useful definition. Do you believe that there can be proof of God (or not-God), or do you simply have to operate without proof?
The weak/strong (or positive/negative) atheism is also highly useful, because (laying aside the fact that there are many possibily deities to believe/disbelieve in) the distinction between “There is no God” and “I’ve never been given a good reason to think a God exists” is a highly important one.
Most atheists are weak ones — they don’t believe in God, or Allah, or whatever — because they don’t see any reason to. No sufficient case has been made. So they don’t believe in God the same way most people don’t believe in fairies or unicorns. This can be upsetting to people who view the existance, nature, and desire of God as critical to their world view, for perfectly natural reasons.
To put it bluntly: The only reason I ever think about God is because I live in a God-soaked country, full of religious people who tend to make everything in life about their religion. (But then, I live in Texas.). It’s impossible for me to operate in life without running into God, religion, or people telling me what God thinks I should do.
Mostly I just ignore that part — the way I do really rabid football fans. It’s their thing. It’s important to them, and unless it impacts me more substantial than having to listen to them ramble, why rock their boat? Sometimes, I try to explain that I simply don’t see the world the way they do. Sometimes I try to explain that no, as an atheist, I really don’t think that way.
The last is the most obnoxious, and why I try to define the weak/strong distinction and give a firm definition of agnosticism. It really doesn’t matter if they agree those are the PROPER definitions, as long as I can get across how I view it — hopefully so that they can understand why I, as an atheist, don’t really subscribe to their God.
Sadly, I mostly get lectured about how the Big Bang is my God.
July 16, 2010, 12:55 pmAnthony says:
If you believe in a God, where did God come from and why? Why do the rules need to come from anywhere or have a reason? Sure, scientists actually look for the reasons why the rules are what they are, but you’re always going to get back to some point where you can’t trace further, and adding God just adds unnecessary complexity.
July 16, 2010, 1:03 pmJaimeInTexas says:
LOL no jailhouse conversion.
Why is there no such thing as murder in the lower animal forms?
July 16, 2010, 1:04 pmJaimeInTexas says:
There are atheists that think that the cosmos came out of nothing?
July 16, 2010, 1:09 pmAnthony says:
Because we only call it murder if it involves humans? Animals kill other animals, even animals of their only species, fairly regularly.
July 16, 2010, 1:10 pmPickled Tink says:
By appeals to force or threat, shared values, mutually beneficial ends, reason, authority, etc. Which, excepting appeals to supernatural causes, is by and large the same bases for normative claims made by everyone, everywhere, throughout human existence.
Given that the list of “super”natural causes has decreased over the entire human experience, it’s pretty clear which side is losing ground.
July 16, 2010, 1:14 pmL says:
I’m not sure I understand the question.
If you’re asking why non-human animals don’t commit the crime of murder, it’s because murder is defined as the unlawful killing of another human being with malice aforethought. IAAL.
If you’re asking why non-human animals don’t kill each other, the answer is, of course, that they do.
If you’re asking why non-human animals are not considered morally blameworthy when they kill each other, though humans are when we murder each other, then I’m sure there are others who can say it better than I. I think it probably has to do with the human ability to reason, and with it, something that might be termed a “moral sense” or an ability to distinguish right from wrong. FWIW, even humans who are deemed incapable of distinguishing right from wrong are sometimes exempted from punishment for murder on that basis.
If you’re asking something else, I guess you’ll have to be more clear.
July 16, 2010, 1:14 pmL says:
I assume there’s at least one. There are enough people in the world that I figure almost everything is believed in by somebody. Why do you ask?
July 16, 2010, 1:17 pmAnthony says:
Sure, but mostly it’s just a question that doesn’t clearly have a meaningful answer. As far as we can tell, the universe has existed since the beginning of time, though that’s a tautology because time is defined with respect to the universe.
July 16, 2010, 1:30 pmJaimeInTexas says:
L: You think that out of nothing came this physical universe?
July 16, 2010, 1:34 pmJaimeInTexas says:
But I am referring to the basic stuff (for lack of better word) that makes up the cosmos, including time.
The cosmic egg, before the expansion, was made of something. Where did the cosmic egg, the stuff that it is made of, come from? What lays outside the egg?
