by Coded Logic 84 Replies latest watchtower beliefs
What if using evidence to try to find out of there is a God is like using a metal detector to try to discover a heavy metal band? It is based on a misunderstanding of how reality works.
Raymond Tllis is good on the reductionist idea that detectable brain states equal emotion. He calls it neuromania and Darwinitis.
I also like Raymond Tallis's explanation why he is an atheist, precisely because he rejects an evidence based approach to the problem.
There are bad as well as good reasons for deciding that one is, or that one should be, an atheist, and I suspect the bad reasons may be more influential. The worst reason for not believing in God (though the least obviously bad), is that there is no evidence for His existence. This is a bad reason for atheism because no-one can agree what would count as evidence. Miracles, scriptures, the testimony of priests and prophets etc, can all be contested on empirical grounds: but for some people the fact that we communicate intelligibly with one another, or that the world is ordered, or even that there is something rather than nothing, is sufficient evidence to demonstrate that there is a Creator who not only made the world but also made it habitable by and intelligible to us. Therefore the appeal to evidence, or lack of it, will always be inconclusive...
According to the religions in which I was brought up (though not, of course to all religions), God unites in His Person a risibly odd combination of properties. In order to uphold a world picture which links the great events that brought the universe about with the little events that fill our lives, it has to conflate metaphysics and morality, physics and politeness – something of the significance of the Big Bang with an Angry God who sulks because he is not adequately praised, and who intervenes at a personal or political level in an often random and sometimes quite repulsive way. It unites the origin of the universe with finger-wagging armies of priests speaking in His name. The notion is almost comical, and certainly infantile, and it betrays how this idea of God is clearly a mirror of local and historical human preoccupations rather than eternal feature of the universe. The God who merges the power that slew thousands to avenge the slights felt by other thousands, or to lift a righteous person up, with the power to bring the boundless totality of things into being, is an ontological monstrosity – like a chimera uniting the front end of a whale with the back end of a microbe.
But shouldn’t one humbly admit uncertainty, and be an agnostic rather than an atheist? No; and here’s the reason why. A quick glance at the metaphysical claims associated with the 100 or so religions on offer at the present time shows that they are in profound and often bitter conflict. But unless you have been indoctrinated from birth into a particular religion you are forced to make a seemingly random choice in the Shopping Mall of Theological Ideas. If in the spirit of humility you seek what they have in common, very little of substance remains: the highest common factor between Christianity, Paganism, Hinduism, Jainism and all the other theisms is pretty small, and what little remains is incoherent. To be a sincere agnostic you would have to be able to entertain the notion of a God who is infinite but has specific characteristics; unbounded, but distinct in some sense from His creation; who is a Being that has not been brought into being; who is omniscient, omnipotent and good and yet so constrained as to be unable or unwilling to create a world without evil; who is intelligent and yet has little in common with intelligent beings as we understand them; and so on. The ‘apophatic’ God, defined in terms of what God is not, of the Greek philosopher Xenophanes and some strands of Orthodox Christianity, is some acknowledgement of this unthinkability of the deity. But agnosticism requires one to keep in play the notion of a square circle. Not, I would think, worth the effort.
So, whatever my actual reasons for being an atheist, intellectually the case does not rest on the lack of evidence for God, or the bad behaviour of believers and religious institutions, but on the idea of God itself, which insofar as it is not entirely empty, is self-contradictory, and makes less sense than that which it purports to explain.
It doesn’t follow from this that I believe we have a complete or even a properly grounded understanding of what we are. For example, we do not understand consciousness – how it is that we are aware. Atomic materialism does not explain it, that’s for sure. And the very concept of matter has become unintelligible, as we know from the paradoxes of quantum mechanics. I also do not understand how it is that individually and collectively we make sense of the world – how knowledge is possible. But this sense of the limitation of our knowledge and understanding makes me more, not less, happy in my atheism: I am not obliged to imprison a thrilling intuition of transcendent possibility arising out of my sense of the unknown, in a ragbag of confused, contradictory and often (but not always) malign beliefs, culminating in logical impossibilities. This nothwithstanding, we should be grateful for the monuments of art, architecture, ritual and thought that we atheists owe to others’ belief in God.
Slimboyfat,
What is the value of pointing to the words of another? If their value lies only to back up your views, is that not an appeal to authority, a fallacy which undermines your argument?
If it is an axiom you live by, why are you following the words of another like the millions of mindless sheep who follow the Watchtower? If people are to believe your words, shouldn't they be your words and not "copy and pasted" from another?