If you are an atheist, to me, the only logical conclusion is that the cosmos has always existed (no begining, no end) and it is infinite.
July 16, 2010, 1:49 pmL says:
I don’t recall saying that, or indeed ever having expressed any opinion on the issue.
July 16, 2010, 1:52 pmJaimeInTexas says:
“I assume there’s at least one.”
I thought “you” meant you, by the above. If not, I think that I, now, understand how you meant it. ;)
July 16, 2010, 2:02 pm1040 says:
i have no idea why this is the case. in any case, if your solution is to posit a god, and then evade the question of god’s creator by saying that god is beyond this question by definition or some other rhetorical sleight of hand, it is a useless explanation.
in the early days, man had the same questions about the sun or the horizon etc. science resolved those questions. after that, one of the biggest motivations for god was the diversity of life forms. darwin resolved that, and with that, the corresponding motivation went out the window. science has since gone a long way towards answering questions about the origin of the universe. our understanding today is dramatically advanced over what it was even 25 years ago.
July 16, 2010, 2:06 pmL says:
Oh, sorry, I might not have been clear. I meant that I assume there is at least one atheist who thinks the cosmos came out of nothing. I am an atheist who has no position on the origins of the cosmos.
Although, to backtrack a little, it’s not quite correct for me to say that I never had an opinion on the issue. I was a Catholic for a few years.
July 16, 2010, 2:06 pm1040 says:
my position personally aligns with morat20′s. i don’t much care if people believe in their pet stories about god or walking on water or whatever else, and the only reason i am forced to think about it is because i live in a culture that is obsessed with religion (relatively – it could be far worse). it is similar to how an otherwise rational person would be forced to engage with the question of witches if they lived in salem circa 1690.
July 16, 2010, 2:13 pmDavid Schwartz says:
I’m not sure which part you want me to elaborate on. Do you want me to elaborate on the various efforts at theories of objective morality or do you want me to elaborate on why they’re not needed?
I think I’ve already made the case for the latter. That people agree that the sky is not the same color as the grass and can pass (at levels above chance) tests of what colors various things are is nearly conclusive proof that some objective parameter must be associated with claimed colors.
As for the former, we have many theories of objective morality that are in about the same shape as “the light must be different in some way eyes can detect” theories of color were at the time. Unfortunately, it ties into other questions we don’t have the answers to, such as the nature of moral agency. What we don’t have is the analog of precisely how is blue light different from red light, but we all know blue light and red light are different and someone who claims that what looks different to everyone else doesn’t look different to him either lacks the ability to measure an objective property or is lying.
I think the most likely outcome will be that morality will be a consequence of the nature of moral agency in much the same way that color is a consequence of the nature of light. (Somewhere I wrote a long essay on this many years ago. I’ll try to dig it up and post an URL.)
July 16, 2010, 2:46 pmAnthony says:
I don’t really consider those questions that can meaningfully be answered, or in some cases even meaningfully asked (the universe does not have an outside; the egg is a deceptive analogy).
July 16, 2010, 2:51 pmChrisTS says:
The chicken.
July 16, 2010, 3:15 pmChrisTS says:
David Schwartz
Do you mean this in a Kantian sense?
July 16, 2010, 3:27 pmJaimeInTexas says:
My starting point is an eternal being. An atheists, it seems for the most part, start with an eternal cosmos.
July 16, 2010, 3:48 pmJaimeInTexas says:
Anthony: Was there an expansion, termed Big bang?
July 16, 2010, 3:51 pmAnthony says:
Yes, but it wasn’t an expansion of the sort you’re intuitively familiar with, it was essentially a rescaling of space.
July 16, 2010, 3:54 pmyankee says:
I’m not sure “eternal” is the right word. Asking what came before the beginning of time is incoherent, there’s no such thing as “before” time.
My personal suspicion is that the universe does not stretch back infinitely in time, but there was no first moment, in much the same way there is no lowest number in the interval (0, 1) on the real line.
July 16, 2010, 5:35 pmRob Berra says:
At the risk of being rude, that’s utter nonsense. We “know” nothing of the sort. Polytheism is no more or less probable than duotheism or monotheism.
The “human-limited attributes” bit is a viable point, but if those contests are being described allegorically that does not render the contests themselves nonexistent or even implausible. Your touted duotheism is, after all, nothing more than polytheistic conflict writ small.
July 16, 2010, 6:18 pmTomG says:
In response to Rob Berra: okay thanks, so you’ve granted me the implausibility for seaweed to be Poseidon’s dandruff – thanks ;-) Yet unless ‘gods’ are the same as atoms and quasars, having no will or mind, wouldn’t they eventually manifest their presences in some intelligible fashion – so as to defy the simplist conclusion (a la Occam’s Razor, of most likely) that there’s only but a single deity or else dueling duos (given our perceived war between good and evil)? Evidence points to only three possibilities: No God(s) at all; A single God, Who cares; or two Anti-Gods in a cosmic struggle. All else is silly if Man was created purposefully (but if not, all bets are off – naturally – and even the most absurd drama is possible). This was interesting to me – Cheers.
July 16, 2010, 8:23 pmAnthony says:
That argument applies as well to monotheism as polytheism, and is generally an argument for atheism.
Occam’s Razor pretty clearly says that, in the absence of contrary evidence, your default assumption should be no god.
The assumption that man was created purposefully requires the existence of an entity with purpose. It’s certainly not something that can be taken as an assumption, and proving its truth is similar to proving the existence of God. However, even if we grant your assumption, Man being created by committee is neither more nor less plausible than a single creator.
July 16, 2010, 8:46 pmDavid Schwartz says:
Having known a lot of atheists, I can tell you that very few of them believe the cosmos was eternal. In fact, I think they would say that they don’t know what you mean by “eternal being” or “eternal cosmos”. They start with what they can observe, deduce from that what they can, and for the rest they freely admit that they have no idea.
July 16, 2010, 9:03 pmBarb says:
You have great faith in your impersonal process!! And that requires even more faith than the belief in an intelligent designer God who has revealed Himself throughout history through the Jews and Christ and the Church.
Really? heal 10 lepers? make the man lame from birth walk? Heal the blind? Really??? Bring Lazarus alive out of a tomb after 3 days dead and decomposing??? Truly change water to wine?
July 16, 2010, 9:53 pmBarb says:
It is interesting that mankind has been pondering his origin and the possibility of controlling deities as far back as we can calculate.
The Bible says, “The fool has said in his heart, ‘there is no god.’”
And “Professing themselves to be wise, they became as fools.”
I find these to be humbling statements with the ring of truth.
July 16, 2010, 10:01 pmBarb says:
C.S. Lewis wrote about man’s “sense of oughtness,” the fact that men appeal to a higher sense of what is fair and just –even if they don’t agree on the standards. “There oughtta be a law!” man tends to think. He noted that in every culture a man couldn’t just have any and every woman he wanted –there were customs about what was legit and what was not –in every human culture. He said this moral sense in man was an evidence, to him, finally, of a higher power. He had been an atheist and had reasoned his way to Christian faith –as set forth in his book, a series of radio talks on the BBC, Mere Christianity.
July 16, 2010, 10:09 pmyankee says:
Yeah, Cure Disease and Cure Blindness/Deafness are both only third level. Raise Dead is 5th level and can bring someone back after one day per level, so three days is pretty trivial. I can’t think of any spells that quite correspond to making the lame walk, but Restoration would probably work; that’s only 4th level. Transmute Water to Wine isn’t on the standard spell list, but it’s on the same power level as Create Water or Purify Food and Drink, so it would be 0th level. So a cleric would only have to be 9th level to do all that stuff (13th level if Restoration isn’t good enough to make the lame walk and you need Greater Restoration instead).
At least in 3.5, dunno about the current edition.
July 16, 2010, 10:18 pmBarb says:
I really do think Jesus Christ was the Word from the Creator-God. There is so much we don’t even profess to know as believers — could there be life on other planets? Is God just as we perceive Him, as revealed in the Bible, or is there so much more to know about who made us and the beings around Him and where He resides and what is meant by Heaven and Hell? I can’t comprehend anything without beginning or end –or even our own amazing bodies and life processes. To say evolution explains all–what a joke! What craziness! There is way more to us and our existence, our beautiful, balanced planet , than what Darwin imagined or even began to explain. All he did was point out natural selection and survival of the fittest which are true enough concepts in science. But no one has proved transition from common ancestors –and even if Earth IS God’s celestial laboratory and He tried a lot of creatures before He tinkered with the DNA to get humans, which is what I think He did –DNA is like a language code –has to be intelligence behind our complexity. How can anyone think it’s all impersonal nature at work with no personal guidance in the process? I cannot.