Back and forth goes the argument. Back and forth like a tennis match with no end or winner. Is it intelligence and wisdom to believe that we now have the answer when the time before we believed we did we were so wrong? Or does not logic dictate that there is more wisdom in choosing more than what everyone else is doing, more than arguing the same old argument like a dog that never catches up with the tail it so eagerly chases?
Or are we so arrogant as to believe we are the One, finally gracing the world with our knowledge, the savior who is come to settle the issue once and for all, endowed with insight and knowledge no other man before us has ever possessed?
But since this is the path some have chosen, I won't interrupt it again. Far be it from me to suggest it is a waste of time and energy to argue what nameless and dead generations before you have debated. I could be wrong, but I believe Einstein would be apropos here when he stated that doing the same thing over and over again in expectation of a different outcome is the true sign of insanity.
What if using evidence to try to find out of there is a God is like using a metal detector to try to discover a heavy metal band? It is based on a misunderstanding of how reality works.Then we could never be justified in believing there is a God. Because I know of no method to tell the difference between things which don't exist and things for which there is no evidence. If we can't find out about something with evidence then what can we find out about it with?
Imagine for a moment that I propose the existence of a square circle. And when you point out such a thing is not possible I say "Well you're being arrogant because you haven't ruled out that it could exists outside of all geometric planes. How do you know in the future we won't have the necessary mathematics to describe a square circle?"
I think you would find such postulations tedious and blatantly ad hoc. The very notion that I'm having to go outside of geometry to make my square circle work is a huge red flag I don't have good reasons for believing such a thing exists.
The same is true of the God hypothesis. If we have to redefine what existence means or postulate evidence is the wrong tool for the job - then that should be a red flag we are not on a path to knowledge.
Philosophy is a great tool for making sure we're using the right epistemological methods and asking the right questions - but untempered by real world data it can only explore the theoretical. Never the actual. And arm chair speculations and ontological arguments are never going to get us to a justified belief in God(s).
Most importantly, it's not my fault if believers can't find a way to verify or falsify their beliefs. It's not my fault they can't think of a set of evidence that would prove the existence of the creator they claim exists. Because it's the person making the claims responsibility to provide evidence - not my responsibility to design tests for them. Onus Probandi: burden of proof / burden of persuasion falls to the person making the claim.
For example, I don't believe in the Multiverse. And simply saying "Well scientist don't have a way to test the theory therefore we are justified in believing it." - is NOT a valid argument. If someone claims the Multiverse is real it is up to THEM to provide the evidence. And if the hypothesis is unverifiable and or unfalsifiable then their belief is unwarranted.
Theology, whether apophatic or otherwise, has about the same value as unicornology.
Both ideas relate to a time in human development when flights of imagination ruled the day where no scientific assessment was possible.
Theology must be one of the most profligate distractions from reality that humans have ever contrived to date but in fairness our forebears did not practice belief based on evidence followed up with critical reasoning.
Theism historically had been mandatory as a pivotal concept and the entrenched habit was carried down the generations by thoughtless inculcation of offspring until our time. Were cultural ideas to begin now and on the basis of evidence and common sense; it can hardly be imagined that something beyond the senses such as an almighty spirit would arise as the answer to everything.
Nevertheless it seems that the human brain is wired to crave for the miraculous, a weakness which is readily exploited by religious organisations.
David Jay - You are an expert in lecturing a strawman.
There is nothing really new here. I respect the idea of atheism and also being agnostic. I also respect the belief of theism and deism.
I understand why people have certain beliefs and ideas and I can tolerate these ideas and beliefs.
Cofty has said my reasons for a belief in a Creator are bucket chemistry. Dismissing my argument like this does not convince me I am wrong. No one has been able to help me see why my argument is flawed with scientific evidence. So with the scientific evidence I do have and then apply Ocams Razor....for me it's more probable there is an intellectual being responsible for guiding evolution in the early stages of amino acid formation.
Kate xx
KateWild,
How have you determined "it's more probable there is an intellectual being responsible for guiding evolution in the early stages of amino acid formation"?
And how does an "intellectual being" get you to God?
Far be it from me to suggest it is a waste of time and energy to argue what nameless and dead generations before you have debated. I could be wrong, but I believe Einstein would be apropos here when he stated that doing the same thing over and over again in expectation of a different outcome is the true sign of insanity.
And people keep making babies, and working, and eating and all that repetitive stuff. When are they finally going to give up already? Thanks for the wisdom.