How do you explain the ability to SEE, perceive BEAUTY and LOVE, and have so much in human experience to enjoy?
I think the BIble is ALL true –but not all the Truth there is to know. We are told exactly what to BELIEVE in order to please this Creator. Over and over, the Bible comes back to the importance of “faith.” I’m going to believe what He told us to believe –even though that doesn’t tell me all there is to know about Him. There is room for speculation –but not room to “cross” the Book. That is His Word and I’m to accept it as from Him.
The Book tells us Jesus saves from death–and that He beat the grave. Faith in Him gives us a second chance at immortality with Him. I’m taking it. And so can you all.
July 16, 2010, 10:24 pmBarb says:
Yeah, Cure Disease and Cure Blindness/Deafness are both only third level.Raise Dead is 5th level and can bring someone back after one day per level, so three days is pretty trivial.I can’t think of any spells that quite correspond to making the lame walk, but Restoration would probably work; that’s only 4th level.Transmute Water to Wine isn’t on the standard spell list, but it’s on the same power level as Create Water or Purify Food and Drink, so it would be 0th level.So a cleric would only have to be 9th level to do all that stuff (13th level if Restoration isn’t good enough to make the lame walk and you need Greater Restoration instead).At least in 3.5, dunno about the current edition.
________________________________
End of block quote –not sure why it didn’t work.
I’m not familiar with your “levels” for clerics. You mean Catholic Church teachings?
In fact, Jesus did say His disciples would be able to do miracles, too. Read HERE about Peter with JOhn healing a man lame from birth as they went back into Jerusalem, preaching in the synagogue, to the Jews about how they had wrongly crucified Christ –but God meant it for good –etc.
I know a man personally who claims to have healed a blind woman in Africa on a mission trip. I heard of some home-schooled youth in So. America who saw a massive chest injury on a child hit by a truck –and they gathered around the child in the street –while the mother ran off screaming –and they prayed in their youthful naivete and faith –and saw the child’s chest re-materialize, healing before their eyes. These were a very mature smart couple of kids with fine credibility.
I know a missionary’s son (MIT grad) who said a woman levitated in the front of their mission church in Brazil (If I recall the nation correctly) and he ran his foot under the suspended woman to see if seeing was believing–and his father prayed for this woman to be free of a demon and her body dropped to the floor; there was a wooosh! and the back door slammed shut –as though a presence had departed.
July 16, 2010, 10:44 pmDavid Schwartz says:
Transmuting non-food liquids to food liquids is a cantrip, so zeroth level. It’s something every Cleric learns before he gets to call himself a Cleric.
July 16, 2010, 10:49 pmMorat20 says:
Case in point. Here was have a theist telling an atheist what they MUST believe. Not asking them what they believe. Telling them.
He quantifies it with “most” — but since atheism has no doctrine, no creed, and is defined entirely by a lack of belief in God (and not by, say, adherence to any given form of cosmology), it’s a pretty stupid thing to say.
By the way — I’ve met atheists who believe in ghosts and fairies. They just don’t believe in God. Why they find ghosts and fairies more believable I didn’t quite understand, but unlike you I simply asked them why.
I’ll make it simple: Just because your religion has a creation myth, doesn’t mean my lack of a religion doesn’t. I don’t believe in your God. That doesn’t mean I have to explain all the things you use your God to explain. It just means I don’t think your God exists.
Atheism makes no statement on the origins of the universe, the origins of life, the value of science, morality, or whether or not Terry Pratchett is a good writer. Atheism has no creed, no doctrine, no beliefs. Atheism is simply not believing in your God.
That’s it. That’s all. PLEASE stop projecting. Just because your religion encompasses origin, morality, and afterlife doesn’t mean my lack of religin covers those same things. It can’t, because atheism means “without”.
The old canard about “if religion is a hair color, atheists are bald” is true. Atheism is the absence of religious belief. You’re trying to give us creeds and motives, telling us what we have to believe. It doesn’t work like that.
July 16, 2010, 11:03 pmRob Berra says:
Um, no you don’t, because it’s not true.
Wrong again.
July 16, 2010, 11:39 pmRob Berra says:
Like the Abrahamic god?
Um, you’re assuming your conclusion here.
First, the Abrahamic deity hasn’t put on a whole lot of large-scale appearances of late. Second, He’s pretty much identical in that respect to any other deity: appearances tend to be unverified/unverifiable, but that doesn’t automatically mean they didn’t happen. Absence of evidence is not evidence of absence.
But that doesn’t mean He doesn’t exist.
That’s because the Romans had a different approach. They were entirely willing to let conquered nations keep their own deities, as long as they recognized the Roman State deities as well. The Jews and later Christians declined to do so, and suffered considerably for it until the Christians were able to turn the tables and enact oppression of their own. Sadly, Julian the Faithful died before he could institute solid reforms.
Christianity and Islam did most of their original spreading by the sword.
July 16, 2010, 11:50 pmRob Berra says:
Are you asserting positively that They have not?
{incredulous look} To what “evidence” do you refer?
Why? Not to put too fine a point on it, but you’re making what appear to be enormous leaps. Please show your work.
And you don’t see substantial amounts of “absurd drama” in the world?
July 17, 2010, 12:13 amleo marvin says:
OK, but that doesn’t seem to comport with
It would be one thing if you falsified anything evolution actually claims to explain, but your arguments are straw men, ipse dixits, and circular appeals to scripture. If, as that suggests, your humility only extends to what you already believe, is it really humble?
July 17, 2010, 2:03 amPeter Shalen says:
The religious people I know all believe that God is a being whose ultimate nature cannot be understood by mortals. If they are a representative sample of believers, then the definition in question is indeed a straw figure.
If the truly religious, as opposed to the fanatical, believe that they cannot understand the ultimate nature of God, then truly religion implies a fundamental humility. In this sense the truly religious have something in common with agnostics, in that they do not claim to understand the ultimate nature of reality. By contrast, atheists, if one defines them as people who do claim to understand the ultimate nature of reality, have something in common with fanatics.
It’s illogical to say “If it’s a ‘straw figure,’ then so is most of monotheistic religion as we know it.” To assert that this description of religion a straw figure means to deny that it’s what most monotheists believe.
July 17, 2010, 2:48 amyankee says:
It’s a Dungeons & Dragons joke. The basic point being, it takes a lot to prove that you’re the omnipotent, omniscient Creator and Sustainer of the universe rather than a much less powerful being with some supernatural powers.
July 17, 2010, 5:32 amTomG says:
To Rob Berra’s excellent questions (and perturbed stares ;-)
Yours: Are you asserting positively that They have not?
What I meant to say was that if ‘gods’ are not mere passive, indifferent components comprising existence – but had some high-level dynamic and method to their madness (quite different, therefore, from the squabbling, egoistic gods of mythology) then given Man’s cognitive capacity and propensity to search out meaning, wouldn’t such sentient and presumably omnipresent gods have revealed themselves to us (assuming of course that our rational-based faculties are indicative of what they, as our creators, would hold dear – and that or existence is purposefully rendered)? Of course I’m aware that Hinduism is a major religion with multiple godheads, and I’ve heard many a Bible-thumper accuse the Catholic cannonization of saints as a form of heretical polytheism (given that they can serve, supposedly, as intermediaries in our pleas with the Lord). But I still maintain that the historical facts, revelatory ‘evidence’, and strides in philosophical and theolgical studies – have pretty much concluded what Akhenaton declared millinia ago, that there must be only one God – a sole Creator (otherwise the multiple gods, not of single mind or intent, would sabotage eachothers’ works of art – and we’d be tossed about at whim, with our bungholes on our faces at times :-)
Yours: {incredulous look} To what “evidence” do you refer?
Evidence in the form of most surviving belief system that stood the test of time, intense inquiry and brilliant minds’ conclusions/invested passions; the scientific body of know